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Thanks to Ybor City Stogie!

RWW News: Jindal Prayer Rally Welcome Message

Don't watch this unless you have a strong stomach.  This is a the freaking governor of Louisiana.  Who the hell does he think he is, the Pope?  Barf!

Rachel Maddow: Best Of Michele Bachmann FAILS

Sam Harris, Islam and Israel

Recently, David Samuels interviewed Sam Harris in Venice Beach, California. Harris' first book, "The End of Faith," had an explosive impact in this country and while many considered it a much-needed breath of fresh air,  others, especially conservative Christians, thought it proved he was the antiChrist.

The discussion between Samuels and Harris covered a number of topics, but there was one area I thought most interesting, insightful and helpful in trying to make sense out of our world.

Harris emphasizes that beliefs matter.  What a person believes gives impetus to his or her actions.   He offers the example of a bus driver who believes in the power of prayer to the extent that from time to time he takes his hands off the wheel because Jesus is driving.  Such a person is dangerous.

For some reason some people have a hard time accepting that beliefs matter. Samuels asked how Harris would respond to those who agree with much of what he has "to say about God and science and religion" and yet "find themselves politically sympathetic to obscurantist and often violent political movements like Hezbollah, which have no interest whatsoever in reason and science or in protecting the rights of gays or women?"

Harris notes again that beliefs matter.  Religious beliefs matter.  Religious beliefs drive much of the violence in the world.  There is a hesitancy to criticize religion and a willingness to accept the religions' claim that their beliefs are sacrosanct and above criticism, even though the word, religion, applies to various groups that are sharply divided on most issues.  "Islam is a religion and Jainism is a religion and they have few things in common, but what they don't have in common is a commitment to nonviolence, which Jainism has in spades and Islam doesn't have in principle.  That's a difference worth noticing."

So, we should not speak of all religions or political movements driven by religion as being the same or of equal worth.  There are important, even crucial differences between them.


On to Islam.  One of today's "memes" ...  "is that terrorism ... has nothing in principle to do with the religion of Islam:  It's coming out of other things, economic inequality, political hopelessness, people have been victimized by the Israelis or somebody else or by the legacy of colonialism; there's nothing about the actual doctrine of Islam that accounts for it.  That is untrue."

Untrue or not, there are those who continue to stress a "moral parity claim, which obviously the Israelis suffer from the most.  The Israelis are confronting people who will blow themselves up to kill the maximum number of noncombatants and will even use their own children as human shields.  They'll launch their missiles from the edge of a hospital or a school so that any retaliation will produce the maximum number of innocent casualties.  And they do all this secure in the knowledge that their opponents are genuinely worried about killing innocent people.  It's the most cynical thing imaginable.  And yet within the moral discourse of the liberal West, the Israeli side looks like it's the most egregiously insensitive to the cost of the conflict."

Harris then references what he calls the "pathology of liberalism," by which he means the notion often adopted by [some] "liberals" that "everyone everywhere more or less wants the same thing and ignores the endless supply of people with no obvious political or economic grievance who are willing to devote their lives to jihad.  What you don't hear Jihadis saying, 'I was just so desperate, I just saw no way out [f]or me or my family, and it just seemed like the only thing I could do to express my rage at an unfair system."

That isn't what we hear at all.  Rather the jihadis speak specifically of going to the Islamic paradise if killed in their pursuit of violence.

"There are people who will use human shields on one side, and there are people who will be deterred by other people's use of human shields:  They're still worried about killing the children of their enemies.  Those are two very different groups of people."


For too long, says Harris, religion has gotten by with the claim it is above criticism.  "What religion has had up until this moment is a different set of rules that apply only to it, which is you have to respect my religious certainty even though I'm telling you I arrived at it irrationally."

We can apply this to fundamentalist Christianity in the United States which continues to insist that they be exempt from community laws, Constitutional laws and common standards in order to practice the "faith."  That's what the Hobby Lobby case was all about.  And when they are challenged as to their insouciance regarding the rights of others, they cry foul.

Harris, however, is concerned in this instance with Islam.  He argues that if you can demonstrate why the Quran is worthy of respect and deference, please do so.  But, "I've read the Quran several times and it's not that good.  In fact, it's conspicuously bad as a moral map, and a spiritual map.  You can wander blindfolded into a Barnes & Noble, and the first book you pick off the shelf will have more wisdom than the Quran.  The Quran is uniquely barren of wisdom relevant to the 21st century.  It's got a few good lines about patience and generosity, and the rest is just vilification of the infidel."

