The Stonecypher

Okay, Now I Finally “Get it”

2012-01-09T15:19:00.000-07:00

I had the U.S. military pegged all wrong. I thought the function of the military was to preserve our national security by maintaining sufficient firepower to repel any foreign invasion, and to keep a nuclear deterrent force that would assure the destruction of any foreign nuclear power that attacked us. But dumb me. Now I know that this picture is SO cold war. Threatened by defense budget cuts, Panetta and his Republican toadies have given us a true picture of our military strategy— which is indistinguishable from our foreign policy. We need 800 billion a year, not just to stay safe, but (in Panetta’s words) to “maintain our foreign commitments.” We have a military presence in 130 nations, which is 60% of all the nations on the planet. These are not Marines guarding an embassy. These are American troops and weapons meant to assure the security of foreign countries so they won’t need to waste their own money and resources to provide strong armies and weapons systems and military infrastructures of their own.

There’s a high school analogy for everything in life. I used to think that the United States was analogous to the high school bully who threatened others with force and intimidation to get his own way. That’s the wrong analogy. The United States is the smarmy but clueless rich kid who buys lunch for everyone else and bribes schoolmates with whatever it takes to make him popular. Now that I know my tax money goes to buy American popularity in the world community, I have a solution for the problems of Iran and North Korea. Why don’t we just ask them how much we need to pay them to be our friends?

Stupidity or Incompetence?

2012-01-07T07:28:00.001-07:00

Each time Obama talks about reducing spending on the U.S. military, the Republicans carry the water for the Pentagon and declare that this puts American safety in jeopardy. Only two logical underpinnings can explain the enormity of the Pentagon budget. Maybe the U.S. really DOESN’T need to spend 10 times more than any other nation on earth on its military in order to be as safe as everyone else, in which case our level of military spending is just plain stupid. Or else, we DO need to spend 10 times more in order to be safe, in which case our military is just plain incompetent. It’s one or the other.

Touched By the Fickle Finger of the Lord

2012-01-02T06:47:00.000-07:00

Timtim Tebow prayed yesterday, but the bloom seems to be off the rose in his relationship with Jesus— unless you consider a solitary field goal to be a gift from Heaven. True believers in Denver are saying that Tebow is so touched by righteousness that he can even make the playoffs by losing, but the truth is that The Big Tebowski might as well pack it in. Word leaking out from the odds makers in Las Vegas is that Jesus has discovered an NFL team composed of nothing but Saints.

Divided Loyalties

2011-12-31T06:54:00.000-07:00

The Chiefs come to Denver tomorrow. No, not elderly redskins in feathered headdresses, or the uniformed General officers who head all the U.S. military service branches. I’m talking here about the Kansas City football team. And this presents a dilemma in Heaven. As we all know, Jesus and “Timtim” Tebow have established a boyhood friendship. Problem is that Christ’s father, The Big Guy, feels a certain loyalty to the Chiefs fans based on the fact that Kansas and Missouri are the only states that teach creation in the schools. Who will prevail? Tune in tomorrow to find out.

Why the Gaps in His Resume?

2011-12-27T15:18:00.002-07:00

Poetic mythmaker, Clement C. Moore, borrowed a couple of ideas from Washington Irving and in 1822 he gave us a detailed picture of St. Nicholas— a picture complete with the red suit, the round belly, and the sleigh pulled by eight reindeer. In the 190 years since then, Madison Avenue mythmakers came to realize there was a big gap in the year starting with the day after Christmas and continuing until Thanksgiving when Santa Claus reappears, and over time they filled in the myth of Santa Claus with a home at the North Pole, a workshop manned by a toy-production labor force of elves, and a kindly wife named Mrs. Claus who looks remarkably like my own wife. The point is this— when you’re selling the idea of an iconic personality, you need to fill in all the details.

I offer the tale of Santa Claus to stand in contrast with the tale of Jesus Christ. If Advent and the time leading up to the nativity is meant to build anticipation for the coming of mankind’s Lord and Savior, then why is there this informational black hole starting the week after Christmas and continuing for three decades until Jesus shows up again as a full grown adult? By all accounts, the first Noel was witnessed by three wise men, as well as numerous shepherds and angels and heavenly hosts (whatever those are). And it’s obvious from the record that everybody at the nativity realized at the time that it was a big deal. So why didn’t anybody bother to track the growth of Jesus after His birth? Where are the hymns about the second Noel, or the third, or any others?

The Muslims in their Koran have a pretty detailed account of the life of Mohammed, and there aren’t the gaps in his story like there are with the life of Jesus. In Christianity, the four gospels do a fair job of doing the job they do, but they sure leave a lot unsaid. If the Son of God truly walked the earth in the midst of mankind two thousand years ago, then why was he so unremarkable for most of his life?

Blame It on the Birthday Party

2011-12-24T15:58:00.004-07:00

Timtim (a.k.a. "The Big Tebowski") threw four interceptions today (two of them came just nine seconds apart) on Denver’s way to a 40-14 blowout loss to Buffalo. After the game, Timtim received a text message from Jesus in the locker room. By way of an apology, the Lord and Savior of all mankind explained that He was so focused on last minute preparations for His big birthday party tonight that He totally forgot that the Broncos were playing on Saturday this week. He actually missed the game, which is why He wasn't guiding the hand of Timtim. At least that's the excuse that both of them are using. BTW, if you’re planning to attend the birthday party tonight, and you need to get a last minute birthday gift, Jesus did mention in his text message that He could always use a little more myrrh.

What Happened to the Gold?

2011-12-20T13:21:00.001-07:00

Once again confirming that Evangelical Christians have absolutely no sense of humor, the true believers have been in a snit since Saturday night when SNL did a skit with Jesus visiting Tim Tebow in the Broncos locker room. They feel that depicting Jesus in such a sports setting is inappropriate and offensive. Of course, these are the same people who think that incense, gold, and myrrh are totally rational baby gifts for a newborn infant. And by the way, just exactly what did Joseph and Mary do with that gold? Did they book themselves into a hotel or B&B to get their kid out of that pathetic manger? Did they use it to pay the tax levied by Herod? Did they put it into a trust fund until Jesus turned 18? Or did they just “blow it” like parents often do when they’re trusted with wealth that belongs to the next generation? This is one of many questions that I intend to ask a Heavenly host if I run into one during the Christmas season.

Alas— No Hoopla

2011-12-18T17:38:00.002-07:00

My wife and I went downtown last Thursday to join the celebration. The Iraq War had ended, and I remembered the iconic photo in Life magazine taken on the day World War II ended— that classic image of the sailor kissing the nurse. I missed the end of WWII (actually I didn’t exactly miss it, but I was only three years old at the time) so I wanted to experience all the celebration-of-victory hoopla for myself this time. Alas— no hoopla. Maybe because there was no actual victory. Covered incessantly by the media with “imbedded” camera crews, Iraq just turned out to be a really, REALLY expensive, long-running and mindless reality show in which viewers eventually lost interest, so that the show finally got canceled because of low ratings. It will be interesting to see what they come up with to fill that time slot.

Maybe If We Wait Long Enough

2011-12-07T08:59:00.000-07:00

The French and the Germans killed each other— big time— during the two World Wars, but now 65 years later they are working together to try to save the European Union from economic collapse. Yesterday, their two respective leaders appeared arm in arm, beaming in apparent harmony. So maybe if we wait 65 years, the Republicans and the Democrats will work together in harmony to try and save what’s left of The United States of America. Question is, by that time will anyone even care?

And Here's Why They Will Always Be The 99%

2011-11-26T09:02:00.004-07:00

“We are the 99%” So goes the battle cry from the “Occupy” movement, but there’s an uncomfortable reality of life that seems to be misunderstood by these folks. The equality which they seek is impossible in the modern world. If you took the total personal wealth in the United States, and distributed it equally so that every family in the nation had exactly the same net worth— within five or six years there would be a group at the very top who had accumulated hundreds of times as much as the average. The personnel makeup of this new upper tier would contain some new members (although most of them would be the same people who are at the top now) but for the most part, the winners and losers would be distributed almost exactly as they are now. Some people are simply more lucky, or more capable than others. Not necessarily better, and certainly not better in terms of their character, but simply more fortunate or more proficient in their ability to navigate the complexities of the modern economic world. Qualities like blind luck, raw intellect, common sense, self-motivation, ambition, personal discipline (this personal self-discipline is probably the most fundamental of all), and pure human likeability (sometimes called charisma)— these traits are not evenly distributed throughout the population, but these are the traits that help certain people rise to the top. And as every elementary school teacher can tell you, these traits can predict as early as fourth or fifth grade which students will go on to be the high-achievers in life.

The “Occupy” movement will die out because it’s nothing like the uprisings in the Arab Spring. Overthrowing an Arab tyrant is very different from trying to even out the economic inequalities of life.

