Good Words

“History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.” -Thomas Jefferson: in letter to Alexander von Humboldt, December 6, 1813

Good Words

“I am for freedom of religion and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another.” ~Thomas Jefferson, letter to Elbridge Gerry, January 26, 1799

How Many?

So, how many quotes are there about homosexuality in the Bible?

Well, according to CARM, there are four. Given that they are one of the many wings of the American Taliban, believers in Republican Jesus, and have a direct line to what God thinks, saying that the Bible "doesn't speak of homosexuality very often" they should know of what the speak, right? So, four....that's 4 mentions of homosexuality.

How many times does the Bible say women should be submissive to their husbands?

That would be 29 times.

So, it seems to me that God places more importance on women submitting to their husbands as they do to Christ than homosexuality. If a woman does not do this, what happens?

This would be a great example of how the Bible is just plain wrong. Women are not second class citizens and should be treated equally (as everyone else is) in the eyes of God. Considering that the Bible was written by (flawed) men at a time long before equal rights, we have to adjust the teachings of the Bible and look past antiquated notions of gender and sex.

Oh, yeah...and how many verses are there on caring for the poor?

Anywhere from 100 to 300, depending upon how specific you want to get.

Religious Bigotry Is Not Freedom

I've been putting up quotes from our founding fathers over the last couple of weeks to illustrate that they did not, in fact, believe that it was OK to be a religious bigot. Having religious freedom does not mean you also get to impede the rights of other people. Essentially, this is what the believers of Republican Jesus think is OK as they happily play the victim card, doing the very same thing they supposedly hate (not to mention employing the fallacies of misleading vividness and appeal to fear).

Yet this recent piece over at HuffPo shows that the atheists out there also get it wrong. The founding fathers were not atheists. They very much believed in God, the grand architect of the universe, and drew much of their inspiration for the core philosophy of this country from John Locke. Locke's Second Treatise of Government was the primary source from which Jefferson wrote The Declaration of Independence. It stated that individuals are born with the rights of life, liberty and property that come directly from our Creator. Jefferson changed "property" to "pursuit of happiness" but the spirit is still the same. Our freedom comes from God and atheists don't believe in God. So where does freedom come from in their eyes? Perhaps my atheist commenters can answer that question.

The quotes that I have been putting up illustrate this core belief. The people that believe in Republican Jesus have always had trouble understanding nuance (you are either with us or agin us!) so it's very likely that they would disagree with Lockian thought which holds that there is no such thing as original sin, for example. People are born as blank slates given only the rights I listed above. How they live their lives after that comes the choices they make with that freedom. Because of this, Locke was often accused of not being a "true Christian"...just like yours truly.

Yet he was clearly a true Christian because he loathed atheism and warned repeatedly that it could lead to chaos. In many ways, I agree with this philosophy and so did the founding fathers. The morality of Christ is what we base our laws upon in America. That doesn't necessarily makes us a Christian nation as many other religions have this same morality. Locke truly believed that reason and Christianity were intertwined and that fundamental human equality arose from this combination. Since all humans were created free, governments need the consent of the governed to make sure that everyone is treated equally under the law. In short, practicing religious bigotry is not freedom. No one has the right to treat people differently because their religion tell them it's ok. Claiming victimhood, as a few jack wagons have done who are refusing to serve gay people at their place of business, is yet another nauseating example of this. The people who are supportive of such folks have yet to tell me where the line is drawn. Would they be allowed to not serve women who were not submissive to their husbands as the Bible says? Or not serve black people because of racial purity beliefs? As of today, all I hear are crickets on these questions. Everyone is equal in the eyes of the law.

So, the quotes that I am putting from our founding fathers are examples of how religious zealots should never be allowed to hijack our government and curtail our freedom that comes directly from God. My beliefs about God coincide with those prevalent at the height of the Age of Enlightenment. The thinkers of the that time, many of whom were our founding fathers, scoffed at both religious zealots and atheists in the same breath. So do I. Our founding fathers sought to protect religion from government, no doubt a large problem as divine right of kings thinking was still quite prevalent at the time. God and Jesus were for everyone, not just those in the aristocracy. No one was closer to God than anyone else...just as the Bible says. That includes believers in Republican Jesus.

