He contrasts Santorum with John F. Kennedy.

In 1960, JFK proclaimed, in front of an audience of Protestant ministers the primacy of the individual conscience.  It won’t be The Pope who would make the decisions on running the country, it will be and should be the president.  The speech was very good.  Whether he really won over the majority of the Protestant ministers can be debated, but his speech certainly helped him win over the nation.

Since then, and until recently a candidate’s Catholicism has not been an issue, unless a local bishop’s stand on birth control, same-sex marriage, stem-cell research, etc., banned a candidate from communion.

Now, we have Rick Santorum who has constructed his image around an “altar boy” youth, and coming from the coal fields. It is not clear what he means by that.  Both of his parents worked in a hospital.  His father was a psychologist, with an MD degree, and his mother was a nurse.  Santorum is a lawyer and, as far as I know, did not practice law in a coal mine.  There were many other discrepancies in his story, as well.  I won’t go in to them right now.  His problem with the truth is serious but I also have a problem with his belief system.

I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them someone else’s money – said by Rick while campaigning in Iowa.
In Iowa, white welfare recipients outnumber black recipients by nine-to-one.

At a talk delivered at the University of St. Thomas in Houston in 2010, the 50th anniversary of the famous JFK speech he chose to reject the Kennedy vision, accusing Kennedy of constructing a wall that,  “sealed off informed moral wisdom into a realm of national beliefs that have no legitimate role in political discourse”.  Rick goes on to explain the First Amendment, insisting that freedom of religion is not just one of the freedoms, but the one on which freedom of speech, press, and assembly depend.

Really? I don’t think that it would be possible to find a religious-oriented country in which freedom of speech is even tolerated.  When religion takes over, as Christianity has in Uganda recently, freedom of the press and freedom of assembly become out of the question, then freedom of speech goes.  A person can be pro-religion without being absolutely stupid!  We have freedom of speech because our constitution kicked, and kept, religion out of government and, in Europe, the French Revolution did the same.

The issues which challenge all of our consciences have grown.  Any perusal of Rick’s voting record seems to show that Santorum has among the worst voting records in the US Congress on social justice and the family — though Santorum describes himself as “pro family”.  In November 2011 he questioned the value of lower income children qualifying for Medicaid, food stamps, and housing assistance.  “Why do these kids feel they are entitled to so much?”  “Suffering, if you’re a Christian is part of life and it’s not a bad thing.”

Not a bad thing???  Wow, how would you know, Rick?

“Why do they feel that they are entitled …?”  I doubt that anyone asked them if they felt they were entitled.  The reason that the government does anything for them is because there are some decent people in congress (Santorum clearly not being one of them) who feel that these kids deserve a chance.  They are, after all, our future.  If they can succeed, America of the twenty-first century succeeds.  If they fail, we fail.  I guess that is too complicated for Rick to understand.

Pro family?  I guess we all know that phrase is a code for “I hate gays”.

His speeches have indicated that he favors massive tax cuts for the wealthy, wants to abolish public service unions, and denies humans are responsible for climate change.  While the bishops have condemned torture in all its forms, in the televised debates Santorum (good Catholic that he claims to be) endorsed water-boarding and “enhanced interrogation techniques”.  He has long been pro-death penalty (he now claims that he is rethinking that one).

OK, Rick.  I guess that I have a couple of questions:  What is your basis for considering yourself a moral person?  How is it that you even feel that you are fit to walk and talk with decent people?  Do you need to think about that?  No problem, I’ll wait.

For those of you who don’t know, Microsoft has been observing the success that Apple has been having with the Apple Store.  Success is an understatement.  As a result of the Apple Store, as well as building a superior product, Apple is richer than most of the countries of the world.  So, Microsoft decided to do the same thing — open their own stores.

Anyway, when visiting Fashion Square Mall in Scottsdale, a Phoenix suburb, we came upon a Microsoft store.  My curiosity got the best of me.  For any of you who have been in an Apple Store, the interior of the Microsoft store looks like a clone with more colors.  As you know, the Apple store is decorated in industrial aluminum to match their computers.  The Microsoft store has more colors and, in general, is not quite so harsh.  There are lots of tables with lots of computers — all running the latest Microsoft software.  At the back of the store is the “Genius Bar”, where, I suppose you can talk to a mental giant who will tell you anything you want to know about the Microsoft software.

