Happy New Year
Sure, we have a hell of a fight ahead, but remember these sage words from that emminent social commentator and Peer of the Realm, Sir Mick Jagger, "Time Is On Our Side"
30 December 2010
29 December 2010
Ten Things Right-Wingers Will Try to Destroy Economic Recovery
Isaiah J. Poole, Executive Editor of TomPaine.com has compiled a list of the top ten things the right-wing has for its legislative agenda that will virtually insure the complete destruction of America's middle class. Here, in order, is a condensed and abridged list of the items on that agenda. A link to the full article appearing on AlterNet follows:
1. Repeal Health-Care Reform
Never mind that there are 50-million Americans now without coverage and repeal would cause an estimated $143-billion increase in the deficit from loss of projected savings and add 20-30 million more people to the uninsured.
2. Restrain the Federal Government's Ability to Support Job-Creation
If they have their way, you can say goodbye to: Community Development Block Grants, new Small Business Administration initiatives, and the requirement that the Federal Reserve take employment impact into account when it sets monetary policy.
3. Slash Federal Infrastructure Spending
Anyone remember a bridge collapse in Minnesota that killede rush hour commuters? While other countries, such as China, are investing heavily in infrastructure, American politicians are hailed as heroes for rejecting projects designed to move goods and people effectively. Think a moment about what that implies for our ability to compete in the global economy.
4. Dismantle Medicare (and Give Seniors "Vouchers")
Shifting increasing out-of-pocket costs onto seniors rather than restraining the growth of those costs by insurance companies would be one likely outcome of the so called "voucher" system.
5. Undo Financial Reform and Unleash The Predators
Imagine a crime wave in your city. Now imagine a city council that puts fewer cops on the beat, makes certain the cops are docile, and that harasses those who are not. Got it?
6. Support Big Oil and Kill Green Jobs
The conservatives would have the Environmental Protection Agency serve the polluters rather than the planet!
7. Don't Just Cut Government Waste; Cripple Government
George W. Bush said, "turning Clinton's surpluses into huge deficits was incredibly positive news" because it would put government in a "financial straitjacket." Plans to reduce spending to 2008 levels would deepen the recession and cause the loss of hundreds of thousands more jobs.
8. Amp up the Insecurity in Social Security
Cutting to the bone, Republicans want the $2.6 trillion trust fund to pay for tax breaks for the very wealthy and offset the costs of two wars.
9. Starve Public Education
Currently, one in four (*25%) of our nation's youths fail the Army Entrance Examination. That is a problem, and the conservatives want to dismantle the very agency tasked with addressing the problem, the Department of Education.
10. Rob the Poor and Middle Income Americans to Give to the Wealthy
Cutting taxes on the rich and two unfunded wars caused the deficit, now conservatives want to cut the things government does for the people in the name of reducing the deficit.
Full Article
1. Repeal Health-Care Reform
Never mind that there are 50-million Americans now without coverage and repeal would cause an estimated $143-billion increase in the deficit from loss of projected savings and add 20-30 million more people to the uninsured.
2. Restrain the Federal Government's Ability to Support Job-Creation
If they have their way, you can say goodbye to: Community Development Block Grants, new Small Business Administration initiatives, and the requirement that the Federal Reserve take employment impact into account when it sets monetary policy.
3. Slash Federal Infrastructure Spending
Anyone remember a bridge collapse in Minnesota that killede rush hour commuters? While other countries, such as China, are investing heavily in infrastructure, American politicians are hailed as heroes for rejecting projects designed to move goods and people effectively. Think a moment about what that implies for our ability to compete in the global economy.
4. Dismantle Medicare (and Give Seniors "Vouchers")
Shifting increasing out-of-pocket costs onto seniors rather than restraining the growth of those costs by insurance companies would be one likely outcome of the so called "voucher" system.
5. Undo Financial Reform and Unleash The Predators
Imagine a crime wave in your city. Now imagine a city council that puts fewer cops on the beat, makes certain the cops are docile, and that harasses those who are not. Got it?
6. Support Big Oil and Kill Green Jobs
The conservatives would have the Environmental Protection Agency serve the polluters rather than the planet!
7. Don't Just Cut Government Waste; Cripple Government
George W. Bush said, "turning Clinton's surpluses into huge deficits was incredibly positive news" because it would put government in a "financial straitjacket." Plans to reduce spending to 2008 levels would deepen the recession and cause the loss of hundreds of thousands more jobs.
8. Amp up the Insecurity in Social Security
Cutting to the bone, Republicans want the $2.6 trillion trust fund to pay for tax breaks for the very wealthy and offset the costs of two wars.
