Romney spouting BS

The mantra for this upcoming election is don’t believe anything Romney says. We already know that he will say anything to anyone just to get them to vote for him. Now most politicians will skew facts to their favor but Romney has brought that practice to a new level.

Case in point is his latest speech (propaganda?) given in Des Moines, Iowa. AP’s Tom Raum posted in the Huffington Post a good critique of some of the facts that Romney got wrong. Here’s one -

“ROMNEY: "I will lead us out of this debt and spending inferno. We will stop borrowing unfathomable sums of money we can't even imagine, from foreign countries we'll never even visit. I will bring us together to put out the fire."

THE FACTS: Romney's tax and spending plans don't support his vow to dampen the debt fire. He proposes to cut taxes and expand the armed forces, putting yet more stress on the budget, and his promise to slash domestic spending isn't backed by the big specifics. Romney's tax plan would cut the top income tax rate to 28 percent from 35 percent and other rates by 20 percent each. He says he'd broaden the tax base and eliminate many deductions in the process, but details are missing.”

A study by the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget concluded earlier this year that Romney's plans would not make a dent in deficits, and could worsen them considerably. That study was done before Romney upped his tax cuts, inviting even deeper debt.

Romney has been saying that he understands the economy (like none of us dummies don’t know a thing) and he can fix it. Gee we must be such dunces! Now to be fair Romney has some knowledge of the economy, namely how to get the most money into his pockets by squeezing the crap out of companies that Bain Capital bought and then dumping. His job creation was to employ more CPAs to keep track of his assets.

Romney continues to play towards his fat cat wealthy friends, ignoring the reality of the economy and spouts simplistic plans that won’t work. The reality of a Romney Presidency is that he will do more harm than good.

Raum also said – “A study by the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget concluded earlier this year that Romney's plans would not make a dent in deficits, and could worsen them considerably. That study was done before Romney upped his tax cuts, inviting even deeper debt.”

All his talking demonstrates that he doesn’t have any understanding of the American economy. It’s easy to say things that sounds nice, but doing it is another story. Please think about it.

Obama–Gay Marriage OK

So the political right is up in a frappin’ tizzy over the fact that President Obama finally said he did have a not problem with gay marriage. The loonies said that Obama has now declared “war on marriage” and it will open the door to the decline of heterosexual marriages. So the question is, “How are those straight marriages doing”?

Here in blue Massachusetts, gay marriage has been legal since 2004 and the effect on straight marriages has been… well nothing! Here we are almost eight years since gay marriages started and straights are still getting hitched and divorced like they did before. All the talk of the demise of marriage hasn’t occurred and we had expected it not to have any affect on straight marriages.

Of course one of our resident far right loonies, Rick Santorum, recently had this to say regarding gay marriage and his sorta buddy Mitt Romney - "Hopefully Governor Romney will continue to stand tall for his position on this issue and understand how detrimental it would be for society for it to have this [marriage thing] changed.”

I guess it’s been pretty “detrimental” for us here in Massachusetts. Curiously, has anyone seen any problems?

My view is that heterosexual marriages are one of the last bastions of privilege that the white, mostly male Christians have that they can raise a stink about. They seem to think that if gays get married then they’ll intrude on their territory (what ever that it) and have privileges that only the straights had regarding marriage.

If they are very worried about marriages, why don’t they work on making sure that their heterosexual marriages work instead of bashing a very small minority of people. What’s the saying about don’t go throwing rocks in a glass house? Looks like 50% of the windows are blown out. Think about it.

Education in America

Take a good close look at the picture to the left. It’s nice to know that our students are getting a good education at those fine Christian schools in Georgia. Who needs the U.S. government to tell schools how to educate kids? Coach McDaniels can teach them kids to be right smart! At least they spelled God right. Or is it Dog?

Is Belief Bad?

I’ve been thinking about faith and belief lately. At the outset I would like to say that as far as I’m concern, faith and belief are one and the same. In my Catholic school days, the nuns would say that in order to have faith you must believe. And in order to believe you must have faith. Two views of the same coin or circular reasoning?