There were a couple of discordant notes.  First of all, it was the middle of the day in a very upscale mall in Scottsdale, and the store was nearly empty.  I’ve never been in an “almost empty” Apple store!  Never!  Second of all, when you are in an Apple store and start to play around with the “toys” they absolutely ooze quality.  There is no question about it, the Apple laptops seem like they are strong enough to use as hammers.

Now, Microsoft, as you know, does not make their own computers.  They have to depend on Dell, HP, Sony, etc.  I don’t intend to name names but the computers that I played with in the Microsoft store seemed like absolute junk in comparison to what I played with in the Apple store.  I wonder how much that will hurt Microsoft.  I think that it will hurt quite a bit.  I am forgiving because I understand that Microsoft is not in the hardware business (yes, I know that they make keyboards and mice, but that hardly counts).  I can see most people walking into the Microsoft store and quickly drawing some comparisons — with Microsoft coming out second best.

Oil prices have been continually going up even though the world keeps discovering more oil.  Now, the truth is, part of the reason that we have more and more oil is that as the prices do go up, it becomes more cost effective to extract oil from areas that would have been cost prohibitive if the prices were lower.

So what’s the deal?  Some people will side with the oil companies (drill baby, drill) no matter what, and others, of course, are tree huggers and don’t like drilling no matter what.

Burning oil is not good for living and breathing things.  We all know that, and I am sure that eventually we will discover an energy source that will satisfy our needs without giving us lung cancer.

President Obama, as we know, cancelled the TransCanada Keystone XL project which, was going to run a pipeline from Canada to Texas.  There are some who are upset because they feel that we should be buying oil from friendly countries.  Well, here is some great news: we are!  Although we import about ⅔ of our oil.  The largest amount comes from Canada (17%),  Mexico is next (16%), then is Saudi Arabia (14%).  We also get oil from Nigeria, Venezuela, etc.  We already have huge storage facilities for Canadian oil located in Cushing, Oklahoma, where there are currently about 59 Million barrels sitting there.

As everything else, the pipeline has become a political issue.  We have many pipelines in the US.  What’s one more?  The problem is that the proposed route of this pipeline will traverse the Ogallala Aquifer which is one of the largest sources of fresh water in the world.  It covers a portion of the states of South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Texas.  It supplies a great deal of the water needs of Mid-Western America.

Opponents say that an oil leak would impact millions of Americans — it would poison their water.  We’d all have to start drinking wine.  As far as our livestock, well, have you ever tried to reason with a drunken cow, pig, or chicken?  The crops wouldn’t grow too well, either.  We know the disregard that the oil industry has for the environment.   Look what happened with BP in the Gulf of Mexico.  There are continual problems with oil leaks in Alaska.  Let’s not forget the Exxon Valdez disaster in March 1989.  In the past two years, the Canadian Government has logged 100 different incidents and accidents on federally regulated Canadian oil and gas pipelines (Vancouver Sun, July 5, 2011).   The oil industry does not have anywhere near the safety record of the nuclear industry — and look what’s happened in Japan.

Now, proponents say that the Keystone XL pipeline will only cross the aquifer in Nebraska and a study commissioned by the State Department found that the Nebraska route would be the most economically feasible and would be unlikely to have any serious environmental impact.

Other proponents, such as American unions, have argued that jobs will be created in producing the pipeline as well as installing it.  Other sources say that the pipeline has already been produced — anticipating a US approval — and the pipe is THINNER than normal to save some money.  TransCanada admitted to that!  It would appear that the Canadian oil industry thinks that they have the US Government in their pockets just as the US oil industry does.  The pipe will be at high pressure and will be passing through an active seismic zone, which experienced a 4.3 earthquake in 2002.  I did read a technical article written by a person identifying himself as an engineer giving some technical reasons as to why the pipeline had to be thinner but, frankly, the article didn’t make much sense to me, and didn’t touch on the poor safety record that the oil industry has.  There has already been many studies showing that the increase in jobs isn’t anywhere near what the oil industry is claiming.  For example, they were counting jobs on the basis of one person for one year counts as 1 job.  One person hired on for two years is 2 jobs!  Goodness, I held the same job for 32 years.  So, I would count as 32 jobs?

