Everybody has an ideology, right?

I think by now, anyone who has spent any time reading my timeline and stuff I post on Facebook (much less my blog “The Cybernetic Atheist”) is aware that I am an unapologetic, out-and-out atheist.  No surprise there.  As I’ve explained before, I’m an atheist because of what I’ve learned about the Bible, and from the lack of any real evidence of the existence of God.  (From which I surmise that Christ cannot exist - no Father, no Son, right?  So, Christianity is man-made.)

But, as so many people have noted, and I myself have also said, atheism is not a belief, it is the LACK of a belief.  Over 8,000 gods/goddesses which mankind has invented over the millennia, and I don’t believe in any of them.  For much the same reasons, in fact.

But, isn’t it true that everybody has to have something which guides them?  Some moral compass?  Some (for lack of a better term) ideology?  I think that’s true, and mankind has come up with literally hundreds of such ideologies, if not thousands, in the course of our becoming humankind designing all of the myriads of civilizations (and accompanying gods) which have come and gone since.

Oh, what was that?  What do I believe?

Funny you should ask, I was just about to get to that.

For starters, it also isn’t a surprise to my Facebook friends to note that I seem to be a liberal.  I used to call myself an Independent, but the Republicans have managed to push me much further to the left over the last ten years (though mostly over the last six for obvious reasons).

But there’s more than that, a political ideology isn’t a moral one, as moral as it may be possible for political ideologies to be.

Morally, I like to identify myself with Secular Humanism.  The basic ideals of that group of people resonate with me closely.  Just to make it easier, here is one example of their beliefs:

* 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.

Obviously, there are other interpretations and versions of these, Secular Humanism is not a religion and has no universally recognized tenets or principles, though these are a good example of the general direction most Humanists tend to go.

Another principle I admire is one contained in the Hippocratic Oath, “First, do no harm”.  If there is one overriding idea which intertwines itself into virtually all of the above principles, that would be it.  As a human being, into whose DNA the very urge of being a socialist animal is cooked, that seems to be the best guide to living one’s life, if one had to boil it all down to its basic elements.

That, I think, is one of the major differences between Humanism and religion - Christianity being my focus because of where I live.  Why?  Well, just look at the Ten Commandments, which Christians tend to look at (at least the Fundies here do) as the basic guidance provided by their God.

Without belaboring the point, look at the second commandment:

“You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.”

Look at the passage I underlined.  That is the very opposite of “do no harm”.  To punish the innocent?  For the neglect and disobedience of their ancestors?  (I always kind of thought the jealousy was a sin.)

On the other hand, There is no example of jealousy or hatred in the Humanist principles above.  Quite the opposite, in fact.

Another reason why I think Humanism is better than Christianity (as well as others) is because of longevity.

Yeah, yeah, I know, Secular humanism is merely a couple of hundred years old at the most.  So, what gives?

As a movement, that’s true.  But the principles above are based on literally hundreds of thousands of years of human experience.   While our intellectual experience giving us the ability to express them well is fairly recent comparatively speaking, the basic experiences themselves derive from the totality of human experience going back over two hundred thousand years, fading back into our evolutionary past.  These principles are so well understood that they were expressed, discussed and argued over in various ways even as far back as the ancient Greek philosophers, who debated many of these very ideas well over two thousand years ago, predating christianity!

Yet, Christianity is only around two thousand years old, its Jewish antecedents go back perhaps another two thousand or so, and the developmental periods for both religions are rife with violence, tribalism, slavery and misogyny.  Hardly an atmosphere to encourage humanistic principles!  Granted, the Greeks weren’t a prime example of being a hotbed of modern liberal ideals either, but their philosophers fought for the idea of trying to make humanity better than we were, at least some of them did, and their example resonated with the fathers of the Enlightenment thousands of years later!

I firmly believe that religion is, to a general degree, concerned with one thing:  Its own survival.  For an excellent example, look at the first five of the Ten Commandments.  Every one of them are devoted to the preservation of the authority of God and his earthly representatives.  Keeping people in the fold, under the pain of death.  (Perhaps not an earthly one, but if hell isn’t a kind of eternal death, I don’t know what is.)

Certainly the fact that most if not all of His other dozens of commandments/laws in Leviticus command death as a punishment qualify as antithetical to Humanist principles.

Yet, Humanism is not.  Not a single principle above is devoted to ensuring the survival of a “Humanist religion”, mainly because there isn’t one!  The closest one can come is where it says, “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.”  Which does not at all entail a self serving principle of survival.