It's All About Certainty

2011-11-23T09:59:00.001-07:00

According to the latest news accounts, the failure of the “Super Committee” came as a surprise to most Americans. Not me (see Dirty Little Truths About pentagon Funding 8-6-11) where I predicted the failure with absolute certainty. I really don’t have that many truly original ideas, but I do have a firm opinion which I’ve never seen echoed by any of the media pundits. I believe that ideology is not just about political viewpoints (and probably never was) but has, in fact, become the world’s newest religion. Wondering why Liberals and Conservatives can’t see eye to eye about the national budget is like wondering why Catholics and Buddhists don’t agree on the virginity of Mary or the divinity of her son. Religion has never been about compromise, and ideology isn’t moved to compromise either. Both are about the certainty of being correct in a single point of view, and to compromise would be to admit a possible flaw in that viewpoint which, in turn, would undermine the certainty. And here’s the key point. The certainty makes people feel good. Compromise doesn’t make people feel good. So I suppose that right about now, both factions of the Super Committee are feeling good about their toeing the line on behalf of their ideological comrades.

Some Thoughts About That "Big Footprint"

2011-11-17T09:28:00.003-07:00

Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta, warns that cutting the defense budget will reduce our navy to the smallest fleet since 1914, and will reduce our standing army to the smallest number of troops since 1940. Actually, that makes perfect sense. In 1914, we were ramping up our navy to face the looming threat of Germany, which had the most powerful navy on the high seas, including the world’s first operational fleet of submarines. Similarly, in 1940, we could see that we would soon face the German army as well as the Japanese. At that time, Germany had the world’s largest and most powerful military machine in the world, and Japan was number two in military might. Those situations required what West Point now refers to in buzzword-speak as a “big footprint.”

Fast forward to 2011. We are told that we still need a “big footprint” to fight the threat imposed by— drum roll, please— the Taliban. According to the Pentagon’s latest assessment, the number of Taliban currently in Afghanistan is about 10,000. Oh, and by the way, the Taliban has no navy. In fact, they have virtually no military infrastructure whatsoever. We’re not talking, here, about pre-war Germany or Japan. And we're most certainly not talking about the Cold War Soviet Union. The plain fact is that America maintains the world’s biggest military simply because it has become the main part of our national identity. It makes us feel good. Unfortunately, it doesn’t make us feel safe.

No Sainthood for Joe Paterno

2011-11-14T09:19:00.003-07:00

I wonder if Joe Paterno is a practicing Catholic? If so, this might help explain why he tolerated a known pedophile under his authority for eight years without notifying the law. Perhaps he was looking to the example set by John Paul II who tolerated numerous pedophiles for twenty-plus years without any negative personal consequences. But Penn. State University isn’t the Vatican, and Paterno should have known the difference. At Penn. State, Paterno was fired immediately for his lapse in leadership responsibility. If Paterno had been the Pope instead of a head football coach, he would now be a candidate for sainthood. In the Roman Catholic process of canonization, being an accessory to pedophilia is not something they hold against you.

How Buddhism Deals With Flooding

2011-11-03T09:10:00.005-06:00

Last March I blogged about the fact that there had been absolutely zero incidents of looting in Japan following the earthquake and tsunami. Now, another eight months have passed, and still there has been no looting whatsoever. In nearby Thailand, most of the entire country has been devastated by massive flooding for more than two weeks now, and the situation there makes New Orleans after Hurricane Katrine look like nothing more than a small scale water event. In contrast with the post-Katrina crime rampage in New Orleans, the incidence of crime and looting in Thailand has been zero. Ziltch. Notta. It's worth noting that both Japan and Thailand are Buddhist countries, and Buddhists believe that it's wrong to steal from their fellow man, so they refrain from looting even when there's a flood.

Unfortunately, such good deeds are not going to save the Buddhists from the everlasting fires of hell (if you listen to the Christian fundamentalists) because the Buddhists have not accepted Jesus into their hearts as their Lord and Savior.... and yada yada yada. "I am the way, and the truth, and the life, and there is no way to the Father but through me." (John 14:6). This narcissistic declaration from the self-proclaimed "Son of God" doesn't offer much heavenly hope to the Buddhist community.... unless, of course, the whole Jesus thing is just a pile of undiluted horseshit. In that case, the Buddhist practice of lawful behavior might have something going for it.

See also "Looting in Japan," March 13, 2011

...And We All Just Wink at One Another

2011-10-22T10:20:00.004-06:00

The world didn't end yesterday as Rev. Harold Camping had predicted, nor did it end in May when he made his previous prediction, nor has the world ended on any of the days predicted by Biblical scholars going back to the time when Abraham thought that killing his own son was a perfectly reasonable instruction from God. The end of the world is a certainty, but predicting the exact day of this destruction from biblical interpretation has proven to be an exercise with a 100% failure rate. In science, if a hypothesis or prediction fails 100% of the time, the scientists change the methodology. In religion, the believers always press onward with strengthened resolve. I personally believe that being wrong is how religious fundamentalists get their kicks since their adherence to flawed notions can be seen as a sign of their faith.

The more interesting question is why do mainstream media outlets give news coverage to these "end-of-the-world" predictions when the track record on these is as bad as it is? I like to think that news people in this scenario are like circus trainers who keep feeding the trained bear so the bear will keep doing tricks to entertain the public. The media keep covering the morons who predict the end of the world so the morons will keep making predictions, and all of us who are in on the joke get to wink at one another and enjoy the fact that some absurdity in life can be perfectly harmless entertainment.

Only In America

2011-10-20T09:27:00.002-06:00

There's a tourist store on the main street of Gatlinburg, Tennessee. It offers for sale large caliber handguns, assault rifles with oversize clips, salt water taffee, and 117 brands of hot sauce. The selection of taffee flavors and assault rifle configurations is as extensive as the hot sauce offerings. And this isn't the only store in Gatlinburg luring tourists in the door to buy this stuff. These stores share a main street with a Ripley's "Believe It Or Not" museum, a Cooter's "Dukes of Hazzard" bar-b-cue restaurant, a museum with several cars that once appeared in the movies (or so they say) and other eating establishments (none of them gourmet) and trinket emporiums too numerous to list in this short blog. By comparison, it makes the midway at Coney Island look like Manhattan's Fifth Avenue. And here's the thing. In our current depression economy, every store on this main street in Gatlinburg is bustling. Cheesy as hell, but positively thriving.

The lesson for American retail business is this. When setting your sights on something to appeal to American taste, aim as low as possible.

Free to Believe Anything

2011-09-26T10:05:00.005-06:00

Recent physics data coming from CERN seems to suggest that neutrinos might— I say MIGHT— travel faster than the speed of light. If true, this would prove Einstein wrong about a crucial fact of physics. Already, evangelical Christian fundamentalists are seizing on this to say that, “If Einstein is wrong about physics, then science can be wrong about evolution, too.” This would be amusing if it weren’t so pathetic. For evangelicals to try defending their thoughts about science based on their logic is like an illiterate non-reader critiquing the sentence structure of F Scott Fitzgerald and Norman Mailer.

Here’s the thing. If Einstein is found to be in error about the speed of light, the revision of his theory will come from scientific testing and computation. It won’t come from The Old Testament. And if evolution someday turned out to be a flawed notion (I guess anything is possible) then that revision as well would be based on science, not The Old Testament.

And here’s why this is important to all of us. In the United States we bend over backwards to accommodate the radical anti-science conservative beliefs of the evangelical Christian fundamentalists, because they compose a large voting block when it comes election time. If a large segment of the voting public consolidated themselves around a hardcore belief in Santa Claus, then the political forces would devote some happy talk to Santa Claus too. Meanwhile, China and India don’t burden themselves with The Old Testament or anti-science fundamentalism. In China, EVERY student in eighth grade is REQUIRED to begin their multi-year curriculum in physics, biology, and mathematics. In America, only 18% of high school students EVER study physics or biology at any time in their undergraduate public schooling.

In the United States, people are free to believe in The Old Testament, and they are free to not care a thing about science. They are also free to be poor and unemployed while they watch all the wealth and jobs go to China.

Consider the Math, Not the Morality

2011-09-22T16:58:00.001-06:00

Lots of blogging going on today about last night’s execution in Florida. As for me, I respect the Chinese because they practice capitalism with a death penalty. In China, not only would they quickly dispatch a scumbag for shooting a policeman, they would also extend that treatment to guys like Bernie Madoff and Ken Ley and Dick Fuld.

With seven billion people prowling about, we don’t need to worry about one life. We need to be concerned with behavior that threatens every life. One guy kills another guy. If that action is expanded to the extent that half the people do it, the human race comes to an end. I call it extinctionary morality. You ask yourself the simple question, “What happens if EVERYBODY does this certain behavior or action?” In this scenario, if the action or behavior in question threatens the human race, the perpetrator has to go away, sooner rather than later. It’s just plain nuts to look at any aspect of murder within the underpinning context that, “Not everybody does it.” Math trumps morality.

I Never Believe the Happy Talk

2011-09-20T15:54:00.002-06:00

A few readers of this blog know me personally, and I’ve been asked once or twice why I’m so cynical and contemptuous of institutions. My answer is— personal experience and my personal disappointment in the institutions I’ve come to know.