The faith and belief that’s promoted today by many religions tend to be talked about in terms that could lead one to think that faith and belief are “things”. In fact I heard one preacher try to make the point that somehow faith had substance.

Faith is supposedly something that comes into you as a gift when you pray a lot or attend church a lot. C.S. Lewis made the point in “Mere Christianity” that you couldn’t reason Christianity out so the best way to have faith is the pray and convince yourself through repetition that it’s true. I prefer to see faith as a mind concept or process that can supplant normal reasoning.

In the Catholic Encyclopedia, belief is defined -”that state of the mind by which it assents to propositions, not by reason of their intrinsic evidence, but because of authority.”  To me the crucial items in the definition are “not by reason” and “because of authority.” So when you believe something you abandon reason and you assent or accept belief because of some authority, either human or written.

The problem with that is that you relinquish your normal reasoning process to then just accepting what someone tells you “because of authority”. You now abandon looking at the evidence and no longer question assumptions. Now you are susceptible to anything because you have no external basis to judge validity. If you believe that illness can be cured just by praying, then you may die sooner than if you sought medical help. So belief can be a real life or death issue.

It’s amazing to me to hear how much preachers continually push the notion to “just have faith” and everything will be just dandy. From an evolutionary point of view, belief can be a life saving thing for example if the tall grass is rustling, and you believe it’s because a lion is walking through there, it might save your life. But then again it might just be that the wind is moving the grass. So if you are right or wrong in your belief doesn’t matter because you are still alive to tell about it. But if you are rational and say that it was just the wind and a lion was truly there, then you no longer get to pass on your genes because you are a lions’ lunch.

But as we have gain knowledge through science about how the world works we may need to abandon some beliefs. Infrared technology can now tell us whether or not the lion is in the tall grass. We no longer have to rely on faith. But to hold onto to faith when science and evidence tell you other wise, can have profound consequences.

Take the belief that prayer works or you can pray away a disease. If a child is sick and the parents refuse to take the child to the doctors and rely on prayer instead, then the child is in great danger. Or if you are out of work and you have the belief or faith that God will find you a job with out you looking for one, you may end up on the street.

Or if your belief is that the Bible has the truth about how people came to be on this earth and insist on Creationism or Intelligent Design be taught in pubic schools instead of evolution, then our whole country is put at risk.

Beliefs can be comforting but they can be dangerous. We really need to recognize that.

Romney’s the man! Ugh!

Can you hear the over whelming enthusiasm for Mitt (I’ll say anything) Romney as the GOP’s nominee? If you haven’t heard it that’s because it’s almost non existent. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, is Romney the best the Republican’s got to go up against Obama? Come on guys, you had almost three and half years to put forth your best guy and this is what you came up with?

Not only does Romney lie like no body’s business, he changes himself to suit the group he is addressing at the moment. Case in point, his recent pandering speech to the NRA, that group that get’s a hard-on just thinking about a Colt 45. Eliot Spitzer had some good comments over at Slate.com. Here’s just a part of what he says -

Romney also argues that our personal freedom is under assault, and cites the Affordable Care Act, of course. Here is a small story not widely enough known: Mary Brown, who went to court to challenge the bill and whose name was on the litigation that made it all the way to the Supreme Court, claimed at the time she filed the suit, through her attorneys, that she “doesn’t have insurance. She doesn’t want to pay for it. And she doesn’t want the government to tell her she has to have it.” Mary Brown and her husband went bankrupt, leaving behind many debts, including $4,500 in medical bills. She will not pay those bills, but we taxpayers will.

So the question to Mr. Romney is why am I , as a taxpayer, forced to pay for Mary’s medical bill just because she didn’t want to pay it. You know what, maybe I should refuse to pay my Medicare monthly payment. The damn government is forcing me to pay for something I don’t want and I want everyone else to pay instead of me.

