It's Alive!

The following is a guest post by Greg Dglas Teed in response to a news article about the banning of pet dogs in Iran.  I found his hypothesis that Muslims don't like dogs for the same reason they dislike women intriguing.  He discusses the motivation that inspired the Qu'ranic verses:

*  *  *

I suspect it's about control and dogma. Over the millennia, dogs have evolved, courtesy of contact and interaction with humanity, into creatures that are capable of inspiring strong emotional reactions in us. These emotional reactions are the stuff of possible conflict with doctrines that require us to hold dogma immune from competing emotional involvements, including love of pets. Affection for anything other than the tenets of the dogma is an element in competition with the demands of the dogma.

This, I suspect, is why prescriptive religions despise women as well. Love of woman is an element that competes with love of god, and therefore, must be eradicated if at all possible. Yes, this is a male-oriented explanation, but religions tend to be male-oriented, do they not?

But it gets darker. Hold on tight.

The Vatican is in the grips of rampant pedophilia, and we see elements of pedophilia in islam as well. The question to ask, and it is a harsh one, is what the attraction of very young children is for clergymen and prophets. Perhaps it is the same reason virginity is held as having such import - innocence. To state it in a vulgar fashion, the innocent are trainable. Now, I stated that in this vulgar fashion for a reason. There is a complex interaction between male ego (indeed all ego, but male ego in particular) and dogma that seems to need investigation.

Just as no man wants to be compared to other men (perhaps to be found lacking), so too people with emotional investment in dogmas do not want those investments to be subject to negotiation. Now, we need to understand that this emotional involvement is with the content of the dogma as well as the dogmatism as well.

People invest emotionally in dogma, and dogmas have their content designed to inspire emotional involvement. People who benefit from being authorities of the dogma very much like this emotional involvement and will disdain competing emotional involvements.

Sex (and indeed any emotional involvement) with a *partner* requires something antithetical to religious dogma (indeed antithetical to any dogma). It requires negotiation. Shoehorning emotional involvements into dominance-submission structures eradicates negotiation, and negates any possible tempering of dogma that might arise from negotiation arising from human sympathy.

In short, pedophilia is a control situation in which the abuser needn't ever negotiate the relationship. The dogma is held immune to tempering. The same is true of obsessively valuing women as virginal innocents. Hence arranged marriages, child brides, and the obsession with virginity. It turns all relationships into dominance-submission ones. The clergy are drawn to pedophilia because their victims cannot hold them responsible for it (both on personal and doctrinal levels). Pedophilia is "safe" in a tragically inhuman way.

Yes, we even negotiate with pets in an unspoken, but nevertheless real way. We have learned to read and respond to dogs' body language, from "soulful" eyes to wagging tails - and they have been shown to have facial recognition capability as well (dogs can read us!) Dogs are social animals, like us, and we have an emotional affinity for them, especially since we have bred them for characteristics (including emotional ones) we admire. A severe and profound competition indeed for emotional investment in dogma.

A competition unacceptable to those who want all your emotional investment to be in god, all other priorities rescinded.

*  *  *

This idea - that religious dogma protects itself - reminded me of Darrel Ray's book The God Virus where he describes religion as an infection of the mind with characteristics of a living organism.  I hope someday a cure is found, or at least a vaccination.

At Home: a Short History of Private Life (Review)

This is the second book I've read by Bill Bryson and he's quickly becoming one of my favorite authors.  What makes his work so enjoyable to read is that it feels more like a friendly conversation than a history lesson.   He sets the scene from his home, an Anglican rectory built in 1851, and takes the reader from room-to-room chapter by chapter, examining the evolution of domestic life.  Granted it's not always a forward march through time - he tends to wander back and forth through the years a bit - but you'll go with him willingly because the meandering bits are interesting and fun.

We start in The Hall of all places, a room we barely think of as a room really.  We learn that this mostly ignored passageway to more important places was actually the entire home at one point, and that it wasn't until after the invention of the chimney that our domicile began to expand and with it was born the concept of privacy.

In the kitchen we learn about the modern history of food preparation, storage and the devious ways in which people adulterated groceries they sold to the public.  "A tea drinker," we learn, "might unwittingly take in anything from sawdust to powdered sheep's dung."  Milk was particularly prone to contain "extras" since it was carried through the streets in open pails.  I'll leave that one to your imagination.  This whole chapter is a Gordon Ramsey nightmare.