I grew up Catholic in a time when the public face of Catholicism was Bing Crosby in “The Bells of Saint Mary’s.” I was an altar boy, and I actually wanted to become a priest. Then, within my own lifetime, I saw the Catholic priesthood exposed as a kind of training ground for despicable pedophiles, while The Holy Mother Church worked behind the scenes to limit the PR damage and cover up the transgressions. I was disappointed and disillusioned.

I was young in America when the United States had half of the world’s GDP, and the so-called, “American Dream” was real, and was iconic throughout the world at that time. I remember an America that had just saved the world by winning World War II. Then, within my own lifetime, I’ve seen the United States fall below many of the other developed nations in the standard of living, and I watched the U.S. military transition from a supremely unbeatable fighting force to a bloated jobs program with high rates of on-the-job injuries and fatalities. I was, and am, disappointed and disillusioned.

To the extent that political parties can be considered institutions, they are so far beneath my contempt that I won’t even discuss them here. But more consistently disappointing than religions or nations are corporations. Who can forget Enron or Tyco or WorldCom or Lehman Brothers or Pfizer (did he just say Pfizer?) In the 1990s, Pfizer was named the “most admired” and “best managed” corporation in America. I owned some Pfizer stock when it seemed that everybody who didn’t own some of it wanted to own it. During the 1990s, Pfizer stock increased in price 10 fold in 10 years. Then, within the last twelve years, I’ve seen Pfizer become, arguably, the most dysfunctional company on the Fortune 500 (See Fortune Magazine, August 15, 2011), while Pfizer stock has languished dead flat for ten years at a price less than half of its value during the glory years. I’m disappointed and disillusioned.

From my personal experience, I believe that— just as surely as all living things eventually die— all big institutions inevitably crumble and fail if you watch them long enough. And you can, literally, watch them because their demise takes less than a single lifetime to unfold. Only 15 companies on the Fortune 500 were on that list 50 years ago. When you see an institution— any institution— at the peak of excellence, you can be pretty sure that the downhill slide has already inexorably started, and that’s why I never put my faith in any big institution. That’s why I never believe the happy talk.

Update. And Also a Question

2011-09-17T11:01:00.003-06:00

Here's an update. My post last Thursday said that public approval of the government was at 17%. That was accurate.... then. Things change. A new CBS / New York Times poll today shows public approval of the government at 12%. This raises the question, "Who will be the last person in the country to approve of the government?"

What Would John Cameron Swayze Say About This?

2011-09-15T08:02:00.003-06:00

The United States of America, 2011. After ten years of war in Afghanistan, the U.S. military (funded with 700 billion dollars a year of national treasure) is hoping to get out of the war with a draw. Victory is a word that’s never uttered because it’s so far removed from reality. The enemy for ten years has been a ragtag bunch of third world insurgents numbering less than 70,000— with no munitions production facilities, no industrial manufacturing capability, no heavy armament, no air force, no navy, no transportation infrastructure, no advanced technology, and absolutely no money flowing into its coffers. In fact, no coffers. Think David and Goliath with Goliath backed by astronomical amounts of American taxpayer money.

Back home, in the second week of September, 2011, the leading Republican candidate for the upcoming presidential election is found to have mandated vaccination of all 16 year-old girls in Texas against cervical cancer just to do the bidding of the vaccine maker, Merck, in return for substantial corporate monetary contributions. Democrat politics is equally inept. A solar panel start-up company has just declared bankruptcy after squandering half-a-billion dollars of “stimulus” money pumped in by the Obama administration. Polls show public approval of government is at 17%. “Official” unemployment stands at 9.2%, but the real unemployment rate is twice that high. Housing foreclosures have never been more numerous in all the nation’s history. U.S. corporations and small businesses are holding more cash than ever, but say they won’t invest in jobs or infrastructure upgrades until they can have their faith in government restored. Nobody expects that to happen anytime soon. And 84% of total American wealth is owned by the top 20% of wealthy Americans.

If John Cameron Swayze had reported news like this back in 1954, the American public at that time would have overthrown the U.S. government, even if it meant flirting with Soviet Communism.

What Is It With American Voters and Texas Politicians?

2011-09-09T16:33:00.001-06:00

What is it with the American electorate and Texas politicians? Must be masochism. What else can explain it? Lyndon Johnson— now there was a real piece of work. Granted, he kind of slipped in under the radar as the result of a tragic assassination, and he waited until he was rightfully elected president two years later before he gave us the full-scale version of war in Vietnam, as well as Medicare here at home. That worked out so well that the other party (Republican) decided to tap into the wellspring of Texas politics when they came up with their pick for the election of 2000. And damned if their guy, George W. Bush, didn’t also slip in under the radar, this time as the result of a Supreme Court decision. His legacy to us was a totally needless war in Iraq and the worst economic situation since the 1930s here at home. Score another one for the Texans.

Now it’s Rick Perry’s turn. This guy combines the “real Texan” shit-kickin’ authenticity of LBJ with the “deer in the headlights” cluelessness of George W. Bush. His promise to us is the elimination of Social Security, creationism in the school science classes, and the rejection of pretty much everything that smacks of science or intellect. He hasn’t said yet where he plans to start his own war to take the place of Iraq.

How many times do we need to go to the well in Texas before we learn that the stuff coming out of there isn’t fit to drink?

It’s All About Bringing Down the Anti-Christ

2011-09-04T07:33:00.002-06:00

Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, has a personal open letter that’s being passed around the Internet as an attachment to people’s e-mail messages, and if it comes your way it’s DEFINITELY worth a read. Schultz, along with 100 other business leaders, have taken it upon themselves to plead with Congress to stop what they’re doing and to work together to restore the American Dream which pretty much everybody knows is dead. The letter from Schultz and its message is praiseworthy— but utterly useless. Here’s why.

If you personally know an evangelical fundamentalist who believes that the earth is less than 5000 years old, and that 4000 years ago people (created by God) were riding around on dinosaurs— if you personally know such a believer, then you also probably know that you will never, EVER get such a person to change that belief. Disagreeing with them, and giving them scientific evidence to disprove their notion only solidifies their position. Disconfirmation always strengthens belief in the religious mind. What Schultz and his 100 friends don’t seem to realize is that the new movement within the Republican Party— including but not limited to the Tea Party— is not so much a political force as it is a quasi-religion. You can’t plead with them to work for the betterment of the nation because, in their religious-type belief system, that’s exactly what they’re doing now. What everybody seems to be missing is the true extent of the vitriolic focus of hatred on Obama. Throughout American history, every president has earned some measure of contempt from his political opponents, but until 2008, The President of the United States was never believed to be the anti-Christ. But such has been the case for three years now. You don’t get a believer with a Christian religious mindset to back off on his or her opposition to the anti-Christ just for the trivial notion of restoring the American Dream.

It will only get worse. Rick Perry is the one person who truly understands the situation for exactly what it is, and he will probably be the next president. He kicked-off his presidential quest with a pep rally in a giant stadium that drew over 30,000 hard core Christian believers. This was pure genius. It’s exactly what a person would do as the opening salvo in a war against the anti-Christ.

The problem with the Book of Revelations is that it doesn’t explain all that much about what to do AFTER you defeat the anti-Christ. Come January of 2013, Perry will have to figure that out. Maybe then, he and his followers will start to care about America.

The Tribes Are Bigger Now

2011-09-01T06:47:00.001-06:00

Much of the chaos and uncertainty in Afghanistan and Iraq (not to mention Libya) has been explained over the years by tribalism, but I happen to think that tribalism also explains the chaos and uncertainty in the United States of America. Our tribes are just bigger and more formalized. When you get right down to it, what are religions and political parties and giant corporations other than just big inflexible tribes? This isn’t a new idea. Other people, smarter than me, have come to this notion before I did. I just needed a little more time to mull it over and get on board.

How else can you explain the way that old time Lutherans see things so differently from evangelical fundamentalists, even though both groups believe in the same Jesus? How else can you rationalize the vitriolic gap between liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans even though both groups claim to have the nation’s best interests at heart? And most amazing of all, how else can you understand the positive passion and loyalty that some employees invest in their company or corporation, even though that same company looks at the employee like a totally disposable commodity to be eliminated the minute there’s a need to adjust the bottom line? People believe in their tribe simply because it’s THEIR tribe. There is no right or wrong way of seeing things in the big picture because the definitions of right and wrong are set by the tribe, and the tribal members believe that the tribe is all there is. There is no “big picture.”

One last thing. People are free to kiss off a religion, or switch political affiliations, or to give up on their company and abandon misplaced loyalty without actually quitting the job, but they almost never do it because tribal members don’t see themselves as being free to quit or switch or give up on the tribe. 10,000 years of human cultural evolution, and it’s come down to this— the tribes are just bigger now.

I’m Disappointed with the Outcome of Hurricane Irene

2011-08-28T17:49:00.002-06:00

Here’s a question. Republicans don’t believe climatologists when explanations are forthcoming about the scientific fact of global warming, but do they believe meteorologists when a warning is given to stay inside during a hurricane? After all, meteorologists are scientists, and every good Republican knows that scientists are just elitists doing the work of liberal Democrats. So how did Republicans respond to warnings about Hurricane Irene?

