Boring Muslims

A thought occurred to me after hearing about the rant the Florida Family Association  (FFA – not to be confused with the Future Farmers of America) put out about the TLC program depicting American Muslims going about their boring lives. What’s their beef? Well apparently the FFA complained that the program didn’t show the whole story about Muslims. The story didn’t mention things like Sharia law and the fact that Muslims are by default terrorists. I guess any story about Muslims has to include those who like to wear dynamite as a vest.

How about if TLC ran a story about those boring Christians, who go to work each day and don’t spout diatribes about gay marriage or rant about the fact that poor Christian children can’t pray in public schools? Would that be OK with the Florida Family Association? Or does the show have to show the Westboro Baptist Church folks who like to protest military funerals with signs like “God hates Fags” or other such nonsense? After all, a show just showing nice Christians doesn’t depict ALL Christians especially the ones like Florida Family Association who seem to have a boner when it comes to gay folks.

You can toss off the FFA as another nutty Christian group but the sad part is that many companies who had advertised on the TLC show caved into FFA and withdrew their ads. Let’s not offend those poor Christians who can’t even get the Governor of Rhode Island to call the “Holiday Tree” a “Christmas Tree.”  Talk about political correctness! Think about it.

Out of the mouth’s of babes

Or as Art Linkletter said – “Kids say the darndest things.”

If you haven’t seen the little video of Michelle Bachmann at a book signing gig in South Carolina, it is priceless. Up walks little 8 year old Elijah with his gay mom and says very quietly to Bachmann, “My mommy’s gay, but she doesn’t need fixing.” Slam dunk!

Bachmann was, needless to say, stunned and only uttered “Bye bye".”

It seems to me that the Right loves to speak in absolutes without any consideration for subtleties of life. You may not like gay sex but people come in all shades and flavors and there is no “one size fits all".” Even kids know that.

Way to go Elijah!

“Think twice!’

From “The Huffington Post” website dated 11/10/2011 -

Herman Cain lawyer Lin Wood, who spoke at a Tuesday press conference defending the Republican presidential candidate against allegations of sexual harassment, said others should "think twice" before making accusations, in an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

"I'm not here to scare anyone off," said the high-profile Atlanta lawyer, referring to the prospect of new accusers. "[However] they should think twice anyway." He added that the campaign had not thought about bringing legal action against the women, at least for now.

Think about this for a minute. In essence the lawyer was saying to any woman that may have been sexually harassed by Cain in the past to “think twice” about going public with the allegation. He is saying that he would bring all the power he could muster in the legal process to make it a living hell for anyone accusing Cain of sexual harassment.

This is a male power trip of the worse kind.

See also Rachel Maddow at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/

Personhood

Just a quick note about the recent vote in Mississippi about defining a person at conception. This is a bad idea on so many levels. It puts all women into legal trouble no matter what they do. Birth control could be banned. Forget in vitro fertilization. And so many other issues.

Luckily it was voted down but it may come back someplace else. Theocracy is creeping into our government at every level. It’s getting scary.

But the scariest part is that the Republicans who talk about less government in people’s lives are promoting via their Evangelical friends the most intrusive thing a government can do. That is to dictate the bodily function of every woman in the US. And by extension men too. They not only want to get into your bedroom, they want to get into your body!

The more this goes on the more I am scared for our country.

Questions that can’t be answered.

There are two questions that have plagued mankind since the dawn human existence. The first is “What is the purpose of life?” And the second is “Do these jeans make me look fat?”

Come to think about it maybe the first question is easier to answer.

Yeah for death!

The past couple of GOP “debates” had some moments that makes one think, “What the hell’s going on here?” The first moment was when Rick Perry was asked about the 234 people that were executed while he’s in office. The audience applauded! In the second “debate” Ron Paul was asked a hypothetical question regarding a person who didn’t have health insurance and would be left to die. The audience cheered. Huh?

