Yes. Yes They Are

Hit the Road!

I'm sure that when Scott Phillips took the job at Prattville East Memorial Christian Academy as athletic director he thought there might be some leeway on which church he decided to attend.

Nope.

The school’s headmaster, Scott Easley, said that it was expected that Phillips attend East Memorial Baptist Church, the church affiliated with the school, even though there was no written agreement that Phillips was to do so.

So much for the freedom to worship freely. And it's not like he was an atheist or anything.

It was only when Phillips took on the additional role of being the school’s athletic director in June 2012 that the church requirement was placed on him. Phillips and his family had been attending Church of the Highlands, which is where he and his family (wife and two children) were “growing spiritually”.

Phillips attending both churches for a year, but felt dishonest about doing so. “We would go to the 9 a.m. service at East Memorial, then head over to Montgomery for the 11 a.m. service at Church of the Highlands,” he said. “It was just not working at all.”

I sense the devil at work here! Everyone knows that there is only one way to worship Jesus and any other way is pure evil!!

It's simply amazing to me that in this day and age, we still have people that think they can tell their employees how they have to worship and where. But this would be the American Taliban at work, folks!

Very Cool

Not The One...EVER!

One concept I truly loathe in our culture is the idea of soul mates. Somewhere out there is "The One" who will complete your perfectly and will be your life long best friend as well as husband/wife. Truly, a pile of garbage and that's why I wholeheartedly agree with this piece recently forwarded to me by a friend.

For those of you who might not dig the overly religious tones, try to look past all that and simply focus on what she's saying. Her husband is not her soul mate and there really is no such animal. My wife is certainly not my soul mate. She's my lover, a great mom, a good friend, and we work well together as leaders of our family. But I've only known her for 17 years. I've been best friends with John Waxey for nearly twice that time. He's more of a soul mate to me than she is because he has known me since the seventh grade.

I don't know why we feel the need as a culture to place the care of our heart and soul into one person. What a load of crap. Life is a chorus, not a duet. There are many people along the way who are integral to how we develop and love. Why some people choose to limit themselves in such a way with this soul mate/the one garbage makes no sense to me whatsoever.

Time to Break the Cycle in Yemen

The United States has closed several embassies across the world in the last week, ostensibly because of a credible threat picked up by the NSA in "chatter."

The mass closures seem to be a smokescreen for the real threat, which appears to be in Yemen. We've had an extremely active program of drone strikes against al-Qaida in Yemen, but the terrorist network there has only gotten stronger. Why?

Gregory Johnsen, a Fulbright scholar and expert on Yemen has some insights:

I think this is one of the really frustrating things for the United States. It's because, as you point out, [the United States has] been carrying out several air and drone strikes. They have killed people like Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born cleric there in Yemen. They killed AQAP's number two.

And yet what we have seen over the past three-and-a-half years is that AQAP has gone from a group of about 200 to 300 people on Christmas Day 2009 to, according to the U.S. State Department, more than a few thousand fighters today.

Yes, despite intense attacks against al-Qaida in Yemen, the problem has only gotten worse. How can that be?

Well, I think one of the things that explains it is that the U.S. -- not all of these strikes that the U.S. carries out are successful. So there are some mistaken strikes. There are strikes that kill civilians. There are strikes that kill women and children.

And when you kill people in Yemen, these are people who have families. They have clans. And they have tribes. And what we're seeing is that the United States might target a particular individual because they see him as a member of al-Qaida. But what's happening on the ground is that he's being defended as a tribesman.

So you have people flowing into al-Qaida, not necessarily because they share the same ideology of al-Qaida, but just so that they can get revenge for their tribesman who has been killed in a drone or airstrike.

That is, the people in Yemen are mad at the United States because we're callously killing innocent bystanders. Many of the people attacking us in Yemen are driven by exactly the same motivations as Americans who want to stamp out al-Qaida in retribution for 9/11. Both sides feel they are completely justified in their actions because they can point to numerous instances of innocent people being killed.

