Men in funny hats mess with vaginas, again!

This whole issue that the GOP is so up in arms about is so, so, so stupid. They claim that the president is now stepping over the line when it comes to religious freedom by requiring health providers cover contraceptives. He’s over stepped the bounds of the constitution, they shout! Chill out guys.

As Rachel Maddow so succinctly put it recently, 98% of Catholic women already use contraceptives which is, and has been, against Catholic teaching for decades. And currently 28 states have laws on the books that require health insurance providers to cover contraceptives, even in Catholic universities and hospitals. That’s required today! And it’s been that way for some time!

So why is the GOP making such an issue of this? Well that’s how they roll. Any little thing that they think they can use to bash the crap out of Obama, they then hype it up as much as possible and get as much air time as they can. They ramp up their hyperbole machine, get their friends like the Catholic bishops to spout drivel, find a forum like CPAC to make the evening news, and then step back and watch the carnage they’ve created. Maddow also showed that the GOP was for this years ago but only now to they have an issue with it. Why now? Well I think they know they are in trouble with main stream Americans and want to get a lot of face time with the good evangelical conservatives to show how they fight for their causes. Boo-yah!

But my real concern is that making exceptions for religious reasons is a dangerous precept. I’m sure we’ve heard about the occasional pharmacists that refuses to dispense contraceptives because it’s against his/her religious beliefs. To me if a person studies to become a pharmacist, then they know right up front that there will be things that they will have to do that MAY go against their beliefs. If a person does all that training and becomes a pharmacist, then do the job! It’s like Rachel Maddow said about an Amish person applying for a bus drivers job and get’s it, then only to quit because Amish aren’t supposed to drive machines. Find a job that doesn’t offend your precious beliefs.

I’m really tired of all this religious stuff being shoved into my face. Dare I say that I pray religion goes away? Soon! Think about it.

Tax but no tax

I watched the Bill Maher show the other day and one of his guests was a Republican congressman, believe it or not. The conversation got around taxing the rich more and changing the capital gains tax rate. The Congressman defended the idea that taxing the rich would cost jobs and implied that by letting the rich keep more of their money, more jobs would be created.

I guess on the surface it may sound OK except there is no way to prove it. The idea is that if wealthy individuals with lots of money in stocks and mutual funds get to keep more of the gains they then will somehow put that money into more stocks and mutual funds and thereby, it is alleged, create more opportunities for jobs.

For example Mitt Romney, in 2010, earned $21.6 million on his investments. This was both in capital gains and dividends. This was taxed at the 15% tax rate versus a top rate of 35%. So does that extra money that Romney now saves and gets to keep, go back and help create jobs? Certainly he is investing in various companies and mutual funds and that makes more money available to those companies but there is no way of knowing if those companies will create jobs, or just pay of debt, or plow it back into R&D, or put into cash for later. If the money Romney saved went to Uncle Sam, which Republicans don’t want, where would it go? Maybe help pay down our debt, or fund social programs (don’t say that!), or put it in a pot to be given to Congress to dole around the country on pet projects. Heard of earmarks?

This is another example of how Republicans love to seize on an issue and milk it for all it’s worth. It sounds good if you only hear 10 seconds of what they say and Republicans figure that’s all the attention span Americans have for many issues. Maybe they’re right! Think about it.

President Obama will be vindicated

Just a quick post to link to Frank Schaeffer’s blog and his recent post with the above title. It’s good look at what the President has done and why he should be given credit for it. The link to Frank’s blog is www.frank-schaeffer.blogspot.com.

Here’s a sample of what Frank says -

Given what was on his plate when he took office and the fact that we're successfully struggling out of both recession and 2 war -- and succeeding -- President Obama is one of the best of the American presidents already. His second term will consolidate that verdict and bodes greatness as his legacy.

I strongly suggestion that his post get a wide circulation.

Questions answered, Answers questioned

The cartoon at left that was in our paper this past Saturday and had me saying, “Huh?” But it also got me to think a little more about what the little guy has on his shirt.

It is true that science has questions that may never be answered. But that’s the beauty of science! As long as there are questions that need to be answered, science will continue to probe, test, and learn. Knowledge is what it’s all about!

To think that science will have all the answers all the time is to fool ourselves. Science continually updates and correct it’s self. That doesn’t make it bad or wrong.That’s the way it should work. We would like to have pat answers to most things but that will never happen. One minute coffee is bad for you and the next it’s good. That’s because we are continually learning. And just because science doesn’t get it just quite right at times is no reason to toss it all out. The consequences could be deadly as in the anti-vaccination movement recently that was promoted by people that didn’t know what the hell they were talking about.

In this very technological and complex age, where we need a sound understanding of science, we are drifting back to the Middle Ages where the churches were looked to for answers. Remember there was a reason that time was called the Dark Ages.

The second line on the shirt about religion having answers that may never be questioned is true. Religion continually claims to have “the truth” and tries to provide answers about how life came to be and how the heavens move, for example. Those answers from the church turned out be ultimately wrong as one Galileo Galilei could attest.

You see the push for answers that shouldn’t be questioned in the Intelligent Design movement. No amount of evidence will move them off their high horse of ID. All this science stuff about evolution to them is nonsense despite the 150 years of solid evidence around the world. One shouldn’t question the Bible because it’s inerrant!

I still don’t know exactly what the cartoon is trying to say but maybe it is that we must always question and no answer is so sacred it shouldn’t be questioned. Remember science books are always updated and revised. The Bible isn’t. Think about it.