There Are Good Things Going On Out There

In most of my blog posts, I am usually railing against things that I dislike. The current GOP, racism, stupidity, hypocrisy, and the Minnesota Vikings immediately pop into my mind. And it is easy to blog about those things that you have a distaste for. Take the government for example. The viper's nest that is congress can be described as the place that is a big sucking black hole that rips Americans of their hopes and dreams. And that is a mild description of that place. Pair that with the sports teams in D.C. and you have one big cluster.

But from that place, there are some things that have actually happened that helps Americans. The Affordable Health Care Act or Obamacare, if you prefer. There are reports of Healthcare companies actually giving rebates to their customers because of the over inflated prices that they have been charging. Healthcare companies have to pay 80% of their premiums that they get from people on actual healthcare for their clients. (I know, what a concept!) So people are actually paying less for their healthcare. The insurance companies that have been raising rates at double digit rates for the past years are now actually having to hold their rates to lower increases or in some instances at the same level or even lower them. This is causing calls of Socialism by the GOP. It is socialism to give subsidies to companies like Exxon-Mobil and BP, so until you want those to end, shut the hell up about any sort of socialism.

The American economy continues to limp along. It is expanding, unlike what it did under our last Republican President. The past 3 years, each and every month we have had private sector jobs increasing. That should show an economy that is real strong and growing by leaps and bounds. So why doesn't it? The public sector cutting jobs right and left. If the public sector (government) would have just kept the jobs that it had in 2010 and not eliminated them, the Unemployment rate would be down to around 5 to 5.5%. The economy would be plugging along at a good clip and we would be hearing that the American economy is looking strong and will get stronger. But the sequester and the cutting of public jobs has kept the economy sputtering along. I list this as a good thing because I still have in my mind the economy losing tens of thousands of jobs each and every month. That was a disaster. Right now, the GOP is choking the economy. That cannot last forever.

The evolution of what is acceptable for a "typical" American family. Gay people can now marry in 13 states and Washington D.C.  As we learn more about human physiology and biology, we are understanding that being gay isn't a choice, it is the way that we are born, whether we are hetero or homosexual. That allows more people to be eliminated from second-class status here and gets us closer in America to becoming a true society without prejudices concerning sexual orientation and the display of our affection to one another.

The discussion of how our government operates in regard to surveillance and the privacy of Americans is also a good thing. Since 9/11, we have went overboard about security. We traded some of our rights in order to feel secure. The government has went way over the line where they should have been stopped. Some of that has been from congress. Some of that has been from the Executive Branch of our government. And the people that we expect to stop those excesses the Judicial Branch, have went right along with the other two. Now since people are finding out what the government has been doing, there is push back on what the government has said is constitutional and they are scrambling to ensure that their programs will hold up to constitutional scrutiny. That is good for those of us who want government to operate out in the open as much as it possibly can.

Let's talk American energy independence. Right now, America is the leading country in Solar power. Of course, that means that the GOP is fighting to cut off any investment in it from our government. Electric car technology is advancing each and every year. More people are conserving more and looking at ways to become less dependent on their local energy companies. They are growing more of their own foods and looking at local ways to solve problems. That is a good thing.

There are other things out there. Look at how California has bounced back utilizing some of the principles that Democrats have spouted over the past decade. We finally have a few Republicans that are standing up to the Tea Party who are hypoctrites, through and through. We are pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan. There is a major upheaval and exchange of ideas going on internationally. And while that does come with bloodshed and a couple of false starts for democracy being spread, remember, America didn't start out as a Democracy and there was around 90 years of simmering resentment before our Civil War.

Not everything out there is great in America. Racism and profiling is on the rise. You have simmering resentment from each and every racial group. We have screwed up majorly on our foreign policies. What we say are values are in regards to democracy and the capitalist system is not extended to anywhere past our borders. We also will not support people who we say are our friends if we believe that we can get further ahead by backing others. There is way too much stalling and obstruction in Washington. The government doesn't respond to the citizens. It causes problems for individuals and businesses all the time. But until someone can come up with a better way to govern, we need to work within the system and take the positives that we see and try to extend the principles from them into the problems that we have.