9. Starve Public Education
Currently, one in four (*25%) of our nation's youths fail the Army Entrance Examination. That is a problem, and the conservatives want to dismantle the very agency tasked with addressing the problem, the Department of Education.
10. Rob the Poor and Middle Income Americans to Give to the Wealthy
Cutting taxes on the rich and two unfunded wars caused the deficit, now conservatives want to cut the things government does for the people in the name of reducing the deficit.
Full Article
28 December 2010
Sergeant With a Death Wish
When I served on active duty with the Marine Corps, I served with a medal-of-honor winning staff sergeant with an obvious death wish. The man was a killer, a stone-cold psychopath that one just did not provoke. {Provoke, hell--we stayed out of his line of sight, except when duty demanded}. Duty demnanded we attend his classes on hand-to-hand combat and knife fighting..sheer terror, punctuated by relief when it was over for that week.
He got his medal in Korea for wiping out a machine gun nest of Chinese soldiers and then turning the machine gun on their company position enabling his pinned down platoon to break through and join the rest of the company and regiment on its march to the sea in sub-zero weather while under constant attack. He had been riding on a tank directing its fire when it was hit by an anti-tank round and he was thrown into an enemy machine gun nest. Without rifle or sidearm, although already seriously wounded himself, he attacked the five man crew with only his KA-Bar knife. He killed all five.
At Camp Pendleton, he spent his liberty hours down at the base ranch riding bareback broncos and bulls. As I said, a pronounced death wish.
I often wonder what his reactions to today's G.I.'s might be. He didn't seem to be the sort of man who would welcome women or openly gay people into the military. Look, even back then, he despised enlisted men who were married--"if my Marine Corps wanted you to have a goddamn wife, we'd of given her to you with your friggin' web gear", he'd hiss at any unfortunate asking for liberty to attend to family affairs.
I first met him when I was serving chow during boot camp and he was the Senior Drill Instructor of the motivation platoon. Now, the motivational platoons, back then, were made up the recruits who couldn't cut it in a regular platoon because they were either wise-asses or bad-asses, or feigning psychosis to get out of their enlistments. These weren't the overweight or mentally slow ones, they were for a different platoon. These guys were the incorrigibles, the ones other services would have cashiered or never enlisted in the first place. The Marine's response was just up crank up the "boot-camp" experience to the power of ten under the supervision of someone, tougher, meaner and crazier than any of his charges for as long as it took to make Marines of them. Some spent months in boot camp, until they "got with the program". And, you didn't graduate from the motivation plattoon, when it was determined you were squared away there, you would be assigned to a regular platoon that was just starting on their rotation through the 12-weeks.
So, while serving chow, about my second week in, he marched in the motivational platoon, and at the end of the line began holding out his tray for us to serve--this is different, because all other drill instructors would eat in an area set off for them with a recruit serving them at the table. But, for whatever reason, he was eating with his platoon and the kid next to me splashed gravy on his blouse. A tattooed hand shot out across the line, grabbed the kid, lifted him and slammed him on the ground...the kid shrieked and wet himself as one hand, tattooed with LOVE on the fingers, held him down by pressing on his chest just over the heart, and the other, tattooed with HATE, grabbed his Adam's apple, shutting off the squealing as the staff sergeant knelt over the kid whispering, "You clumsy shit-bird, you do that again and I'll rip out your goddamn heart and eat it!"
That was it. Over in a flash. But it was my first intimation of how thin is the line between life and death and how quickly that line can be crossed. I did some very serious growing up in that instant.
The thing of it was, after boot camp, he was assigned to my company as a platoon sergeant. Thankfully, not my platoon...sometimes he'd look at me, and say, "I know you from somewhere." I never reminded him of where.
The other thing of it is, I made it a point to learn from him everything he taught about hand-to-hand combat and knife fighting. I've been in a few tights in my life, and only have been beaten down once...but then, I've always been very damned careful not to splash gravy on anyone.
He got his medal in Korea for wiping out a machine gun nest of Chinese soldiers and then turning the machine gun on their company position enabling his pinned down platoon to break through and join the rest of the company and regiment on its march to the sea in sub-zero weather while under constant attack. He had been riding on a tank directing its fire when it was hit by an anti-tank round and he was thrown into an enemy machine gun nest. Without rifle or sidearm, although already seriously wounded himself, he attacked the five man crew with only his KA-Bar knife. He killed all five.
At Camp Pendleton, he spent his liberty hours down at the base ranch riding bareback broncos and bulls. As I said, a pronounced death wish.
I often wonder what his reactions to today's G.I.'s might be. He didn't seem to be the sort of man who would welcome women or openly gay people into the military. Look, even back then, he despised enlisted men who were married--"if my Marine Corps wanted you to have a goddamn wife, we'd of given her to you with your friggin' web gear", he'd hiss at any unfortunate asking for liberty to attend to family affairs.