I find this all a bit strange from a party that doggedly promotes the right to life position on abortion but doesn’t seem to have a problem with killing criminals or letting the uninsured die. I guess it OK as long as you aren’t one of the ones dying. Protect the unborn but knock off the murderer or terminally ill!

To me it really coming down to the haves and the have not’s. And this is a dangerous thing for our country. If you have health insurance (hopefully cheap insurance) who cares about those that don’t? And those who commit a capital crime, put a bullet in their head! They deserve it.

It’s also like the Catholic church’s stand on contraception. They let people die of AIDS but God and the church doesn’t want you to put on a condom because that’s interfering with the natural process of making a baby. That’s a sin! This from a religion that promotes the sanctity of life? Does any of this make sense? Think about it.

I believe it, don’t question it!

Recently Penn Jillette of Penn and Teller fame, appeared on CNN with Piers Morgan. The interview started with Piers telling Jillette that he was upset with him for saying that, essentially, anyone who believes in God is wrong. So, Piers, what’s wrong with that?

I guess Piers was looking for a free pass on the God question. He was saying essentially that his belief in a supreme being is sacrosanct and anyone who dares to question this belief is a nasty person. But why is belief in a non-material super being and an after life which is not yet proven, non-questionable?

Penn was right in saying that we should be able to question any belief, even a non-belief in God. Everything is on the table. The minute you put one subject off limits, you start to build walls to communications.

Christianity has had 2,000 years to present it’s case. And there are a growing number who don’t buy it. Sure there are those that grow up in a Christian family in the Bible belt that claim to believe all the stuff. But for those who take the time to dig into the Christian religion find that it doesn’t stand up to the light of day. The more you question the more Christianity falls apart.

Those that profess belief in the Christian religion,  like ministers who have a vested interest in it’s survival, don’t want it questioned lest the faithful end up having doubts about Christianity. Even the Bible says that a believer shouldn’t have doubts and if they do they should default to just believing. In other words if it doesn’t make sense and can’t stand up to scrutiny, believe it anyway!

It’s been said that the best case for atheism is the Bible. Think about it.

All alone in the night.

The above is from the opening dialog in the Babylon 5 sci-fi series. I think it is appropriate for the picture at left.

This picture was taken by the Juno spacecraft on it’s way to Jupiter. During the testing of the spacecraft, the controllers turned the cameras back towards Earth and shot the picture. The spacecraft is 6 million miles away. The bright dot on the left is Earth and the duller dot on the right is the moon.

When you think about it, all that we know, all that we are, and all that we will be is on the little bright dot in the night. There is no place for us to go. We are insignificant in the solar system, in the galaxy and the universe. If we screw it up on Earth, the universe won’t care. We are truly all alone in the night.

Seriously, think about it!

It’s a sad state of affairs.

Looking at the current crop of GOP candidates for president, one has to ask the question “Is this the best they got?”

The cartoon to the left is not far from an accurate picture of the candidates. I think that the idea amongst them is that the more they can sound off the wall the more they’ll get attention. It’s like the current crop of “stupid” movies that seem to keep coming out. The more one can be seen as “stupid” the more people buy tickets.

With all the vitriol that seems to come out from the GOP against Obama, one would expect someone from those ranks to emerge that could clearly and succinctly present a case against him. But all we get are sound bites and broad statements about how America is going to hell in a hand basket and “name your candidate” will get things right in short order. It’s one thing to say that you’ll create jobs and get the economy moving but it’s another to articulate how you’ll do it. The devil is in the details.

Not picture in the cartoon is the 8th dwarf, Rick Perry. Just recently he fired a shot across the bow by saying how he’ll change the Constitution with things like banning all abortions, making marriage for only straight folks and having appointed Senators. Now that last one is a hoot. Why not just get rid of Congress and have one person run everything. I can think of a few countries where they have that. I wonder how they are doing? Think of Syria, Iran, North Korea, just to name a few.