And speaking of Hurricane Irene, I need to say that I’m disappointed with the outcome. Not the lower than predicted winds in NYC, or the downgrade of Irene from a category 2 to a mere tropical storm. No… I’m exceedingly happy with everything that made Irene less destructive than what was predicted. But the name, Irene, starts with the letter, I, so I knew that the next “big one” would start with the letter, J, and I was really hoping to see Hurricane Jesus. It would be galactically satisfying (for me, at least) to see a hurricane named after the guy who causes hurricanes. Jesus is Lord and has dominion over everything— right? So by definition, that includes hurricanes.

But alas, the newest tropical depression is called, Jose. Maybe next year.

The Civil War Won’t Last That Long

2011-08-25T13:36:00.004-06:00

This is personal, so I’ll just say it flat out. “I don’t love this country enough to try and save it from the new angry and resentful breed of Republicans”. I haven’t been what you’d call, “a patriot” since the 1950s, and seeing as how the American public has some input into the fate of the country, I feel that The United States pretty much deserves what it gets. And what America will probably get in 2012 is an all-Republican government with a Republican president, but this is better than the alternative.

The alternative isn’t Obama. He wouldn’t last that long if he was re-elected. The alternative to Republicanism is civil war. No president in United States history has been as aggressively hated as Obama, and it started the day after his inauguration when conservatives across America went out and stocked-up on hand guns and assault rifles and ammunition. To their credit, they haven’t opened fire just yet.... outside of Arizona, but if they can’t get their way at the polls next year— if Obama beats their guy or gal in the election, then In Rick Perry’s popular shit-kicker vernacular, “they’ll get ugly on him”. No way in hell would they peacefully tolerate another four years.

I could actually vote Republican in 2012, if I could vote for Chris Christie or Jon Huntsman, but Christie is too intelligent to even want the job of president, and Huntsman is too intelligent to get the nomination from the party of Perry, Palin, and Bachmann. Most Republicans now seem to value only angry fundamentalism and extreme conservatism, which means that their candidate will be an extreme conservative fundamentalist, and almost certainly angry and ignorant as well. So I won’t be voting Republican. I will vote again for Obama as I did three years ago, but this time I really don’t want him to win. I don’t want the street riots to start. Not that the civil war would last that long. It would be over in a day or two. The Republicans have all the guns. And I wouldn’t be anywhere in sight. I don’t love this country enough to resist angry Republicans when they have guns in their hands.

What Was So Different About the 1930s?

2011-08-21T07:02:00.008-06:00

Throughout The Great Depression of the 1930s, the national unemployment rate never rose above 30%, and I wondered what was on the mind of the 70% who still had jobs. With very little research, it was easy to find the answer— optimism for the future. An unbounded and ubiquitous optimism pervaded America, and there was a kind of inner confidence that America would soon lead the world to prosperity. This world of tomorrow that everyone imagined even had a name— The March of Progress.

The March of Progress was a collection of anticipated marvels, prophesied in 1939, that were realistically expected to exist in the year 1964: buildings taller than the Empire State Building constructed with lavish use of aluminum and glass, a multi-lane highway system that would allow a driver to travel coast-to-coast without stopping for anything but food and gasoline, the cautious but feasible use of atomic energy for power production, ubiquitous plastics, television sets in every home supported by a broadcast infrastructure, nylon stockings for women, rockets capable of orbiting above earth's atmosphere, radio telephones for occasional use in automobiles, aircraft capable of carrying 200 passengers at 400 mph, antibiotics, warships an eighth of a mile long, prefabricated low-cost houses, and fresh fruits and vegetables available at any time of year. And when 1964 came to pass, every one of these wonders had become reality. Even in 1939, for those in the depths of poverty, technology and innovation promised a better future.

In 2011, there’s a new March of Progress that’s become reality: transcontinental bullet trains capable of speeds in excess of 250 mph, skyscrapers approaching heights of a quarter mile, and supercomputers capable of a trillion computations per second. The thing is, these technological wonders all exist in China and Japan. The U.S.A. is behind Asia in this new, modern-day March of Progress, and as if to put an exclamation point behind that reality, the United States just ended… ENDED its manned space launch capability. We do, however, still have the world’s biggest and best military, although we can no longer win a war.

So what’s on the mind of Americans today, the 90% who still have jobs, and who aren’t yet brain dead from incessant ideologically-biased political happy talk? What do we have to match the optimism of the 1930s? What future can we predict with confidence? Here’s a partial list: the emerging power of radical fundamentalism in both Islam and Christianity, diminishing effectiveness of antibiotics, identity theft, man-made climate changes and rising sea levels, extermination of the world’s supply of edible fish, a series of global economic meltdowns, depletion of natural resources (especially fresh water), escalating and unstoppable rates of Internet crime with pervasive hacking, and corruption in seats of power… all problems with their origins in the growth of population and the disparity of living conditions across the planet. And then there’s a secondary but related set of problems: most countries including the United States are now becoming ungovernable, and most large corporations are unmanageable, and most religions are unreasonable. The optimism of The Great Depression is something we’ll never see again.

A Doomsday Feedback Loop

2011-08-16T13:21:00.004-06:00

The men who signed the Declaration of Independence initially reserved the vote for white male property owners, and while some of them might have harbored their own sexism or racism, the majority of the Founding Fathers were simply acting on the assumption that only white male property owners could inform themselves sufficiently to vote intelligently. Slaves and women (for the most part) didn’t read newspapers. A slave master was in the position to tell a slave how to think politically, and the same was true for husbands and wives, and only property owners were deemed to have the kind of stake in the governmental system that would motivate them to stay abreast of national affairs. The intent was always to have our democracy guided by an educated, well-informed electorate.

Fast forward to the 21st century, and a focus-tested world where opinions about pretty much everything— including politics— are shaped by what appears on electronic screens of every conceivable shape and size. When it’s time to vote, the 50% of the eligible voters who choose to cast their ballot will do so based on what they’ve been told by the heads that appear on their screens. For the most part, this means that their vote will mirror the opinion of someone else (probably a politician), and will most likely have little to do with their own understanding of the issues. The system has worked this way for at least half a century, ever since the advent of television, and it wasn’t previously much of a deal breaker because the elected politicians, once in office, had access to the kind of information necessary to govern intelligently. Quite simply, a public vote cast in ignorance didn’t guarantee ignorant governance.

Now that’s changed. The politicians, especially Republicans, and especially Michele Bachmann in particular, are perfectly candid in saying that they shape their opinions and voting positions based on what “the voters” tell them. And, of course, the voters tell the politicians only what the politicians have told the voters. In the sciences of chemistry and physics and biology, this is known as a feedback loop, and it doesn’t allow for much, if any, variance based on new input.

The current economic deterioration of America is the biggest single problem we’ve ever faced. Our fate is now being guided by “the people” who know nothing about the staggering complexities of tweaking the largest economy on earth, and this guidance is channeled through elected representatives who know little more than “the people” they claim to listen to. These forces are reinforcing each other in a feedback loop with almost no input from economists or any kind of outside experts who might actually know something about money and finance and business and international banking.

The thing about feedback loops is that they always magnify any imperfection, and— lacking a correction mechanism— when left alone for sufficient time, each and every component of the loop will eventually self destruct.

The Perfect Icon for Our Times

2011-08-10T08:57:00.003-06:00

Hats off to Newsweek Magazine for its cover photograph of the wide-eyed, looney-looking Michele Bachmann. More than any other single visual image in the last few years, this Pulitzer-worthy photo captures every nuance of America’s flirtation with true collective mental illness. Whether or not it was Newsweek’s intention, the magazine has given us the perfect icon for our times. We're so messed up now that we can't even do rebellion in a rational way.

Looking back to the early years of Vietnam, governmental failures at that time coincided with the Civil Rights movement, and the summer of love in San Francisco, followed by Woodstock two years later. Back then, we knew how to rebel against a constrictive and dysfunctional Federal government by celebrating our own version of freedom. Our icon then was Bob Dylan who wasn’t electrically mesmerizing in any wide-eyed way. He was just simply brilliant in a thoughtful way. Fast forward 40 years. After ten years of Iraq and Afghanistan and Democrats and Republicans, our newest version of rebellion takes the form of the Tea Party, with Michele Bachmann as their standard bearer. They gravitated to her because they thought Sarah Palin was too intellectual. You know that a nation is crazy when the rebellion against the national insanity is crazier than the national insanity itself.

Getting a Little Sick of Seal Team Six

2011-08-09T10:37:00.000-06:00

As a quick follow-up to my previous post about the Pentagon, and about last weekend’s loss of 30 American servicemen in the helicopter shoot down, I just need to say that I’m getting sick of hearing about Seal Team Six. I feel sad for the families that have lost a son or daughter who joined the National Guard and died later in Iraq or Afghanistan, and then watched as the nation pretty much ignored the sacrifice because it wasn’t sufficiently “spectacular.” I guess that if you’re in the National Guard, you’re not “bad ass” enough to impress the media. The Seal Team Six members might be the best warriors in our military, but their lives are not the most important lives. One of the things that made America great during World War II was that our nation honored every single sacrifice as though it were equal to every other sacrifice.