Nobody A Winner In The Aftermath Of Zimmerman Verdict

Let me put this out there. I thought that George Zimmerman was guilty of murder. It isn't a popular opinion around my neck of the woods. Why do I think that? Because of his actions, an altercation was inevitable and he killed a minor. There should be no self-defense defense able to get around the fact that his actions led to the altercation. But that wasn't the judgement. The judgement is that he feared for his life after Trayvon Martin proved to be tougher in a fight. But that isn't the major point of this post. The major point of this post is the aftermath of this miscarriage of justice.

Christianity and GOP Rhetoric: An Unholy Union of Hypocrisy About Abortion

I need to rant about this for a minute. This really isn't about the faith of Christians. This is more about the hypocrisy of the Christian sect and the GOP in particular. Over the past couple of weeks, I have seen little blue and pink flags populating yards around town. They are particularly conspicuous on church lawns. Those little flags represent fetuses that have been aborted. GOP leaders here in North Dakota are supportive of this demonstration.

Now I am not going to argue that abortion should be legal or not. And I applaud people and organizations for standing up for what they believe in. However, I will take the Christian church to task for this show of their beliefs. I understand that abortion is not correct in the Christian faith. And they have every right to say that. The one thing that I wonder though, is when they are going to take a stand against the greed that is shown in America. Where is that demonstration going to be shown to the public. When is the stand against the death penalty going to appear on the lawns of churches around the country? Where are the little flags to promote the cause of helping children, for having families adopt those kids in foster care? The banners out in front of the doors asking for fairness and equality for all God's children, not just those that have the right skin or the influence where they live. I am waiting, but I don't think that I will see any of those things. Why? Because the majority of leadership in America's Christian Churches have drank the Republican Kool-Aid and have fallen in line with the ideology.

Besides, it shouldn't matter what the Christian faith says about abortion, just like it shouldn't matter what it says about gay marriage. Here is what the 14th Amendment says about American citizenship:

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

Here is where the conservative theology runs contrary to their rhetoric. According to their vision of America, we need to follow the constitution. I believe that as well, so the 14th Amendment says that when a baby is born, they become an American citizen when born on American soil. Until that baby, embryo, zygote, or whatever you want to call that thing in a woman's lower torso for 9 months is born, it does not have protection as an American citizen according to the Constitution or current American laws. And for the argument that science has changed and our knowledge of human anatomy and biology has increased dramatically since the 14th Amendment was passed, it does not matter. Just as the 2nd Amendment is ironclad according to conservatives even when science has changed the weapons and kill rates that are inflicted, so it goes towards the embryo that the woman carries. Another GOP do as I want and don't worry about what the law says topic, apparently. Instead of trying to get the constitution changed, they are trying to short-cut the law making process just like gay marriage and not follow what it says in the constitution.

In the end, the GOP is working hard as hell to get abortion outlawed in the states. They are using their allies in Christianity to help them. No matter what the GOP says, they are still using the Culture Wars to try and win elections. They know that is the only thing that they can use to win elections. Because if they try to win on the economy, reason, or jobs, pretty soon they will become an endangered species and then Christian churches will have their influence wane. We can't have that. After all, having Pat Robertson and Ted Haggert out there preaching to us that the conservative way is the right way helps keep the GOP looney and America divided about everything. Nothing like helping our enemies in the world, right GOP?

Guns, America, and Stupidity

In the latest issue of Sports Illustrated, there was an article about Frank Hall, the football assistant that limited a school shooting to 3 dead and three others injured. I became teary-eyed reading about what he did and the difficulties that he had after that day. I also was teary-eyed because of my selfishness. I had forgotten all about Chadron, Ohio. How do you forget a news story about a teenager killing three people in school?  The sad thing is that I am not alone. I would bet that 99% of Americans forgot that fateful day. Why? Because our civilization doesn't care.

This is the ending of the 10 pages devoted to this story by Gary Smith:

Two months after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary, Rob Cox - the cofounder of a nonprofit formed in Newtown to help it heal - was leafing through a dozen boxes containing thousands of cards and letters that had poured in from around the world. He came upon one from Chadron, offering encouragement and details of what had happened there, and he was mortified.