The good thing about Mitt is that you never know which way he’ll go on an issue. And that’s the bad thing too. But more than that is that if he make’s it to the White House, the far right nut jobs will pull him over to there side like Darth Vader manipulated The Force. Who’s the GOP’s Darth Vader? Think Grover Norquist. Scares the crap out of me and it should scare the crap out out of you. Think about it.

Liar, liar, pants on fire!

We know that politicians lie, but Mitt Romney is bringing it to a new level. Not only does he flip and flop with the wind, he out and out lies. Of course Obama made the recession worse and made it longer, Mitt says. Wrong! Of course Obamacare added to the debt. Wrong!

He’s been called out on his lying before. As an example, January 24, 2012 from Dan Amira at The Daily Beast -

From a Republican debate in Florida -

Mitt Romney said ….“We’re headed to a Greece- type collapse, and [Obama] adds another trillion on top for Obamacare and for his stimulus plan that didn’t create private-sector jobs.”

Literally everything in this sentence is false. The United States is not headed toward a Greek-style collapse. Obamacare didn't add to the debt; according to the CBO, it's lowering the debt by $230 billion through 2021. And the stimulus created millions of jobs. Aside from that, though, it's a fine sentence.

The thing we have to be careful in the general election is that his lies, said often enough, are believed by enough people to derail the re-election of Obama. Is the American voter is smart enough to see through Romney’s lies? Maybe I just answered my own question.

Greatest enemy that faith has….

You’ve seen the pictures of church signs on the internet. Many are boring, some are funny, and some are idiotic (OK, maybe most are idiotic). Recently I’ve seen a presentation where the presenter showed a slide of church signs that read “Reason is the greatest enemy faith has”. I thought that would make a good bumper sticker. But also I though, that’s right!

C.S. Lewis in his “Mere Christianity” talked about how you really can’t reason Christianity and the best way to be a Christian, according to Lewis, is to just convince yourself that Christianity is true despite the fact that it doesn’t make any reasonable sense. His method was simply to think every day, “this is true” over and over and over. So at the end you give in from exhaustion.

It’s no wonder to me that the statement that reason is the greatest enemy of faith says it all. If you have ever tried to reason with a Christian, you know you can present all kinds of very reasoned arguments that are rock solid only to have the person say “that may be true but I still believe”. It’s the old saw “The bible says it, I believe it, and that’s it”.

So it’s a waste of time to try to reason with a ardent Christian. Our only hope is with those that already have some sort of doubt about their faith and let them find the facts themselves. Reason to hope?

Thinking makes you loose faith, duh!

This guy, Santorum, is too good to be true. As an example of what right wing thinking (or lack of) is all about, he keeps giving one gem after another. On a Sunday morning interview of CBS he said - “I understand why Barack Obama wants to send every kid to college, because of their indoctrination mills, absolutely … The indoctrination that is going on at the university level is a harm to our country.”  He went on to further claim that 62% of students that go to college loose their faith. Ouch!

Well, the 62% number looks like it came from a 2006 survey by Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government which found that 62% of college REPUBLICANS said “religion was loosing its influence on American life.” That very different than what Santorum was saying about the 62% of students in general loosing faith.

But stop and think about that statement for a moment. If it were true or even mostly true, what does that indicate? It indicates to me that once students leave the confines' of Mom and Dad they find a wider world that raises questions that their faith can’t answer. That’s part of being educated, Rick! If you want to insure those kids don’t get “corrupted” by the wider world, then keep them at home and see how they do.

When the world is surpassing us in science, math, and other areas,  yo-yos like Rick would rather have a bunch of pious Christian dummies out in the work force rather than smart, possibly liberal leaning unbelievers. Good plan Rick! Think about it.

Thomas Jefferson must be really pissed!

If you haven’t heard the latest crap from Virginia, Jefferson’s home state, then get ready. It seems in order to make it as difficult as possible in Virginia for a woman to get an abortion, the republican legislature passed a bill that, among other things, required women to undergo a “transvaginal  ultrasound” procedure, without their consent or the consent of doctors. In other words to really harass women the state wants to stick a probe up their vagina to see… what?