Dirty Little Truths About Pentagon Funding

2011-08-06T19:32:00.002-06:00

When the twelve-member super committee fails to cut another 1.5 trillion later this year, then presumably automatic cuts in Medicare and Defense will kick in. To preempt the Defense part of that, Secretary Leon Panetta warned us two days ago that cuts in Defense would threaten our national security. Now, it’s universally known that the U.S. spends more on its military than all the rest of the world combined spends on their respective armies and navies and such. No other nation on the planet spends even a fifth of what we spend militarily. So here’s my naïve question for today. How come all these other nations— clearly underfunded by Panetta’s standards— are not being overtaken by aggressors intent on stripping away their security and freedom? How do other countries manage to protect themselves on the cheap? And if they can do it, why can’t we do it?

The answer to that question is in another dirty little secret (America is filled with dirty little secrets). The United States military is NOT primarily about protecting our security or maintaining our freedom. That’s just patriotic feel-good nonsense. It’s all about jobs. The Pentagon is our nation’s biggest jobs program. Manufacturing all those bullets and bombs, as well as the fancy equipment to deliver those commodities to a target— all of this keeps people employed. A lot of people. And here’s the fascinating subtlety. It doesn’t matter whether the U.S. wins its wars or loses them because the consumption of bullets and bombs stays the same in either scenario, just as long as the war doesn’t end. Actually, either an outright victory or defeat is negative for jobs because then the consumption slows down or ends, and there’s a limit to how much you can stockpile. This is why the U.S. is always at war in at least one foreign country, and why the wars go on so long. C’mon, does anyone in their right mind believe the United States wages a war for ten years because it lacks the firepower necessary to take down an enemy in less than a decade?

And here’s another subtlety. A war can come to a stop (a big job killer) if our enemy runs out of their bullets or bombs, so over the years an ingenious system has evolved that allows our own bullets and bombs to find their way into channels that supply the people we are fighting. This effectively doubles the consumption. Did anyone out there think that al Qaeda or the Taliban had their own munitions plants? Of course not.

The only drawback to the entire operation is the death and injury of the troops we hire to do the fighting. But it’s surprising how little most Americans care about this. We never see the protests that were so common in the Vietnam era. Yesterday, 30 Americans were killed in a single incident, but next week people will forget it. The 30 who died were in a helicopter brought down by an RPG in Taliban hands. We’ll never know if that RPG was “made in America,” because the Pentagon will lie about it if they learn the truth.

“The Rose Tattoo,” The Legion of Decency, and Divine Retribution

2011-08-03T09:39:00.003-06:00

This week, Denver is hosting The Supreme International Convention of the Knights of Columbus, and during my morning walk while waiting for the light to change at a downtown street corner, I found myself surrounded by a dozen or more “knights.” And in their conversation I heard three words which I hadn’t heard for 40 years, “Legion of Decency.” If you’re not Catholic, or if you are Catholic but are younger than 30, you might not know about the Legion of Decency. A quick search on Wikipedia can pretty much fill you in, so this blog isn’t so much a factual explanation of the Legion as it is a personal kind of diary entry about my own brush with the Legion of Decency.

It was 1955. I was 13 and I was living with my grandmother (a staunchly compliant old-time Catholic) who raised me during my teenage years. A new film opened at the movie theater, “The Rose Tattoo,” starring my favorite swashbuckler, Burt Lancaster. I figured, given the title and the lead actor, that it was just another adventuresome pirate movie about a buccaneer with a tattoo, so I made plans to go see the film. And I told my grandmother. Big mistake. She sat me down and began to explain that “The Rose Tattoo” had been condemned by the Legion of Decency (actually it wasn’t), and it was too “suggestive” for me to see it. In another minute or so, when I failed to understand all the implications of the word, “suggestive,” she had to break down and tell me it was a “dirty” movie. One thing led to another, and finally she had to tell me that it was “dirty” in a sexual way. She said that the Legion of Decency had determined that this movie would put filthy ideas in the head of anyone who watched it. So I asked the key question, “How did they know this?” She said they just knew it. Then I asked the key follow-up question, “Had they watched it?” She said that most likely they had. Then I asked the question that almost got me banished from her house. “If the guys in the Legion of Decency had watched it, how come it didn’t put filthy ideas in THEIR heads?”

In later years I came to know the answer to that question. The Legion of Decency was made up mostly of priests and bishops, so the only fictional character in literature or film who was likely to fill them with lustful sexual craving was Oliver Twist. In their own dysfunctional way, they were immune to the normal heterosexual allure of women, so they could view films like “The Rose Tattoo” with a certain amount of detachment.

That’s not quite the end of the story. The Knights of Columbus got me to thinking. I never got to see “The Rose Tattoo” when I was 13, and then I forgot about it until day before yesterday. So Monday night I downloaded it on Netflix and gave it a view. Good movie. I think it won three Oscars. I thought I had escaped the “filthy ideas” curse of the Legion of Decency, but then last night the sky over Denver lit up with a tremendous lightening storm. A strong bolt of electricity struck the earth about a block away, and I was sure that it was divine retribution for what I had done, especially since the thunderbolt missed me by a good 600 yards which looked to me like just another sign of incompetence from Jesus.

Disconfirmation Only Strengthens Their Belief

2011-07-30T15:39:00.002-06:00

When the Founding Fathers (most of whom were Deists, and not specifically Christians) gave us the First Amendment, they intended to keep government out of the “religion” business, but they had to know at the time that there was little they could do to keep religion out of the government business. The “separation of church and state” as it’s commonly called really isn’t a true separation because it only legislates against cross contamination in a single direction, and in a curious way the debt and budget debacle in Washington this week is a byproduct of that situation. In a nutshell, the kind of fervent belief that causes a person to reject evolution and global warming can now also cause a person to reject rational principles of economics. “We don’t need to raise the debt ceiling because I don’t “believe” that we need to raise the debt ceiling.” It took 225 years, but eventually enough of these believers got elected to congress to actually have the power to take down the system. And it looks like that’s exactly what they intend to do. I wonder if the Founding Fathers saw this coming such a long time ago?

Three years ago I attended a neuroscience seminar titled “Hardwired to Believe.” (see my blog “Conference on World Affairs” 5/1/2008) The essence of the seminar was that people are hardwired differently, and some people just have neurological connections within their brains that make it easier for them to accept the idea of creation than to dig into the mountain of scientific evidence supporting evolution. And here’s the kicker. The more these people get their noses rubbed in evolution, the stronger becomes their belief in creation. The disconfirmation only strengthens their belief. Moreover, they’re not just being stubborn. They are following a neurologically based bias, and it’s this bias that we’ve all come to know as faith or religious belief. When this faith is applied to the question, “Where did man come from?” the answer isn’t immediately critical. If faith says that man was created by a creator, then, “So what?” It’s as harmless as believing in Santa Claus. But when these people band together to gain political power— and that’s exactly what happened with the Tea Party phenomenon— then their faith and belief systems are no longer inconsequential. Believing that the U.S. will still be okay if it defaults on its credit obligations is NOT as harmless as believing in Santa Claus.

Not All Breiviks Live In Norway

2011-07-27T08:47:00.001-06:00

It was a lone self-described Christian conservative (his description, not mine) who perpetrated last week’s lethal rampage in Norway to highlight the erosion of culture by the infiltration of those who are “different.” In this case, the “different” meant the Muslim immigrants moving into Europe in increasing numbers. Clearly, as a dramatic statement about maintaining a certain cultural purity, this deranged killing spree was different from anything that had come before, but the dirty little secret is that Oslo was different only in degree, not in essence.

To justify his insane murders, the homegrown Norwegian killer, Anders Breivik stated that he was offended by the prospect of Muslims “mixing in.” Thus, Breivik joins the long list of other Christian conservatives who have been offended by “different” people “mixing in.” Christian conservatives fought against equal rights for Negros right up until the 1972 passage of the Equal Rights Amendment because they didn’t want people with dark skin and kinky hair to be “mixing in.” When the KKK would set their chosen symbol on fire to intimidate and threaten Negros, it wasn’t the symbol of the swastika, or the symbol of the star and crescent. It was the symbol of the Christian cross. And today, the Christian conservatives have targeted homosexuals as the latest group to be prevented from “mixing in.”

Readers of this blog know that I’m not a fan of Christianity, and my reason for this is that I see Christianity— at least in its conservative fundamentalist version— as exclusionary and elitist. It’s all about deciding who is offensive to God, and deciding who should be prevented from “mixing in.” But mostly, it’s all about making the fundamentalist Christian conservatives feel like they’re “special.” Swelling their ranks are evangelists like James Dobson and Ted Haggard, and politicians like Michele Bachmann, and self-appointed “therapists” like Michele’s husband, Doctor Bachmann Ph.D.— all claiming to speak the mind of the Lord when they oppose gay marriage, and as they work to marginalize homosexuals I see a little bit of Anders Breivik in all of them.