This is the same trap that Arabs and Israelis have been caught in for the last 50-plus years. As long as we react to violent attacks with more violent attacks, we'll never break the cycle of violence.

The only "lesson" our drone strikes appear to teaching al-Qaida in Yemen is how to goad us into more attacks that produce collateral damage (our euphemism for the deaths of innocent people). Our actions only seem to be helping al-Qaida recruit more members. We're making the same mistakes we made in Iraq at the beginning of that war.

Yemen has a lot of problems. According to Johnsen its new president is weak. There's a separate rebellion in the north. There's a push for secession in the south. The economy is collapsing. People are having a hard time getting basic food and water. And then we throw our war on al-Qaida into the mix.

Our current strategy in Yemen is backfiring. It's is a recipe for a cycle of never-ending bloodshed. And that pretty much describes our involvement in all the countries in the Middle East. We've got to find some common cause with the people of Yemen and stop the arbitrary killings, or we're going to be fighting this nonsense forever.

Even More Fucking Awesome!

A Republican Case for Climate Action?

Yeah, you got that right.

There is no longer any credible scientific debate about the basic facts: our world continues to warm, with the last decade the hottest in modern records, and the deep ocean warming faster than the earth’s atmosphere. Sea level is rising. Arctic Sea ice is melting years faster than projected.

No longer any credible scientific debate...hey, don't be so sure about that! Everything is credible in the bubble!

Now about those market based solutions...

Acid rain diminishes each year, thanks to a pioneering, market-based emissions-trading system adopted under the first President Bush in 1990. And despite critics’ warnings, our economy has continued to grow.

No, it hasn't! Liars!! Liars!!! Our economy has collapsed and has been constantly failing!!! Pollution is not an externality!!!!

As administrators of the E.P.A under Presidents Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George Bush and George W. Bush, we held fast to common-sense conservative principles — protecting the health of the American people, working with the best technology available and trusting in the innovation of American business and in the market to find the best solutions for the least cost.

Bunch a fuckin' RINOS!!

The bubble is continuing its collapse...

So Fucking Awesome....

Abandoned!

It looks like the Tea Party is foaming at the mouth again.

But as many tea party stars seek re-election next year and Rubio considers a 2016 presidential run, conservative activists are finding themselves at a crossroads. Many of their standard-bearers have embraced more moderate positions on bedrock issues such as immigration and health care, broadening their appeal in swing states but dampening grass-roots passion. "They keep sticking their finger in the eyes of the guys who got them elected," said Ralph King, a co-founder of the Cleveland Tea Party Patriots. "A lot of people are feeling betrayed."

Liars!! Liars!!!

They are not pure of Constitution any longer. Apparently, there are quite a number of Americans who are not pure either.

The tea party also fell out of favor with many people. At its height after the 2010 elections, a CBS News poll found that 31 percent of those surveyed considered themselves tea party supporters. A May survey found just 24 percent identified with the movement.

This dwindling support was seen at a recent protest at Marco Rubio's Florida office where a half-dozen tea party protesters gathered under a tree in front of Rubio's Miami office, seeking shade as they denounced his support for an immigration overhaul. But the protest soon turned into more of a support group, with the four men and two women grousing to each other about how Rubio had turned into a "back-stabber," a "liar" and a "flip-flopper." Juan Fiol, a real estate broker who organized the protest, kept looking at his phone, waiting for calls from fellow tea party supporters that never came.

"It was supposed to be a big event," he said as he waved a large "Don't Tread on Me" flag.

I seem to recall some giggling over the small number of anti gun protests around the country over the last few months. I'm nearly certain there aren't as any smiles with the news of this.

Or of what this means for 2014.

So-Called "Life" in China

The New York Times has a story by one of its correspondents in China. It gives a personal account of what life is like in a country that regularly poisons its children with toxic additives in baby formula and fills the very air itself with poisons that take years off the lives of anyone who breathes it.