As you might have guessed by now, another focus of mine is that of anti-theism.  I am, admittedly, an anti-theist.  I believe strongly that religion, as a belief system(s) which encourages people to believe things which are false and contrary to reality, is harmful to not only individual humans, but humanity as a whole.  Much of my writing is focused on struggling to spread the truth about false beliefs and their harmful affects.

But even that is an outgrowth of my Humanist principles - see the next to last one above.  Religion is not a good introduction to ethical conduct - quite the opposite, in fact, as it encourages a plethora of unethical conduct, mainly by example, which precisely undermines its attempts at ethics through the Ten Commandments and the teachings of Jesus.  There may be millions of Christians who defy this, by being good - but that happens because they adhere to the Enlightenment principles expressed by our Founding Fathers, ignoring the more harmful and violent examples and verses of the Old Testament.  (One can see that, because of the various examples of Christians who do the opposite - adhere to the Old Testament’s more intolerant and violent prescriptions of conduct, and do all they can to undermine and violate the egalitarian principles contained in our Constitution.)

So, to make a long story shorter, while my focus may be on the harmfulness of religion and my attempts to explain how I arrive at those conclusions, my very positive beliefs are what informs that fight, wishing with all my heart that more people could see how much better America and the world would be without the falsehoods of faith.

I hope this helps to make my efforts more understandable.

What year is this, anyway?

I can't decide if I'm living in the USSR, Czarist Russia, North Korea, Medieval Europe, or some combination thereof.  Or at least in a developing something the designers can't make up their minds where they're going with it all.

It's bad enough that Dominionists have been trying to remake American History to show the US as a Christian country.  But now, Oklahoma's legislature is trying to ban AP American History and replace it with some crackpot version of a perfect Christian America.

It seems they object to the technique of learning from the past by pointing out where we went wrong so future generations won't make the same mistakes.

I can understand how seeing your most cherished values being pointed out in school as mistakes and wrong might be upsetting.  But as a past (but reformed) Republican, I can testify from personal experience that one can learn from one's past and one can move on to a better way of thinking.

It really doesn't hurt at all.  It's kind of liberating, in fact.  Oh, sure, one does get the odd pang of regret if current events smack you in the face with something you used to think was cool but was really harmful.  But I see those as reinforcing the initial lesson.  Kind of like reminders:  "See?  Weren't you stupid then?  But you're smarter now!"  In the end, they remind you that you've come a long way, baby!

But I guess some folks just can't get past it.

I can understand that, really I can.

What I can't understand is why you'd want to paint over those past mistakes by turning our lovely country into a totalitarian nightmare.  Remaking the past is something we accused the Soviets and the Maoists of doing.  You know, those dirty commies who painted out the totalitarian rulers of their countries' past and replaced them with monsters to contrast with their own "perfect" replacement?

In our case, the Dominionists want to replace the very real monsters on our own past with visions of lollypops, candy canes and unicorns farting rainbows so their kids will never question Jesus.

Probably because they want to keep making the same mistakes and call them "family values".  Or whatever.

But in so doing, they are destroying what they claim to love about our country.  Its liberty.  Its freedom.  Whatever happened to "Truth, Justice, and the American way"?  Somewhere, on the way to the forum, it got lost.  Or waylaid, or mugged or something.  Probably something, because it sure ain't what I was taught it was supposed to be when I went to school.

Nobody taught me that it was Ok to lie, cheat, and steal your way into office, and when we learned about politicians who did, it was never presented as an honorable way to act.

The one thing Conservatives always forget in their zeal to protect their way of life is that all things come to an end.  People change.  Countries change.  Societies change, often rapidly.  The one thing about American Destiny that Conservatives always are proud of (and justifiably so) is the huge number of technological changes America was responsible for in the 19th century.  We were instrumental in an extremely rapid advancement of humanity out of the horse and buggy days and the days of direct fire based energy into the 20th century where our transportation methods were advanced by hundreds of years in just a few decades, and we marched into the age of electricity almost overnight.

The problem for Conservatives is that such technological changes always - always - bring social changes as well.  Old technologies die.  Remember the old buggy whipmaker example?  As I typed that, Autocorrect wanted to change it to "chipmaker".  So old professions die, too.

A few hundred years ago, the very best swords you could ask for were made with Damascus steel.  A decade or so ago, some guys trying to relearn the old ways of the blacksmiths realized that the techniques for making Damascus steel had been lost.  Nobody knows today how those swords were made.  We have made guesses, but we don't know.  Not for sure.  We may never know for sure.

That's because we can kill people faster, better and from farther away with weapons using gunpowder.  You don't win a war by showing up with Damascus steel swords.  That's how you die.