Why Michele Bachmann is Fortunate to Live at This Time

2011-07-22T16:47:00.002-06:00

If you’ve ever watched someone suffer a severe migraine headache, it can be outwardly obvious that there’s something going on inside their skull that you don’t want going on inside your skull. It’s hard to hide intense pain. That’s probably why migraine headache symptoms were routinely interpreted as a sign of demonic possession 300 or so years ago in America. I happen to know a little bit about this. A distant relative of mine, Elizabeth Clawson, was one of the last women to be accused of witchcraft, and she stood trial in Stamford Connecticut in 1692. She was actually acquitted, which is why she survived to raise a family that cascaded down through the generations until I could finally join the tribe 250 years later. I mention this now because I’ve done a fair amount of research on the witch trials in New England (there were other locations besides Salem), and I can report with absolute certainty that more than one woman was burned at the stake simply because she was seen by other people while displaying outward symptoms of what was certainly a severe migraine headache.

Migraines are in the news this week because Michele Bachmann is reported to suffer occasionally from this affliction, but this blog isn’t a rant about the prospect of a female U.S. President having a migraine while her finger is on the nuclear trigger. That wouldn’t be my problem— not unless Boulder Colorado was on her target list, which— come to think of it— might be the case. No, that’s not why I’m raising the subject. I mention Michele Bachmann and migraine headaches because she needs to be ever thankful that she lives in the 21st century instead of the 17th century. Back then, suffering with migraines, she might very well have been suspected of communing with Satan as a witch. And living as she does with a hardcore bible thumper it would’ve been hard to hide the signs, which he would have immediately recognized as something offensive to God. Deciding what’s offensive to God and then inflicting that decision on other people is what bible thumpers do, and Michele Bachmann’s husband is notorious for this. He’s even built a cottage industry abound it. Doctor Bachmann Ph.D. spends his time these days “curing” homosexuality which he’s decided is a curse from God, but three hundred years ago he would most certainly have been building fires under the feet of some women with severe migraine headaches. Michele is fortunate to have been living at this time.

Learning from the Pros

2011-07-19T12:58:00.003-06:00

As preparation for an upcoming game, NFL players routinely study films of plays that have worked for other teams. To continue with a sports metaphor, Rupert Murdoch has apparently taken a page from the NFL playbook. I have it on good authority that Murdoch stayed up late Monday night watching film and video clips of Catholic bishops appearing before critics to answer for the sexual transgressions of people under their supervision. These guys are the ones to watch if you’re in Rupert Murdoch’s position. The Catholic Church has, literally, written the book on accountability avoidance. Their formula is in three parts. One part, “My integrity is not to be questioned,” and one part, “I’m deeply sorry, and I apologize to anyone who was offended,” and one part, “I’m utterly shocked that something like this could have taken place on my watch.” Actually, the bishops do the last part a little differently. Instead of “on my watch,” the official Catholic phraseology uses, “I’m utterly shocked that something like this could have taken place within my flock.”

When a priest is being promoted to bishop, he is flown to Rome for a crash course on how to answer for sexual transgression “within the flock.” The three part formula is teachable, and its success is repeatable. It works every time. And if the formula can work against allegations of sexual molestations occurring by the tens of thousands, then it’s a piece of cake to apply that same formula to something as simple as hacking the e-mails of somebody who’s already dead. No big deal. Right?

Murdoch is as safe in his job as a Catholic bishop, and that’s pretty darn safe. But if I’m wrong about this, he has other options. Murdoch can take it on the lam, going incognito by plastering on thick facial makeup and long false eyelashes, and then passing himself off as Tammy Faye Baker.

Stop Blaming the Government and the Politicians

2011-07-15T16:22:00.004-06:00

If China was going down the tubes (the reality for China is quite the opposite), then it would be appropriate to blame the government. In China, the government runs the country. In America, “we the people” run the country. That’s the problem. We now have a democracy— the very kind of democracy that frightened the hell out of the Founding Fathers who wrote the U.S. Constitution. That’s why they gave us a republic instead. The way it was supposed to work— in the original plan— a person might get elected to office by voters who were so petulant and spiteful that they were demanding a complete government shutdown, but then once that person joined other elected leaders in the seat of government, he or she would work in cooperation for the good of the country. And most essential of all, the voters were expected to be sophisticated enough to know they couldn’t always get their own way on everything. That’s how a republic works. That’s how America is supposed to work. That’s all in the past.

Last election, about 50 Republicans (most affiliated with the Tea Party) were sent to Washington with marching orders to shut down the government, and damned if they didn’t do exactly that. That’s true democracy in action. Why should we be surprised at what they’re doing when they said they were going to do it?

So how did America get to this point? I blame four things: Ubiquitous and incessant polling. Massive political advertising on television. The emergence of our current system of primary elections to choose candidates. And 40 years of “dumb down” public schooling. We now have elected leaders who first become candidates by winning a primary, as opposed to being selected by party officials. All too often, this “winning” is achieved by the hiring the best PR agency to design the most effective attack ads while, at the same time, raising the most money to pay for the whole negative advertising process. And the attack ads work because the electorate just isn’t very bright. But here’s the killer. Once in office, elected officials make their decisions and policies based on the poll numbers. And then they crow that they’re following the will of the people, which they are. By definition, that’s democracy, but that’s not how it was supposed to be.

Democracies, if we look back at the historical record of true democracies, never last more than a century or two, and this includes the Athenian democracy in ancient Greece which went belly up after 172 years. The Founding Fathers knew this. In a true democracy, the voters don’t just get what they want. They get what they deserve.

Also see: Dying From "Death By Polling" 6/27/11

How Would Jesus Solve the U.S. Budget Problem?

2011-07-12T16:49:00.002-06:00

In all four gospels there’s a written account of an episode where Jesus chased money changers and livestock merchants from the Temple of Herod by the use of his own physical force. So from the gospels we know this about the Lord and Savior of All Mankind— he was not above pitching a good old fashioned fit in the pursuit of political activism when confronted by an intolerable economic situation. Good for him. This documentation stands in stark contrast to what the gospels say about the actions of Jesus when confronted by homosexuality and abortion (both of which were as common in biblical times as they are now). Quite simply, the gospels say NOTHING about this. Zippo. Zilch. Notta. Jesus, as far as we know, never uttered one single solitary word about homosexuality or gay lifestyle or abortion. These issues may or may not have been off his radar, but they were certainly absent from his talking points.

I bring this up now because I believe the Republicans are missing a great opportunity. For the last 40 or more years, the Republican Party has regularly found someone on their team with a special relationship to Jesus— somebody who could tap into the infinite mind of the Son of God, and report to us what the Big Guy really and truly feels about things like gay marriage or abortion. How else can you explain all the right wing rhetoric about God’s opposition to such practices? The GOP position is clearly not taken from the gospels which are silent on the dreaded sex-related topics.

The newest GOP favorite with a channel (albeit an indirect channel) to Jesus is Michele Bachmann. Her husband, Doctor Bachmann Ph.D. runs the family business— a Christian Counseling service that offers to change a person’s sexual orientation from gay to straight by filling them in on God’s negative opinion of their behavior. I think Doctor Bachmann Ph.D. is squandering a huge opportunity here. If he can climb inside God’s head to get the lowdown on homosexuality, why wouldn’t he also try to get some divine inspiration about topics like budget deficits or how to avoid national bankruptcy? Biblical history tells us that Jesus actually cared about financial malfeasance and economic impropriety enough to get physically involved trying to make things better. I’ll bet Jesus would be more than willing to talk about raising the debt ceiling if only some special person like Doctor Bachmann Ph.D. would ask the right questions during their next discussion. And then Doctor Bachmann Ph.D. could tell his wife, Michele, and she could go to Waterloo and tell the rest of us.

Don’t Blame Rupert Murdoch

2011-07-10T13:13:00.005-06:00

After 168 years of publication, most of which was spent wallowing in tabloid journalism, “News of the World” went out of business because of outright criminality and excessive sleaze. The surprise for me, personally, was the apparent recognition that there can actually be too much sleaze, even in the modern 21st century world. I had thought otherwise.

For the record, I personally loathe FOX News. I listen to NPR and I watch PBS, and I never thought that FOX and PBS were simply right wing and left wing versions of intellectual equivalency, although I’ll grant that FOX and MSNBC are intellectual equals. I also regularly tune to NHK (the Japanese version of BBC) to get news from Asia. FOX news comes up for discussion now because it’s owned by Rupert Murdoch who also, until last Saturday, owned the now-defunct “News of the World.” There’s a huge temptation for liberals like me to jump on Murdoch now that his power seems to have lost a bit of its tarnish, but I think this is being overly simplistic and naive. Murdoch is, and always has been, merely a zookeeper who made sure the lions got their daily dose of red meat, and zookeepers rarely question where the red meat comes from. In the case of “New of the World,” supplying the red meat meant hacking the phones and e-mails of people who had lost loved ones and who were at the depths of their own personal sorrow. The fact that this is despicable journalism may or may not say something about Rupert Murdoch, but it speaks volumes about the people who actually read that tawdry newspaper. And with its history going back 168 years, clearly readers were reveling in trash and sleaze and other people’s grief long before Rupert Murdoch was even born.