He could, and has, of course, said similar things about the Bible.  In an article entitled, "Why Don't I Criticize Israel?", he notes that "when we're talking about the consequences of irrational beliefs based on scripture, the Jews are the least of the least offenders.  [...]  But let me remind you that parts of the Hebrew Bible--books like Leviticus and Exodus and Deuteronomy--are the most repellent, the most sickeningly unethical documents to be found in any religion.  They're worse than the Koran.  They're worse than any part of the New Testament.  But the truth is, most Jews recognize this and don't take these texts seriously.  It's simply a fact that most Jews and most Israelis are not guided by scripture--and that's a very good thing."

In the United States, we have a number of theocrats who would, if they could, take over our government and remake it into a kind of Old Testament theocracy where violence would play a very important role.  They have told us this.  They have warned us.  The speak reverently of stoning those caught in adultery and executing gays.

These are dangerous people because of what they believe.  Their religion deserves to be criticized and mocked, not treated with respect!


Finally, in this article Harris speaks of the difference between Israel and Hamas. "The truth is that there is an obvious, undeniable, and hugely consequential moral difference between Israel and her enemies.  The Israelis are surrounded by people who have explicitly genocidal intentions toward them."  The charter of Hamas is explicitly genocidal, looking forward to the fulfillment of a Koranic prophesy when all Jews will be killed.

"The discourse in the Muslim world about Jews is utterly shocking.  Not only is there Holocaust denial--there's Holocaust denial that then asserts that we will do it for real if given the chance. [...]  There are children's shows in the Palestinian territories and elsewhere that teach five-year olds about the glories of martyrdom and about the necessity of killing Jews."

He goes on:  To appreciate the moral difference between Israel and her enemies, "you have to ask what each side would do if they had the power to do it."

We know what Israel would do, because while they have they power to kill everyone in Gaza at any time, they forgo that option.  On the other hand, the Palestinians "have told us what they would do.  They tell us they would commit genocide.  They tell us they will kill every Jew in Israel."

And that is a world of difference!  It is not a trivial difference.  And it's a difference that impacts all of us.  9/11 is an example.  "For the rest of our lives, and the lives of our children, we are going to be confronted by people who don't want to live peacefully in a secular, pluralistic world, because they are desperate to get to Paradise, and they are willing to destroy the very possibility of human happiness along the way.

"The truth is, we are all living in Israel.  It's just that some of us haven't realized it yet."


For more of Mr. Harris' writings, go to his website here.

A Veritable Circus of Religious Freaks

First of all, Ben Carson.

Ben Carson is a 7th Day Adventist. While our Constitution says there shall be no religious test to hold a political office, someone who is a 7th Day Adventist should be considered very carefully by the voters, for this sect/cult is pure nonsense.  A person who believes in the tenets of Adventism must be considered a religious freak.

Carson, though, holds political views which are even worse.  He's ultra-right on the batshit crazy side of things.  For example, he said earlier this year that the United States is "very much like Nazi Germany."  What?  Yup.  The reason is that the Kenyan Usurper is using the government to "intimidate the population."

I'm not quite sure how that works seeing as how most of the dummies that voted in the last cycle voted for the same assholes who got us into this horrible mess to begin with and those assholes have been running the government for a long time.

Oh, wait, it's the IRS.  The government (i.e. Obama) is using the IRS to "punish" its opponents.  Hmmm.  Now how does that work? The Wall Street gangsters, who should be on a chain gang, are still intact and still stealing, still trying to grab even more of our money with their latest charade of insisting that any deal which would stop the impetus to shut down the government must allow them to continue with their shady financial practices!

Carson is part of that cadre of medical doctors who are dumber than doorknobs when it comes to politics, American history, and common sense (cf. James Inhofe of Oklahoma - climate change is a hoax, and Paul Broun of Georgia - evolution is the devil's work to send us all to hell).  Carson actually said that Obamacare was the "worst thing" since slavery.  Huh?

And when asked about the problem in Ferguson, Missouri, Carson opined that the reason young, unarmed black men like Michael Brown are getting shot by the police is because they "never really learn how to relate to authority in the proper way."

Yassuh master, that's what he said!

