Christians, Jews, Muslims have been at war with each other ever since our species abandoned Pagan Gods in favor of a monotheistic male God more than 20 centuries ago. The ancient Jews created their version of God in dark caves and wrote what later became known as the "Old Testament". They paid a steep price for their heresy. Later, a spell binding healer named Jesus came along and was quickly and efficiently crucified by the pagan Romans. There is debate about this- but some claim that Jesus was resurrected from his grave.Whether that was the case, or not, his disciples and their descendents traveled far and wide in the old world to resurrect his reputation in order to create a new religion called "Christianity". Not to be out done, a self proclaimed prophet named Mohammad decided that Arabs deserved their own version of a male God and very quickly the doctrine of Islam spread throughout the shores and trade lanes of the Mediterranean Sea. Problems quickly arose when Jews, Christians and Muslim all began to claim the holy sites as their own and promoted their own version of God's words and directives to humanity. All three religions have been at war within their own ranks and with one another ever since. There are dozens of divisions and versions of Christianity, numerous versions of Islam, and the same goes for those who follow the Jewish faith. Neutral observers have fruitlessly pointed out over the centuries that each of these religions appear to worship the same God, and pay their respect the many of same prophets. They also have in common that all three religions were created by men, not women, and that the men firmly place the blame on women for arousing their sexual urges. Therefore each religion encourages women to maintain their virginity and to wear modest clothing that will not unduly arouse men. The ensuing centuries have given us the crusades, the "Inquisition", the attempt by Nazis to exterminate Jews, the creation of a "Jewish State", and now deadly warfare between several branches of Islam.
The warriors of our species have always carried their Gods into battle and the very first action of the victor is to displace the Gods of those who are conquered. There is nothing new about the religious wars we're witnessing in the Middle East other than the fact that the weapons have become more deadly and efficient over the centuries. All three religions and their various sects still basically worship the same monotheistic "God" concept. Many observers note that religion evolved out of superstition. Our ancestors, failing yet to understand the laws of physics, the existance of planets, and the behavior of stars - didn't fully trust the Sun to return periodically, nor an eclipse to end, or understand the cause of diseases. Our tendency has always been to defy what we don't understand and pray that it will continue, or go away- as the case may be.
Whether or not we share the views of others when it comes to religion, it might be useful to remember that the word itself implies something "supernatural". While there is much that we do not understand about the Universe and the concept of "life" there can't, by definition, be anything "supernatural" about something that clearly exists. We exist therefore life, and all that we witness or fail to understand, is perfectly "natural".
The fact that we don't understand something doesn't necessarily mean that it's" super natural", it just means that we're still in a state of ignorance. No one can, or should, deny our never ending search for spirituality in our daily lives -even though we appear to be the only species who strives to find such meaning. If religion serves that purpose so be it. But maybe we can agree that killing each other over our differing views on spirituality is as contrary to any concept of spirituality as can possibly be imagined. It's been said many times that there is no God worth worshiping who would condone all of this hatred and killing. If we must worship let's worship a God that brings us together in peace - not a God that urges us to kill one another.
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
Thursday, July 24, 2014
Contradictions:
Try these on for size:
People opposed to abortions who are also against birth control.
People opposed to abortions who are also against providing financial assistance to unwed teenage mothers who do the right thing and then try to finish their education so that they and their child can escape poverty.
Christians who claim to follow the teaching of Jesus while urging the government to turn back undocumented immigrants seeking a better life in America.
Flag waving wealthy corporate CEO's who claim to be patriots while moving their businesses offshore in order to avoided paying their fair share of income taxes.
Self righteous anti- immigration people who claim that their ancestors came to America legally -ignoring the fact that our ancestors immigrated to America illegally without the permission of the true Native Americans - many of whom still live in poverty on Reservations.
Try these on for size:
People opposed to abortions who are also against birth control.
People opposed to abortions who are also against providing financial assistance to unwed teenage mothers who do the right thing and then try to finish their education so that they and their child can escape poverty.
Christians who claim to follow the teaching of Jesus while urging the government to turn back undocumented immigrants seeking a better life in America.
Flag waving wealthy corporate CEO's who claim to be patriots while moving their businesses offshore in order to avoided paying their fair share of income taxes.
Self righteous anti- immigration people who claim that their ancestors came to America legally -ignoring the fact that our ancestors immigrated to America illegally without the permission of the true Native Americans - many of whom still live in poverty on Reservations.