The abortion issue aside, what galls me is that the republicans scream to high heaven to get the government out of their daily affairs but yet don’t seem to have any problem with the government looking into vaginas. This is state sponsored RAPE! And why all this is happening? It’s the religious right who wants to interject full blown Christianity into our government. They want to create a theocracy, full stop. They seemed to think this is what the country needs but they conveniently forget to ask the Jews, the Muslims, the Hindus, the Atheists (who cares about them?), and others. What is important is that they get their way, damn everyone else.

There was a reason that Thomas Jefferson wanted this wall of separation between church and state. He saw how having church authorities meddling in government affairs made a mess of things and didn’t want that here in America. I’m afraid we are going backwards towards the dark ages. Tom, I’m with you. I’m pissed!

“But no religious test”

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

The United States Constitution, Article VI, paragraph 3. Emphasis added.

The GOP is famous for beating up on Obama for “shredding the constitution”. Meanwhile the current crop of GOP candidates tout their own religiosity to make sure they pass the religion test with the far right faithful.

Despite what the constitution says, there is a religious test that presidential candidates must pass if they are Republican. You hear them talk about their beliefs and their faith, yelling about whether or not another candidate is a “true Christian’ (what ever that is) or they are the better Christian for the job. Franklin Graham, heir to the Billy Graham empire, hints that Obama is Christian in name only. Of course Romney, being Mormon, might not be a Christian although Franklin didn’t say it directly and I’m sure he’s not happy with Romney’s Mormonism.

Then Rick Santorum talks about Obama and say that he doesn’t think Obama has the correct theology. It’s not the theology of the Bible, Santorum says. Begs the question of what is the correct theology? Maybe there is one but as an atheist I’m sure there isn’t any. To paraphrase sci-fi writer Robert Heinlein “Theology is like looking for a black cat in a cellar at midnight that isn’t there”.

But the main point is that we need to get religion out of politics, it is toxic and it will only cause more problems than it will solve. If you haven’t heard the old joke about when three Baptists get together, one will form a new church. So which candidate has the right religion? Also you already know that “real Americans” don’t trust those “Muslims” because they are ALL terrorists and not Christian. Then there are the Jews. It goes on and on.

Also in the Constitution is this little item... “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”. Congress isn’t establishing a religion but the GOP certainly wants to! Think about it.

“Compelling Catholics”

There was this letter to the editor in today’s paper under the banner “Obama’s contempt for religion evident”. The writer complained that Obama and his supporters “have a contempt for religion, morality and the U.S. Constitution”. But the kicker  comment was this… “the government is compelling Catholics to violate their consciences or to suffer the consequences”.

Compelling Catholics? This whole issue is so stupid! As it has been in the past, health insurance companies help pay for contraception IF the insured wants it. The folks that want to COMPEL Catholics are those guys in funny hats in Rome. And how well has that worked? Not well at all. As been mentioned before, 98% of Catholic women ignore the church’s edict on contraception. No one in government is forcing anyone to get or use contraception.

Why aren’t the bishops up in arms with the pharmacies or grocery store that have condoms on their shelves? Is the pharmacy compelling men to use the condom? If a married Catholic man uses a condom when he has sex with his wife, who is to blame?

I’m upset that when these issues come to light, it seems that men are the ones who seem to want to dictate things. Sean Hannity had a “panel” to discuss this issue. The “panel” was made up of priests, bishops, rabbis and others and all were men. No women! A recent congressional panel was called on this issue and all the witnesses were men! No women! WTF?

The republicans don’t seem to get that most people don’t really care about this issue. What they care about is the economy and jobs. If you are out of work and don’t have health insurance, who cares about the pill or the condom? They are using this issue to try and beat up on Obama. They figure eventually they’ll find something that will stick. It ain’t this! Think about it.

Wrong theology–which one?