And then when the conversation turned to "a sense of entitlement," Carson blamed women's liberation.  "I think a lot of it really got started in the '60s with the 'me generation.''What's in it for me?'  I hate to say it, but a lot of it had to do with the women's lib movement."

It will be fun when the race for the White House begins.  Oops, I guess it already has.  This IS fun!


On to the sports arena.  Ray Rice, the Baltimore Raven football player, who knocked his fiancee out cold in an Atlantic City elevator last February is gonna be playing football again.  He’s been reinstated in the NFL.  

According to the latest version, his fiancee who is now his wife, claims the “assault … was part of God’s divine plan to raise awareness for domestic abuse in America.”

“God chose me and Ray for a reason,” she believes.

Yikes!

Greg Laurie, a wingnut preacher on the far right side of reality, claims there is “No Question These Are the End Times; America’s Role as Superpower Will Diminish as New World Order Forms.”

“Harvest Ministries Pastor Greg Laurie said Sunday his study of Bible prophecy and current events shows America will fade as the world’s foremost superpower in the last days, either because it will join with the antichrist or it will be diminished by the rapture.

Bible prophecy is really something.  Gotta wonder, though, why every Biblical prophet these days gets different meanings from the same material.

David Jeremiah, another far right lunatic, says “The End Times Are Here and Began With the Re-Establishment of Israel.”  The End Times began in 1948 says Jeremiah.  Poor Israel doesn't have a chance.  All the Israelis who haven't accepted Christ are going to hell and that road to hell got a jump start in 1948!

Back to sports, specifically golf.  Larry Alford, when he was 18, was supposedly a top golf star ranked up there with Tiger.  (The name is not familiar to me, so maybe that claim in an exaggeration.)  Then he was in a car accident - he’d been partying and drinking.  He was seriously injured, spent months in the hospital and underwent over 50 surgeries.

He lost his left arm.

But he’s found God or Jesus or both.  That happened because he started asking himself why this happened to him.  Somehow God told him one reason was he “never stuck with Christ in my walk through high school and college.”

He began praying about getting  back on a golf course, and found someone who designed a “one-of-a-kind” prosthetic that works pretty good.  

Now he travels around to golf tournaments raising money for charity by challenging other golfers on the course.

But the big thing is “I feel I have been saved because all those people who have been in accidents and lost a limb, God has put me in their life to encourage them that they can go on in life.”

And finally, a bizness called Samaritan Ministries - “a Biblical, non-insurance approach to health care needs.”  Here's how it appears to work.  You put in your money which is put into a pool and then when you need money for a health problem, they give you some of your money back.

But it's only for "committed Christians."  What follows is from their website:

If you are a committed Christian, you do not have to violate your faith by purchasing health insurance from a company that pays for abortions and other unbiblical medical practices. You can live consistently with your beliefs by sharing medical needs directly with fellow believers through Samaritan Ministries’ non-insurance approach. This approach even satisfies the Federal health care law’s (Affordable Care Act) requirement that you have insurance or pay a penalty-tax (see 26 United States Code Section 5000A, (d), (2), (B)).

The IRS will be issuing details explaining how your participation in health care sharing through Samaritan Ministries will exempt you from the penalty-tax. Since those details will not be needed until 2015 when you file your 2014 tax return, it may be a while before the information is released. Samaritan Ministries is working with the IRS to develop these procedures and will notify all of its members as soon as finalized.

Every month the more than 36,000 households of Samaritan Ministries share more than $9 million in medical needs directly—one household to another. They also pray for one another and send notes of encouragement. The monthly share for a family of any size has never exceeded $405, and is even less for singles, couples, and single-parent families.

Ha, ha.  It’s a socialist healthcare program for true believers!  Ha, ha!

If you want to know more, click here.

An Economic Agenda for America: 12 Steps Forward

1. Rebuilding Our Roads

2. Reversing Climate Change

3. Creating Jobs

4. Protecting Unions

5. Raising the Wage

6. Pay Equity

7.Making Trade Work for Workers

8. Cutting College Costs

9. Breaking Up Big Banks

10. Bringing Health Care to All

11. Ending Poverty

12. Stopping Tax Dodging Corporations

THIS IS WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A LIBERAL!

Our thanks to YborCityStogie for this post!

The Robots Are Coming...

"In the lab of Hod Lipson, an expert in evolutionary robotics at Cornell, graduate students have created two computers that can speak to each other.  The 'male' computer speaks with a slight British accent, the 'female' with a syncopated Indian voice.  And what do robots say to each other?