The Fuse Box chapter, as you may have guessed,  is a meander through interior lighting and the adaption of electricity.  "A candle - a good candle - provides barely a hundredth of the illumination of a single 100-watt lightbulb. Open your refrigerator door and you summon forth more light than the total amount enjoyed by most households in the eighteenth century. The world at night for much of history was a very dark place indeed."  So dark that according to Bryson, James Boswell was able to have sex with a prostitute on Westminster Bridge in 1763. 

Speaking of sex... The chapter on the bedroom discusses sex through the ages, but spends a lot of time in the Victorian era.  Humorous and sad at the same time, the Victorians really had some hang-ups.  "The well-known consequences of masturbation covered virtually every undesirable condition known to medical science, not excluding insanity and premature death." 

In addition to the perils of a robust sex life, The Bedroom takes us from the straw sleeping mats most people slept on in the middle ages to the ornate, hand-carved beds of royalty in more modern ages.  It also takes us back to a time when privacy was a different concept than it is today.  It was common for hotel guests to double up in their rooms... with strangers.  "Diaries frequently contain entries lamenting how the author was disappointed to find a late-arriving stranger clambering into bed with him."

Ewwwww.

 The book takes the reader through many other rooms in the house as well and on every page you'll learn something new.  This is not just for the history buff.  Bryson has a gift for story-telling and making learning fun.  

25 Questions for God

The idea for this list of questions was a post by Jonah Moore over at freethoughtblogs.net. I thought it was an interesting concept, like an interview with God. Some questions remain in original form, and some I changed to reflect what I might want to ask...

25 Questions for God

1. What are you made of?
2. If you made man in your own image, do you have reproductive organs as we do?  What do you use them for?
3. Why do men have nipples?
4. Do you have nipples?
5. The Bible clearly shows you have a range of emotions, like humans do. Some emotions, like anger, are negative, can cause harm, and show a lack of impulse control.  How can a perfect being lose control of his emotions?
6. Why do you work so hard to make yourself unseen?
7. If we are all your children, what was so special about Jesus?
8. Out of the billions of people that have ever lived on the planet in history, why have you chosen only a few to communicate with and why mislead them about the true nature of earth?  Why tell them things that we would eventually find out to be false, like geocentrism and flat earth?
9. Why did you make the world appear to have evolved?
10. Why did you punish us for having sinned when you made it in our nature to do so?
11. At what point did you stop talking directly to people?
12. Are we the only planet with life?
13. If so, why such a huge universe that looks like a leftover explosion?
14. Do you intervene in people's lives directly, or do things happen based on countless variables as it appears?
15. If you do intervene as people claim, how do you decide who to help?  For instance, what would make you intervene in a football game but let a child die of starvation?
16. Why do you require worship?  It seems sort of low self-esteemish don't you think?
17. How many prayers do you require to produce a positive result for an ill friend or family member?
18. Why can't/won't you communicate with us directly?
19. Why make scripture so obscure and so difficult to interpret that people are divided on what you really mean?  A perfect being should have the ability to communicate clearly I would think.
20. If you have always been, does that mean your memory of your past is never ending?
21. Did you really mean all those terrible things you said in the Old Testament/Torah and/or Qu'ran?
22. Did you really intend for women and children to be property, and for old men to force female children into marriage and sexual relations?
23. What's the back story on black holes?
24. How does gravity work?
25. If you could do it all over again, what would you change?

Shut Your Noise Hole and Pay Your Bill

The powers that be in the Republican party wanted a war, now they can help pay for it. The tax cuts they're enjoying were supposed to be temporary, so let them expire. To ask the poor & middle class to sacrifice their homes, access to healthcare, their social security, clean air and water and a decent wage so that the top 1% can keep an amount of money that wouldn't make a bit of difference in their financial health and well-being.. is depraved IMO.

Reducing tax rates for the wealthy is not going to do one thing to help this economy. They already have an absurd amount of money they aren't spending or using to create jobs. They have bilked us out of billions of dollars and now sip champagne while they laugh at us. They have purchased our democracy and our government now works for the top 1%. The rest of us can go fuck ourselves as far as they're concerned. All they have left to do is reduce wages even more so they can have 300 million slave laborers and cannon fodder for their wars.