He went around Newtown, asking neighbors and friends, but their responses were all exactly what his had been. Chadron? No trace in their memories of that town or school. No trace of a shooting there just 9 1/2 months before their own. No memory of a football coach saving his school from a slaughter far worse than it might have been.

Which meant the clock was already ticking in the land of amnesia. How long before Newtown, too, was gone?

In 2014, Newtown will have been forgotten my most of us. You say that isn't possible. But it is. Columbine doesn't have the same horrific visions as it did just 5 years ago. How about Oikos University? Do you remember that shooting? Did you even hear about it? I know that I didn't. I am sure that you didn't know that there have been 74 school shootings since January 1, 2000.  147 people have died in those shootings.

If you listen to the NRA, the way to lessen those numbers is to allow everybody to have weapons in schools. Never mind that the amount of deaths attributable to shootings in the United States during that same time period is approximately 375,000. The number of shootings during that time is estimated at over 2 Million. And according to our U.S. Congressman, Kevin Cramer in the House from North Dakota, the reason that we have school shootings is legalized abortion. Well, I think that his solution to the problem is just as bad as the NRA's.

The reason that I bring this all up? It is amazing that both Democrats and Republicans cannot come to some agreement to try and prevent the five shootings at school that happen on average each and every year since 2000. We have seen that Washington will not listen to the public. Some sort of gun control is needed. And don't tell me about the 2nd Amendment. The thought that all weapons should be available to anybody didn't come into the consciousness of the American Court system until a court in Georgia back in the 1830's said that the 2nd Amendment meant that a person could own any weapon that they wanted. Seems like that isn't a Founding Father declaration there.

It is time for the adults of both side of the political spectrum to come together and come to some sort of agreement on firearms. Let's see why a person needs a semi-automatic weapon besides in a theater of war. Let's agree that shotguns, pistols, and rifles are needed by people and should not be regulated. But there needs to be a conversation that is rational where the NRA, Kevin Cramer, and the No Weapon Coalition are not invited. Maybe, just maybe a civil discussion and following the public opinion on firearms will cause a small ratcheting down of the partisan rhetoric in American politcs.

If You Thought That The Iraq War Was A Waste Of American Lives

According to the website Antiwar.com, there has been 32,021 American combat troops wounded or killed in Iraq since we invaded. Unofficially there has been over 100,000 Americans injured or killed in Iraq since we invaded. And there have been about 1.5 Million Iraqis that have died since we invaded. So let's put the number of people killed since we invaded Iraq at 1.6 Million people. A horrifying statistic.

What if I tell you that the 1.6 Million people dead in a decade because of war was a small number? Would you believe me? Would you believe me that over the past 10 years, that there was something that killed approximately 5.5 Million Americans? While not on the scale of the Black Plague (Bubonic) that wiped out 25 Million Europeans in 5 years, it is still a devastating number. And what if I told you that the cause of these deaths of Americans are making corporations profits and in some cases multimillions of dollars?  Would you be outraged?  Have you guessed what the cause of these deaths are?

My Case For Same-Sex Marriage

In 1974, the Supreme Court said in the Cleveland Board of Education v. LaFleur court case that the "freedom of personal choice in matters of marriage and family life is one of the liberties protected by the Due Process Clause.”  If that is a fact, and it is, then marriage equality for homosexuals should already be recognized.

Arguments of the Crusaders against same-sex marriage do not stand up to scrutiny if you think about it. The tradition of marriage is a farce.  The traditional marriage supporters say that marriage has been between a man and a woman for 2,000 years. Then why did the Catholic Church argue against a white man marrying a non-white woman in the 1967 Supreme Court case of Loving vs. Virginia? In that case, the court said “The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men. Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man.”

There is the thought that a marriage is for the procreation and raising of a family. But if that is the reason why marriage is allowed, why do we as a society allow those who are unable to have children to marry? Why do we allow senior citizens to marry? They aren’t going to procreate and be able to raise a family. Also, science has become advanced enough that a woman does not need to have sex with a man to have a child. And if the goal of marriage is to raise a family, why do we allow people to get divorced if they have kids? I believe that a loving same-sex couple that is married is a better situation for children than a divorced couple. Also, how is it that people would say that a heterosexual that has been engaged in crimes against society would make for a better parent than a homosexual person that has never committed those types of atrocities against society.

