America Down the Tubes Courtesy of Politics

So Tea-Party members/Republicans are cheering Ron Paul and his seemingly deep disregard for Americans who are sick and cannot afford Health Insurance.  I suppose they think that the more poor people that die–the better off they will be.

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asks Rep. Ron Paul whether medical care should be provided to a hypothetical, uninsured 30-year-old man who lapsed into a coma, to which Paul responded, “That’s what freedom is all about, taking your own risks.”  Blitzer then asked, “Are you saying that society should just let him die?” audience members erupted into loud cheers of “Yeah!” and laughter.

Coincidentally Tuesday morning the US Census Bureau released data showing the number of uninsured Americans this year has risen by another 900,000 to 49.9 million people (that’s a 13.3 million person rise since 2000). The Census Bureau also reported a huge leap in the poverty rate, more than 46 million Americans, about one in six) lived below the poverty line. Maybe one reason so many people are without health coverage is that health insurance premiums have doubled in nine years (got to pay all those multi-multi-million dollar salaries to the company CEO’s).

According to a study done this year by Harvard Medical School and Cambridge Health Alliance published by the American Journal of Public Health. Nearly 45,000 deaths in the U.S. every year are associated with lack of health insurance.

Also the United States has both the highest overall poverty rate and the highest childhood poverty rate of any major industrialized country on earth, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
While 21.6 percent of American children live in poverty,
In Denmark the rate is 3.7 percent
In Finland the rate is 5.3 percent
In Iceland the rate is 6.7 percent
In Germany the rate is 8.3 percent
In France the rate is 9.3 percent
We are uncomfortably close to 3^rd. world Mexico who has 25.8% of its children living in poverty.

All of these bad numbers in the US are arguably caused by our government’s dumb ass practices and policies. We spend TRILLIONS** of dollars on illegal and unnecessary wars, and come to find out that many-many BILLIONS of those dollars are just flat missing and unaccounted for. Meanwhile we are borrowing money from China to pay interest. We continually suck money out of programs for educating our young, from repairing our infrastructure and paving our roads…and yes, for programs that help our poor and indigent.

Government’s main business is to look after the welfare of its citizens, and to provide common services that we as individuals cannot do.  That’s why we CITIZENS band together and make governments…to further the interest of the common folk, for the common good. It is not to enable crooked politicians to consistently (and without consequences) raid the treasury to pay for billionaires’ and monster companies missteps, foreign wars, foreign aid, pork projects, an American Gestapo and unnecessary bridges to nowhere.

We are quickly building a very BIG class of dis-enfranchised citizenry, people who are losing their houses, their income, their health benefits, their ability to care for their family, their dignity, and their patience with a government that does not care and supports only corporations and billionaires.

Don’t fool yourself, these corporations and billionaires don’t care in the least about us, the people…all they care about is getting the peoples labor for the lowest possible wage and no benefits. They are truly and consciously trying to eliminate the American middle class. They send all jobs they possibly can to low labor cost countries and end up ultimately devaluing the citizenry in those countries.  Capitalism is great and all, but as with all things taken to the maximum extreme…crippling.

America cannot stand much more of the evil and unconscionable manipulation and thievery that we are being subjected to by our own government. We need to start making them accountable for their wickedness and VERY badly mistaken priorities.

**It has also been reported in the last two decades that the Department of Defense and the Bureau of Indian Affairs have both “LOST” a TRILLION dollars…they both have no idea in hell where the money went.  Just think, that’s Two Thousand Billion Bucks…no one got in trouble, no one was ever held accountable.  You see, when the government does it…it’s not a crime.  Is that Democracy or is that tyranny?
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Human Rights vs. Government Rights

“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war.” Abraham Lincoln, 1864

Down through time, during man’s ascendancy on this earth, we have had people who wielded power over us. It probably started out with the biggest and strongest of the group defying anyone in his tribe to stop him from telling them what to do, and backing it up with muscle and a big club.

Over time, as the tribes got bigger, there was probably some kind of system to pick the person who was discerned as the best candidate for the Job. The strongest, the most intelligent, or the one with the most backers, wife’s, or any combination of the above.