Rick Santorum, the current darling of the Right, was quoted as saying that “Obama’s agenda was ‘about some phony ideal, some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible, a different theology,’ he added. He went on the Sunday news circuit to back pedal somewhat and said while Obama believes ‘man is here to serve the Earth,’ he [Santorum] believes ‘Earth is not the objective. Man is the objective.”’

He goes on to say, “I was talking about the radical environmentalists. This idea that man is here to serve the Earth as opposed to husband its resources and be good stewards of the Earth. I think that is a phony ideal.”

He’s going back somewhat to the 19th century idea of “manifest destiny” and some other religious views that don’t concern themselves with what happens to the planet. He seems to side with those who know that Jesus will come back soon and rescue us all, so who cares about the Earth now?

At the same time he acknowledges that Obama is a Christian and he seems to be OK with that. However he forgets that many Protestants look upon Catholics (such as Santorum) and say that they are not true Christians with their allegiance to the Pope and Mary and saints, etc. To some Baptists, an Atheist is better than a Catholic.

This is what happens when you start involving religion in politics. I remember when John Kennedy had to address his Catholic faith. He gave a speech in which he said that basically his faith was a private matter and that as president he wouldn’t let the church dictate his actions. It was a different time then. I don’t think Nixon would have helped his campaign if he jumped on Kennedy’s religion like Santorum brings up Obama’s religion. But today, thanks to the nutters on the right, a person’s religion is a big thing. In fact if seems now you have to pass a religious test to get elected, despite what the constitution say about that. Look at the 2008 election where Obama and McCain had to go to Rick Warren (amongst other things they had to do) to get his blessing on their religiousness.

We are on a dangerous road now where religion plays such a large role in politics. We have essentially a state religion (Christianity) and every politician is judge against it. Is there anyway we can get Thomas Jefferson back to helps reinforce the wall between church and state? Seems like there is a hole you could drive a truck through.

My God! Can you believers be any more crazy?

In our local Sunday paper were three letters to the editor under the banner “Religious freedoms are being assaulted”. One letter claimed that the president and others were “attacking our constitutionally protected right of religious freedom.” The writer goes on to complain that “we have been told that religious organizations would be required to provide abortions, contraceptive and sterilization services.”

Another writer said that Obama “is disregarding the most basic tenet of the First Amendment – free exercise  of religion.” Yet another writer screams “The Obama administration’s assault on the free exercise of religion…. is an abomination.” It is interesting that all the writers were men.

This is typical of many religious zealots. Take something that “appears” to go against something they cherish and they go off the deep end declaring that their religious freedoms are crumbling. First of all nothing has really changed. Similar mandates for contraceptives were already in place in 28 states and no one said anything. Then Obama actually gave them an out by declaring that religious employers wouldn’t have to pay additional premiums to cover contraception. What zealots, or at least the ones writing letters to editors, don’t realize is that 98% of catholic women already use contraceptives, going against Catholic dogma. And that’s the real complaint from the guys in funny hats. It’s about maintaining power and control where ever they can. They can’t admit that the majority of women (and many men) don’t pay attention to guys in funny hats.

I’m so sick of religious nuts screaming to high heaven that they are being assaulted by the government and others (like Atheists) while they enjoy such massive power in this country. You can see that in the current crop of GOP nutters proudly showcasing their religious credentials at every opportunity. Let someone try to run for office who proudly declares that they are an Atheist and see what happens. You’d do better off declaring that you are gay than saying you are an unbeliever.

As someone who went through 12 years of Catholic education, or beat down as I like to call it, I know how much power the Catholic church likes to wield. This whole issue from the beginning was not about health insurance providers or the government providing contraception to women. It was about power and how much the Catholic church could flex their muscle in the body politic. (See the blog entry by Adam Lee over at www.bigthink.com/ideas/42414.) All religion is about power, pure and simple. Think about it.

Happy Birthday Mr. Darwin

Today is Charles Darwin’s birthday. Born in 1809, Charles Darwin explored the world and came to the conclusion that life on earth was not created by some big daddy in the sky as he was taught to believe. He explored and saw the evidence which he termed “Natural Selection”. He did not really “discover” evolution as that was already evident.