This bullshit about "If we don't lower corporate taxes they'll close up shop and move overseas," doesn't convince me of anything other than we are being held hostage by economic terrorists. We're on the brink of a worldwide financial disaster because of corrupt corporations. You're damn right I want loopholes closed and tax cuts to expire for the people behind them. They got us into this mess now they damn well better get us out of it.

Tax rates may be "high" comparatively, but our tax code is so complicated with loop holes and massive deductions that no one is actually paying those percentages. There are certainly countries paying at least as much as we do and some even higher: Denmark, France, Japan... And none of those countries are in TWO WARS that are costing BILLIONS per MONTH.

These fuckers wanted a war to add cash to their already over flowing coffers and now that the bill has come due they don't want to pay. Who made money off the war? Hint: It wasn't the poor or middle class. So why do they have to become homeless or go hungry or not afford healthcare in order to pay for a war they had no choice in?

For instance, instead of letting temporary tax cuts to the wealthy expire or *gasp* cut defence spending, this is what our Republican politicians have done to afford their wars and protect their corporate lobbyists:
Cut funding to Planned Parenthood
Refused funding for high speed train projects that would've created jobs and cleaner mass transit
Refused funding for child abuse prevention
Cut $1 billion in funding to the National Institute of Health
Cut $2 billion in funding to job training programs
Cut funding to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention
Busted up unions to lower wages on the middle class

Really? Yes, really. They've sacrificed our children, our health and our livelihoods rather than pay a relative pittance in higher taxes.

And it gets better. They want us to believe this whole climate crisis we're headed into is a big hoax being played on us by 98% of the climatology scientists in the world. The problem is, it doesn't matter what a politician thinks or knows personally, all that matters are the biggest donors to his/her campaign. When your big donors are corporations that benefit from shutting down the Environmental Protection Agency then you tell your constiuents that global warming is a farce and we're wasting money trying to make the air breathable and the water drinkable.

Corporations are making RECORD profits and they want us to believe that protecting the environment we need to stay alive will cost them so much money that it will cause them to downsize and cut jobs. BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Like what? The guy that dumps the toxic waste in the river? First of all, they're lying - the EPA doesn't destroy jobs, it makes jobs. Secondly, I WANT MY KIDS TO BREATHE CLEAN AIR fucktard!

Fuck you and your de-regulation too. Corporations do NOT do the right thing if they don't have to and it affects the bottom line. Period. They have shareholders to answer to; all that matters is the money. 2.4 million people die each year from causes directly attributable to air pollution. Pollution from corporations causes birth defects and cancer.

The banking corporations have stolen our money and helped destroy a worldwide economy!

If corporations did the right thing without being "regulated" into doing so then none of this would have happened.

And you know what? You're damn right there is abuse and corruption in some Unions, and abuse of the welfare system.
There are people in my own family that abuse our social programs and it makes me sick, I hate it. It needs to be changed, it needs massive reforms - I'm all for it, let's do it. But we cannot abolish programs that are so desperately needed, especially now. You don't throw the baby out with the bath water.

And a union guy making a living wage isn't getting rich off his corporate boss, trust me. Most of them are just middle class people trying to make a decent living and take care of their families. When the CEO of a company is making 1000 times the amount of money as his union employees, it's really hard to feel sorry for him.

So yeah, it's time to stop crying about expiring tax cuts for the wealthy and send a message: When your wars are paid for and you get this economical mess cleaned the fuck up we can talk. Until then shut your noise hole and pay your bill.

If You Think America is the Greatest Country, You haven't Seen Norway

 

 

Absolutely amazing!  Their national healthcare system pays for a two-week trip to the tropics and 12 months of paid maternity leave - just for starters.  Wait til you hear about their criminal justice system.

Get yourself a copy of Rosetta Stone Norwegian and pack your Snuggie.  Airfare starts at around $900.

Patty Cake Cats

 

 

 

Scandalized Priest Writes a Book

Remember this guy?  He was the Roman Catholic Priest who was caught having a relationship with a grown woman a couple of years ago.  It was a big scandal because evidently the Church finds sex between consenting adults more of an affront to their god than raping children.

He left the Roman Catholic Church and now works for a different Catholic Church (reformed Anglican or something, who cares) and he's living happily ever after with his new wife and child.  Blah, blah, blah.  I don't really give a shit one way or the other about the Church's policy on celibacy, and I'm glad Alberto Cutie has found happiness with his new family.  