So far, it seems to me that it is simply too dangerous to too many  Americans to allow a pipeline through the Ogallala Aquifer,  One disaster is all we would need to recognize that this was a horrible idea.  Trying to round-up spilled oil is almost as bad as trying to round-up leaked radiation.

From what I have read, it isn’t at all clear that we even need it, and, I haven’t been able to find any information on why the pipeline isn’t simply put somewhere else (other than the cost).

Oil is a commodity.  It pretty much doesn’t matter if we buy from Canada, Mexico, or Russia.  The oil companies are very politically correct: they don’t care if you are Christian, Jew, Muslim, Canadian, American, Saudi, etc.  You want the oil?  You’ll pay the price!  The price will be whatever the oil producing nations want to charge.  We are addicted to the oil, but, guess what, the sellers are addicted to the money!  Even if we agreed to let the pipeline go across the US, it certainly would not be in the interest of, say, Exxon to let the price go down.  Exxon is in the habit of making money — lots of it — for their shareholders and they are not about to be come altruistic!  So, the price of oil will stay the same, or go up, no matter what we do.

Further, China is a recent entry into the ranks of oil buyers.  Their industry is expanding so much that they are willing to buy virtually every drop of oil produced.  That is a guarantee that the price will remain high — and go higher.

I am sorry for speaker of the house, John Boehner who stands to lose huge sums of money if the project does not carry through.  That is one of those interesting things.  Insider trading is legal for our congressmen and congresswomen.  So he has done nothing wrong — but it sure seems unethical.  This could be one reason he is pushing it so much.  But for those outside of congress, this pipeline in the proposed location is a terrible idea.  President Obama canceling it was exactly what was called for.

PS: I am not really sorry for John Boehner — that was a lame attempt at sarcastic humor.

St. Rick the Godly

“They are taking faith and crushing it. Why? Why? When you marginalize faith in America, when you remove the pillar of God-given rights, then what’s left is the French Revolution. What’s left is the government that gives you right, what’s left are no unalienable rights, what’s left is a government that will tell you who you are, what you’ll do and when you’ll do it. What’s left in France became the guillotine. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re a long way from that, but if we do and follow the path of President Obama and his overt hostility to faith in America, then we are headed down that road.” — speech by Rick Santorum.  I think that he is implying that we are on the route to executing people for religious beliefs.

Now, Rick is capable to putting together complete sentences but the stuff that he says seems to be nonsense.  75% of the US Citizens claim to be Christian.  We Americans of no religious belief and those of strong belief have both been quite successful in getting along for over 200 years.  The government has not been able to interfere with the churches and the churches have not been able to interfere with government.  We of no religious faith have been able to avoid supporting any sort of religious organization.   All of us do have to make up for the taxes that churches are exempted from.  That doesn’t seem very fair, but I live with it.

In recent years, the religious community, in my view, has been stepping over the line and, we,  the non-religious community have fought back.  We have indeed put up a fuss over people putting up religious symbols on taxpayer-owned land, religion trying to put undue religious pressure on US military personnel,  religion trying to force children to pray in public schools, etc.  We have simply requested that our Constitution be obeyed.  The courts, presumably with some judges being quite religious, have generally agreed.  Separation of church and state is really not a difficult concept.

Santorum talks about the French Revolution, so lets us do it too:  The French revolution was from 1789-1799.  Indeed, not only did it put the aristocratic class out of business, but it also put an end to religious privilege.  It was very much of a radical left-wing revolution and was based on equality, citizenship and inalienable rights.  It not only profoundly influenced France, but it also influenced all of Europe.  Indeed there was a lot of bloodshed and more upheavals even after the revolution.  It lasted many years.  Wiki has a very good and concise write-up about the revolution — and is where I got my information.