Monday, June 16, 2014
Wars
If there is one constant in human history it's the impulse to invade, plunder, and rape. As far back as we can trace our history it's been a long series of wars, conquests, slaughter, and subjugation. The story never changes except for a few variations of the plot and the cast of actors. The plots revolve around intrigue, religion, territory, race, wealth, land, resources, or any other possible excuse to stir people to take up arms against an imagined foe. The villains come from central casting where there is no shortage of unemployed evil doers with over inflated egos ready and willing to wreck havoc upon unsuspecting populations. We call these actors our "leaders". Leaders acquire power through inheritance, intrigue, brutal conquest, and persuasion (aka election). Once in power their primary instinct is to acquire more power and attack other neighboring leaders. Somewhere back in Africa millions of years ago when we came down from the trees and started walking around hitting each other on the head with clubs and rocks there were probably a few sociopathic males with a "leader" gene in their DNA. That gene shows up at least once or twice every generation to produce people like Genghis Khan, Hitler, and the numerous other "leaders" who we all too eagerly follow into deadly warfare against our fellow human beings.
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Boycott Partrisanship
For those of us who are sick of all the negative political attack ads on television the best way to stop them is to boycott their advertisers and sponsors. Just drop a line, or call the TV stations and tell them that if they keep running the negative ads you're going to boycott their advertisers. Then make a call, or write a letter to the advertisers and tell them you're going to boycott their products. It's that simple. Television stations, media outlets, and the press make a lot of money running these negative ads which only serve to pit us against each other and encourage extreme partisinship. The result is that we end up with politicians who represent narrow minded ideologies. It's up to us to say enough of the childish bickering! Just say no to political divisivemess.
For those of us who are sick of all the negative political attack ads on television the best way to stop them is to boycott their advertisers and sponsors. Just drop a line, or call the TV stations and tell them that if they keep running the negative ads you're going to boycott their advertisers. Then make a call, or write a letter to the advertisers and tell them you're going to boycott their products. It's that simple. Television stations, media outlets, and the press make a lot of money running these negative ads which only serve to pit us against each other and encourage extreme partisinship. The result is that we end up with politicians who represent narrow minded ideologies. It's up to us to say enough of the childish bickering! Just say no to political divisivemess.
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Putin's claims of American Hypocrisy?
Putin's land grab in the Crimea is very similar to America's invasion of Mexico in the 1840's when President Polk decided to use force to acquire Texas, California, and portions of Arizona and New Mexico. .Polk claimed that it was America's "Manifest Destiny" to own that land. He sent troops into Mexico and forced the President of Mexico to sell the land to America at the point of a gun. This caused an International uproar and our actions were broadly censured. The invasion was preceded by Mexico filing complaints against American citizens who were illegally migrating into Texas -which at that time was owned by Mexico.
We sometimes wonder why other Nations accuse us of hypocrisy. Our blatant land grab in Mexico, our invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan are examples, as is our claim that we alone should be allowed to own nuclear weapons. We are after all the only Nation who so far has used nuclear weapons to kill thousands of non-combatant citizens.
Putin's land grab in the Crimea is very similar to America's invasion of Mexico in the 1840's when President Polk decided to use force to acquire Texas, California, and portions of Arizona and New Mexico. .Polk claimed that it was America's "Manifest Destiny" to own that land. He sent troops into Mexico and forced the President of Mexico to sell the land to America at the point of a gun. This caused an International uproar and our actions were broadly censured. The invasion was preceded by Mexico filing complaints against American citizens who were illegally migrating into Texas -which at that time was owned by Mexico.
We sometimes wonder why other Nations accuse us of hypocrisy. Our blatant land grab in Mexico, our invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan are examples, as is our claim that we alone should be allowed to own nuclear weapons. We are after all the only Nation who so far has used nuclear weapons to kill thousands of non-combatant citizens.
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
Governments are supposed to protect individual freedom and provide for the general welfare of their citizens not repress, subjugate, or spy on their citizens. Money was invented to provide an efficient way to exchange goods and services, not provide a way to allow a few individuals to take the majority of the money out of circulation for their own personal benefit. Politicians are supposed to represent the interests of all of the people not just those with enough money to buy influence.
Friday, March 7, 2014
Mitch McConnell brandishing a rifle is about as childish as it gets. This is the man who said his primary job was to prevent Obama from getting re-elected. What happened to trying to improve the economy and creating more jobs? What happened to updating our infrastructure? What happened to healing the wounds of partisanship? What happened to raising the minimum wage for some of our nations hardest workers?
We're paying McConnell and our politicians above average salaries and they're not even putting in a 40 hour work week.
We're paying McConnell and our politicians above average salaries and they're not even putting in a 40 hour work week.