The fact of the matter is that this economic crisis we are in is not just with us alone. It’s global. And there is no quick fix. Just like global warming. We can’t just shut off all carbon dioxide tomorrow and expect the global temperatures to suddenly drop. What’s in place today on the economic front took a long time to rear it’s head and it will take a long time to undo what has been done. None of the GOP dwarfs will be able to fix it regardless of what they say. They don’t even understand the problem.

In fact if they can’t even agree on something like evolution with 150 years of solid, world wide evidence, how can they begin to tackle the economy? Think about it.

Rick Perry–George Bush Ver. 2.0

Is it my imagination but does Rick Perry seem like a redo of George Bush? Consider the obvious. Both are/were governors of Texas, both flew in the military and both seem to be very, very Christian. Oh, and both have a disconnect between their brain and mouth. Consider Rick Perry’s comments about the Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke calling his actions “treasonous.” Pretty heady stuff!

Of course he is loving all the attention he is getting by his recent entry into the presidential fray. His comments have garnered more attention than Bachmann (happy birthday to Elvis on the anniversary of his death no less) or Mitt Romney making corporations into people.

The far right wing loves this but it will be interesting to see how he fares down the line. Hopefully the media will start to question his job creation hype in Texas which turns out not to be that great when you consider that most of the jobs created were low wage, menial jobs. And if you loose your job in Texas don’t expect a lot of state help. When you compare the unemployment rates in Massachusetts, New York and Texas, they are not all that different. Massachusetts may not have as much oil or gas as Texas but try and grow corn in Texas this year.

So Governor Perry, prepare next Sundays’ sermon. You seem pretty good at preaching to the choir. Think about it.

Not Guilty but not innocent

Just a comment on this Casey Anthony thing.

We have to remember that the jury’s function is to take just what is presented to them in court and make a judgment as to the guilt or innocence of the accused. They do that by looking at only the evidence and coming to a conclusion.

I didn’t follow this whole Casey Anthony trial closely but I did read enough to see that the prosecution did not present a clear case pointing to Casey as the one who caused Caylee’s death. That is not to say that Casey did or did not have anything to do with her death.

Casey may have caught a break by not being found guilty in Caylee’s death but Casey will be paying dearly for this the rest of her life. She has no assets, no money and is saddled with enormous legal bills. There are court judgments against her and she will most likely have to move someplace else. She is subject to more legal proceedings against her. Again she will have to live with this the rest of her life.

The jury system worked as it should. The prosecution didn’t have a good case. As one who sat on a jury you go by what’s presented to you and you make the best decision you can. The public may not like the decision but they didn’t have to make it, the jury did!

“My God doesn’t act that way”

The above was the headline in an article in our local paper referring to a minister conducting a service after the tornadoes that struck Massachusetts on June 1, 2011. He went on to say that his God is a god of love, caring and compassion. This is like a plane crash in which everyone was killed save one person who declared “God saved me!” One has to ask why didn’t God prevent the plane from crashing in the first place or asking why didn’t God prevent the tornadoes in the first place. Doesn’t He care?

These declarations are typical of people with a religious bent who tend to see only what supports their beliefs. It's call selective justification. It’s like saying that you believe there are a lot of Ford Mustangs on the road and you support that belief by noting every Mustang you see without ever noticing the total number of cars you see. If the total car population was accounted for then the belief of many Ford Mustangs fails. We remember the hits and forget the misses. It’s just the way we are wired.

Also it just maybe a guttural thing. When faced with a disaster like a tornado we need some thing to hang on to and even though we deep down know it doesn’t make sense, we appeal to an Almighty.

It’s curious but not surprising that the concept of God is different to different people. I remember in school the nuns who said that the Old Testament described a wrathful God while the New Testament describes a loving God. So it’s not surprising to hear a preacher saying “My God doesn’t act that way.” I guess God can be molded how ever someone wants Him to be. Remember God was made in mans’ image not the other way around. Think about it.