The Revolution caused a massive shift of power from the Roman Catholic Church to the state.  Prior to the revolution, the church was exempt from taxes while it could legally levy a tax on the people.  Needless to say, the Protestants living in France were not happy with that arrangement.

What does Rick want?  Does he really want us to go to a society where the church (presumably he means the Catholic Church) has some sort of legal role to play?  After the French Revolution all French were equals.  Before the revolution the Church had a say in the running of the country.  Do we want this?  Rick may, but I hope the rest of us don’t.

“For the 8 percent of people who didn’t have insurance, we said to them, if you can afford insurance, buy it yourself, and one of the plans out there, you can choose any plan.  There is no government plan, and if you don’t want to buy insurance, then you have to help pay of the cost of the state picking up your bill, because under federal law if someone doesn’t have insurance, then we have to care for them in the hospitals, give them free care.  So we said, no more, no more free riders.  We are insisting on personal responsibility.  Either get the insurance or help pay for your care.”

All of this is just as easily said about Obamacare.  Mitt Romney is in a sticky place.  Every time that he explains why Romneycare is not socialism — he also explains why Obamacare is not socialism.

The odd thing is that every time he has used his argument, he gets applause from his conservative audience.

In any case when the government steps in to do a task that is poorly or not at all done by private industry, there is someone that will say, “Socialism, socialism!”  Well, it isn’t.  Not according to any definition that I have ever read.

Things were simpler during the time of the Roman Empire, but even then both under Rome when it was a democracy and under Rome when it was ruled by an emperor, the government always did what the individuals could not do for themselves.  They built roads, they provided an army to defend the empire, they created money, they created laws so that everyone played by the same rules and, yes, they even had an HMO!

Now, the HMO might be a little difficult to understand so let’s take a look.  Just like today, there were people who believed in the gods  of the time (Zeus, Apollo, etc.), and those who didn’t.  There were doctors who did understand how to treat certain illnesses and understood the limits of their knowledge.

For example: Digitalis is a plant also known as Foxgloves.  It has been used in ancient times to treat heart failure and atrial fibrillation,  and is still used today for these purposes.  It works.  The ancient Romans used it.  It is not my purpose to discuss cardiac problems, other than to let you know that, in some ways, we have not come as far as we would like to believe.

So, just as today, the drugs worked for some and not for others.  What do a lot of people do when all treatments have failed?  They went to the temple and prayed to their god of choice.  They did it 4000 years ago, 2000 years ago, and they do it today (the success rate over the past 4000 years has been roughly the same).  So, the Temple was the healthcare unit of last resort.

What did the Romans do?  They built Temples.  Whenever they conquered a new territory they told the locals that they (the Romans) would build whatever temples were desired.  When you look at some of the Greek ruins today, if they were temples, and built at the time of the Roman occupation, then, in all likelihood they were financed by the Romans.  The only requirement was that the Romans would appoint the leader.

In at least one case it didn’t serve them very well.  The Romans appointed Caiaphas as the high priest of The Temple in Jerusalem.  He never got along very well with his fellow Jews.  Some of you probably know the story of the run-in between Caiaphas and a delusional Rabbi.

So, indeed even at that time, governments did feel that they had a duty to the ill.  The Romans, and before them, the Greeks built special “Healing Hospitals” which were essentially Temples.  They built public water supplies, and sanitation systems, roads, etc.  So, it is not at all unusual for the government to take over when individuals can’t do it on their own.  This practice goes back far before there were such words as “socialistic”, “communistic”, etc.  It has worked well so civilized nations continue the practice.

Currently, we, who like to believe that we are a civilized nation spend lots and lots on medical care, and our outcomes are not as good as most of the civilized world.  One would think that maybe we need to get together and try something as a nation.

Anyway, a few months ago the Mississippi legislator, having nothing else to do (zero unemployment, no poor people, Mississippi schools are the best, everyone is ecstatic about living in Mississippi, etc.) decided to pass a Personhood USA amendment to their constitution.  This would declare that a fertilized egg has exactly the same rights as an adult in Mississippi.  The people of Mississippi, I guess, decided that although the fertilized egg may have the same IQ as the average Mississippi law maker, it may not be a good law.  Before long fertilized eggs might want to marry dogs or cats, well, you know.