These changes are not made in a vacuum.  The social changes that come from dying professions, new classifications of devices, better and faster ways of doing things are and have been immense and have caused the old comfortable Patriarchy to be shaken to its foundations.

Young people in America today are overwhelmingly progressive.  They accept and think little about the homosexual issues of the day and are accepting a more equal role for women in jobs, marriage, and politics.  Demographically, the old Conservative way of thinking is dying, and probably won't survive more than another decade or two.

Dominionists and Conservatives (especially the ones who are both) know this, and are doing all they can to stretch out the days before they lose power.  Education of one of their best efforts.

Unfortunately, their efforts are unAmerican and damaging to our democracy to an extreme degree.

We shouldn't really let them get away with it.

America's Greatest Shame.

Gitmo.  Guantanamo Bay.  Also known as GTMO and the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp.  Wikipedia says this about it, in part:

Guantanamo Bay Naval Base (also called Gitmo or GTMO by the U.S. Army, U.S. Marines, U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force, and U.S. Coast Guard personnel stationed there[1]) is located on 45 square miles (120 km2) of land and water at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, which the United States leased for use as a coaling and naval station in the Cuban–American Treaty of 1903. The base is on the shore of Guantánamo Bay at the southeastern end of Cuba. It is the oldest overseas U.S. Naval Base, and the only U.S. military installation in a country with whom the United States has no diplomatic relations.

It speaks about the Detention Camp thusly:

In the last quarter of the 20th century, the base was used to house Cuban and Haitian refugees intercepted on the high seas. In the early 1990s, it held refugees who fled Haiti after military forces overthrew president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. These refugees were held in a detainment area called Camp Bulkeley until United States district court Judge Sterling Johnson, Jr. declared the camp unconstitutional on 8 June 1993. This decision was later vacated. The last Haitian migrants departed Guantanamo on 1 November 1995. 

The Migrant Operations Center on Guantanamo typically keeps fewer than 30 people interdicted at sea in the Caribbean region. 

Beginning in 2002, a small portion of the base was used to detain several hundred alleged combatants at Camp Delta, Camp Echo, Camp Iguana, and the now-closed Camp X-Ray. The US military has alleged without formal charge that some of these detainees are linked to al-Qaeda or the Taliban. In litigation regarding the availability of fundamental rights to those imprisoned at the base, the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized that the detainees "...have been imprisoned in territory over which the United States exercises exclusive jurisdiction and control."[49] Therefore, the detainees have the fundamental right to due process of law under the Fifth Amendment. A district court has since held that the "Geneva Conventions applied to the Taliban detainees, but not to members of Al-Qaeda terrorist organization."[50] 

 My attention has been redirected to this facility due to the fact of five detainees (members of the Taliban, thus POWs and not terrorists) being swapped for an American serviceman held by the Taliban for five years.

I am not going to relate the history of the detentions there.  The Wikipedia article has enough of that.

Instead, I am going to note, again, that this facility is, in my opinion, ill-advised at the very least, and at the most, probably illegal.  Certainly, our detention of Al Qaeda personnel there without charge for numerous years is unConstitutional and most probably a violation of International Law.

It sure as hell is a direct violation of everything this country is supposed to stand for.  Our Constitution is the legal blueprint for our nation's government.  It contains the powers that we, as the grantors of that power, allow our government to have and wield.  It also contains certain restrictions on power that prevent the government from doing certain things to people under its control.

Let's look at that statement again.  There is nothing in the constitution that restricts those guarantees of freedom from government over-reach to only citizens of this country.  It repeatedly uses the term "The People".

The restrictions are to government power, and are meant to prevent the government from taking certain actions against people.  Like, for instance, the fifth Amendment:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise

infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of

a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval

forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War

or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same

offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be

compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself,

nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process

of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without

just compensation.

emphasis mine.

Both phrases are being repeatedly and constantly violated in the case of the Al Qaeda prisoners in Gitmo.  Only about five of them have been afforded some form of due process, and a couple of dozen more are supposedly due for some form of prosecution, but to date have not been charged.

Some of them have been held for over ten years.  WITHOUT CHARGE.

There is also nothing in the Constitution that (contrary to the thinking of the Bush Administration) says that those protections stop at the border.  The constitution is as much in full force and effect anywhere the United States Government operates on soil International Law says is American controlled.  Which includes the United States Navel Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Moving on from the strict legalities, this shit is just wrong.  For decades after World War II, the US has fought against human rights violations by other countries around the world.  We have excoriated them in the press and at the United Nations.  We have held our heads up high and berated other countries' governments using names of all kinds for violating human rights.

