Category Archives: Religion

House Of Horrors.

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No, it’s not The House On Elm Street. It’s not Norman Bates’ home. The US House of Representatives has claimed the crown! Populated by a host of psychopaths, spooks, bloodsuckers and zombies, it strikes fear into intelligent people around the globe.

Within its terror-filled chambers, Speaker Boehner plays a modern-day, orange-tinted Mad Hatter with a Tea Party no less crazy than that from Alice In Wonderland. Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor are like Freddie Krueger and Norman Bates trying to slash food stamps, Social Security and Medicare. Michele Bachmann talks glowingly of the end times. Louie Gohmert wields a verbal chainsaw attacking everyone and everything in sight. Steve King (not to be confused with the less frightening Stephen King), Trent Franks, Joe “You Lie” Wilson and Ted Poe lead the rest of the freak show.

Across the hall, honorary member and defacto House leader, Ted “the headless horseman” Cruz, unleashes a seemingly endless stream of hatred and nonsense.

With a cast like this, is it any wonder Washington has spun out of control? Is it any wonder that Congress has become dysfunctional? Moderate Republicans have fled for their lives, allowing the John Birch Society and Ayn Rand-inspired zombies (aka the Tea Party) to take our government hostage. So it’s now up to Democrats and Independents to put an end to their insanity.

But there are no silver bullets, no wooden stakes. And unlike horror movies, you simply can’t turn away from the terror or walk out of the theater when it gets too scary. In this story, it’s as if the 3D psychos have jumped off the big screen to threaten us all. Moreover, their tactics will have real consequences for the poor, the hungry, the young, the elderly and the middle class. Our only defense is our vote.

Around Halloween, everyone likes a good haunted house or horror film, but this is a horror story that may not end well…if it ever does. That’s your cue to scream!

The End Of Professionalism.

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In the early nineties, I started noticing a new attitude from advertising clients. Where previous clients respected our opinions and were willing to pay for our expertise, clients began questioning everything from concepts to production to grammar. It was if our college degrees and years of experience meant nothing.

You see, this new generation of clients had seen plenty of advertising. They had computer programs to check spelling and grammar. Suddenly, they were experts.

Even worse, marketing directors and advertising managers would often hire their nephews and nieces to design print ads, brochures and websites because “they had taken a class in graphic design.” Where we had been held to account with a variety of measurements – awareness studies, focus groups, sales results, etc. – the nephews and nieces were exempt from all that. While these clients admitted the work might not be great, they said it was “good enough.”

Within a few years, large clients such as Frito-Lay were holding contests for amateurs to create their Super Bowl commercials. In reality, this became a new way to generate “buzz” and to cut costs.

The advertising industry isn’t the only one affected. The innundation of media, computers, the Internet, Worldwide Web, YouTube and “apps” have had the same affect on most professions. People with no specialized education or training now believe they are expert writers, artists, designers, photographers, film directors, video editors, football coaches, basketball coaches…you name it. For example, almost everyone is an expert on education…after all, everyone has attended some sort of school.

I realized this phenomenon had reached a point of no return when college football fans bought games which allowed them to play their team’s upcoming schedule on their home computer. They then announced the results as if they were predictors of the upcoming season. When the actual team played actual opponents and lost, these “gamers” were then convinced that the loss was the result of the coach approaching the actual game differently than they had on the computer.

Such idiocy is relatively harmless…until it spills into economics, science, politics and everyday life.

We now have politicians who think they know more about climate change than climatologists. Religious leaders who claim evolution is just a theory. (Of course it is…in the same way gravity is a theory!) Political leaders who claim the way to end poverty is to take away social safety nets. We have created a society of people who believe they’re experts about everything, and if they aren’t, they can just “Google it.”

It’s long past time that we again respect the real experts…the professionals who have spent years learning and mastering a subject. It’s time we stop seeing conspiracies around every corner (that only diminishes the real conspiracies.) We need to learn to trust again. And we need to earn that trust. Until we do, our nation and our civilization will never truly prosper.

The End Is Near?