Blogger Bentley Owen in “The Friendly Atheist” reports:  Oklahoma took up the challenge.  First of all Senator Ralph Shortey presented a law to ban aborted fetuses from our food (well, you never know, better be safe than sorry). Next a “Personhood Act” sought to define human life as beginning at the moment of conception.  In the words of the bill, “the unborn child at every stage of development has all the rights, privileges, and immunities available to other persons, citizens, and residents of this state.”

All of this was a bit much for Senator Constance Johnson, a Democrat.  She proposed an “every sperm is sacred” amendment to the bill, which reads: “any action in which a man ejaculates or otherwise deposits semen anywhere but in a woman’s vagina shall be interpreted and construed as an action against an unborn child”.

So, if you are in Oklahoma, no masturbating, no wet dreams, no pulling out.  There must be a vagina present to catch your precious seed or YOU  ARE IN TROUBLE.

A pro choice legislator, Democrat Jim Wilson, attempted to add an amendment to the bill that would require the father of the child to be financially responsible for the woman’s health care, housing, transportation, and nourishment while she was pregnant.  Something like this would be helpful to the woman, so as expected, the Republican majority legislature rejected it.

Two Busses

In this particular case, as the website DPREVIEW.COM reported, the photographer of the top photo sued the photographer of the bottom photo because “the idea was stolen”.  I can’t imagine this happening in the states, but in the United Kingdom the judge ruled that the “intellectual creation” was stolen.

So, I guess that if you are visiting the UK and it is a grey day, you had better leave your camera in your hotel room.  If you ventured out and took your camera and there was a brightly colored object (especially a bus) in the picture you could be in trouble!  This could really put a chill on photographic creativity in the UK.

If you want to read more, just go to:

http://www.dpreview.com/news/2012/01/25/Imitated_Image_Copyright_Case

but you have the basics.

But, first of all, lets look at Planned Parenthood.  They indeed perform abortions — which troubles some.  They also do Breast Cancer Screenings, Procedures to Prevent Cervical Cancer, STD Testing,  Gonorrhea testing, etc.  The list goes on and you certainly can find all of their services by visiting their web site ( www.plannedparenthood.org ) .  From what I can tell, Planned Parenthood clients are mostly the poor.  Planned Parenthood is the only hope for many women to get good health advice and, yes, an abortion if they so desire.  It is a vital service.  Hence, in the continuing Republican war against women and the poor, Planned Parenthood is in their cross-hairs.  They were almost successful but the Susan G. Komen foundation reversed themselves and decided to continue the funding.  They did the right thing.  It is only too bad that they had to be pushed to do it.

The funding is not assured.  According to the Washington Post, Planned Parenthood is, once more, eligible.  It is not a given that they will get funded.  They have not put in an application for funding because they had been told that they were no longer eligible.  On the other hand, enough people gave donations, so that the amount that they may have lost from Komen has been made up.  We’ll have to see what happens next year.

dishonest and proud!

In April 2011  Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) said, in a speech against federal support for Planned Parenthood; 97% of what planned parenthood does is abortions.  His staff later said his assertion was “not intended to be a factual statement”.  So, it was intended to be a lie?  I am always happy to see a politician who is honest about lying.  That statement was so ridiculed that he had it removed from the Congressional Record.

Here is a factual statement: Planned Parenthood’s abortion care represents 3 percent of its medical services — 332,000 terminations out of a total of 11.4 million services provided in 2009  (from April 15, 2010 Washington Post).  Nearly all the care offered at Planned Parenthood health centers is preventive services and screenings, including contraception, testing for sexually transmitted infections, pap smears and breast exams. Title X funds cannot be used for abortion care at any time, for any reason. Federal Medicaid funds can be used to reimburse a provider for an abortion when the pregnancy would endanger the life of the woman or resulted from rape or incest.

Oddly, breast-cancer screening has always been a source of aggravation for the anti-choice people.  A lot of them still seem to feel that breast cancer can only be gotten by sexually active women who have gotten an abortion.  Rick Santorum has been saying that.  This is just plain nonsense, but there are a lot who believe it.  A lifelong virgin can get breast cancer, a married woman can get it, and a prostitute can get it.  It has no relationship to how a woman is carrying on below her waist.  There have been many studies, but no indication that an aborted pregnancy can increase the risk of breast cancer.