Rights which WE are violating at this very moment in the camps at Gitmo.

Hypocrites.  WE are hypocrites.  Our government is being supremely hypocritical by keeping these men in detention while holding others to a higher standard.

The fact that the American People are not demanding an end to those violations means that we ourselves are hypocrites.

Shame on us.

It will take decades of hard work and a perfect record to erase this shame.  The amount of work future generations of Americans will have to do to convince the world that we really are better than that is enormous.

We will likely never live this down.

Close Gitmo, Mr. President.  Close the detention camps.  Either charge the bastards or let them go.  But stop violating the very values our country was founded on.  Defy the Republicans and shame them in front of the entire world.

Our reputation demands it.  Human decency, above all, demands it.

Time to come clean, or just clean house.

By now, many of you have seen the latest news from Ireland, about the almost 800 bodies of infants and children found in a septic tank on the grounds of one of Ireland's many "mother and child" homes maintained at government expense by the Catholic Church across Ireland during much of the early 20th century.

What you may not understand is that those kids were tossed in without ceremony, without last rites, unwanted in death as they were unwanted in life.  When the site was discovered by accident in 1975, it was re-covered by a new concrete slab, and Catholic prayers were said over it, quickly, by a priest before it was again forgotten and ignored.

Bad enough that women were enslaved by the church at the expense of the theocratic Irish government of the time, forced to work for little or no money, and had their children ripped from their arms simply because they became pregnant out of wedlock.

Bad enough that Catholic priests have, for a length of time unknown to all, sexually molested the children of even their most devout followers, and covered up the facts through Church approved rules and regulations to prevent public discovery of these sad and outrageous actions.

But to discover that the Church in Ireland, at countless homes scattered throughout that long suffering country, was actually killing these children through willful neglect, is simply beyond the pale of what a civilized world should accept.

Now we find that at least at one such home, the children so callously killed through willful neglect were also shamefully tossed into a septic tank like so much human feces.

Was this a common practice?  Were all such children disposed of so casually?  How widespread was this practice?  Are they almost all in unmarked, unsanctified mass graves?

Now, a UK based media outlet has asked those questions, and is demanding accountability.

While I think it is about time this is finally brought to light, I would take it further.

How many other countries have seen similar such homes and similar conditions?  This cannot be a phenomena unique to Ireland.  This was an intrinsic, imbedded and very authorized practice throughout that country, indicating that the Church Fathers (read:  College of Cardinals) not only approved, but allowed it to occur and made it official and part of the Church bureaucracy.

What part of the enslavement of women and the neglectful death of children was covered by the New Testament?  Where are the words of Christ that allowed and approved of the death of children for the sins of their parents?  Where is the justification in the teachings of Christ for this complete and utter failure of the church to stand up for its dogma and it's teachings?

Not to mention the shameful coverup of its crimes by throwing the bodies into a septic tank.

It is beyond time for the world to stand up and demand that the Roman Catholic Church come clean.  Time for it to admit to its crimes, worldwide, and to take real, measured actions to atone for the crimes of its past, by funding the uplifting of the poor of this world through the sale and liquidation of church wealth and property it has accumulated and hoarded for almost two millennia.

Time for an abject apology and real atonement.  Or it's values mean nothing, and it's teachings are mere window dressing for its real goal - collecting and hoarding wealth.

Republicans vs. Vets. and 21st Century Politics

The last week has not been a good one for the Republican Party and their relationship with Vets.

Starting with the Republican refusal to either extend or fund further veteran's benefits (including the refusal to fund 27 more medical facilities), continuing with their open spat with that idiot Congresscritter the other day, and now, ending with Republicans' open vehemence towards the Administration finalizing an agreement with the Taliban to bring home the last POW from Afghanistan, That Grand Old Party is fast moving in the direction of becoming the Grand Old EX-Party as they continue to shoot themselves in the foot, the knee, the nether regions and now straight into their empty, echoing braincase.

How is it that the party whose very self-identification has always been with the military (who they insist can do no wrong) now has put itself into the position of throwing that very military (and Vets) under the bus as they continue their five year long hissy fit over the election of Barrack Hussein Obama?

Have they no shame?  No values?  No morals?

Obviously not, save the one, overriding value of racial hatred towards blacks.  You know, the value they SAY they don't have, but honor exclusively to the exclusion of all others, including patriotism, humanity and common sense.  The one that has turned them into the Party of NO, refusing to give President Obama even the semblance of victory in the most minor of issues, even issues they have no philosophical problems with.