What I find interesting about this article is that this priest criticizes the hypocrisy of his former employer while making hypocritical statements himself.  I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

From the article:

They said I stained their public image, but they don't need me for that. They have done that very well on their own. As a matter of fact, I helped fight those scandals. I replaced two priests accused of being pedophiles, denounced by many victims. I even replaced a priest who had a daughter with a prostitute, who was paid one hundred thousand dollars to keep quiet, and she still talked about it.

He replaced priests that raped children.  He didn't call the police or burn them at the stake, he replaced them.  He even knew about payoffs to keep people quiet and was apparently OK with that.

He goes on...

I wouldn't have touched these topics if they had showed me a bit of sympathy. They could have said: 'The Father has failed us, but he has loved the Church for so many years, let's pray for him'. But no, they came out to crucify me. We have tapes of gay priests hanging out in gay bars right next to the Vatican, being promiscuous. Over one thousand priests have died in the United States of AIDS and that's not in the news.

So.... he would've continued hiding the the church's hypocrisy and perversion if they hadn't pointed out his own.  Real upstanding guy there.  Lots of finger pointing and no one taking responsibility - sounds like business as usual for the Church.

 

Lies the Government Told You (A Review)

I just finished reading Andrew Napolitano's NY Times Bestseller, "Lies the Government Told You."   The author is a regular on Fox "News" and an anti-abortion proponent so I admit I began reading the book almost certain he would piss me off pretty quickly.   Well, I did get my knickers in a twist fairly early, but not at Napolitano.  

Even if you think you know how corrupt and devious politicians are- and therefore government - this book is going to show you just how heinous it really is.  Covering US history from the Declaration of Independence to the present day, he explains in detail some of the lies we've been told and their far-reaching consequences.


 He's not towing the party line here either. He calls little Bush heartless, lawless and a liar almost every time he's mentioned.  No one is safe in this book: FDR, Eisenhauer, even Abraham Lincoln is taken to task.  (Honest Abe?  Say it ain't so.)


The Chapter, Innocent Until Proven Guilty made me cry (coulda been hormonal, but the stories are still devastating).  The chapters most interesting to me personally were The War on Drugs, The Federal Reserve Shall be Controlled by Congress, and The Right of the People to be Secure.


In chapter 7, Your Body is Your Temple, I find Napolitano's reasons for legalizing marijuana (our bodies are ours to do with as we see fit; and the government should not interfere between a physician and patient) to be excellent reasons for keeping abortion legal as well.  Ironic that the author thinks doctors who perform abortions should be charged with murder.  Wouldn't that be unconstitutional based on the two premises stated above in regard to weed?  (Yes, I understand Napolitano wants to leave abortion laws up to each state government, but the state governments can't defy the US Constitution).  In this instance I find him to be guilty of the same thing he accuses some Supreme Court Justices of: allowing personal views to affect public policy.


The message of this book:  The government knows precisely how to get us to do what they want, when they want, and like sheeple we follow them down the garden path toward tyranny, all the while they use us as revenue and cannon fodder.  It's not supposed to be "them" and "us," it's supposed to be "We The People."


On the whole, I liked the book and I think he makes some excellent points.  It made me think about the long term consequences of the resolutions we're debating today.  Whether they're good or bad is a matter of perspective, but either way this book will give you something to think about.

Everything Happens for a Reason

I hear this pretty often from theists when something tragic happens, like an unexpected death or a disfiguring accident, or even the loss of a job.  Anytime something bad happens, they soothe each other with vague excuses about their god's master plan.  It wasn't the bad economy that forced your employer to lay you off, it was god.  He's a good and merciful god and he knows what's best for you... and what's good for you isn't a paying job apparently.

I remember a few years ago when a little boy was decapitated in a car accident near my son's school - I can't tell you how many times I heard "Everything happens for a reason", and every time someone uttered it I cringed.  What they meant, of course, is that their god planned that little boy's violent death for some mysterious purpose that our feeble minds cannot know.  Somehow it makes them feel better to believe an invisible man in the sky is controlling all the bad things that happen. That comforts them.