The argument that angers me the most by anti-same-sex marriage crusaders is the one that the majority of people that molest children are gay people. Their conclusion is that gay people who get married and have children are more likely to molest those children. In a Pediatrics ’94 Journal article, Dr. Carole Jenny and her colleagues reviewed 352 medical charts, representing all of the sexually abused children seen in the emergency room or child abuse clinic of a Denver children's hospital during a one-year period, from July 1, 1991 to June 30, 1992. The molester was a gay or lesbian adult in fewer than 1% in which an adult molester could be identified – only 2 of the 269 cases.

Let’s examine why same-sex marriage should be allowed. Allowing same-sex marriage would stop the discrimination of people’s basic civil rights, strengthen the institution of marriage and society, and allow for what was not seen as an abomination by the Lord.

In 1989, Denmark allowed for domestic partnerships.  72% of the Danish clergy argued that it was a bad idea. A survey of the Danish clergy in 1995 found that 89% of the Danish clergy admitted that the law was a good thing. It included a reduction in suicide, sexually transmitted diseases and promiscuity and infidelity among gay people. This “experiment” shows that same-sex marriage could have the result in strengthening not just the institution of marriage, but to the society as a whole. In 2010, Denmark passed a law saying that gay and heterosexual marriages were the same in the eyes of the law.

An experiment at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm Sweden which is part of the National Academy of Sciences found in brain scans that key structures of the brain governing emotion, mood, anxiety and aggressiveness are alike in gay people of one sex and heterosexual people of the other sex. The fact that it is a physiological difference between being gay or straight means that not allowing the fundamental right to marry is purely discriminatory. It is the 21^st century form of racial discrimination.  

The biggest reason for my belief in why Gay Marriage should be legal is the Bible and the relationship that Jonathan and David had. “And Saul said, I will give him her, that she may be a snare to him, and that the hand of the Philistines may be against him. Wherefore Saul said to David, Thou shalt this day be my son in law a second time.” (I Samuel 18:21, English Revised Version)

Saul had three children. Merab the eldest daughter, Jonathan, Saul’s son, and Michal, the youngest daughter. David was never married to Merab. The Bible says that David and Michal did marry. So that leaves a marriage between David and Jonathan that was acknowledged by Saul. That means that David, who is in the bloodline of Jesus Christ, became the King of Israel and did the Lord’s bidding had a relationship that was an abomination in the eyes of the Lord. That doesn’t make any sense in a Biblical sense because according to the Bible, the Lord would have seen David's relationship with Jonathan as an abomination and would have killed David. Israel would have lost the greatest king that it ever had and the promise of the Israelites would not have come to pass. So either God is a hypocrite in the homosexual way of life or man changed the Bible to cause the act of homosexuality to be taboo. We can't determine which one it is because we don't have the original transcripts. I tend to be on the side of human interference in the Bible because according to a Professor of Religious Studies at UNC@Chapel Hill, we have over 700 bibles written in Ancient Greece that scholars can study and no two say the same thing throughout the texts.How does that happen? Human interference.

Since freedom of personal choice in matters of marriage and family life is one of the liberties protected by the Due Process Clause, gay marriage is a human right. The grand experiment of America demands that equal natural rights to be obtained by everyone, not just heterosexual couples. It doesn't matter what Christianity or any other religion says. Same-sex marriage should be the law of the land. And before everybody says that it is a states rights issue, look at the constitution. All states are supposed to recognize the licenses and contracts between people of another state. So even here in Deep Red North Dakota, we are supposed to recognize the gay marriages that are performed in Vermont, Iowa, Washington, Minnesota in August and hopefully soon in Illinois. Following the Constitution is what everybody on the right says they want. Well, let's see if that is true.

I Miss Hitch

The whole idea to me that everlasting life was based on belief in and complete subservience to a higher being always felt like slavery to me.  If what it takes to get into heaven is to tell you how great you are, then you can have it...I'd rather rot in hell.  Me