I first met him when I was serving chow during boot camp and he was the Senior Drill Instructor of the motivation platoon. Now, the motivational platoons, back then, were made up the recruits who couldn't cut it in a regular platoon because they were either wise-asses or bad-asses, or feigning psychosis to get out of their enlistments. These weren't the overweight or mentally slow ones, they were for a different platoon. These guys were the incorrigibles, the ones other services would have cashiered or never enlisted in the first place. The Marine's response was just up crank up the "boot-camp" experience to the power of ten under the supervision of someone, tougher, meaner and crazier than any of his charges for as long as it took to make Marines of them. Some spent months in boot camp, until they "got with the program". And, you didn't graduate from the motivation plattoon, when it was determined you were squared away there, you would be assigned to a regular platoon that was just starting on their rotation through the 12-weeks.
So, while serving chow, about my second week in, he marched in the motivational platoon, and at the end of the line began holding out his tray for us to serve--this is different, because all other drill instructors would eat in an area set off for them with a recruit serving them at the table. But, for whatever reason, he was eating with his platoon and the kid next to me splashed gravy on his blouse. A tattooed hand shot out across the line, grabbed the kid, lifted him and slammed him on the ground...the kid shrieked and wet himself as one hand, tattooed with LOVE on the fingers, held him down by pressing on his chest just over the heart, and the other, tattooed with HATE, grabbed his Adam's apple, shutting off the squealing as the staff sergeant knelt over the kid whispering, "You clumsy shit-bird, you do that again and I'll rip out your goddamn heart and eat it!"
That was it. Over in a flash. But it was my first intimation of how thin is the line between life and death and how quickly that line can be crossed. I did some very serious growing up in that instant.
The thing of it was, after boot camp, he was assigned to my company as a platoon sergeant. Thankfully, not my platoon...sometimes he'd look at me, and say, "I know you from somewhere." I never reminded him of where.
The other thing of it is, I made it a point to learn from him everything he taught about hand-to-hand combat and knife fighting. I've been in a few tights in my life, and only have been beaten down once...but then, I've always been very damned careful not to splash gravy on anyone.
27 December 2010
Christians, Do You Help Shoulder the Cross?
One wonders about Christians, not all of them--but, certainly most of them.
Over the past several weeks I've watched bemusedly (Okay, you got me there. Sometimes with annoyance and hostility) as people calling themselves Christian have demanded that others recognize and accept their right to claim the year-ending, winter-solstice, holiday season as theirs in recognition of the birth of little baby Jesus. They bleat and blather about Jesus as the "Reason for the Season", one even got holidays confused and tossed in the cross (Easter) as "The True Reason for the Season". Where I live, in occupied territory in the deepest red zone of East Texas, there are numerous yahoos displaying yard signs reading, "Happy Birthday Jesus".
Sure its sounds snarky to harp on it, but do these people really think their Jesus is driving by taking notes on who is celebrating his birthday (it's not, most biblical scholars think it's probably in September...just when football season is getting under way, and here In Texas, not even Jesus is going to trump that) and who is not--in a minute I'm going to reflect a bit on what he, if there really is such a he might be taking notes on.
You can't imagine the fury I ginned up by challenging, rather gently for me, these arrogant demands that people must shift from what is a pretty much fun, secular-humanist holiday and knuckle under to a puritanical religious ritual. "Go to hell", I was told by a sitting judge and one of her supporters. My brief dissertation on the historic background of Christmas, and why I, and so many others, resent being told that we must cast aside our secular beliefs and adopt the Christian viewpoint, was margenalized as a "rant".
And so it goes. But, here is what really perplexes me about these folks, and it really has nothing to do with the holiday season and much more to do with, where in the name of hell is the christian outrage at what is happening to so many our brothers and sisters. Christians, especially the more evangelical fundamentalists, love parables and allegories, so let's give them one.
Jesus is said to have fallen (not really spelled out in their bible--but, one of those, well, everybody knows it kind of things) under the weight of the cross three times. Only one person helped shoulder it, Simon of Cyrene. And, here's the thing about that. He didn't rush out and say, "Let me help you with that old boy". Hell no, a Roman soldier drafted him to the task! Which, in my mind, makes him the very first Christian...yeah he did it, but it wasn't out of love or generosity or grace or blessedness or whatever the current catch phrase of the religious right holds sway today. He was compelled to do so under pressure of authority!