Isn't it ironic, though, that with the American Taliban running around, we now have to protect government from religion?

Good Words

“Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, then that of blindfolded fear.” ~Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787

Jefferson didn't believe in a limited god either.

Alternate Dimension?

Being a comic book and scifi fan, I often wonder how many other dimensions and realities exists that are parallel to our own. Are there alternate versions of myself or my family and friends? Today, I feel like I have slipped into an alternate dimension with these two headlines.

Pope Says Church Is ‘Obsessed’ With Gays, Abortion and Birth Control

Iranian New Year greetings leave Israelis perplexed, pleased

Seriously, WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON? Don't get me wrong...I'm happy but it's jarring after so much bull crap every day to see something as positive as both of these stories.

I supposed I could be a cynic and say the latter headline is just Iran trying to smooth over diplomatic relations with the United States and is representative of recent back channel communications over their nuclear weapons program. Still, though, even with that caveat it's quite shocking to hear something like that from an Iranian leader.

The Pope's comments certainly jibe with his overall philosophy of placing more importance on helping the poor and sick of the world rather than being inordinately preoccupied with sex. Certainly caring for the needy of the world is mentioned far more often in the Bible than homosexuality, abortion, and birth control so it's clear which is more important.

Sadly, I'm sure it won't be long now before the Pope is accused of not being a Christian.

Good Words

“In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. It is error alone that needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.” ~Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Horatio Spofford, 1814

Good Words

“I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state.” ~Thomas Jefferson, letter to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, 1802

What's the True Cost of an Unsafe Pain Killer? 150? 33,000? 78,000? Or Billions?

ProPublica published an article about how easy it is to overdose with acetaminophen, best known under the brand name Tylenol. If you take just 25% more, only 2 extra pills a day over a few days, you can cause liver damage. Higher overdoses can cause liver failure and death.

Accidental overdoses killed 1,567 people between 2001 and 2010, or about 150 people a year. In a given year, double that many die, but the other cases are either intentional or the intent is unclear.

Furthermore:

Acetaminophen overdose sends as many as 78,000 Americans to the emergency room annually and results in 33,000 hospitalizations a year, federal data shows. Acetaminophen is also the nation’s leading cause of acute liver failure, according to data from an ongoing study funded by the National Institutes for Health.

In addition:

In 2010, only 15 deaths were reported for the entire class of pain relievers, both prescription and over-the-counter, that includes ibuprofen, data from the CDC shows. 

And finally:

The London-based Lancet declared in a 1975 editorial that if [acetaminophen] “were discovered today it would not be approved” by British regulators. “It would certainly never be freely available without prescription. 

One major problem is that many drugs contain acetaminophen (such as Nyquil), so it becomes extremely easy for people with a pounding headache and a bad cold or the flu to overdose when they take Nyquil and Tylenol at the same time.

This allows us to draw three conclusions. 1) Anything containing acetaminophen (including Tylenol and Nyquil) should be more tightly controlled, probably prescription-only. 2) The warnings on Tylenol and Nyquil should be much more explicit and obvious: even a small overdose can send you to the hospital, especially in combination with alcohol. And 3) if you can tolerate safer pain relievers, you should use those preferentially.

Fine. The FDA should tell these drug companies to stop pretending their product is absolutely safe. Case closed.

But then I came to the comments at the end of the article. The first commenter said, basically, "Only 150 dead people? So what!" Other commenters chimed in with stuff like, "More people die from can opener accidents." Would they think that if their daughter just died because they just tried to soothe her suffering with a spoonful of medicine? Or she was forced to undergo months of waiting for a liver transplant?

The trolls intentionally obscure the real point of the article: 78,000 emergency room visits and 33,000 hospitalizations annually. If the average emergency room visit costs $1,283, that's $100,000,000. If the average hospital stay costs $15,734, that's another $519,000,000. Many victims of acetaminophen poisoning will suffer permanent liver damage, and some will require liver transplants, which means they'll spend their entire lives taking anti-rejection drugs. If the average liver transplant costs half a million dollars and the antirejection drugs cost $12,000 a year, acetaminophen poisoning will directly cost billions of dollars annually.