"'What is God to you?' the female robot asks.
"'Not everything,' the male responds.
"'Not everything could still be something.'
"'Very true.'
"'I would like to believe it is.'
"'Do you believe in God?'
"'Yes, I do.'
"'Don't you want to have a body?'
"'Sure.'"

The above is taken from an article, "Only Human - The evolution of a flawed species," by Tim Flannery in the December 2014 issue of Harper's Magazine.

"Surely," he writes, "Lipson's two robots could not be called human, but their fabricated 'minds' speak to each other out of learned experience.  The generation of machines envisioned by Lipson may be far more capable that this--they may, he believes, have their own emotions informed by direct contact with the world."

The question Flannery raises in this article and the question which has begged for an answer for so long is:  "What does it mean to be human?"

Maybe the robots can tell us?


Note:  The above photo was taken from an article about teaching robots (10 Hardest Things To Teach a Robot") here.

Secularism and the so-called War on God, Christians and Christmas

If you check out websites of the Christian Right, you will be inundated with articles complaining about the "war" on God, or the "war" on Christians, or how "liberals" and secularism have stymied Christians so they can no longer freely practice their beliefs.  And at this time of year, they whine about the non-existent "war" on Christmas.

The authors of these websites bellyache about how we are rapidly becoming a "secular" society, and that secularism is taking over our government, and that secularism is akin to atheism, and the God will punish America mightily for this terrible perversion.  One wingnut is certain that our secularism has set the apocalypse in motion and the antichrist on his way!


It is true that religion is becoming less popular in the United States as it is in many other countries around the world.  As the years go by, more and more Americans are opting out of religious affiliation and religious belief.

But there is no substance to the notion that secularism has made it impossible for Christians to profess or practice their faith.  Religious Right whackos screech over and over that there is no separation of church and state in our Constitution.  Rick Santorum, the dodo from Pennsylvania, said recently that separation of church and state is a Communist idea!  But the fact remains:  The Constitution does insist that there be a separation of Church and State, no matter what these misfits would like to think.

As to the belief that secularism is guilty of denying Christians the right to live their faith, the reality is something else.   Christians actually have enough power in many areas to violate the Constitution in numerous ways:  providing private/church school with taxpayer dollars; conducting prayers at public meetings; placing religious posters in public squares; establishing a "faith" office in the White House; demanding that their right to practice their religion means they can deny you your right to believe and practice what you wish, as is portrayed perfectly in the Hobby Lobby case.


Secularism is a terrible thing, according to the Christian Right.  But there's some confusion about what the word means, and it is often used wrongly.

Sam Harris recently conducted an interview with Phil Zuckerman, "a professor of sociology and secular studies at Pitzer College in Claremont, California.  He has written a number of books dealing with the "secular" life, such as "Faith No More," and "Society Without God."  Zukerman has a blog at Psychology Today called "The Secular Life."

During the course of the interview, Zuckerman clarified "three terms that are closely related, but also distinct."  The one on which I'll focus is "secularism."  Central to understanding this term is the last three letters:  "ism."  "It implies ideology.  Social movement.  Political agenda.  How things 'ought' to be."


Generally, the Religious Right identifies secularism wrongly with atheism.  And that sends them up the wall.  But that's not what it means.  And this is most important for our country today:  Zuckerman says,

In this country ...  "we've primarily got good, old-fashioned Jeffersonian secularism, which at root is nothing more than the ideology or political position that church and state ought to be separate and that government ought to be as neutral as possible when it comes to religion in the public square.  This version of secularism is basically anti-theocracy-ism (or what used to be called disestablishmentarianism).  It is an ideology that is often embraced by both religious and secular people.  And it most definitely is not the same thing as 'atheism.'  In this instance, 'secularism' is a political or ideological position concerning the relationship between government and religion (keep them separate!), whereas 'atheism' is a personal absence of belief in gods."


In dialogue (when possible) with the religious right, we need to call them on their attempt to conflate any position different than their own with a "secularism" by which they mean atheism.  At that point, then, anyone who disagrees with them must also be an atheist.

From the onset "secularism" has been the basis of our government.  We are not and should never be, a theocracy!  Religion may play a role in the lives of our citizens, but does not play a role in our government.  And that's precisely what has the Religious Right up in arms.  In their hatred and fear of "secular" and "secularization," they attack "secularism" and insist their religious beliefs be granted a special status, that this country be defined as a "Christian" nation, and that a theocracy of sorts be established in Washington!