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Thursday, February 20, 2014
Big Horn Sheep
Let me get this straight. The Arizona Game and Fish department is killing mountain lions who kill big horn sheep so that hunters can kill the sheep instead.
Monday, August 1, 2011
Simple Budget Solutions
The politicians are making our budget problems unnecessarily complicated when in fact the problems can be solved relatively easily without damage to our economy,without draconian cut back in programs, and without large tax increases. Here are some simple steps we need to take.]
1) The politicians are fixated on the cost of Social Security and Medicare ( "Entitlements) so the first thing we need to do is set those two programs aside and discuss them separately. Neither entitlement program has a place in the discussion about the discretionary portion of the budget because they have a completely different funding mechanism and the money collected for both programs is supposed to be set aside in separate Trust Funds (even though it is common knowledge that the politicians have been taking money out of both Trust Funds to conceal deficit spending for the past several decades). Both Social Security and Medicare are funded by payroll taxes and it's obvious that as more people retire and need more health care those payroll taxes will need to be raised. However, the amount that those taxes will need to be raised to adequately fund Medicare in the future is relatively small compared to the cost of buying a decent health insurance policy in the private sector and it is obvious to even the most casual observer that covering every citizen with Medicare would save hundreds of billions of dollars annually by eliminating the need for Medicaid, SCHIP, and all of the numerous fragmented health care programs at the State and Federal Level. For example, a 4% payroll tax increase on a salary of $40,000 to fund the expansion of Medicare to cover everyone is only $1,600 per year compared to the cost of about $15,000 per year for a decent health care policy in the private sector. Politicians claim there is no "political will" to expand Medicare to cover everyone yet most physicians, health care workers, and voters favor doing so. It's the lobbyists who finance the campaigns of the politicians who object to expanding Medicare- not the majority of the voters or health care workers. We should mention in passing that expanding Medicare and eliminating Medicade would go a long way toward helping the 50 States balance their budgets.
Social Security will also require a slight increase in payroll taxes but that can be moderated by removing the cap on taxable payroll, and by making sure that only people below a certain income level are eligible for Social Security benefits.
2) Now that we've solved the Medicare and Social Security problem, we're faced with the discretionary part of the budget. The biggest component of that budget is the cost of funding our ever growing military industrial complex. Again, those budgets are largely driven by lobbyists for the Defense Contractors and in fact a lot of money allocated to the Defense industry creates jobs here in American. Nevertheless, by any reasonable estimate there is at least 35% waste and corruptions in that area of the budget.
3) Finally we need to discuss ways to increase government revenues. There are two primary ways to do so. The first and most important is to get our economy back on track and create more jobs. The second is to make sure that every American, rich or poor, pays their fair share of taxes. Our economy has stalled in part because of an every increasing gap between those who have money to spend and those who do not. Currently less than 2% of our population control the majority of the money. There are reports that Corporations and financial institutions are holding cash reserves in excess of three trillion dollars. The Republicans, in a brilliant public relations ploy, call those people "job creators" when in fact the wealthy have taken so much money out of circulation over the past several decades that there isn't enough money in the hands of consumers to keep the economy healthy and vibrant. We've seen corporate profits reach record levels in the past two years while unemployment remains near ten percent. Where are the jobs the so called "job creators" are supposed to be creating? While cutting the size of government spending is generally an admirable goal it hardly seems appropriate during this recession to reduce the number of consumers by laying off several million government workers.
The politicians have been extremely successful at hiding behind the cost of entitlement programs as a way to avoid taking responsibility for our budget problems. That's because during flush times they've basically been stealing money from both Trust funds to finance and conceal their deficit spending. They've done that by claiming that the money we've put into the Trust funds from our weekly payroll taxes is actually money they can spend instead of money that was supposed to be put aside in a Trust fund to cover Social Security and Medicare expenses for people who reach retirement age. Now that they've "borrowed" all that money from the Trusts they have nothing to hide behind so they're blaming the entitlement programs for the growing deficit. At the present time our Government is borrowing money to replace the money the politicians took out of Social Security and Medicare and the interest on that borrowing is rapidly becoming one of the biggest contributors to our rising deficit problem. Yet the politicians continue to blame the entitlement programs,, instead of their own mismanagement of the money we paid into those programs , for our budget problems. We'll probably never solve our budget problems until we find a way to keep our tax money out of the hands of the politicians. In the meantime write to your elected representatives and tell them the best way to get our financial house in order is to stop stealing money from the Social Security and Medicare Trust funds and replace "Obama Care" by expanding Medicare to cover everyone. Every poll reveals that this is what the majority of us want. The politicians won't listen if we don't talk to them. It's that simple folks. Get on your phones. Write letters and email. Nothing will change unless we speak up in mass. It's important that "political will" be defined and the will of the people not the will of the lobbyists.