Middle school conversation

Some time ago, Sarah Palin jabbed the press by making reference to the “lame stream media.” It was her was of saying the “main stream media” is out of touch with the “real America'”, where ever that is.

But more than the catty retort which Sarah is prone to spout, it points to how the conversation of the political right is more like what one would hear in middle school -- self-centered, childish and uninformed. It reminds me of those morning coffee shop groups (mainly old dudes) sitting around telling each other the way the world should run and “those idiots” don’t know what they are doing. “Those idiots” tend to be anyone else except themselves.

The right constantly likes to dumb down of some of the issues to snappy sayings and sound bites. One only has to listen to Sarah or Michelle Bachmann or any Tea Party person to get the drift of what I’m saying. And it’s shameful. And it’s harming us.

We live in a very complex world and there are no simple answers anymore. Take the recent ABC News piece on Afghanistan titled “Are We Winning?” You would think that would be a very simple question to answer but in fact it’s not. Gone of the days of the enemy hoisting the white flag and the surrender ceremonies on a battle ship. The new enemy doesn’t wear a uniform and doesn’t represent a country. They are bands of criminals with weapons and motive to inflict harm to anyone they think should feel their wrath. They are not organized and not really lead by any one leader. So, truth be told, there is no “winning” against them. All you can realistically do is to minimize their impact and keep up constant pressure to push them to the margins.

And take the economy. It’s going to be the number on topic for the election and the truth is there is no quick fix. To think that anyone can come into the White House and make everything fine and dandy is only deluding ourselves. I know people out of work want a job NOW but it won’t happen NIOW. To trot out an old phrase “it’s a new paradigm.” We’ve entered a new world in which our economy is tied to other economies and that won’t changed. We need to have real conversations about what needs to be done and how we can prosper given this new environment. And making more goods in the USA is not the answer.

This new conversation needs a public educated enough to understand what’s facing us and our politicians need to set an example of that conversation. Having a talk like middle school girls in the hall way talking about someone who Tweeted so-and-so won’t cut it. We need to be adult about this. Think about it.

How Mitt? How?

Our former governor, Mitt “I’ll tell you anything” Romney, announced his candidacy for President. Woo woo!

Ole Mitt was spouting off his plan to create jobs, lower taxes and bash the hell out of anyone getting in his way. He was putting out the same drivel one hears from all those “business people”, i.e. Donald Trump, who claim to know how to create jobs. Well, running a company and running a government are two different things. For one thing a company CEO generally has the authority to do as he/she pleases. While a President has to deal with our wonderful Congress which may or may not do what he/she wants.

I’ve never understood how voters think that just because a person ran a company, they could run the US Government the same way. It’s like saying “I can drive a car, so I can fly a plane.” As a flight instructor I can tell you they are two different animals.

With Mitt’s past history on the campaign trail, you’ll know he’ll say anything to get votes. Politicians distort things as a matter of course but Mitt raises it to a new level. While in Massachusetts (most of the time) he raised business taxes by $140 million in one year with measures branded “loophole closures” while still claiming he wasn’t raising taxes. Romney also raised revenue from higher fees and fines, a tax by another name, while still claiming that there was no need to raise taxes.

But the one thing that voters should listen for is how Mitt will do what he’s says he’ll do. Politicians are long on promises but short of specifics. Besides if anyone think that Mitt or anyone like him will make American all better two days after taking office, they are in for a rude awaking. I think that one of the reasons that many, particularly on the right, have issues with Obama is that they expected instant cures to the problems we have. The current economic crises is unlike anything we have experienced, save the Great Depression.

My fear is that someone like Mitt will sell the American public a bill of goods and we’ll still have all the long term issues that we can’t seem to get the courage to solve. Besides if Mitt get’s to the White House (hope not) he’ll bring in a bunch of right wing nuts which will make things worse not better. Think about it.

The Last Comic Standing

Bill Press (www.billpress.com) had a column entitled “You’d have to be stupid to run against Obama.” Well the stupid keep trying.