The accident did happen for a reason:  the driver of the car the boy was in ran a red light at a most unfortunate moment.  It was an accident; a horrifying, dreadful accident.  Why would it be more bearable to believe an all-powerful entity deliberately pushed the car through the intersection in order to kill that boy?  What possible reason could said entity have for inflicting such a gruesome tragedy on an innocent child and his parents?  Whatever the reason believers of this nonsense claim, it isn't good enough for me.

It's much more comforting for me to know that accidents are just that: an unexpected, unintended event without deliberate cause.  Something that can be avoided with enough diligence.  I'm much more comfortable knowing there isn't some bi-polar deity with a warped sense of mercy planning to murder my children.  Amen!

Diseases, disorders, birth defects... all get the same response.  God did it, but he had a good reason.  Maybe it was a wager with the devil (Job), maybe his ego needs stroking (Abraham), who knows?  It makes believers feel good to think their god hands out all sorts of horrible afflictions on humanity.  I find the truth much more bearable.  That diabetes/cancer/Down's Syndrome isn't personal.  No one is purposely fucking with these people.  These are natural, sometimes random, always unfortunate, biological occurrences with no agenda.  

Body parts wear out, cells don't replicate properly, machines malfunction, companies go out of business - these are facts of life that don't require divine intervention or a purpose.  Things may happen for a reason, but the reason is always a natural course of events.  

I Am An Atheist

To the god-believers in the house:

Being an atheist simply means a lack of belief in deities and the supernatural - nothing more, nothing less.  I was born an atheist (as we all are), and after a brief period of belief as a child I shed what I felt was an unneccessary and hypocritical dogma for a life of intellectual honesty. 

I did not come to this conclusion lightly, or painlessly.  I soul-searched, I studied, I researched.  I even practiced Buddhism for awhile.  It's not always easy to be honest, even with yourself, but in the end there was only one possibility:  All of it, aside from some city names, is pure unabashed bullshit.

Let me make a few things clear before I go on...

1) I am not angry at your god.  Gods are an invention of the imaginative human mind, they are not real. It would be a waste of perfectly good energy to be pissed off at a fictional character, including gods.  I'm not upset with Santa or the Tooth Fairy either (although the Tooth Fairy never made good on that last I.O.U - that's my mom for ya).

2) I do not worship an evil deity.   An atheist, by definition, does not believe in any gods and this includes the naughty ones (they're fictional too, btw).

3) I did not reject religion so I could be immoral.  Quite the contrary actually.  One of the reasons (there were many) that I left my Christian beliefs behind was because of the profound immorality it espouses, from both its' ancient writings to its' modern practices.   I subsequently explored a few religions - like Buddhism - that walk a much higher moral ground than the religion of my youth.  Although I do not practice any religion today, I learned more about peace and love from Buddha than I ever did from Jesus.

Religion is one thing, gods are another, and in the end there was only ONE reason I stopped believing in them.

There aren't any.  There is no evidence supporting the notion that any all-powerful entities, invisible or otherwise, exist (none, nada, zilch).  And by "evidence", I mean real evidence - not "flowers are so pretty there must be a god" evidence.  The natural world reveals and explains itself without the need for divine intervention.  To answer "God did it" when we don't know how something works is intellectually lazy and dishonest. 

The ancient Greeks didn't understand how planets revolved around the sun so they invented Zeus with his horse-drawn chariot, charging across the sky with our star in tow.  Seems ridiculous, right?  Except there is no fundamental difference between the beliefs of those ancient people and the beliefs of modern day theists, only the names have changed. 

Humans are a relatively new species in the grand scheme of things and it seems to me that our abilities have out-paced our maturity - much like adolescents.  We are developed enough to do grown-up things, but do not yet possess the experience or judgement to shed our childish thinking.  We are the careless, reckless, self-centered children of the Universe who believe everything revolves around us, and when we find trouble we cry to Daddy to make it all better instead of taking responsibility for ourselves.

The growing pains of humanity are the death throes of religion.  And it's time to grow up people.  It's time for humanity to embrace our natural world for what it is - natural. And to care for it, and ourselves, like it's the only thing we have.   It's time to shed our childish fantasy that magical beings will save us from ourselves.  Our lives and our world depend on it.   

The Road to ...?