It's a con game.  Any time they are forced to bow to the secularism of our country, they cry foul and whine about being persecuted.  The fact is, they don't want to play by the rules.  There is no war on God or Christians or Christmas or any other religion or religious belief.  They make up this crap in order to confuse the issue and thus insinuate their theocratic leanings into the various structures of our political system.


You can read the entire interview here.

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George W. Bush, War Criminal, Tries to Make Amends

The latest issue of Golf Digest includes an article titled, "The Healing Power of Golf," by Jerry Tarde, the Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of Golf Digest.

It's no secret that many professional golfers are rabid Republicans, some being on the ultra-right side of things, as well as claiming to be "born-again," fundamentalistic Christians.  The latter often praise their god when they win a tournament (cf. Zach Johnson at the Masters), hold prayer meetings during the week, and talk about how Jesus helps them during their difficult times.

In light of those facts, it's not surprising that Mr. Tarde saw fit to interview former president George W. Bush.  George, as you may remember, is also a rabid Republican and talked about God a lot.  He's been "born again," and claimed God wanted him to become president!

But Mr. Tarde also wanted to talk to George about the golf.  Golf and the Bushes are friends of long-standing.   Bush showed Mr. Tarde a picture of his most recent painting of three old caddies who had caddied for his grandfather, his father, and himself.  "Golf runs deep in the Bush clan," saith Mr. G.W. Bush.

The interview took place in Dallas where Bush was holding forth at the "Warrior Open golf event for wounded veterans and active servicemen who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.  It's part of the Bush Institute's Military Service Initiative."  Thus Golf Digest is "honoring him this month as a Golfer Who Gives Back."

This is just plain weird!  It is eerie!  Bush says, "I feel a special kinship for our military, because, unfortunately, I became a wartime president."

Oh, barf!  There's nothing wrong and a lot right with helping our wounded veterans and those in active service, so long as we don't make heroes out of people merely because they wore a uniform or got themselves shot.

But does Golf Digest not see the irony?  Bush didn't somehow, "accidentally," become a "wartime president" as he implies.  Iraq and Afghanistan did not just "happen" when he was president.  He was the chief liar, and the chief warmonger who instigated this country's unnecessary and unprecedented wars of aggression which killed over 4,000 of our soldiers and wounded many thousands more; which killed and displaced hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, leaving Iraq a pile of rubble and destroying whatever political stability that country had!  And it's not over yet.  In fact, in some ways, the horror may be just beginning.

Bush, as we know, lied about WMDs.  He ignored warnings during the summer of 2001 that terrorists were planning to use airlines in an attack on our country.  Then, in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Bush not only forbade the FBI from interviewing Saudis in this country, but provided the means for them to flee to Saudi Arabia asap.  Why?  Did he know from the beginning that almost all of the terrorists were Saudi Arabians?  Or was it just because for years the Bush family has been in bed with the Saudis?

And let's not forget Bush's own military record and what a joke that was.  He cried to Daddy who pulled strings so he could avoid going to Vietnam.  Then, instead of completing his commitment to military service, Bush used his connections to play politics and stay out of harm's way.

It seems likely that Bush uses the Bush Institute's Military Service Initiative as a sop to ease his guilty conscience.

What really sinks my boat, though, is how Tarde fawns over this war criminal who authorized the use of torture.  Bush, he says, like the wounded warriors, uses golf as a "restorative power," whatever that means in his case.  George feels badly about sending all these people into harm's way.  But, hey, he's playing the best golf of his life!  Yeah!  He plays with Lee Trevino and David Graham even.

Tarde mentions that Bush's "handlers" refused to let him ask Bush about "President Obama continuing to play golf under withering criticism in contrast with Bush's decision not to play in his second term."   In that mention you get a sense of Golf Digest's political leanings.  And you get a sense of Bush's mindset when he says he "chose not to play because my view was I could find other ways to be myself, like mountain biking.  And I didn't want to send a signal to mothers whose sons were in combat that while they were sacrificing, I was on the golf course.

It wouldn't matter to me what the hell Bush did in his 2nd term.  Not playing golf doesn't bring back all the dead or heal the wounded.  Not playing golf doesn't wash the blood dripping from his hands.  Not playing golf does not somehow absolve him from responsibility.