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All across the Worldwide Web, you can find websites, blogs and videos announcing the impending “End of Obama.” Some have been created by fanatical Christian groups that are convinced President Obama is a Muslim. Some have been created by white supremacy groups and other racist thugs who dislike the color of his skin. Some have been created by fraudsters determined to scare you out of your money.

We have pundits predicting the demise of democracy if Obama is allowed to implement his agenda. (Never mind that Obama was democratically elected – not once, but twice.) They predict that he will single-handedly lead us into economic disaster. Some of these predictions come from right wing radio hosts looking to scare up higher ratings. Some are pushed by right wing politicians determined to scare people into voting for them.

The two things that connect all of these dire (and unfounded) predictions are fear and hatred.

This is really not a new phenomenon. We’ve had doomsayers for centuries. But nobody actually took them seriously…until now. They used to be the subject of ridicule and smirks. They used to stand on street corners holding signs and shouting to themselves until the people in white coats put them in straight jackets and carted them off. They used to hide deep in the woods never to be heard from again. But now we make TV shows and movies about them. Worse yet, we elect them to office.

Today, we have people such as Tea Party favorite Ted Cruz and Tea Party caucus leader Michele Bachmann warning of the end times. We hear dozens of bombastic right wing preachers and televangelists predicting dire consequences if we don’t do as they say and send them money. We have TV “reality shows” rating the ability of “Doomsday Preppers” to build bunkers, stash food and map escape routes. We have gun “collectors” storing arsenals of weapons and ammo that would put the armies of many small countries to shame. We have Tea Party fear mongers warning of UN troops in black helicopters coming to take away our freedoms. And we have right wing billionaires funding TV commercials warning that “Obamacare” is the “end of liberty.”

Is this really what Americans have become as a people? A nation of ninnies afraid of a shadow – especially if that shadow is cast by a black man? Has the “land of the free and the home of the brave” become the land of the hateful and the cowards? If so, we better commission someone to write a new national anthem.

The generation of my parents fought the Great Depression and World War II with the words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt ringing in their ears, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” If they were called The Greatest Generation, what should we call the generations of today?

Artificial Intelligence.

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In an age of political irony, the committee assignment for Rep. Michele Bachmann stands out. Believe it or not, she is a proud member of the House Intelligence Committee!

Clearly, GOP leaders have no understanding of the word’s meaning. As I’m sure you know, intelligence is defined as “the ability to learn facts and skills and apply them, especially when this ability is highly developed.” It may also be defined as “information about secret plans or activities, especially those of foreign governments, the armed forces, business competitors, or criminals.”

Do either of those definitions have any obvious relationship to Bachmann? Seriously?

In all her years in office, Bachmann has displayed no aptitude for learning. She has demonstrated no understanding of history, our Founders, our Constitution or any other aspect of government. Neither has she demonstrated an ability to keep her lack of knowledge secret. Honestly, the woman can’t keep her mouth shut!

For example, Bachmann says that we are now living in the end of times. She’s not only a believer in Biblical Armageddon. From her politics, one might rightly conclude that she’s trying to rush to the end by defunding the federal government, defaulting on government loans, denying the science of climate change, fighting against gun safety, pushing for more fracking and oil drilling, and denying equal rights for all Americans.

However, if you listen to her long enough, you find that she admits to having no mind of her own. Like Sarah Palin, she claims that God tells her what to do. How sacrilegious is that!? She would have us believe that God would consistently tell her to say and do the wrong thing?

I find that offensive!

As a child, I was told that God is omniscient and omnipotent. Bachmann? Not so much. That leaves only two possible explanations for Bachmann’s failures. Either God doesn’t really speak to Bachmann. Or he has one heck of a sense of humor!

If Teapublicans Want To Be Taken Seriously, They Should Lose The Superiority Complex.

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They need to stop claiming that they’re the only real patriots; stop pretending to be the only true protectors of liberty; stop wrapping themselves and their ideas in the US flag; stop quoting the Founding Fathers, at least until they read the Constitution – the whole Constitution – and stop believing that God has taken their side.

Most of all, they need to lose the anger and hate!