At some point in our history…our leaders came to believe that they were picked by ‘God’ or ‘the gods’ to fill the role of leader, and of course this was followed by some leaders thinking they were gods, and they started to picked their own successors. At any rate most of the leaders of humankind have had problems with the power they wielded. Hell, even Solomon was selling his people into slavery to enrich the treasury.

From the written history we have of the Middle Eastern world of Biblical times we know that the Kings and leaders of the time were always going to war to either overthrow another tribe and take their animals, crops, women, gold, tactical location, for sport, or they were defending themselves from bloodthirsty Kings trying to do the same to them. These leaders, almost to the man, turned out to be wicked and corrupt. They had no sense of respect for the rights of humans they purported to represent and guide. The common man has always been cannon fodder for Kings and leaders throughout our human history. Used up and discarded.

As our recorded history continued through the Greeks, Romans, Catholic Popes, Kings in France, England, and elsewhere on the European and Asian continents, Kings and other unelected leaders have consistently taxed and starved and caused their subjects to die in any manner of ghastly ways while they go about spending tax money on and for themselves and their supporters. This has never changed.

Our leaders today; Kings, princes, presidents, military juntas, what have you; continue in this fine tradition even now. Some are more sophisticated than others. The military juntas say they had to take over from freely elected presidents because the president was leading the country the wrong way. So in the ‘interest of the people’ they take over the power.

Russian socialists just don’t seem to die out…they go away for awhile, but they keep sneaking back in, after all the ‘people’ don’t know how to rule themselves…only the party can realize the dream of equality for you. The Chinese, as always, copied and then morph into something hardly recognizable as communism any more.

America started out with high hopes and a radically new form of Government…where the ‘people’ actually had the power to vote out of office those they didn’t like. But, as always, the twin drugs of power and practically unlimited money took over, and men schemed and manipulated the unwritten rules, the laws, and the national parties and the common folk. Propaganda, misdirection, and manipulation of news or information access have been honed into highly effective tools to control people’s thoughts, actions and even thinking processes.

The political parties in America almost totally control the way our people think and act nowadays. They control every bit of money, all transactions of a monetary nature, in practically the whole world, are either now under their control or observation…or the politicians, and the flunky’s that work for them, are actively seeking the means to bring them under their control or observation in the near future.

Nowadays it’s a common practice to award No-Bid contracts worth billions of dollars to your campaign supporters or ex-employer, where in the past this was illegal. Actually this is still illegal, but the politicians just ignore the laws…and we let them get away with it…after all its unpatriotic to question or challenge our leaders. If you were to get too vocal in your protests then you might find yourself on a terrorist watch list, as some anti-war protesters in Maryland found out. Go Here for more.

Our leaders in the last seven years have managed to take away the right to petition a judge for a hearing if you’re arrested. This is a principle of law that goes back hundreds of years, in most countries the world over, and our leaders have decided that we don’t have that right anymore…they didn’t ask…they just took it away. It used to be that those in power had to go before a judge and show cause and ask for permission to search our homes or personal papers or computer…that was also taken away…this was a part of the constitutional law our ancestors fought the American Revolution over, and our leaders swear an oath to uphold.  No matter, we don’t need this protection any more…the poor outgunned federal government needs the power now.

This leader we all suffer under now has even promoted unlisted laws that they can’t tell us about. They are secret laws that you can be prosecuted on…but they can’t tell us exactly what they are and why we need them. We as a people had no input on this; we were not represented in their passing. Again people are put in the place of having no protection from the Kings.

Now some people will say we get the government we deserve, and that’s true to a certain degree. However I posit that the whole political process in American has been totally subverted and is mostly used to the advantage of the very, very rich and very, very powerful and to the detriment of the common people. America, the United Kingdom, Russia, and China are the most spied upon, politically controlled, and manipulated people in the world now. This is not just my perception, go here for more information

All of our electronic communications (emails, blogs, websites, cell phones and land line phones) are diverted to supercomputers that search and scan for anything out of the ordinary in our thoughts as expressed in our communications. As I’ve already mentioned all monetary transactions are now monitored so the government can get their unfair share of taxes. Billions, even Trillions of dollars of tax money have just disappeared with no explanations to us poor people who work really hard to succeed and pay their taxes. If we use too much cash money…the government suspects us of being drug dealers, money launderers, arms dealers or some such crap, and they promptly investigate. Even ex-Senator Bob Dole was caught up in this silliness.