So far as criticism of Obama's golf:  It's true, he has played more golf than Bush did.  But he's taken only one-third as many vacations as did Bush.  To catch up with George, Obama would have to take 879 days of vacation between now and the end of his 2nd term.  Bush, as you recall, ran off to his Texas ranch at every opportunity!

In the end, George W. Bush is a war criminal and should have been sentenced to prison, along with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.  One of President Obama's big failings in my opinion, was to forgo charging this triad with war crimes and putting them on trial.

No one, including Mr. Tarde of Golf Digest, should be promoting this criminal and his nonsense even if he is, belatedly, trying to "give back" something to those who somehow survived his monstrous decision and need to become a "wartime president."

Let him do it anonymously and penitentially, for no good deeds can ever make up for the misery he unleashed on this country and the Middle East.

Bachmann called a rally and (almost) nobody came

This from Daily Kos:

Michele Bachmann (you do remember her, right?), just after the President notified the world he intended to issue an executive order to halt the deportation of illegal immigrants, went on FAUX News to issue her own "executive order" - a call for a rally to protest the president’s “illegal” action.

“I’m calling on your viewers to come to DC on Wednesday, December 3," she said, "at high noon on the west steps of the Capitol.  We need to have a rally, and we need to go visit our senators and visit our congressman, because nothing frightens a congressman like the whites of his constituents’ eyes … “

Dontcha just love the phrase “whites of his constituents’ eyes”?  So cute.  

And dontcha just love the assumption that all the viewers of FAUX News hate the Kenyan Usurper in Chief so much they’d drop everything and head to D.C.?

And dontca think this is a pretty good example of why “fair and balanced” can never be applied to FAUX Nexs, because FAUX News is nothing more than an organ in service to the ultra right SOBs trying to screw our country.

The story ends this way:  Nobody showed up at Bachmann’s rally.  Well, that’s not quite true.  Two other wingnuts with screws loose - Ted Cruz and Steve King were there, along with about 40 other “protestors.”

So, Bachmann settled for a press conference. 

A quote from Daily Kos, “I guess when you lose a presidential primary and decide to leave Congress, you lose some of that special sparkle.  But Bachmann’s level of celebrity also has to have been hurt by the ever-increasing competition she faces in the flagrantly inane extremism category.”

I think “inane” is not quite the right word.  Batshit crazy is more appropriate.

Voting right are important...

...unless you're just a normal person trying to attain the "American Dream."

A Successful Presidency

Thanks to Ybor City Stogie for this!

Republicans, Thanksgiving and Socialism

Talking Turkey About Guns 2014

For Christ's sake, tell the NRA to stop with all this gun crap, already!  

What follows comes from Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.

This Thanksgiving, when talk around the table turns to politics and current events, you can help set the record straight on some of the most common myths about guns.

Myth:  More guns in more places make us all safer.

Fact:  The NRA’s vision of guns for anyone, anywhere, anytime actually puts everyone at risk.  Without a background check, there’s no way to tell the difference between a good guy with a gun and a bad guy with a gun.  Most states don’t require safety training, or even a criminal background check, to openly carry a loaded firearm in public.

Myth:  Having a gun at home make women safer from domestic violence.

Fact:  Women are five times more likely to be killed by an intimate partner when a firearm is present.

Myth:  The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.

Fact:  If more guns stopped gun crime, we’d be the safest country in the developed world.  Instead, Americans are 20 times more likely to be murdered with a gun than people in other developed countries.

Myth:  Hiding your guns is enough to keep them away from your kids.

Fact:  The only proven way to keep guns safely away from children is to store them locked and unloaded.  A Harvard study found that more than two-thirds of children know where their parents keep their guns, even when the parents think they don’t.  And more than a third have actually handled the gun without their parent’s knowledge.

Myth:  Congress hasn’t passed a background checks law, which proves that Americans don’t support background checks on gun sales.

Fact:   Congress’ failure only proves that too many lawmakers cater to the gun lobby instead of the American people.  92 percent of Americans - including 82 percent of gun owners - support background checks for all gun sales.  In Washington State, the only state where the question was put to the people in the 2014 election, an overwhelming majority of votes passed a ballot initiative to require background checks for all gun sales.

One View - The Roosevelts by Gene Bocknek

This is a guest post by Gene Bocknek.  