Okay, here's my allegory. How many of you people calling yourself Christian will pick up and help carry the cross? Here's some of what it is loaded down with: drug and alcohol addiction and abuse stemming from a desire to deaden the pain of ignorance, unemployment, and institutionalized generational poverty, or men and women selling their bodies in order to obtain that soma against the cruelty of existence in a system which places no value on human spirit, or older and elderly people merely existing, not living, at the edge of starvation in the midst of aloneness. Oh, I could go on, but you surely get the picture.
When you shoulder those pieces of the cross, then I might believe there is some honesty in your sanctimonious posturings. I'm not talking about tithing, or a few bucks in the collection plate, or a blanket or coat in cold weather, and then back to your life, fading like Simon back to the obscurity of the crowd.
Got it?
Over the past several weeks I've watched bemusedly (Okay, you got me there. Sometimes with annoyance and hostility) as people calling themselves Christian have demanded that others recognize and accept their right to claim the year-ending, winter-solstice, holiday season as theirs in recognition of the birth of little baby Jesus. They bleat and blather about Jesus as the "Reason for the Season", one even got holidays confused and tossed in the cross (Easter) as "The True Reason for the Season". Where I live, in occupied territory in the deepest red zone of East Texas, there are numerous yahoos displaying yard signs reading, "Happy Birthday Jesus".
Sure its sounds snarky to harp on it, but do these people really think their Jesus is driving by taking notes on who is celebrating his birthday (it's not, most biblical scholars think it's probably in September...just when football season is getting under way, and here In Texas, not even Jesus is going to trump that) and who is not--in a minute I'm going to reflect a bit on what he, if there really is such a he might be taking notes on.
You can't imagine the fury I ginned up by challenging, rather gently for me, these arrogant demands that people must shift from what is a pretty much fun, secular-humanist holiday and knuckle under to a puritanical religious ritual. "Go to hell", I was told by a sitting judge and one of her supporters. My brief dissertation on the historic background of Christmas, and why I, and so many others, resent being told that we must cast aside our secular beliefs and adopt the Christian viewpoint, was margenalized as a "rant".
And so it goes. But, here is what really perplexes me about these folks, and it really has nothing to do with the holiday season and much more to do with, where in the name of hell is the christian outrage at what is happening to so many our brothers and sisters. Christians, especially the more evangelical fundamentalists, love parables and allegories, so let's give them one.
Jesus is said to have fallen (not really spelled out in their bible--but, one of those, well, everybody knows it kind of things) under the weight of the cross three times. Only one person helped shoulder it, Simon of Cyrene. And, here's the thing about that. He didn't rush out and say, "Let me help you with that old boy". Hell no, a Roman soldier drafted him to the task! Which, in my mind, makes him the very first Christian...yeah he did it, but it wasn't out of love or generosity or grace or blessedness or whatever the current catch phrase of the religious right holds sway today. He was compelled to do so under pressure of authority!
Okay, here's my allegory. How many of you people calling yourself Christian will pick up and help carry the cross? Here's some of what it is loaded down with: drug and alcohol addiction and abuse stemming from a desire to deaden the pain of ignorance, unemployment, and institutionalized generational poverty, or men and women selling their bodies in order to obtain that soma against the cruelty of existence in a system which places no value on human spirit, or older and elderly people merely existing, not living, at the edge of starvation in the midst of aloneness. Oh, I could go on, but you surely get the picture.
When you shoulder those pieces of the cross, then I might believe there is some honesty in your sanctimonious posturings. I'm not talking about tithing, or a few bucks in the collection plate, or a blanket or coat in cold weather, and then back to your life, fading like Simon back to the obscurity of the crowd.
Got it?
21 December 2010
An Interactive, Secular-Humanist X-Mas Card
We are celebrating the Holiday Season in the best mithraic tradition in high anticipation of the approaching climax of the saturnalia, and will resume our writings on Monday, December 27th.
Meanwhile, click on the link below for your very own interactive, secular-humanist X-mas card!
Did you know that the puritans banned christmas celebrations for several decades? And, that the bible makes absolutely no reference to christmas? And were you aware that biblical scholars agree that Jesus, according to biblical writings, could not have been born in December---and most likely was born in March, September, or perhaps early November. You should also know that what we now call "christmas" was essentially a pagan celebration up until Pope Gregory the First, sometime around 600 AD, commanded his bishops to merge local practices into church rituals in order to expand the church's influence.
Meanwhile, click on the link below for your very own interactive, secular-humanist X-mas card!
Did you know that the puritans banned christmas celebrations for several decades? And, that the bible makes absolutely no reference to christmas? And were you aware that biblical scholars agree that Jesus, according to biblical writings, could not have been born in December---and most likely was born in March, September, or perhaps early November. You should also know that what we now call "christmas" was essentially a pagan celebration up until Pope Gregory the First, sometime around 600 AD, commanded his bishops to merge local practices into church rituals in order to expand the church's influence.
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