What a huge coincidence that this comes in the exact same week when we were treated to televised images of people gathered outside the court house where the Casey Anthony saga was being concluded. I could not, in my wildest imagination, ever see myself joining such a group of rabid blood-nuts to express pleasure or displeasure at a judicial sentence being handed down to somebody I didn’t personally know. Who in their right mind does that? And I confess that when I see a group like that I secretly assume that all of them are FOX News buffs. It’s interesting, though, that Rupert Murdoch probably looks at such a group and sees the same rabid herd mentality that I see. This would explain a lot about FOX News.

Back about the time that “News of the World” began publication, Henry Thoreau said that “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.” And human nature being what it is, I suppose some people find solace or pleasure when they can read about other people who are even more desperate than themselves. Rupert Murdoch didn’t create that condition. He merely strives to make a dollar by helping it along.

A Bright New Career for Casey Anthony

2011-07-09T15:49:00.002-06:00

Casey Anthony gets out of the slammer next week and will, presumably, be looking for a job in a bleak employment market. Meanwhile, Nadya Suleman (a.k.a. the Octomom) appeared last Friday on The Today Show with her brood, and demonstrated for all the television viewers to see that her two-year-old octuplets are completely out of control, and are well on their way to predictable adult lives as deadbeat malefactors. Since 2009, most of the cost of raising the octuplets plus Suleman’s six other fatherless kids has fallen to the taxpayers in the debt-ridden state of California. By her own admission, Suleman has too many kids. Meanwhile California, facing bankruptcy, can no longer afford to support the prolific cash-crop resulting from Suleman’s peculiar life style as an in-vitro breeding machine. And Casey Anthony will need a job. Her primary expertise and work qualification seems to be the willingness to whack a two-year-old kid, and the ability to do it with legal impunity.

I love it when multiple problems can be solved by lumping them together to provide a common solution. So here’s the deal. Casey Anthony needs to move to California and go to work for the state, where she can accomplish a rather drastic budgetary cost-cutting measure. Utilizing her unique and rare skill set, her job would be to move in with Nadya Suleman and cull the herd, so to speak.

Would Jesus Be Tweeting Today?

2011-07-08T07:43:00.002-06:00

Now that the Pope has tweeted, and Obama has tweeted, the question comes to mind— would Jesus tweet? Probably not. Jesus never wrote down anything in his own hand, so it’s a reasonable assumption that he was illiterate. This would help explain why effective widespread communication was never a priority for The Savior of All Mankind. According to the apostle, John, Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” This wording is concise enough to fit on a 140 character tweet, and the clear message is that anyone who doesn’t except Jesus as their savior will rot in hell for all eternity, making this perhaps the most important piece of information in the life of any human being. This should have been a big deal then, and it would be a big deal now.

Even before Twitter, the Son of God with, supposedly, infinite wisdom and power had the capability to make sure that every person knew the rules of the game when it came to the salvation of their each individual immortal soul. Don’t ask me how he could have done this. I don’t have infinite wisdom and power, and never pretended that I did. But Jesus was supposed to be better than me. So how good was Jesus at communicating? Now keep in mind that accepting Jesus is the ONLY way (according to John) to have everlasting life in heaven with God. This information should have been considered vitally important, but Jesus simply relied on a twelve man team of followers to spread the message around the world. Supposedly Jesus could see into the future, so he should have known that the population of the planet would more than triple in the second half of the twentieth century. Evidently, he thought that twelve guys were sufficient to get the message out to the additional five billion people when the time came for all of them to be “saved.”

I don’t know if Jesus was divine (whatever the hell that means). I only know that he was a lousy and ineffective communicator, based on his utter failure to reach his target demographic in the modern world. They say that Twitter reaches more than 200 million tweeters today. This would be a help to Jesus in spreading his “believe in me” message, but it still wouldn’t get the job done. Of course, there’s always the probability that John just made the whole thing up.

Dying From "Death-by-Polling"

2011-06-27T09:03:00.003-06:00

America is dying from "death-by-polling," as manifested in the latest poll showing that 67% of likely voters oppose raising America's debt ceiling. Of course, none of these people could tell you or me exactly what it means to raise the debt ceiling, not even if their life depended on it. These are the same two-thirds of the population who can't balance their own check book, and who thought that sub prime loans were a good idea. We're not talking, here, about intellectually informed financial geniuses. Nevertheless, their opinions seem to matter in this country. So here's what needs to happen, because it's universally true that people only believe what they discover for themselves.

Washington needs to let the country go into default to show the voters what a bankrupt nation actually looks like. Let voters discover economic reality for themselves. Let the geezers (this group includes me) go a few months without their Social Security check. Furlough all the air traffic controllers and TSA screeners to keep all the planes on the ground. Close the VA hospitals, and move the war casualty patients into the empty airports where they can fend for themselves like some kind of third world refugees. This seems to be the kind of America that the so-called fiscally conservative voters want. Either that, or they really and truly believe that tax money can just be cultivated to grow on trees.

Lets just hope that the grown-ups (if there are any left) in Washington don't take polling results seriously.

Representation Without Taxation

2011-06-24T09:09:00.004-06:00

"Taxation without representation" was one of the sticking points that drove the American colonies to revolt against the British Crown in 1776, but today we have the opposite problem. We have representation without taxation. Behind all the so-called budget talks in Washington lurks the dirty little secret that almost half of all Americans pay no income tax whatsoever. The number is 48% to be specific. For these low income people, the only way that they financially support the Federal government is if they drive a car (gasoline tax) or they smoke (tobacco tax) or they drink adult beverages (alcohol tax). That might be okay, but for the fact that all these folks get the full benefit of government assistance, including Social Security (if they qualify) and Medicare and food stamps, not to mention the protection of the U.S. Military against foreign threats. They vote and take the goodies that are available, but financially they have no skin in the game, so to speak.

So what's the answer to this? We absolutely need a national consumption tax, a sort of national sales tax on everything but groceries and prescription medicines. This would give every American a stake in fixing the budget problem, something that's lacking now. Most other developed nations have this tax in place, although for the life of me I don't see how they were able to put the tax into effect, given the politics that worked against it. Politically, the very mention of a national sales tax in America would be suicidal to the first political party that suggests it, and this probably will prevent it from ever coming up in discussion. But the smart people-- the REALLY smart people (most of whom don't hold elected office) -- who truly understand money and budgets and finance, all these experts quietly say that a national sales tax is the only way out of our monetary problem.

Don't look for this monetary solution to happen. The riots in the streets of Athens over the Greek government's austerity measures are a vision into the future of the United States if we ever tried to implement the national sales tax. We in America would prefer national bankruptcy instead.

Seven Billion and Counting

2011-06-15T09:10:00.006-06:00

The world's supply of fresh water, oil and edible fish seemed inexhaustible. The world's largest city by population was London, England, followed closely by New York City. Back then, Mexico City, Bombay, San Paulo, and Peking all contained fewer than one million people. Today, these four cities hold more than 20 million inhabitants each with their populations growing exponentially. Back then, the globe's total head count was just over two billion.

This is not the picture of some long distant planet at the start of the Industrial Revolution more than a century ago. It was the state of the world at the dawn of the atomic age at the end of World War II. The growth of mankind from two billion to seven billion has taken place in the course of a single lifetime, my lifetime to be specific, and if left unchecked the increase in human population threatens to make our world into a place where I, for one, would not choose to live.

Why bring this up now? Because the Catholic Church has recently re-stated it's position that birth control is a sin, evidently thinking that exponential population growth is NOT a sin, and can just go on forever. But it can't, and when something can't go on forever, it stops.

Taking Back America

2011-06-03T10:12:00.005-06:00

I'll admit that I just don't seem to understand codes, particularly the codes used by political parties to say things internally that will stay under the radar of those outsiders who might take offense or dispute the messages. Case in point is the Tea Party call to take back America. I flat don't get it. Take back America from what? Or from who? And most importantly, take back America how? "Take Back America" is the kind of shorthand that looks good on a bumber sticker, but since the meaning is so ambiguous I have to assume that it's code for something deeper and perhaps more sinister. Could it be that there are patriotic Americans who want to take their country back from a colored man who got himself elected President?

"Taking back America" seems to be a favorite theme (always unaccompanied by specifics) with Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, and I confess that each time I hear it from them it reminds me of the cheerleader who sleeps with the entire football team, and then goes off to college announcing that she intends to take back her virginity.

How's That Workin' Out For You?