The Susan G. Komen foundation, might need to examine themselves a little bit.  If you go to the ComplementaryTherapies area of their website ( http://ww5.komen.org/BreastCancer/ComplementaryTherapies.html ) , you will see a long list of,  “Integrative and Complementary Therapies”.  I was surprised by some of the stuff that is included in the list.  I certainly see a number of items that have no known benefits toward fighting cancer.  Acupuncture? Prayer? Tai chi? GIVE ME A BREAK!  Our donations pay for this?  Silly me, I thought that I was donating to fight breast cancer.

Komen is dominated by a very conservative board as well as the director.  In 2008 and 2009 they spent a total of over $1 million dollars lobbying against the public option portion of the healthcare bill.  The CEO of Komen, Nancy Brinker has strong ties to George W Bush — which probably helps to explain her opposition to progressive policies.

Over the years Komen has associated themselves with some questionable promotions.  For example, according to Wiki, in 2005 Yoplait donated ten cents to Komen for each lid mailed in by consumers when postage to mail a letter cost 37 cents.  Why not just donate the 37 cents!

In 2009 the handgun maker Smith and Wesson announced a donation to Komen of the proceeds collected from the sale of the M&P9 JG pistol, with a “special pink grip”.  I wonder if Komen knows that bullets have been known to cause harm to living things.

Unfortunately, if a woman (actually men can get breast cancer as well) has invasive breast cancer the statistics are pretty dismal and, over the last 40 years have gotten worse.  According to a “Slate” article by Katherine Rich ( http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2010/10/sink_pink.single.html ) a woman now has a 1 in 8 chance of getting breast cancer in her lifetime.  In 1975 the figure was 1 in 11.  Yes, that is not a misprint, the odds have actually gotten worse.  There are those who have been pushing Komen to donate funds to study environmental causes, but Komen has never been interested.  Environmental pollution is not an item that conservatives are interested in studying.

According to the Slate article, Susan G. Komen promotes the importance of early mammograms, but research concludes that “for every 2000 women invited for screening throughout 10 years, one will have her life prolonged, and 10 healthy women, who would not have been diagnosed if there had not been screening, will be treated unnecessarily.”  Komen has strong ties to General Electric — which happens to be a major producer of breast x-ray machines.  It is possible that this influences their strong attitude in favor of mammograms.

So, what have I gathered from this research?  Susan G. Komen finally, after prodding, did the right thing.  As I stated above, some of their practices need to be examined to make sure that they are putting their money where it does the most good, and, if politics does enter into their decision process, they need to be honest about it.  They had a good reputation but I must admit that after reading about them, I am a bit cynical.

Planned Parenthood provides an extremely useful service.  I never realized how much until I researched for this blog.  Putting it out of business as the Republicans have tried to do will only hurt the poor and not affect the wealthy — which is what the current Republican Party is all about.

We could say that our constitution works because we Americans want it to work.  It depends on an educated population who watches the people they elect, and are quick to vote them out of office when it is no longer desirable to have them.  Our constitution, our form of government will fail when we fail as a people.

I personally wonder how much longer we will last as a nation when, in recent years, we have had people like George W Bush, Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann, and Herman Cain on the national scene.  These people are absolute clowns — yet one of them became our president, and two of them became governor of Texas.  There were enough Americans who thought that George W Bush was presidential material, and, after absolutely screwing the nation for four years, asked for more.  That doesn’t say much for us as a people, does it?

We have people who are dedicated to dumbing down science education in our schools – and it seems to me that they are fairly successful.  We have a congress composed of too many people who think, “My way or the highway”.  Compromise is not in their vocabulary.  We have a lot of people in pain.  Does our congress care?  Do they even know?  Their job seems to be secure.