There are some important questions our nation needs to answer in our future. What should we expect of our government? What government programs are essential? Which ones can be cut? When does government become an intrusion into our lives? What should be the role of the US in the world? How much military spending is enough? How much is too much? What is the role of money in elections? How much influence should the wealthy and corporations be able to buy? What, if any, role should religion have in government? What can be done to keep ever more lethal weaponry out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill? What should be done with the millions of undocumented immigrants who are already in our country?

These are all legitimate questions that need to be answered. But we can’t have an honest debate as long as one side assumes that it has all the answers and, worse yet, that the other side has no place at the table.

Our government was founded to provide for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for our citizens. All of our citizens. Not those of one political party, ethnic group, race or religious belief.

The Founding Fathers argued intensely over the powers of our government. They debated their positions in the Federalist papers. Those on the side of a strong, central government won. As a result of the Framers’ decisions, our nation has had unparalleled success.

We should not hate our government or each other. We should debate loudly, but respectfully. The only ones who deserve our wrath are those who don’t vote and those who dismiss the views of others. That includes those who would hold our government hostage until they get their way!

Sovereign Citizens: America’s New (Bowel) Movement.

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If you’re wondering about the headline, it’s not a typo. I feel it’s an accurate description of the freeloaders who have renounced their US citizenship and refuse to pay taxes or obey laws while taking advantage of our nation’s freedoms, services and benefits.

Each time one of these nitwits burns his driver’s license, Social Security card, birth certificate and other forms of identification, it’s as if our nation is shedding waste.

Now all we need to do is give them a good flush.

If they truly don’t want to be citizens of our nation, we should load them up and ship them to one of the many lawless nations in the world, such as Somalia, Yemen or Syria, where they can practice what they preach. There are plenty of immigrants who would gladly accept US citizenship, pay taxes and obey our laws. Indeed, many of our undocumented workers are already paying taxes knowing that they may never directly receive benefits from those taxes.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the Sovereign Citizens movement is large and growing, with much of the growth coming since the election of our first president of African-American heritage. An estimated 100,000 people currently living in the United States are “hard core” Sovereign Citizens who have already renounced their US citizenship. The SPLC estimates another 200,000 are “just starting out” by resisting traffic tickets and drug charges. By conservative estimates, there are an additional 200,000 tax protesters who refuse to pay taxes. By deporting all 500,000, we would be freeing up room for 500,000 of the “Dreamers” and other grateful immigrants who are seeking US citizenship.

We would also be lowering the deficit through increased tax revenues.

At the same time, we would be making our nation safer. After all, the FBI classifies Sovereign Citizens as anti-government extremists and domestic terrorists. The SPLC classifies them as a hate group which was spawned by Christian Identity minister William P. Gale, the Posse Comitatus movement and several other racist and political groups of the lunatic fringe. (On second thought, strike the word fringe. That’s being much too kind.)

At the heart of the Sovereign Citizen movement is the belief that there are two classes of citizens in America: “original citizens of the states” and “US citizens (“Fourteenth Amendment citizens”) that include descendants of freed slaves. Since the “original citizens” of the states were here first, they claim not to be bound by federal, state or local laws. (It’s not clear how this applies to Native Americans.)

Like the Tea Party movement (that also needs to be flushed), Sovereign Citizens have selective memories and are selective readers of the Constitution. They also completely ignore the many statements made by our Founding Fathers that express the view that our Constitution placed everyone personally under federal authority.

And, like the Tea Party, Sovereign Citizens subscribe to a number of bizarre conspiracy theories and demand a return to the gold standard. The SPLC describes them this way: “Sovereigns believe that they – not judges, juries, law enforcement or elected officials – get to decide which laws to obey and which to ignore.” They often resort to violence in defiance of authority. Indeed, many are heavily armed, posing a serious threat to anyone with whom they disagree.

They’re not only in the wrong country. They’re in the wrong century!

Arizona’s Religious Boat People.

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For those of you who live outside the state, here’s a story that will give you some idea of the lunacy that is Arizona. Sure, you may know about our famous “dry heat” (like living in a sauna for 5 months out of the year), our Grand Canyon, our version of the Iron Curtain, our racist anti-immigrant law SB 1070, our finger-wagging governor and our famously right-wing politics.