Essentially, China is like the US was before the creation of the FDA in 1906 during the administration of Theodore Roosevelt and the creation of the EPA during the Richard Nixon administration. It's important to note that it was Republicans who created these institutions because today's Republicans are doing everything they can to destroy them.

Before those agencies were created companies were able to put anything they damn well pleased into food and medicine, and they could dump any kind of poison into the air and water. The quality of the food and air was pretty much what we see in China today.

The problem with China is rampant corruption due to the tight links between government and industry. That same problem is happening in the United States with such tight links between elected officials and the PACs of giant corporations and billionaires. The very industries that the government regulates have been writing their own regulations.

Government and business should not be so closely aligned. As we've seen in this country a century ago and in China today, when business and government cozy up it inevitably leads to corruption and an inferior quality of life for the vast majority of citizens.

Republicans who keep telling us that government regulation is making us uncompetitive with China are blind to the misery and death that the Chinese suffer from due to that vaunted "competitive advantage."

Not An Outlier?

When I first heard about "libtard" hating Mark Kessler, the police chief of Gilberton, PA, I laughed and thought he was just an Alex Jones type who was far over the top and not really indicative of the gun rights community.

But the turnout of support for him after his 30 day suspension coupled with a serious look at his video rants have made me realize that he is not an outlier. In fact, this is the same shit we see on gun blogs all over the inter-webs (and, sadly, here in comments): adolescent behavior rooted in a deep paranoia and massive insecurity.

Honestly, these people need psychological help. They could start with an examination of their problems with authority which likely stem from troubled relationships with their parents.

American Medical Tourists Now Going to Europe

We've all heard about "medical tourism" in the past, where people go to third-world countries like India and Thailand to get cheap organ transplants and hip implants. But you gotta wonder how safe it is.

Well, it turns out that Americans go to Europe to be medical tourists as well. The New York Times has a story about Michael Shopenn, an American man who got a hip transplant at a private hospital in Belgium for a grand total of $13,660:

That price included not only a hip joint, made by Warsaw-based Zimmer Holdings, but also all doctors’ fees, operating room charges, crutches, medicine, a hospital room for five days, a week in rehab and a round-trip ticket from America.

The irony of this story is that the hip implant was made in that same town (Warsaw, Indiana) where Shopenn lives. To get the surgery done at home, with a special deal on the implant made possible by some friends who work in the medical implant business, would have cost $88,000. That special deal on the implant? $13,000 -- almost the cost of the entire procedure in Belgium.

The medical-industrial complex is gouging American consumers. We have inferior health outcomes compared to similar countries, yet pay two to 10 times as much as patients in other first-world countries pay for most procedures.

And this kind of medical ripoff is what the Republicans in the House have now voted 40 times to perpetuate.

Conservatives constantly berate American union workers for pricing themselves out of jobs by demanding decent working conditions and living wages. Why aren't they going after multimillionaire insurance and medical device company CEOs who are sabotaging the entire US economy by making American business uncompetitive with the rest of the world with the overhead of drastically overpriced medical care?

Good Point

Dustin Hoffman makes a good point in the video below about how women are still unfortunately perceived in our culture.

My Experience with the Jury System

About six years ago I had my one and only contact with the jury system. At that time I wrote the piece below, but never posted it. I came across it today while cleaning up my email. I think it shows the challenges that minorities face in the American legal system. Maybe it's different these days, but somehow, I doubt it.

I was recently called to jury duty in downtown Minneapolis at the Hennepin County District Court building. A panel of 24 prospective jurors, all of us white and middle-aged, was summoned to a courtroom. As we entered the prosecutor, the defense attorney and the defendant, an overweight young black man, rose.

The judge explained the charges (fifth-degree possession of meth) and began to ask the panel a number of questions: did we know the defendant, the lawyers, the witnesses in the case? Did we know people employed in law enforcement or the legal profession? Had we been victims of crime? Did we have experience with the justice system as defendants?