[Photo is of Franklin Delano Roosevelt]


The recent Ken Burns PBS series on the Roosevelts is an astonishingly good documentary, a classic in every way.  I had just finished reading Doris Kearn's biography of TR Roosevelt and doubted I needed any more.  But the film and commentary are brilliantly done, with harsh honesty.

What I find remarkable is how one large family of fabulously wealthy high society produced two such men, one a Republican and the other a Democrat, both of whom recognized a debt to the common working people of the nation, brutally exploited by the equivalent of today's Walton family and Koch Brothers.  A quotation from the lips of JP Morgan tells it all:  "I owe the public nothing".

Unrestrained Capitalism had women and children factory workers - usually new immigrants - working 16 hour days, seven days a week, at poverty wages.  Men and boys in coal mines had it worse, dealing with black lungs and periodic explosions.

Teddy Roosevelt acted on his own, avoiding a Congress that was controlled by those piratical millionaires, threatening to nationalize the mines unless the owners negotiated better terms with their workers.  He set up a government agency to regulate prices of industrial and farm goods so as to provide better wages and working conditions.  He also attacked monopolies which squeezed out competition to control prices and wages (the product of a "free market").  Theodore Roosevelt also endorsed a national income tax and enforcement of the anti-trust acts, and became the most loved president in American history.

FDR faced a nation during the Great Depression of the 1930s, created by shoddy practices on Wall Street, including buying stocks on margin (10% of cost).  Only by bulling a reluctant Congress and Supreme Court was he able to institute the workers' right to organize, create
Social Security as a reward for a lifetime of hard work, provide jobs through his new Public Works Administration (PWA), Works Progress Administration (WPA), Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), and support Republican Senator Norris' battle for the Tennessee Valley Administration (TVA), this latter for the poorest section of the nation.  As the national leader Roosevelt broke America loose from its isolationism to face the threat of Nazi Germany by providing lend-lease equipment to Great Britain, and brought the nation into World War II when the Japanese attacked our naval fleet at Pearl Harbor.

Despite the benefits of great wealth and privilege the Roosevelt men chose to see the privations of the working class and felt a moral obligation to rectify that situation.  It required heroic effort on their part, and earned them the bitter enmity of their wealthy peers.

They were sustained in their efforts by moral and/or religious convictions about the obligations of government toward its desperate citizens.  They also recognized a truth that persists to the present time - that government is the only counterweight to unrestrained capitalism.  In our time the president with the closest comparison is George W. Bush.  There the comparison ends.  Bush equated personal loyalty with competence, appointing ignorant people to nationally vital government positions in Homeland Security and Emergency Management.  He stood by while Texas-based Enron stole the pension of 35,000 employees and further demonstrated his loyalty by invading Iraq on false, trumped-up charges of nuclear armament when his real concern was Saddam Hussein's refusal to cooperate with American and British oil interests.

Bush family oil connections included the Saudi family of Osama bin Laden.  The 9/11/01 attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon was perpetrated by Saudi Arabians!  Bush issued an executive order permitting some 200 Saudis to leave the USA immediately after the attack, and barred the FBI and other agencies from interviewing any of them.

Bush also got Congress to pass a tax reform bill which reduced taxes on the wealthiest of our citizens.  His budget cuts to pay for the lost revenue reduced the IRS staff of fraud investigators by 50%.  Finally, he urged dissolution of Social Security in favor of providing citizens the "freedom" to invest their pensions elsewhere.  The subsequent collapse of the stock market put a damper on that proposal.  The enormous billions wasted on the Iraq invasion bankrupted the US Treasury which was his parting gift to President Obama, and laid the groundwork for the horrific mess of a fractured Iraqi nation and people now in evidence.

Not all rich president are the same!

Texas State Board of Education is misnamed

One never knows just how crazy things can get in Texas, because when you think you've seen the worst, some new issue or goofball pops up that makes the rest of the nation wish that Texas had stayed with Mexico.  Damn that Sam Houston anyway!

The Texas State Board of Education is involved in the latest fracas proving that Texas education is still under the thumb of people who may have been educated but never learned anything - Republicans, naturally!  For years, these Republicans, being good "Bible-believing" Christians, have tried to foist their fundamentalist religion upon students in Texas schools.

It looks like they have finally succeeded.  By a vote of 10 to 5, the Texas State Board of Education voted to approve textbooks that would inform Texas school children that the US of A is a Christian nation, that "portray Moses as an influence on the Constitution and the Old Testament as the root of democracy."