But how much do you know about our anti-UN, anti-federal government, anti-science, anti-education, anti-evolution religious nuts?

As an example, I give you the family who attempted to relocate from the US to a tiny island in the island nation of Kiribati because of the parents’ belief that the US was interfering with their religious freedoms. Prior to loading their small children in a boat and setting sail, the father filed numerous documents in Yavapai County rejecting federal authority. In 2006, he signed a “Declaration of Citizenship” swearing allegiance to the Arizona Republic, claiming status as a “natural-born state citizen” and stating that he is “not a federal citizen of the United States.”

He described himself as a “non-resident alien of the White Race.” He renounced his Social Security number and failed to pay federal income taxes, owing the IRS $9,963 in back taxes.

When the family’s boat began to break apart in a storm, the family was rescued by a Chilean fishing vessel, transferred to a cargo ship and taken to Chile. They then asked the government that they had previously renounced to loan them $10,000 to transport them back to Arizona.

How nice! You denounce and renounce the US. You refuse to pay your taxes. Then when you need help, you come to the US with your hand out. Actually, you fit right in to Arizona. After all, many in the state hate the federal government and have tried to claim sovereignty over all federal lands within its borders, including the Grand Canyon. Yet Arizona gets far more in federal funding than it pays in federal income taxes.

So welcome back to Arizona. The other idiots have probably missed you.

How Would You Pay For Uninsured Healthcare?

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Conservatives in Arizona and other states are mouth-frothing mad over the expansion of Medicaid for those who can’t afford health insurance. They claim that it’s a matter of personal responsibility; that the current system is fine; that people should simply go without healthcare if they can’t afford it.

Hmmm…

The people saying that consist mostly of the Bible-thumping, church-going crowd. You know, the good “Christians” who claim to follow the guy who once said something like, “What you do unto the least of these, you do unto me.”

What these people don’t understand, in addition to the Bible they claim to study, is that even people without money deserve healthcare. In fact, our federal government came to that realization years ago. That’s why hospitals are mandated to treat those in need, even if they can’t afford to pay for the treatment. As a result, most of the working poor (people below or near the poverty line are already eligible for Medicaid) delay medical care as long as possible. When their conditions have reached a point where they are more difficult to treat, they go to the Emergency Room where treatment costs many times more than care at a doctor’s office.

Who pays for their treatment? The very people who are whining and bitching about expanding Medicaid to cover more of the working poor. As a result, the whiners pay considerably more than they would if everyone had health insurance…even government-paid health insurance.

So the question is this: How would you like to pay for your brothers’ and sisters’ healthcare? Through the efficiently-run Medicaid system? Or through the many times more expensive E.R.?

Race Or Economics?

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Following the acquittal of George Zimmerman and the ensuing discussion of race by President Obama, conservative race-baiters have gleefully blamed the victims. “It wasn’t Zimmerman’s fault. Trayvon Martin was a young, black thug high on marijuana who had it coming. There’s no race problem. The real problem is the black culture of dependency. Black people are violent…just look at black-on-black violence. Obama is playing the race card to distract people from his failures. Yadda, yadda, yadda…”

Yes, there has been a breakdown of the African-American family unit…just like the breakdown of the white family unit. More and more people are having children out of wedlock, and more married couples are getting divorced.

Still, the race-baiters have a point. According to a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 73 percent of African-American babies are born out of wedlock as compared to 29 percent of non-Hispanic white babies. On the surface, those numbers would seem to support racist loudmouths like Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh. But if you delve deeper, you learn that 66 percent of Native American children and 53 percent of Hispanic children are born out of wedlock, while just 17 percent of Asian children are born outside of a traditional family.

Hmmmm…

That would seem to disprove the right wing talking point that the problem is a lack of Christian values. After all, Hispanics and African-Americans tend to be the most devout Christians of the lot, while Asians tend to represent other faiths, such as Buddhism and Hinduism.

So if the problem isn’t religion, what next?