Looking at the current crop of Republicans who are falling all over themselves by sort of running and then not running, it brings to mind the reality show of some time ago called “The Last Comic Standing.”

The list of possible GOP standard bearers who are not running is growing longer by the minute. George Pataki, Rudy Giuliani (maybe in now? who knows?), Bobby Jindal, Rick Perry, and Jeb Bush all said no. Haley Barbour made noises then dropped out. Donald Trump drummed up attention (for his reality show more than anything else) and then dropped out. Mike Huckabee is making more money at Fox so he said no. And now the latest favorite, Mitch Daniels said no.

So who do we have left? Well Mitt (“I sorta was Governor of Massachusetts”) Romney is still making sure he looks good for the cameras. The health care law he helped get enacted in Massachusetts will dog him but Mitt will do one of his famous flip-flops and explain it away. Maybe!

Don’t forget former Governor Tim Pawlenty, who said on CNN  - “If any doofus can go to Washington and maintain the status quo. And that's what we've got in the White House and the Congress in terms of the attitude about their willingness to tackle these issues.” I thought the 2010 election sent in a bunch of radicals that were going to shake things up in Washington. I guess maybe the Tea Party people sent in a bunch of doofuses (or is it doofi?).

Then there is the Paris Hilton of politics, Sarah Palin, riding her macho hog in Washington, posing for pictures and spouting a bunch of stuff that sounds good but really means nothing – if you can understand her at all. And of course Michelle Bachmann, the Tea Party favorite who can’t keep her American history straight. I heard that the press at some point egged the two of them by floating the idea of a Palin/Bachmann ticket. That, God forbid if it ever happened, would be a sequel to “Legally Blonde” movie retitled “Legally Brunette times Two.”

What is amazing to me is that for all the apparent fervor against Obama from the Political Right, you would think there would be no shortage of people falling all over each other and willing to take him on. After all he is, according to the wing nuts, leading America down to ruin by “taxing and spending.” Meanwhile the GOP in Congress can’t get their act together to pass anything meaningful.

I go back to what Bill Press said, “You’d have to be stupid to run against Obama.” Maybe the GOP will eventually find someone stupid enough to run. Think about it.

Jesus returns --- sort of!

Harold Camping of Family Radio, a California-based religious broadcasting network, has announced that Jesus will return on May 21, 2011 to judge the world and start the rapture. Yeah!

Well not according to some other Christians. I guess Harold hasn’t got it right according to some people like www.jesus-is-savior.com/Wolves/harold_camping.htm where they said that Harold “has aired Mormon advertisements”, perish the thought! Or that Harold claims that the Holy Spirit is no longer working in the church. How Harold came to know that is a mystery. Don’t you just love it when one Christian group points fingers at another Christian group? Who’s go it right?

Also floating on the web are advertisements about pet care for pets “left behind” when those good Christians get raptured up to heaven. For as little as $35 per pet you can be assured that Fido or Whiskers get’s taken care of while you enjoy your heavenly paradise with 72 virgins – woops that’s another mythology! If I wasn’t such an honest person I would start up a business like that but knowing that these folks won’t really depart this planet, they may end up starting to demand their money back. But then I could let it sit in the bank making fabulous interest in the mean time.

Anyway according to www.huffingtonpost.com Harold Camping has done this before. He previously predicted that the Rapture would occur in mid-September 1994 and, surprise, it didn’t. You would think that once you blew a prediction you would be more cautious about doing it again. But these types get caught up in their own delusion and no amount of reality will persuade them to change. It’s like the UFOers who still claim that we’ve been visited by aliens. No amount of shooting down their claims will stop them from believing.

And that’s the real issue here. Religious people are taught to believe something despite the evidence and the more you try to rationalize them out of it the more entrenched they become. If you read most apologists, they basically say that Christianity doesn’t make sense but believe it anyway.

I like the quote attributed to the TV program “House” that says something like “if you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people.” Think about it.

Government, go away–well, wait a minute!