Now all that is so far-fetched as to be laughable, but the Republicans who control the state's board of education are serious.

One has to wonder if these morons have ever read the Old Testament or the stories about Moses.  If they had, they would know that democracy was not even a concept in those days.  Yahweh was king and ruled absolutely.  The Israelites made a mutual covenant with Yahweh, their king, which said that Yahweh would take care of them and protect them by defeating their enemies so long as they obeyed Yahweh's every wish.  If they failed to obey, Yahweh would take away his protection or kill them outright.

Some democracy.

Furthermore, Moses is not even an historical figure.  There was no person named Moses!  It's all myth and legend!  I think these fundy Christians are so ignorant they have taken one of the three presentations of the so-called Ten Commandments (each containing a different 10 commands!) and want very hard to believe that our Constitution was based on those ten no-no's.

That just doesn't work, though.  You shall have no other gods?  Is that in our Constitution?  You shall keep the Sabbath day?  Is that in our Constitution?  You shall not make any graven images?  Where do you find that in our Constitution?  Don't commit adultery?  I don't find that in the Constitution, either.  And honor your mother and father?  What?  Where is that, in the Bill of Rights?


Essentially what you have running the public education system in Texas are a bunch of fundamentalist ignoramuses who intend and have the power to foist their specific brand of ignorance on the youth of the state.

Perhaps this is what it's all about.  An article at Crooks & Liars states:

"Scholars claim the decision to include the biblical figure of Moses in social studies education is part of a concerted effort by Christian extremists to promote the idea that the United States is a 'redeemer nation' - giving a divine justification for supposed American exceptionalism."

You'll note the title of this post.  I said the Texas State Board of Education is misnamed.  It should be called the Texas State Board of Christian Propaganda.

Ted Cruz, Cicero, and Treason

On November 20, the senator from Canada and now Texas, held forth on the floor of the U.S. Senate, using a speech from the Roman philosopher, Cicero, to denounce President Obama.

First of all, it would be nice if this clown in a senate suit would get about the business of the Senate and work on bills and programs which might benefit the country.  That is not what Mr. Cruz is about, however.  Mr. Cruz believes God has called him to do whatever is necessary to bring down Mr. Obama.  If that includes misrepresentation and outright lies, well, that's OK because Mr. Cruz is about the deity's business.


Jesse Weiner, a classics professor, takes Mr. Cruz to task in a recent article in "The Atlantic" magazine.

Cruz, says Professor Weiner, "dangerously misused Cicero."  In 63 BCE, Cicero gave a speech to the Roman Senate called "Against Catiline."  Catiline was an enemy of Cicero and had "conspired to murder Cicero and attempt a coup d'etat."  Cicero learned of this conspiracy and informed the Senate after which Catiline went into exile to die.

In a strangely demagogic manner, typical though of Cruz's orations, the senator took Cicero's speech and as Professor Weiner notes, "replaced many of Cicero's words and phrases" in order to adapt the speech to his purposes.  That is not exactly "Hoyle."

A huge problem for people who really care about this country is "that the senator not only accused the president of overstepping the constitutional bounds of his authority (a legally dubious claim), but also challenges the legitimacy of the Obama presidency, accuses the president of treason, and perhaps even advocates for his violent punishment."

Ironically, as Professor Weiner notes, "...from the position of Cicero, Cruz presents himself as a decidedly undemocratic oligarch."  That is not surprising, of course, as we have concluded that the oligarchs are currently undermining our system in a determined takeover which is well underway.

So when "Cruz explicitly accuses the president of being 'openly desirous to destroy the Constitution and this Republic,'" again essentially accusing Obama of high treason, what is his purpose?  This is, says the professor, "dangerous rhetoric."  By using such words, is Cruz actually trying to foment a revolution, a coup, a violent attack on the president of the United States?


Ironically, it would appear we haven't come very far in 2 millennia.  I'm waiting to hear if any one of the other senators will rise to denounce this tacky turkey from Texas.

Do you think, if we offered the Canadians a significant bribe, they would take Mr. Cruz back?

You can read Professor Weiner's article in its entirety here.

Skyscraper World's Tallest Roller Coaster POV - Skyplex Orlando

You'll be able to ride this is 2017.  If you dare.  It will be located on International Drive just down the road from SeaWorld.

What a crazy world in which we live!