And then there are the indirect costs: some victims will suffer other debilitating medical problems as a result of liver failure, which will prevent them from working, or will require expensive special care. Some of these people will wind up on welfare and Medicaid. Parents and spouses will miss work to care of them.

The real cost of lax regulation of Tylenol is not just 150 dead people a year. It's billions and billions of dollars in medical costs, plus millions of hours of lost productivity, plus an incalculable amount of human suffering.

So, who are these guys who troll the web, who minimize other people's pain and defend the profits of giant corporations who market dangerous products? Are they paid shills? Rabid libertarians who think companies should be able to make money any way they can, and let everyone else clean up the mess while they laugh all the way to the bank? Conservatives who hate it when people sue corporations? Why do they leap to these companies' defense and obscure these drugs' true costs to society?

Don't they get that dangerous products hurt everyone, even conservatives and Republicans?  Republicans like Antonio Benedi, for example. Benedi was once an assistant to president George H. W. Bush. He took some Tylenol, as per the label, and it almost killed him. He had to get a liver transplant. He sued Tylenol's manufacturer and a jury awarded him $8.5 million.

I don't think people should sue companies at the drop of a hat. But these companies are selling a product that has been known to be dangerous for decades. They've tried to make it safer and have failed. They've even produced an antidote for acetaminophen poisoning. So they know exactly how dangerous it is. Yet they're using their economic and political clout to prevent the FDA from enacting additional safety measures. All the while still telling parents that Children's Tylenol is completely safe (when used as directed).


Medicine is supposed to make us better. Not poison and kill us.

Good Words

“We should begin by setting conscience free. When all men of all religions shall enjoy equal liberty, property, and an equal chance for honors and power we may expect that improvements will be made in the human character and the state of society.” ~John Adams, letter to Dr. Price, April 8, 1785

How Fucked Up?

When children throw a temper tantrum, they usually end up breaking something. Mom's dishes or dad's sports memorabilia isn't quite on the level of the US Economy.

Republicans are far more likely to oppose raising the debt limit than anyone else; they say don’t raise it by 61-25. Republicans, however, also believe overwhelmingly that not raising it would cause serious economic harm — by 66-27.

At least we now have confirmation as to just how fucked up the Right is there days.

Mutually Assured Destruction

Two men with concealed-carry weapon permits shot each other dead in Michigan in a road-rage incident. 

Witnesses tell WZZM 13 one driver was following another driver too closely. The first driver pulled into the Wonder Wand Car Wash parking lot and the other driver followed him into the lot.

Witnesses say the driver of the following car fired shots, and the first driver returned fire. Both drivers were shot and killed. Authorities say both men had licenses to carry concealed weapons.

These weapons sure did a bang-up job protecting these two guys. I bet this makes you feel so much safer.

Back in the day nuclear Armageddon loomed over us: the Mutually Assured Destruction of two gigantic nuclear arsenals pointing at each may have prevented World War III. There's no incentive to shoot first if you know that your entire country will be wiped out.

But the small-scale Mutually Assured Destruction of handguns provides no such protection. The mindset is that whoever shoots first wins. Obviously, this is a failed strategy: you need to shoot the other guy in the back proactively in order to really protect yourself.

Welcome to the nightmare world of the NRA.

First Star To The Right, Straight On Until Morning

This recent piece in the Times about Voyager I leaving our solar system filled me with melancholy. What happened to our country's spirit of exploration? One of my criticisms of the president is his continued belief that the space program should be privately funded. Honestly, I'm not sure I want to see a future that looks like the Aliens universe. I'd rather it be more like Star Trek.

Think about what Voyager will see as it leaves our solar system after having traveled 11.7 billion miles. It's simply mind boggling!

From the article...

Dr. Gurnett and his team have spent the past few months analyzing their data, trying to nail down whether what they were seeing was solar plasma or the plasma of interstellar space. Now they are certain it was the latter, and have even pinpointed a date for the crossing: Aug. 25, 2012.

I have to admit that part of me is wondering if some alien ship will snap it up and transmit a message back to us.

We Dodged a Bullet in 2008

Back in the days of the Soviet Union, there were two main Russian newspapers: Pravda ("Truth"), which was the official organ of the Communist Party, and Izvestiya ("News"), which was the official organ of the government.