Two people were excused from service because they said they would give more credence to law enforcement personnel than other witnesses. A third was excused because he felt he had been incorrectly stopped in one of two DWI incidents.

The judge then asked us to return the next day, Thursday, reminding us not to talk about the case. We returned and were asked to wait in the hall outside the courtroom. After a few hours we were brought in and the attorneys began to ask the jurors questions in order, one by one. After 20 minutes and three jurors we finished for the day. The judge asked us to return the following Monday at 1:30.

Monday we returned to wait in the hallway for a few hours. We watched the lawyers, the defendant, police officers and other people enter and leave the courtroom. We didn't know what the delay was. Despite the admonitions of the judge, people began to talk about the case. People wondered if fifth-degree meth possession was a felony. They wondered why the defendant didn't just plead guilty to such a minor charge. They commented on the way the defendant dressed (in "pedal pushers"), and how he sauntered into the courtroom "like King Tut."

People complained about the delay, about missing work, about weekend plans (which hadn't been interfered with), about being forced into a third week of jury duty. They talked of other things: illnesses, books, church, family, the nastiness of politics, and whether the woman talking to a man in an office across the atrium was a parole officer. One man talked about hitchhiking in college and helping two girls reconnect the odometer cable they had disconnected to hide how far they had driven. Others talked about the drunken driving escapades of their youth, when kind-hearted cops just told them to get home safely. And about how that sort of thing doesn't happen any more.

At the end of the day the judge called us in. He apologized for the delay and asked us to return Tuesday at 9:30.

The next day we all knew what to expect: more waiting. I sat at the far end of the hall, next to the rumbling elevators. I couldn't hear the conversations taking place near the courtroom entrance.

After a couple of hours we were brought into the courtroom. The lawyers and defendant were absent -- they had made a deal. The judge again apologized for all the waiting and explained the delay: the defense had raised questions about the methodology used by the county to select jurors.

The judge had to take testimony from the Jury Office regarding how jurors are selected. Members of the jury pool for a specific case are selected at random from the jurors in the assembly room by a computer program, and then assigned juror numbers in random (non-alphabetic) order. Minorities, he was told, comprise 14% of the county's population. The juror selection system tries to achieve a 12.5% minority population. That's one person out of eight. We should have had three minority members on a 24-person panel. The defense wanted to know why we didn't.

The judge had to investigate where Hennepin County gets the names of the jurors. He said the Jury Office told him they came from voting records, drivers licenses and the Minnesota identification card system (for those who don't drive). From my one quarter of college statistics I compute that probability, based on the target 12.5% minority figure and 24 prospective jurors, at 4%.

In the end the judge ruled that the county's system was reasonable, and the trial would have to proceed with the jury pool on hand. And so the defendant decided to plead guilty. The judge explained other circumstances in the case (a felony warrant in another county and violation of parole) that figured into the defendant's decision.

The judge (who was Asian) thanked us and let us go.

We returned to the jury assembly room, where we were released from further service. As I left I scanned the potential jurors. I saw one black woman in the entire room of perhaps 100 people. Yet throughout my entire experience there I saw many people of color in the courthouse: judges, lawyers, guards, janitors, clerks, customers, passers-by on the street. There was no shortage of minorities in downtown Minneapolis.

Based on what the judge said, I don't think this particular defendant received unequal treatment. But I have to ask: how many defendants, faced with a jury packed with impatient, judgmental white faces, decide it's easier to just plead guilty? How many cases that go to trial have jurors who are mad about missing several days' pay? How many of these jurors vote out of spite to convict a defendant that they think should have just pleaded guilty to a silly misdemeanor drug charge instead of wasting everyone's time?

These aren't unfounded concerns. In his explanation the judge acknowledged the problem -- the term for it is "jury nullification."