It is easy to blame the “religious right” for our predicament.  Indeed it is partially their fault but it is our fault as well for being tolerant of religious excesses.  We have ministers speaking from the pulpit advocating for the candidate with the lowest IQ.  Why are they getting tax breaks!  Why?  Churches can accept public funding yet can still enforce their own bigotry.  If they are accepting funds to, say, teach low income children, the teachers that they hire should be hired on the basis of ability — not religion.

In the past our major enemies have come from the outside: the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor,  We beat them.  The Germans declared war on us.  We beat them.  The Soviets declared an economic war on us.  We beat them.  We were a United States and we fought, with dollars and arms — and won.

Now our enemy is within.  It may very well be that we have never had an enemy quite like this.  They call themselves Evangelical Christians but the use of the name Christian seems somehow wrong.  These are highly religious people, but their god is THE AMERICAN CORPORATION.  Corporation want tax breaks, no problem.  They want tax refunds, no problem.  They want to be able to take money from unsuspecting Americans to invest in bazaar schemes, no problem.  They want to get rid of pesky regulations, no problem.

These are people who are willing to let our pollution destroy us — because Big Corporations says that there is no problem.  These are people whose attitude toward the less fortunate is, “screw em”.  These are people who, rather than discuss, are willing to immediately commit troops.  We saw how well that worked out in Iraq.  These are people who are dedicated to keeping our youth ignorant by teaching mythology instead of science.  What do these evangelicals hope to gain?  I don’t have an answer.  It is hard for me to fathom that they really believe that an imaginary space man up in the clouds is going to reward them for this crap?

There is no question in my mind that the only loyalty they have is to a United States that they hope to create —  a theocracy with some sort of new god, The Corporation  — a few wealthy people and lots of economic slaves.

Now it seems that the evangelicals are stepping up their war on contraceptives.  This is part of their overall war on women.  A women spends some 30 years of her life either trying to get pregnant, or trying to NOT get pregnant.  Contraceptives are a good thing.  So, let’s get rid of them.  Let’s make sure that poor women can’t get abortions.  They don’t seem to understand or don’t want to understand that banning abortions only makes it more dangerous for a poor woman to get an abortion.  The rich will go to Canada or Europe for their abortion.  The poor will go see some quack who is very good with a coat hanger, in a cut-rate motel, and possibly bleed to death.

Representative Steve King (Republican – Iowa) has warned that birth control will make American a dying civilization.  What about a whole bunch of unwanted kids?  That should do wonders for our prison population.  Some Republicans have decried birth control as tantamount to abortion and signed on to legislation that would outlaw it!

Nothing upsets a conservative so much as that pesky first amendment indicating separation of church and state, or the idea of women being able to control their own reproductive health.

From 2000 to 2008 the Republicans have successfully proven that they cannot govern.  They can only destroy.  They tried, and were somewhat successful in damaging the Clinton presidency and they are trying to do the same to President Obama.  That is all they can do.  They are totally bereft of ideas.

When given the chance to govern they made an extreme mess of things for the United States and for the world.  Their social ideas are straight out of Iran, and their economic ideas are straight out of the 18th century, and their ideas of education are straight out of Bevis and Buthead.

I was watching “Face the Nation” this morning and Newt Gingrich was being interviewed.  Truly it is refreshing to watch someone who does seem to know what is happening in the world after being so disgusted for so long with the likes of Bachmann, Cain, and Perry.  In any case, he was asked about the happenings in Syria.  He indicated that he didn’t feel that there was need for American forces on the ground, but we should aid the rebels with covert operations — supplying guns, intelligence, etc., getting our allies involved, trying in every way possible to get Assad to move on, etc.

OK, sounds good to me.  Now, isn’t that exactly what we did do in Libya?  I don’t remember the reason anymore but Gingrich criticized President Obama for doing just that.  Further, since Gingrich has no more access to classified information than you our I do, how does he know that we are not covertly providing arms and intelligence support?  As far as getting our allies involved, it is clear that all the Arab nations are acting in a unified manner to get Assad to go away.  Also, clearly, the French, Germans and the British are involved — as well as the United States.  The rebels seem to have plenty of arms.  Presumably they are not being manufactured by rebel factories.  So it would appear to me that we are already doing exactly what Newt thinks we should be doing.

So, what is Newt’s complaint?