Our government is inexorably moving to a kind of democratic dictatorship. Where we vote for those that would totally control our whole life…in all respects. They just slowly add things that enslave us. You don’t even notice them sneaking up on you.

Nothing ever truly changes in Kings and politics…it’s all about control, power, and money…always was.

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The Killers in Religion

Did Osama bin Laden invoke God when he planned and carried out the deadly attack on New York’s Twin Towers on September 11^th, 2001?

Did George Bush also call on God when he unleashed the bombers and missiles on the countries of Afghanistan and Iraq?

Do the Palestinian suicide bombers call upon God when they explode themselves in crowded Israeli cities and busses and crowded restaurants?

Do the Jewish people call upon God when they retaliate against the Palestinians with tanks and missiles and bulldoze their buildings?

Did you know that just Christians (Catholics and Protestants) fighting among themselves in the last two thousand years have killed over 15 million believers, much much more than that when you count the collateral damages that all wars bring, such as diseases and starvation.

Catholics and Protestants have both called on God as they killed each other in England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, Italy, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Russia, Switzerland, Austria, Bohemia, Netherlands and probably most other countries to some degree.

And then there are the Jews…Catholics and Protestants have, for two thousand years, been rooting for the death of Jews individually and as a race.  Jesus killers that they are.*  Hitler with the unspoken consent of the Catholic and Protestant population of Germany tried his best to wipe them out.

And then there are the ancient Hebrews fighting and killing those sinners that God pointed out to them and sanctioned the death of…including women, children, and babies.

Do any religious people stop and think that maybe a real God would not do-or-sanction this kind of behavior…ever?

Where is the God in all of this?

What are the ministers and priests who abuse children in the name of God thinking?

What are the Bishops, Archbishops, and Cardinals thinking when they try to hide evidence that their Godly religion is pure evil? Do you think that the pedophiles of the church are just a recent thing and restricted to just the USA?

What are the Religious leaders of the world (Muslims, Christians, and Jews) thinking when they tell us that people of different sexual persuasion should be killed? Well maybe the ones that prey on children.

What is keeping the people of this world believing in a sky spirit that is so obviously evil and anti-human?  This is not an argument about free will…this is an argument against a false God…a fake God…a God that can’t seem to make its followers God-like or humble or good, if it does exist.  Do you think you should support a God that gives you no advantage for following him, or that never answers prayers?

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Religious Attitudes in Mexico

Antonio Lazcano is a biology professor at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico in Mexico City. He has studied evolution and the origins of life for more than 30 years and as a student at the university he majored in prebiotic evolution and the emergence of life. He has authored several books in the Spanish language, including ‘The Origins of Life’, published in 1984, that became a bestseller in Mexico. He has also been a professor-in-residence or visiting scientist in France, Spain, Cuba, Switzerland, Russia, and the United States He was reelected president of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life, in 2005, the first Latin American scientist to occupy this position.

He has an article in the journal ‘Science‘, which is a publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, wherein he comments on the acceptance of evolutionary sciences in Mexico and it’s relationship to the dominate Roman Catholic Church.

He relates that Mexicans in general have a commitment to the idea of evolution, as the Catholic Church and Pope Pius XII endorsed the evolutionary principles that Darwin had proposed, in the mid-nineteen hundreds. So, contrary to many peoples belief, the people of Mexico do not suffer under a strong anti-evolutionary theocratic peer pressure. The Church realizes that the science behind evolution is valid, and tends to not interfere with peoples secular beliefs.

He comments that opposition to his teaching of evolution is practically nonexistent, and he has only been challenged twice. “Only twice during my 30 years of teaching about evolutionary biology and research into the origins of life, have I encountered religious-based opposition to my work. In both cases, it came from evangelical zealots from the United States preaching in Mexico.” He continues. “One of the little recognized U.S. imports into Mexico is a small flow of creationists, who, through religion, are trying to impose their fundamentalist beliefs and hinder the teaching of Darwinian evolution in all levels of schooling”. My emphasis.