As has been noted before, their brains have apparently been put on hold for the duration of the current Administration's tenure, which is obvious, considering that their actions have alienated the young, the middle aged, every minority group you could imagine,  half of the electorate in the persons of the ladies of our proud nation, public employees of every stripe, including cops, including...

Oh, hell, just say it, everybody in this country who isn't an old, white, Anglo-Saxen, Protestant male.

Trust me, at some point, they'll even manage to piss them off soon, they've already managed to anger the members of that class who are classified as seniors.

No wonder they want to restrict voting!  If they manage to allow anybody in this country who isn't an old, white, Anglo-Saxen, Protestant male Republican to vote, they'll lose.

Frankly, I am seriously beginning to doubt the sanity of the leaders of the Tea Party Movement.  How can they seriously believe that this kind of public tantrum about something they've honored in the past isn't going to alienate even members of their base?  Vets have been a strong contingent of the GOP for decades, and Republicans have had the country fooled into thinking Liberals hated vets for almost as long as I can remember.

But not any more.  They've managed to eviscerate that image in just a few short weeks.

What else can they stand on?   Unless they wake up and begin actually suggesting actual plans and laws to solve this country's problems, there isn't anything.

Once upon a time, politics in this country revolved around two parties debating policy and laws, vying for the citizens' attention and agreement by the manner of that debate.  Yes, it got rancorous, even nasty at times, but you always had two sides to choose from.  (Sometimes three!)

Now, you've got Democrats with real, honest to goodness plans, laws and policies meant to solve America's problems on one side, and on the other side, you've got "We hate that Nigger!"

(Sorry for the trigger word, but it is literally the ONLY one which applies)

The modern Republican Party is the 21st century equivalent of the KKK and its lynching parties, determined to see that the black guy in the White House is never seen as a successful President.

Their voices get more and more shrill as President Obama's last term gets shorter and shorter.  I am NOT going to ask if it can get any worse.

It can.

If Humans Aren't Unique.

There is a growing body of evidence to the affect that there are other species of mammal on this earth who may exhibit similar levels of intelligence to humans.  In fact, there are some biologists who investigate life which survives in extreme environments now advancing the thought that intelligence may not always exhibit the same characteristics as ours - that we may not recognize a similarly intelligent species when we see one simply because we won't be able to communicate with it.

Humans have this peculiar trait - we seem to only think someone is as smart as we are if we can talk to them.  Witness someone talking to a foreigner whose voice gets louder and louder as they try to make themselves understood - as if sheer volume helps.  And that's trying to talk to another human!

So, imagine how much harder it is for us to understand that another species is as smart as us if the methods of communication for us and the other species are not compatible - we use sound waves vs. another species using body movement or skin color.

They probably think we are as stupid as we think they are!

Fascinating subject - there is good evidence that dolphins, various species of hominids, elephants, some birds and even whales may also be as intelligent as humans.  We just all have quite different methods of communicating.

This, of course, blows the religious attitude that humans are special - that only humans have souls that are capable of surviving into an afterlife - right outta the water.  What is there to say, if those other species really are as smart as we are, that we are so special that only we can go to heaven?

That others are intelligent as well tells us that no, humans are not the top of the intelligence pyramid, no we are not special, and are, in fact, as the environmentalists have been telling us for decades, just a  small part of an ecology we are rapidly stripping of its ability to keep us alive.

To me, this is a double whammy perfectly illustrating the terrible harm that comes from vast numbers of people believing in superstition.

On one side, the religious belief that we are special and god made this world for us because we are made "in his image" harms us because people will do anything to go to this special place we call heaven.  They see the world through god-colored glasses to justify hurting others to prevent those others from jeopardizing their own chances of going to heaven.

The other side of that whammy is that they see the world as being ours to rape and pillage of everything of value, because not only did god give us "dominion" over the world, but that one day, he'll just come back and fix whatever we screwed up.

Both are short-sighted, both are harmful in numerous ways, and both are blown completely away by the knowledge that we are not the only intelligent species on this planet.

Because, if we are not so special, and there are others as smart as we are, that means that our traditional place at the top is wrong, unethical, and morally bankrupt.  It means that we must, at the very least, take the welfare of all those other intelligent species into account as we use the resources this planet gives us.

At most, it means that we must take the welfare of ALL life on this planet into account.

Which means that we are in for a major re-assessment of how we must live as a species, on this planet and among our fellow travelers on this beautiful blue-green ball we call home.  I've never thought of myself as an environmentalist.  But, I AM a rationalist, and one of my prime directives is that my world-view must change as new information comes to light.

Maybe being an environmentalist isn't such a bad thing to be after all.

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.