Wiley Miller does a great comic strip called “Non Sequitur.” His Sunday May 15, 2011 comic hit the nail on the head about all those government regulations that the GOP and folks like Sarah Palin hate. Search for Wiley Miller and you’ll find the comic I’m referring to. The striking panel was in the middle where the man stops to read a sign that says “safety from the oppression of socialist, nanny-state regulation zone.” The next panel shows the man about to walk into two lanes of traffic! Who needs regulations?

This comic reminded me of our ever “in-your-face” Sarah because she likes to bash any government interference in our daily lives. She got on Michelle Obama’s case about the First Lady encouraging kids not to eat so much fattening food and, perish the thought, get some exercise! Sarah reminded her followers that our government should not be in the business of telling parents what to feed their kids. If Mommy and Daddy want junior to eat Big Macs every day and end up fat, then that’s their right Sarah shouts!

Then one ever to talk out both sides of her mouth, Sarah back in June of 2010 after the BP oil spill, as reported by Bob Cesca on the Huffington Post blog, wanted government involvement in big business, the oil business no less!

Sarah Palin is in favor of the federal government planting its gigantic boot on the throats of energy companies. She put it in writing. Not only that but she even proposed that our socialist, anti-capitalist, wealth-redistributing president call her on the phone so she can describe to him specifically how to impose all kinds of big government regulations against BP and others.

So I guess Sarah hates the government telling parents what to feed kids but at the same time she wants to regulate big oil business. Well that’s this week. Next week Sarah will be against oil drilling regulations and Twinkies as well, maybe. And people still think about her as a good candidate for President? Think about it.

Donald the Trumpeter

I haven’t written a blog for several months because everything has been so good with the world that I couldn’t find a topic to write about. Oh I guess I forgot about the brutal winter in the Northeast, the earthquake and tsunami and resulting nuclear crisis, the tornados in the South and other little things like that. Then Donald, the male Sarah Palin, pops onto the scene. Now he’s something to write about!

I had thought this “birther” thing had been resolved a long time ago but here comes Donald Duck Trump pontificating that he finds it interesting that Obama won’t show his long form birth certificate. Then lo and behold Obama says here it is! Does that settle it for the Donald. No! He has to have his “experts” (who ever they are) look at it closely as if Obama fudged something on it.

This whole “birther” thing smelled funny from the beginning. I know that some people will hold onto a myth forever and that no amount of evidence will change their mind. Just look at the 911 Truthers. They still claim that the WTC towers were brought down by the government and not by two jets flying into them. Delusional people can not be rationally talked out of their delusion.

Then I saw the web site www.thegrio.com in which Goldie Taylor wrote an excellent column where she relates the story of her Great Great Grandfather being jailed after he couldn’t produce his “papers.” She made an excellent point that racism is alive and well in America and folks like pompous Donald needn’t be given a platform to spout his BS. In the 21st century we found a new way to force a black man to “show us his papers.”

I personally don’t give the Donald any chance of becoming a real candidate for the Presidency but at the same time the press should curtail giving him air time. If this is the kind of crap the Right is tromping out in hopes of gaining the White House, then we are all in trouble. Think about it.

The Tucson Tragedy

It’s been several weeks since the shootings in Tucson so I think we can try to calmly examine some of the things surrounding this event.

No one, in my opinion, can make sense of this event except to say that only some mentally unbalanced person could have caused this violence. At the same time I think it is appropriate to ask how close is any one of us to committing something like this? How much pushing via harsh rhetoric and a toxic political tone would be needed to get some other Jared Loughner to do something similar? How many of those gun loving and government hating right wingers are just close enough to that edge to gun down some other politician? Probably more than we care to think of.

At the same time the speech by Obama on Wednesday after the shooting in Tucson was spot on in it’s tone and words. I was blown away by, first of all, the reception Obama got from the audience and the continued applause through out the speech. I was expecting something very somber and muted but instead we got a rally of sorts to come together and honor those that died and celebrate their lives and the people that took part in helping others. My sense was that this audience had enough of the talk of the right and the Tea Party, at least for the moment.