1) The politicians are fixated on the cost of Social Security and Medicare ( "Entitlements) so the first thing we need to do is set those two programs aside and discuss them separately. Neither entitlement program has a place in the discussion about the discretionary portion of the budget because they have a completely different funding mechanism and the money collected for both programs is supposed to be set aside in separate Trust Funds (even though it is common knowledge that the politicians have been taking money out of both Trust Funds to conceal deficit spending for the past several decades). Both Social Security and Medicare are funded by payroll taxes and it's obvious that as more people retire and need more health care those payroll taxes will need to be raised. However, the amount that those taxes will need to be raised to adequately fund Medicare in the future is relatively small compared to the cost of buying a decent health insurance policy in the private sector and it is obvious to even the most casual observer that covering every citizen with Medicare would save hundreds of billions of dollars annually by eliminating the need for Medicaid, SCHIP, and all of the numerous fragmented health care programs at the State and Federal Level. For example, a 4% payroll tax increase on a salary of $40,000 to fund the expansion of Medicare to cover everyone is only $1,600 per year compared to the cost of about $15,000 per year for a decent health care policy in the private sector. Politicians claim there is no "political will" to expand Medicare to cover everyone yet most physicians, health care workers, and voters favor doing so. It's the lobbyists who finance the campaigns of the politicians who object to expanding Medicare- not the majority of the voters or health care workers. We should mention in passing that expanding Medicare and eliminating Medicade would go a long way toward helping the 50 States balance their budgets.
Social Security will also require a slight increase in payroll taxes but that can be moderated by removing the cap on taxable payroll, and by making sure that only people below a certain income level are eligible for Social Security benefits.
2) Now that we've solved the Medicare and Social Security problem, we're faced with the discretionary part of the budget. The biggest component of that budget is the cost of funding our ever growing military industrial complex. Again, those budgets are largely driven by lobbyists for the Defense Contractors and in fact a lot of money allocated to the Defense industry creates jobs here in American. Nevertheless, by any reasonable estimate there is at least 35% waste and corruptions in that area of the budget.
3) Finally we need to discuss ways to increase government revenues. There are two primary ways to do so. The first and most important is to get our economy back on track and create more jobs. The second is to make sure that every American, rich or poor, pays their fair share of taxes. Our economy has stalled in part because of an every increasing gap between those who have money to spend and those who do not. Currently less than 2% of our population control the majority of the money. There are reports that Corporations and financial institutions are holding cash reserves in excess of three trillion dollars. The Republicans, in a brilliant public relations ploy, call those people "job creators" when in fact the wealthy have taken so much money out of circulation over the past several decades that there isn't enough money in the hands of consumers to keep the economy healthy and vibrant. We've seen corporate profits reach record levels in the past two years while unemployment remains near ten percent. Where are the jobs the so called "job creators" are supposed to be creating? While cutting the size of government spending is generally an admirable goal it hardly seems appropriate during this recession to reduce the number of consumers by laying off several million government workers.
The politicians have been extremely successful at hiding behind the cost of entitlement programs as a way to avoid taking responsibility for our budget problems. That's because during flush times they've basically been stealing money from both Trust funds to finance and conceal their deficit spending. They've done that by claiming that the money we've put into the Trust funds from our weekly payroll taxes is actually money they can spend instead of money that was supposed to be put aside in a Trust fund to cover Social Security and Medicare expenses for people who reach retirement age. Now that they've "borrowed" all that money from the Trusts they have nothing to hide behind so they're blaming the entitlement programs for the growing deficit. At the present time our Government is borrowing money to replace the money the politicians took out of Social Security and Medicare and the interest on that borrowing is rapidly becoming one of the biggest contributors to our rising deficit problem. Yet the politicians continue to blame the entitlement programs,, instead of their own mismanagement of the money we paid into those programs , for our budget problems. We'll probably never solve our budget problems until we find a way to keep our tax money out of the hands of the politicians. In the meantime write to your elected representatives and tell them the best way to get our financial house in order is to stop stealing money from the Social Security and Medicare Trust funds and replace "Obama Care" by expanding Medicare to cover everyone. Every poll reveals that this is what the majority of us want. The politicians won't listen if we don't talk to them. It's that simple folks. Get on your phones. Write letters and email. Nothing will change unless we speak up in mass. It's important that "political will" be defined and the will of the people not the will of the lobbyists.
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