My conclusion is that the jury selection system in Hennepin County,.though well-intentioned, isn't really working. To start off, the source for potential jurors isn't really very good: registered voters do not represent the general citizenry. Voters are overwhelmingly white and middle-aged or elderly. The drivers license and ID card rolls will similarly skew the jury pool, though not as much.

To be a juror you must be a US citizen, 18 or older, a resident of the county, physically able to serve, not on parole for a felony, and able to communicate in English. Potential jurors answer a questionnaire that asks about race, income, level of education, marital status, etc. All this is fine and good, but it's obviously not working.

The judge didn't go into how many people simply neglect to return the jury questionnaire. Perhaps minorities and younger people simply don't respond because they can't afford the time. You only get paid a $20 per diem and 27 cents a mile for travel. That just ain't gonna pay the bills.

If the population apparently underrepresented in the jury pool has legitimate reasons for not serving, something should be done to make it possible for them to participate.

It can't be stressed how important it is to have all kinds of people on juries, which is supposed to be comprised of your peers.

Throughout this experience the most astonishing thing to me was that five of the 24 prospective jurors had convictions on DWI charges. That is, more than 20% of these fine, upstanding white middle-aged citizens called to jury duty had broken the law and had driven drunk. Which in my book is far more serious than the fifth-degree meth possession the defendant pleaded guilty to. And it makes me wonder why the hell we're wasting all that jail space -- and money -- on people who've committed trivial drug crimes.

In a way this is strangely comforting. Apparently the only real difference between middle-aged white America and young black America is their choice of drug.

More "Bad" Economic News

US HOME PRICES RISE 12.2 PERCENT, BEST IN 6 YEARS

Home values are rising as more people are bidding on a scarce supply of houses for sale. Steady price increases, along with stable job gains and historically low mortgage rates, have in turn encouraged more Americans to buy homes.

And it continues...

Barack Obama's destruction of the economy continues....

S&P Tops 1,700 For 1st Time; Dow Also At Record High

US employers add 162K jobs as unemployment rate falls to 7.4 percent, lowest since Dec. 2008

Busting Obamacare Myths

Politico has a great piece up about the myths (see: lies) about the Affordable Care Act. It caught my eye because of a little tidbit that came up recently came up in comments about Indiana's rates rising by 72 percent.

Two states are playing starring roles in Republicans’ “Obamacare rate shock” warnings: Ohio, which said its health insurance rates for individuals will go up 88 percent, and Indiana, which estimated its individual rates will rise by 72 percent.

There’s just one problem: Both states’ insurance departments tell POLITICO that people’s premiums won’t necessarily go up by that much.

Neither state was actually talking about premiums — they were talking about the basic cost of providing health insurance.

Neither state tried to distinguish between the four different levels of Obamacare coverage. They just mashed all of the costs together, so a casual customer would have no sense that some plans will be cheaper than others.

What this clearly demonstrates is that when conservatives make an accusation, the rest of the country should just sit back and wait for it to implode. They don't have anything other than adolescent outbursts that are full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Fox News: Unfair and Unbalanced

When Fox News interviewed Reza Aslan they opened themselves up to a firestorm of ridicule. Aslan, author of Zealot, a scholarly biography of Jesus the man, is a Muslim. Lauren Green, the Fox anchor, insisted that a Muslim could not possibly write a book about Jesus. She and other right-wing critics of Aslan's book, are trying to sell the lie that Aslan is hiding the fact that he's a Muslim (he mentions this on page 2 of the book, which Green apparently did not read).

Apparently Fox thinks Aslan should wear a crescent armband everywhere he goes so that we can tell he's a Muslim. I guess the Persian name didn't clue them in.

Fox ignores the fact that Aslan had once converted to evangelical Christianity, and that his mother and his wife are Christians, and that his brother-in-law is a Christian pastor. Aslan is also a religious scholar with four degrees, one in the New Testament, and fluent in biblical Greek. So he obviously understands Christianity from the inside out. Fox also ignores the fact that Islam reveres Jesus as a holy figure. Many Muslims believe Jesus was born of virgin birth, that he will return near the day of judgment to restore justice and that he had miraculous powers to heal. But they don't believe he is one with God.