One must remember that if Charles Darwin didn’t put forth his ideas of natural selection some one else would have. There was no stopping the push to understand the world as it is versus what the church said it was. A 150 years after he published his “Origins of Species”, it still remains one of the most influential books ever created. Too bad those idiots who promote Intelligent Design never read it.

I’ll leave you with this quote from Mr. Darwin. When you read this quote think of the current crop of Republican candidates."Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science"

Couldn’t have said it better myself. Again, Happy Birthday Charlie!

By the way Happy Birthday to Abe Lincoln. He’s claimed these days by the Republicans but Abe wouldn’t like what’s happened today with the GOP.

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.

No good Democrats–not one!

I was flipping through the AM dial the other day in my car and heard what appeared to be a promo for a talk radio station. The bit I caught went something like “There are no good Democrats – not one!” When I heard that I thought, OK this guy has a definite agenda and I’m assuming he must be a rabid Republican. So I put him into the junk pile of the rabid right.

It started me thinking, what constitutes a good Democrat or for that matter a good Republican? I could tell that this person didn’t have much love for any Democrat, good or bad. But what about his opinion of Republicans? Would he claim that all Republicans, by default, are good?

But looking at this a little more deeply, his comment was a reflection of what is going on in America and that is the deep polarization of the political and cultural landscape. Call me naive but long ago, Democrats and Republicans fought and traded insults, but now the discourse has gone beyond politics. Republicans, I assume, are white, Christian, rich and want power. Democrats are white liberals, mostly rich, many Christian, and push for more government spending. Or so the general trend goes.

What concerns me however, is that now it’s an “either or situation.” Either you’re with us (white, Christian, capitalist, etc.) or you’re against us (liberal, no good leach, non-believer, etc.) and we (the good ones) are coming after you! Also the GOP Right, and their Tea Party cohorts, have promoted a “just believe anything we say and don’t think” environment. To hear the drivel that comes out of many of the politicians and radio and TV people is frightening. You have to wonder if any of them have any grasp of reality. Obama is to blame for everything wrong all over the world, they spout, and the GOP darling of the moment will fix everything INSTANTLY.

I think the American electorate is setting itself for a big disappointment if Obama is replaced. By demonizing Obama to the extent it does, the far right is setting themselves up to be very, very disappointed. I don’t have time here to go into why Romney has no clue how to fix things but suffice it to say that Americans will be depressed for a long time by the person replacing Obama, if that happens. It’s like being told that the gala tonight will be the greatest thing since sliced bread only to find that no one arranged for food, forgot the tents as it is still raining, and the band consists of three teenagers who can only strum their cheap guitars. Oops, my bad! Think about it.

Atheist? – then you have nothing to live for.

I have read and heard it said that if you don’t believe in God than you have nothing to live for. You might as well kill yourself. They (those loving Christians) also throw in that Atheists have no moral compass without a supernatural Daddy to show them the way. If you’re an Atheist you must be an evil person!

It’s always bothered me that Christianity's main emphasis is that we human are bad from the get go and unless we bow down and confess to the  big guy in the sky that we believe he exists and we want forgiveness for being born, we will suffer the most unimaginable punishment ever conceived and for eternity to boot! The song “Amazing Grace” say it all -  “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me....” “A Wretch like me”, that says it. God created wretches.

It’s been part of the 2,000 year old plan of Christianity, to make sure the scum we call humans know they are crap and that we (priests, ministers, etc.) will save them and give them a reward. But only after they die! Talk about having nothing to live for!

Paula Kirby, in a January 18, 2012 Washington Post blog entry on faith, wrote a article entitled “How do atheists find meaning in life?” In it she says -

“We atheists find purpose in the world as it is, and in our real lives; we see living beings as valuable in their own right, deserving of our concern and compassion simply because they share our capacity for pain and pleasure. It is hard to imagine a position less moral, less conducive to empathy, than this inherently warped and uncharitable view of humanity proposed by Christianity.”

I think that sums it up for me. Think about it.