These ironic names elicited a popular saying: "In Pravda there is no news, and in Izvestiya there is no truth."

Both of these publications still exist, though there are two versions of Pravda: one is still the Communist Party organ, and the other is just a Russian news website.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin published an article in the The New York Times arguing against an American strike on Syria to avenge gas attacks on Syrian civilians, Putin articulated many of the same arguments that most Americans already believed. Though Putin's article was obviously slanted, it was relatively tame, stating many obvious truths, and even co-opted conservative Republican language, ending with, "We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal."

John McCain apparently saw Putin's article as a direct slap in the face, as it completely gutted every argument McCain had made for attacking Syria. McCain complained bitterly about the Times letting Putin speak to the American people, saying that Russian citizens don't have the right to criticize Putin in their own country.

So a Russian website took McCain up on that, and his article has now appeared in Pravda.ru. McCain's column ripped Putin a new one. Where Putin's article was a reasoned argument against American intervention in Syria and a call for peaceful decommissioning of Syria's weapons of mass destruction, McCain's article was a petty, personal diatribe against Putin. It had nothing to do with Syria, and made no case whatsoever for an American strike against Assad. McCain had to personally attack Putin because the Russian president dared criticize McCain's entire ethos of attacking any country that he feels like.

In the end, the publication of McCain's article showed that his main argument was false: people can criticize Putin in Russia. McCain only made himself sound like a maniacal blowhard, compared to Putin's smooth arguments calling for peace and reasoned cooperation. Which is bad, because many of McCain's criticisms of Russia are dead on. His pettiness discredits himself and the arguments he is  trying to make.

And it turns out McCain published his article in the wrong Pravda: it appeared on the website Pravda.ru, not the Communist Party's Pravda. The editor of the Communist daily called Pravda.ru "Oklahoma City Pravda." Not that it really matters, because the Communist Party no longer controls the Russian government: Putin's party is called United Russia, and holds more than 50% of the seats in the Duma. It's basically a collection of plutocrats bent on self-enrichment, rather than Communist ideologues who use the Party apparatus for self-enrichment. A subtle, yet important, difference.

What we have here is another example of John McCain's overweaning egomania. The only reason McCain was ever considered a "maverick" is that he has always felt the need to exact revenge from anyone he felt wronged him, even erstwhile political allies. For example, George Bush unfairly trashed McCain in the presidential primaries in 2000, so McCain got his revenge by cosponsoring the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law.

And how seriously did McCain take the whole Syria debate in the first place? Apparently, not very: he was playing poker on his iPhone during the Foreign Relations committee meeting on Syria.

All this shows that the American people really got it right when they rejected John McCain in 2008. This guy is egotistical, unbalanced and monomaniacally bent on attacking any country that crosses him. As president McCain would have gotten us back into Iraq, and he would have started three more wars in Libya, Iran and Syria. In short, he is the last guy you would want to have the nuclear football.

At this point, even die-hard Republicans have to agree that we almost literally dodged a bullet when Obama beat McCain in 2008.

Good Words

“Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind.” ~John Adams, (“A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America” (1787-88))

Look To Your Right

If you look to your right, you will see that I have a new contact form on the site. This replaces the old email contact which got lost at the bottom of the page and I think disappeared for awhile when I went through my last redesign. I've had a few emails of late from people who don't want to comment but would like to send me information to share on the site if we so desire. Likely, there are others so this note will go directly to my email. Speaking of which...

I've had more than a few emails regarding my Neighborhood Mental Watch post from Tuesday. Interestingly, many of them told me that they already have community organizations like it in place where they live and have had them since Columbine. One email suggested that, rather than start a new organization, we should simply add it in to the already effective Neighborhood Watch program. After all the support George Zimmerman enjoyed in tracking suspicious characters, one would think that keeping an eye in mentally ill people with guns would spark a bipartisan bonanza of neighborhood vigilance, right?

It seems like it would be easier to take what the Lemmers did with their son and Pete Hoffmeister suggested we all do with troubled young men and fold it into the already existing USAonWatch program. Certainly, it would address the more common problem of gang violence in addition to shooting sprees. Our president sets a great example of what a community organizer can do so why not follow his lead?