But that's true of many Christian sects, which hold views on Christ not all that different from Islam. Jehovah's Witnesses don't believe in the Trinity at all. Mormons don't believe that Jesus is God, they believe he is the son of god and one of many gods. The Unification Church, Christian Scientists and certain Pentecostals also reject the Trinity.

Saying that Aslan, a Muslim, cannot write a book about Jesus is like saying that a Christian Old Testament scholar cannot write a book about Moses. Because Moses was a Jew, and Jews have for centuries been persecuted, murdered and castigated as Christ-killers by all of Christendom. In the middle of the last century Christian Germans stood by and watched Hitler commit genocide against Jews, largely because of that antisemitic religious sentiment. The only reason fundamentalist Christians seem to tolerate Jews these day is that the return of the Jews to Jerusalem is a prerequisite for the End Times, when the Antichrist attacks Israel. Yes, Christians want to see Israel restored so that millions of Jews can be killed.

Monotheistic religions are sort of like releases of operating systems. Judaism is Monotheism 1.0. The Pharaoh Akhenaten's worship of the solar deity Aten was Monotheism 1.1. Christianity is Monotheism 2.0, with a little polytheism thrown in with the Trinity. Roman Catholicism is Monotheism 2.1, and Eastern Orthodoxy is Monotheism 2.2. Islam is Monotheism 3.0, with the polytheism taken out again. Protestantism is Monotheism 2.1.5, with the indulgences taken out. There are hundreds of branches of Christianity, with all sorts of heretical beliefs. Mormonism comes in at about Monotheism 2.1.9.1, with the reintroduction of polygamy and polytheism on a massive scale, then there's Monotheism 2.1.9.2, which is Mormonism with polygamy taken out again, but all the polytheism.

What's most revealing about the Fox interview with Aslan is the utter rejection of the very possibility of scholarly research. In the minds of the Fox anchors, editors, producers and viewers, it is only possible to write books that are either outright attacks against Jesus or a glowing hagiography praising him. In their minds a Muslim cannot write a fair biography about the life and times of the historical Jesus, just as a Democrat could not possibly write an objective biography of Ronald Reagan (even though millions of Democrats voted for Reagan).

This reveals everything you need to know about Fox News: their motto of "fair and balanced" is completely false. They don't believe it's ever possible to be objective about anything. And the interview with Aslan proves the point: Fox News cannot give a Muslim a fair interview: they're just interested in pushing a false narrative that hews to their preconceived notions that Muslims hate Christians.

This is why they and their viewers reject scientific research that disagrees with their political agenda. Because they are innately incapable of separating their own beliefs and prejudices from facts, they believe it is impossible for others to do so. They feel scientists are constantly attacking them by producing evidence that conservatives are wrong, when the scientists are just reporting the facts they're finding. You can tell this is so because so many scientists frequently report findings that show that their own conclusions were incorrect. Unlike conservatives, most scientists admit it when they're wrong.

This also shows why Fox News is so dangerous: they are constantly selling the false narrative that Christianity and Islam are at war. They want to take the immoral actions of a few Muslim terrorists and besmirch the honor and motives of all Muslims. This is what's so evil about the conservative worldview: everything is a battle to death and no one should be given any quarter.

It can be difficult to keep your beliefs from coloring your language when you write about something. But as long as a writer discloses his personal history and potential conflicts of interest, and includes citations to other works upon which the research is based -- which Aslan does -- the reader will be fully aware of the possible slant and take it into account.

But what's really funny is that all Fox News really did with that hatchet job was make Reza Aslan richer. Zealot had climbed to the #1 spot on Amazon.com by Sunday, and Random House has ordered another 50,000 copies be printed.