It's pretty clear by now that although the Republicans and their Tea Party base screech relentlessly about the budget, that's certainly not their priority.  In reality, their objective is to strangle and starve the Democratic party as outlined in the following excerpt from a Tea Party web site:

"The Tea Party must be victorious.  Not only in the ballot box as we elect conservatives to office, but we must use our success to dismantle liberalism.  As is being done in Wisconsin and Tennessee, we must take apart the public unions, which are little more than a funding arm for the Democratic Party.   We must cut the funding sources for liberalism in the government.  We must defund groups like Planned Parenthood, who receive hundreds of millions of dollars from the government then turn around and give millions to help elect Democrats.  We must eliminate programs that fund liberal activist groups.  We need to indentify the sources of their funding and go after them."

So if they can't beat Democrats at the voter's box they'll just eliminate the competition... or try to. Hinky ballot box results that always favor conservatives and the destruction of Democratic funding sources sounds a whole lot like sour grapes to me.  Now they're even passing "birther laws" in some red states in an attempt to keep our Democratic president off the ballot next year.  How is that going to work when there is legal documentation of his Hawaiian birth?  Do they think Hawaii is not part of the United States?  Maybe their next move will be to kick Hawaii out of the Union?

It all boils down to Republicans taking away our choices.  If we won't vote for them of our own free will, they will remove our options by force.  

Where does this lead us?  Looks like the Tea Party wants to lead us into a one party system... an authoritarian ultra-conservative system that is very much against the will of the people.  Afterall, if it was the will of the people they wouldn't have to do it by force.

 

Tea Party on Mexican Truckers

A few weeks ago I joined a Tea Party web site because I like to hear what the "other side" has to say.  Even if I don't agree with someone's basic philosophy I still want to know where they stand - you never know where you can find some common ground, or maybe hear a point you hadn't considered. Unfortunately, they're just as wacky & misinformed as the news portrays them.  They are also prolific bloggers - for fuck's sake I can't keep up with the dozen emails/blog entries they post everyday on this one single site.  Here's the latest blather with my comments added:

*  *  *

Tea Party:  "On March 3, 2011, the Obama regime announced that it would allow Mexican trucks to go throughout the United States to deliver loads.  Epic fail is an understatement for this policy, which is going to have a lot of casualties."

My comment:  NAFTA, enacted in 1994 by President Clinton, opened the borders to Mexican truck drivers (and Canadians too, but they aren't brown so TPers don't care).  In 1995 Clinton severely restricted Mexican truckers crossing the border to the point that they could only transfer their goods to American truckers within I think 18-20 miles of the border.  Bush later tried to reverse Clinton's ban but was blocked by Congress (and the Teamster's Union).  Eventually the Supreme Court ruled Clinton's ban a violation of NAFTA.  What Obama did was meet with Mexican President Felipe Calderón to discuss stricter safety standards for Mexican truckers before the borders opened up again.

Tea Party:  "The first casualty will be American truck drivers.  A lot of Americans make a good living as truck drivers.  Not any more.   Mexican truckers are not paid nearly what American truckers are paid.  Businesses operate in their own interests.  If they have a choice in shipping their goods with an American trucking firm that costs twice as much as a Mexican firm, they are going to choose the Mexican firm.  It is not that they are not patriotic.  They have to stay in business."

My comment:   Well maybe just until the Tea Party succeeds in busting up unions, then American trucker's wages will go down and they'll be able to compete again.  We wouldn't want them to continue making "a good living" at the expense of those patriotic businesses that are currently forced to hire foreign labor to keep their doors open.  :::eye roll:::

Tea Party:   "The second casualty will be American citizens.  Mexican trucks are not up to the same safety standards American trucks are.  They are not going to be subjected to safety inspections at the border.  They are just going to be waved on through."  

My comment:  Another Tea Party lie since all Mexican truckers will have to comply with all US laws & regulations as part of the deal.  But beside that point, the Tea Party is the "deregulation party" so what's their beef?  They want less government, or so they say, and they are fighting fiercely to kill regulations in America.  You'd think they would hold up the Mexican government as an example of Tea Party values.  No, huh?

Tea Party: "The fourth casualty will be both American citizens and the American Truck Driver.  American truck drivers are required to have a commercial driver’s license.   Something as simple as a speeding ticket can cost an American truck driver his CDL.   There will be no accounting for the traffic record of a Mexican driver.  He could have dozens of speeding tickets and accidents and his Mexican license will not be revoked. "

My comment: Again, each carrier will be assigned an identification number, and each driver from Mexico must have a valid commercial driver's license from the country, which would be regularly inspected.