Soon after the shooting there was a lot of talk in the media of the connection between the rhetoric of the past two years and the shootings. For once I had to agree with Glenn Beck and others in saying that the shooting was the sole doing of a “nut job.” The linkage between the “don’t retreat, reload” talk leading up to last falls election and the shooting really had no basis in fact, at least in this instance.

But at the same time is it OK to continue to speak in terms of “don’t retreat, reload” and expect that no one in America would be embolden to take matters into their own hands? Talk like that has a cumulative effect and it’s only a matter of time when someone feels justified to do what Jared Loughner did.

So maybe there wasn’t any real connection between the shootings and the toxic talk of the past two years. But our world is different that any other time. There are lots more of us and we have virtually instant communications. The internet has opened up a whole new world of information, good and bad, that can possibly help push someone to the edge of violence. Dialing back the tone of things wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Maybe taking time to think about how we talk to each other deserves some pause for thought. Think about it.

Zapping Zicam

This is just a little thing but it bugs me. Recently on TV I saw a commercial for Zicam. You know that homeopathic “medicine” that you take at the first sign of a cold and it supposedly shortens the length of your cold. What struck me in all this was how do you know it worked?

I’m sure many have heard the old saying about what to do when you have a cold. If you treat it with all kinds of meds you’ll get over it in seven days. If you do nothing you’ll get over it in a week. In other words the cold has to run it’s course and your will body fight it and eventually eliminate it from your system. The meds one takes really don’t do anything to get rid of the cold. The meds only help reduce the effects of the symptoms and your body does the rest.

Additionally there are thousands of cold viruses around and everyone reacts differently to a cold. So there is no way of knowing how long any particular cold virus you get will affect you. You could get over it quickly one time and the next cold may take longer for you get over. You just never know.

So why spend money on something that really won’t do anything? Well people want quick fixes. And if someone markets something that enough people think will help them get over a cold, then they’ll buy into it. It’s like the magnetic bracelets. There is no real proof they do anything but people plunk down good money on them. It really points out how gullible we all are and how we lack the brains just to ask questions about something we are buying. Think about it.

Huck Finn and Thomas Jefferson

You may have heard about the controversy regarding removal of the n-word from Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” It seems that NewSouth Books, based in Montgomery Alabama, wanted to replace “hurtful epithets” like nigger and injun with “less offensive words” like slave and native American. In other words we are no longer permitted by NewSouth Books to read Mark Twains’ original and now have to settle for something more politically correct. Don’t want to hurt our sensibilities.

This called to mind the story from last March about the Texas Board of Education (a bastion of stupidity if there ever was one) dropping Thomas Jefferson from a world history section of a school textbook devoted to great thinkers. According to David Knowles citing Texas Freedom Network “the board had chosen to embrace religious teachings over those of Jefferson, the man who coined the phrase ‘separation between church and state.’” I guess the Texas Board of Education didn’t like the religion of Jefferson who was decidedly not the Christian of Texas.

This raises the question about how much revisionism must take place and who decides how to write history. We all know, for example, that any history of the western world is decidedly euro-centric, white washing all the gory things those Europeans did in colonizing the Americas. It’s glossed over about how the Europeans literally committed genocide in America. Or how whites used blacks to build wealth in the south to the point of going to war in defense of slavery.

Not only are we seeing the beginnings of a white wash of history, we are also seeing the “Christianizing” of America. The Christian view is all sweetness and love, unless you are not Christian then watch out. See how many nice things they say about Muslims or Atheists. Think of how much of a good thing it was that the missionaries came over to “spread the gospel” to the savages. Where are those converted Christians today? Living hand to mouth on lands that no white person wants.

I think history should be told as accurately as possible so that those that come after us understand how things were back then, good and bad. To paraphrase the old saying, unless we learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it. Think about it.