Right wingers suggest that the issue is IQ. You may remember that Teapublicans recently seized upon a Heritage Foundation “study” that claimed Hispanics have lower IQ than whites. The “study” was the basis of a report that assimilating such low IQ people into the US would cost us trillions. Then some academics examined the “study” and found that its racist conclusions were completely fraudulent. Not only is there NOT a difference in IQ, the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) found that the Senate immigration bill would shrink the nation’s deficit by $897 billion over 20 years.

That leaves only one possible conclusion from the birth data…economics. The cultures with the highest percentage of single-parent households are the cultures that were systematically destroyed by the Euro-American concept of Manifest Destiny; that caucasians were destined to rule; that white people were superior to people of color; that people of color were incapable of taking care of themselves.

Using this despicable philosophy, whites enslaved blacks. Whites committed genocide on Native Americans, leaving them defeated, broken and poor. And whites have routinely discriminated against all other races, denying them the vote, good-paying jobs, safe neighborhoods, and respect. Such conditions have a negative impact on all races. For example, where there are large concentrations of impoverished white people, the percentage of white, unwed mothers dramatically increases, along with violence.

People of color didn’t choose to live in poverty. They didn’t choose to work at meaningless, minimum wage jobs. They didn’t choose to live in slums, poor barrios and on reservations. They didn’t choose to send their children to under-financed schools. They didn’t choose to have greedy gun dealers import weapons into their communities.

They didn’t choose these things anymore than Trayvon Martin chose to take on a gun-toting vigilante with nothing more than a bag of Skittles.

A Divided Nation.

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I began this blog several years ago with a post “Why We’re Divided.” The point was that our political divide is not merely the result of differing ideologies. It’s the result of differing “facts.”

Never has that been more clearly demonstrated than by two competing advertising campaigns running on this Independence Day. In my state’s largest newspaper, there is an ad bearing the headline “In God We Trust.” Paid for by a company that is owned by a religious zealot, the ad uses a variety of quotes from our Founding Fathers to support the claim that our nation was founded on Christianity.

A few pages later, there is an ad bearing the headline “Celebrate Our Godless Constitution.” Paid for by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, it, too, uses a variety of quotes from our Founding Fathers to support the claim that our nation was built on the principle of separation of Church and State.

This is a classic example of proof-texting – selectively choosing quotes that support a particular point of view. This technique is often used by the religious to justify actions or beliefs. Religious leaders use verses from the Bible to justify war, to rationalize genocide, to discriminate against gays and others, to ignore – indeed blame – the poor for struggling as the result of policies they didn’t create, etc.

No matter how ugly your point of view, you can find a verse in the Bible, the Torah or the Qur’an to justify an action or inaction.

The same is true when it comes to quotes by our Founding Fathers. As Michael Austin writes in his book That’s Not What They Meant! Reclaiming the Founding Fathers from America’s Right Wing, the Founders were so diverse, you can find a quote from one of them to support almost any point of view. Among the Founders were Protestants, Catholics, Quakers, Jews, Deists, Agnostics and Atheists. There were idealists and slave owners. There were farmers, plantation owners, printers, attorneys, inventors, ship owners and many others.

There were Founders in favor of a strong central government and those who believed the power should reside exclusively with the states.

So which ad is correct? Both of them. And neither of them.

Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence, and James Madison, who authored our Constitution’s Bill of Rights, strongly believed in separation of Church and State. The majority at the Constitutional Convention agreed. However, many of the Founders spoke of “divine providence” and the “principles of Christianity.”

More important, the ads demonstrate the growing divide between Americans; between the Federalists and those who believe in states’ rights; between the devoutly religious and the agnostics; between science and religion; between those who trust government and those who despise it; between the wealthy and the poor; between red and blue; between black, brown, red and white; between the educated and the uneducated; and between those who believe the US is the greatest nation on Earth and those who recognize its faults and intend to change them.

I think it no exaggeration to write that our nation is at a crossroads, more divided than at any time since the Civil War. Independence Day is the perfect time to consider the consequences of such a divide. Committing to compromise and finding common ground are imperative to the future of our nation.