I would add that this is a good example of the ‘Ugly American’ in action. How much arrogance and self-conceit does it take for these fools to interfere with another countries scholastic standards? What craziness do they posses that makes them think that…they alone…have the all answers, and must climb in other peoples face to spread their insanity?

Professor Lazcano says that their history has not recorded any major controversy over the publication of Darwin’s The Origin of Species, in 1859. The fact that the Roman Catholic Church does not advocate the literal reading of the Bible as the evangelical fundamentalists do, probably contributes to this.

Places that have a predominately Catholic background such as France, Spain, Italy and most Latin American countries are secular in their outlook and politic, and are able to maintain an extended form of secularism while also being able to support religious freedom. Catholics in Mexico do not read the Old Testament as literal truth, but as a way that creation may have happened. Thus it is possible for Catholic Bible readers to believe in a supernatural origin of life and not have to reject Darwinism in order to maintain logical consistency in their theocratic scheme.

Professor Lazcano says that he and his associates are often invited to speak about life origins and evolution in public and private schools, including those run by Catholic nuns and priests. He says that students and professors see no doctrinal conflict between their own personal faith and Darwin’s scientific ideas. “They even found hilarious the idea of teaching creationism based on biblical literalism.”

He feels that most Mexicans find it hard to understand the hold that religion has in America, and many are baffled by the lax attitude of American politicians to the religious right that manage to influence and undermine the public educational system. “In contrast, Mexico still maintains some anticlerical attitudes, and public education bears the secular trademark of the Enlightenment, whose introduction into the country was facilitated by some prominent priests and Jesuits.”

His closing sentence is particularly relevant to the creationist / evolutionist argument. “Our understanding of the origin and early stages of biological evolution still has major unsolved problems, but they are recognized by the scientific community as intellectual challenges, and not as requiring metaphysical explanations, as proponents of creationism would have it.” My emphasis Amen

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Make Me Famous

Who is Mary Magdalene?

So just who is this woman Mary Magdalene; Is she Saint or sinner?

In one of the sermons that Pope Gregory I gave in 591, he identifies Mary Magdalene as: “She whom Luke calls the sinful woman, whom John calls Mary [of Bethany], we believe to be the Mary from whom seven devils were ejected according to Mark.” Remember this is the Pope who started celibacy in ‘The Church.’ The Catholics only reversed their unofficial position in the late 1960’s.

Peter was at odds with her. He openly criticizes her in front of other Apostles and is rebuked by Levi for his attitude towards her.

Did she actually write the Gospel of Mary? People of religion have told me that the Nag Hammadi Gnostic Gospels were too late (200’s-300’s CE) to be considered as real or applying to Christianity as we know it now. But, I think they forget that Eusebius was collecting letters and papers for the modern Bible as late as the 350’s CE.

Was she the enigmatic ‘Beloved Disciple’ of the Gospels; was she in fact the writer of the Gospel of John, as some people believe. See: Elaine Pagels …and others…check out Wikipedia and Mary Magdalene on the net. Sorry, no evidence that she had Jesus’ baby.

Did she retire to France, where 5 churches claim to have her bones, or did she retire along with John and Mary mother of Jesus, to Ephesus, Turkey where they all died?

Reading the convoluted history of the early Christian Church is much like reading a very anticipated crime novel by your favorite author. There are twists and turns that no one could even think of in earlier times. The level of scholarship relating to the early church is amazing and exhaustive. Modern researchers have turned upside down early theories and some biblical ‘truths’.

From Mary Magdalene article in Wikipedia:

“Further attestation of Mary of Magdala and her role among some early Christians is provided by the Gnostic, apocryphal Gospel of Mary Magdalene which survives in two 3rd century Greek fragments and a longer 5th century translation into Coptic. In the Gospel the testimony of a woman first needed to be defended. All of these manuscripts were first discovered and published between 1938 and 1983, but as early as the 3rd century there are Patristic references to the Gospel of Mary. These writings reveal the degree to which that gospel was despised and dismissed by the early Church fathers. In the fragmentary text, the disciples ask questions of the risen Savior (a designation that dates the original no earlier than the 2nd century) and are answered.”

The history I am finding…is fascinating, and I find a lot of it contradicts today’s evangelical fundamentalist thought. Of course they just think this stuff is lies spread by the devil.

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