Tea Party: "The fifth casualty is sanity.  Not only are we destroying a sector of the American economy and putting a lot of Americans out of work, but the taxpayer is going to subsidize this.  All trucks are required to have something called the EOBR (the electronic on board recorder).  This neat little piece of gear costs $3,000 plus a monthly maintenance fee.  American truckers must pay for this themselves.  The Obama regime is going to pay for this for Mexican trucks."

My comment:  Meh, they haven't convinced me they're all about jobs, especially after the disasterous budget plan they've recently passed in the House and all the defunding they've done lately.  They do realize defunding = job loss, right?  Anyway, the second point in their paragraph is actually true - that all trucks have to be eqipped with GPS and we are paying for it.  GPS isn't in the NAFTA agreement as far as I can tell so if we want to keep track of Mexican truckers, then we'll have to foot the bill.  But I'm quite certain the Tea party isn't against real-time tracking on brown people, they just feel the brown people should pay for it.  They aren't freaked about Canadian truckers.

 *  *  *

 The more I listen to and read their rhetoric the more convinced I am that the Tea Party is being used by people like Koch & Murdoch.  Using their most basic fears against them, these mega-corporation heads (and others) have rallied hopelessly short-sighted individuals and lathered them up to do their dirty work.  Tea Partiers believe they are fighting for their god and country when in reality they are being used to further the agenda of corporatations.  Not one of them realizes that if their agenda is successful they will suffer as tragically as the rest of us.  The only ones that will benefit from the Tea Party values are big corporations.

Things may well work out for them in the short-term (anti-abortion laws, gay marriage bans, closing borders), but that's the smoke & mirrors part.  Those are the fears their leaders are using to get them hot and bothered while the real agenda remains to eliminate the middle class and put us all at the mercy of the biggest corporations.  Most of the TPers I know fall smack into the middle of the middle class they are seeking to destroy.  When we're all standing in line at the food bank, thank a Tea Partier.

 

Earthquakes, Tsunamis and Weather, Oh My!

The earthquake and subsequent tsunami that hit Japan this week have all the armchair prophets spreading doom and gloom on the web.  As usual, the religionists are going all Pat Robertson on us and blaming the victims:

*  "What God does is God's business. But I'll tell you this -- there's a message being sent and that is, 'Hey you know that stuff we're doing? Not really working out real well. Maybe we should stop doing some of it.' I'm just saying."  ~ Glenn Beck

*  "What if God was tired of the way they treated their own people in there own country! Idk guys he makes no mistakes." ~ Cappie Pondexter

*  "I fear that this disaster may be warnings from God against the Japanese people's atheism and materialism."  ~ Senior pastor Cho Yong-gi of Yoido Full Gospel Church

*  Sept 11th (NY) Jan 11th (Haiti) and March 11th (Japan) .... Luke 21: 10-11 Then Jesus said to his disiples: "Nations will rise against nations, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be great earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places, and fearful events and great signs from heaven. Jesus says for behold I come quickly. So, ask yourself "Am I ready?" ~ An in-law of mine on facebook.

Those are but a very few of the many disingenuous quotes I have read over the last couple days, and I am utterly baffled at their unashamed ignorance (well, the Glenn Beck one isn't surprising).  The most intelligent creatures on earth with more knowledge about our planet than we've ever had before and yet the vast majority still think earthquakes, tsunamis and hurricanes are the mysterious workings of an invisible, sentient being that hangs out somewhere in space.

It's like living in the fucking Bronze Age.

This is what happens when people are more concerned with putting religion in our schools instead of science.  We end up with adults who don't understand that plate tectonics and weather systems are a real part of inhabiting a living planet.  It's unfortunate when natural disasters affect populated areas, and my heart goes out to the people of Japan.  But the earth isn't punitive and there is no space-being arbitrarily slapping us around.  Japan is on a fault line and earthquakes are common in those areas.  Period.  No other explanation or prophecy is required.

You know when we need to worry in a big way?  When there are no more earthquakes - that's when the jig is up - because it means the earth is dead and any living thing still here will be extinguished forever.  Life cannot exist naturally on a dead planet, but we've got at least another few million years before that happens.  I hope the religionists don't annihilate us all in the meantime.  Fucking fucktards.