2011-06-01T11:09:00.003-06:00

Well, no surprise here. The Vatican honchos at last week's gathering to discuss condom use simply decided to maintain the Church's position that condoms are sinful under any circumstances, and that anyone in a position to use a condom should practice abstinence instead. Abstinence is the Catholic strategy for everything involving sex. It should be remembered that the Church has depleted its vast wealth to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars to pay off the victims of pedophilia suffered at the hands of Catholic priests-- all of whom swore a vow to practice lifelong abstinence. So here's my question to the self-deluded idiots in Rome: "How's that abstinence thing workin' out for you?"

Vatican Conference on Condoms

2011-05-28T08:04:00.002-06:00

The hierarchy of the Vatican has convened a conference this week to craft a position statement on the subject of condom use. This is like an assembly of midgets crafting a strategy for winning NBA basketball games. Considering that the Catholic Church has only recognized the value of women for less than 100 years, we should not look for a lot of wisdom from the Vatican on this, or any other aspect of human sexual behavior. It's all about pomp and show.

The "Lazarus" Dilema

2011-05-26T13:07:00.002-06:00

As long as I'm offending all my Christian friends, including most of my own family, I need to ask about Lazarus. My questions is: whatever happened to him? Help me out, here. Is Lazarus still alive today? Or did Jesus raise him from the dead, and then bump him off sometime later, after his public relations value had diminished? And if the latter is the case, then it raises this question. How much Godly compassion is shown when you make a man die twice? You see my confusion here?

Invisible Day of Judgement

2011-05-25T10:31:00.004-06:00

Last Saturday's predicted day of judgement and Rapture was a bust, so Harold Camping tried to save the day by proclaiming that the judgement had taken place, but was "invisible." Hey, why not? Let's see. You've got an invisible super being who lives in an invisible heaven, and who watches and guides human lives invisibly. According to legend, a junior version of Mister Super died on earth, and then invisibly rose from the dead a couple days later. Nobody actually witnessed this resurrection (it was invisible), even though the whole point of it was to achieve maximum, long-lasting notoriety. This was done, so it's claimed, to atone for an invisible original sin, but nobody ever saw that original sin being committed in the first place although all of us are said to be guilty of it. Not sure how this works. So it makes perfect sense that the final judgement would be cloaked in a mantle of invisibility. Religion is all about seeing how many invisible things you can get somebody to believe.

What’s So Good About Good Friday?

2011-04-15T16:54:00.002-06:00

A week from today is Good Friday, a day which always puts a smile on my cynical lips. On that day, supposedly Jesus Christ sacrificed his life to atone for my sins and the sins of all mankind. You with me so far? And supposedly, Jesus was the earthly incarnation of an infinite and all-knowing god (all-knowing is the operative phrase, here). So here’s what I don’t get. If you believe the fable about the all-knowing power of Jesus, then that means that at dawn on Good Friday, J.C. knew he would get the cookies pounded out of him that day, but he also knew that 48 hours later he would be back on the streets, good as new, and no worse for the wear. So if you sacrifice your life for a cause— any cause whatsoever— then how much of a sacrifice really is it if you know that you won’t actually have to stay dead for more than a day or two? And is that really a sacrifice at all? Isn’t that more of just an overly dramatic temporary exhibition? How about just calling it a stunt? And is an overly dramatic stunt enough to atone for the sins of all mankind? Who makes this stuff up, anyway?

This World’s No Place to Live

2011-04-14T09:10:00.003-06:00

Bluegrass picker, John Duffy, sang that, “This world’s no place to live— but it’s home.” Problem is, the “hominess” seems to diminish with each passing day, and this makes writing a cynical blog like The Stonecypher increasingly difficult.

2011 has been simply the worst and it’s not even Easter time yet. Writing should result in something that’s fun to read. From my viewpoint, the fun comes from absurdity, and the absurdity usually comes from stupidity. But stupidity is never funny when it’s tragic, and 2011 has (so far) been mostly about tragedy. Oh, to be sure, there have been bright spots. Charlie Sheen isn’t funny, but watching major networks devote large segments of prime news time to interviewing psychologists about their interpretation of Sheen’s You Tube postings— that’s absolutely hilarious because it makes the “farce factor” meter peg out at the max. And of course, Sarah Palin is always entertaining for “farce factor” value. She doesn’t even need to speak. All she needs to do is hold one of her kids or grandkids up in front of the microphone, and we all get to wonder how big and heavy will the kid need to be when she stops doing this. That’s funny.

But Arab dictators are not funny. Citizens facing fatal gunfire in the mistaken belief that somehow there’s safety in numbers— that’s not funny. Mexican drug cartel violence isn’t funny, especially for Americans along the southern border. Global unemployment and homelessness are definitely not funny. 9.0 earthquakes are not funny. Thirty foot tall Tsunami waves are not funny. Radiation leaks are not funny. But when the radiation leak is in Japan, and hysterical Californians stock up on iodine tablets to protect themselves— that’s funny, at least in a snickering, condescending kind of way. It’s all about the reading on the “farce factor” meter, and god knows I’m certainly not above a little snickering condescension.

I look forward to the day when we can all get back to just watching the fast track canonization of John Paul II. For sheer farce and absurdity, it’s hard to beat Catholicism, especially when it involves sainthood for JP2— a man who kept clerical pedophiles working their evil in parishes for 22 years when he had the power to stop it. It makes you wonder about all the other Catholic saints. How messed up were they?

Staying Safe the American Way

2011-03-18T09:23:00.000-06:00

I guess there’s no way to explain the lack of critical thinking skills in the American population other than to say it must come from lousy education in the public schools. Case in point. Americans drive down the freeway at 70 mph while texting, and think they’re safe in doing this. Then they feel the need to pop down iodine tablets to protect themselves from Japanese radiation. Give me a break.

Looting in Japan

2011-03-13T12:55:00.005-06:00

It’s been three days since the catastrophe in Japan, and now it’s time to look at the incidence of looting and violence there. We all know the familiar pattern. After a devastating calamity— whether in the United Sates (Hurricane Katrina), or Haiti (the 2010 earthquake), or South America (the mudslides in Brazil)— the widespread looting begins even before the first bodies have been recovered. It’s probably just a coincidence, but the U.S., Haiti, and Brazil would all say that their primary religion is Christianity. So how much looting has taken place in Japan? Zero. Zilch. Notta. In three days there hasn’t been a single reported incidence of looting. Not one. And it’s a sure bet that, if it takes a decade to recover from the destruction there, the looting incidence will still be zero ten years from now. Japan is a Buddhist society.

Buddhists don’t believe they will have everlasting life because they’ve been “born again” (whatever the hell that means). Buddhists don’t believe they’ve been “saved” because they’re washed in the blood of the Son of God (I don’t get the meaning of that, either). And Buddhists don’t believe there has been “atonement” for their sins and the sins of all mankind because some self-righteous, self-proclaimed messiah got the cookies pounded out of him by a middle-level Roman bureaucrat two thousand years ago. So what DO Buddhists believe? They believe that it’s wrong to go into somebody else’s home or place of business and take stuff that doesn’t belong to them. Furthermore, they believe that if something is wrong, then you just don’t do it. Period. In their belief system, there’s no divine forgiveness or atonement or any of that crap.

I suppose it was to be expected, but already a few Evangelicals are saying that Japan’s troubles are God’s retribution for their failure to accept the Savior. If you can buy into the Jesus thing, you can convince yourself of anything.

Americans Don’t Want to Pay for the Government They Want

2011-03-10T20:21:00.001-07:00

Ron Schiller’s departure from NPR is probably a plus for everybody. His remarks in the undercover “sting” video show that he just doesn’t “get it” when it comes to the Tea Party. The Tea Party probably has a racist or two in its ranks, but to explain away the Tea Party by calling it a racist organization is to miss the point. Racist organizations are despicable and socially unacceptable, but racism doesn’t have the power to drive the world’s biggest economy into bankruptcy. Things would be so much better if the Tea Party was the new KKK because the reality is much worse than that.

Last Friday night (actually it was on PBS) commentator Mark Shields said the smartest thing I’ve heard in years. He said “The American people don’t want to pay for the government they want.” That’s the problem in a nutshell, and leading the charge in this direction is the Tea Party. When you see Tea Party members gleefully registering their passion about this complex problem, they always look like Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney who have just been told that the big high school play is finally going to be a musical. America’s financial crisis— if it can be solved at all (and I doubt that it can)— will be solved, not by passion from well meaning, enthusiastic amateurs who think you can change things with torches and pitchforks, but by informed and committed intellectuals who understand that the U.S. is not above slipping into third world status.

And the Winner is— the Film, Not the Movie

2011-03-06T13:32:00.003-07:00

It’s been six days since the 2011 Academy Awards, and I wanted to wait a week before making my comments to avoid a sudden knee-jerk reaction. Over a twenty year period, in film study lectures, Roger Ebert personally taught my wife and me the difference between films and movies. Films are intellectual. Films are made for “mature” audiences (which doesn’t necessarily mean old geezers) and they can often be on-screen versions of literate Pulitzer Prize novels. They star actors like Colin Firth, Paul Giamanti, Sean Penn, Meryl Streep, and Helen Mirren (notwithstanding her embarrassing role in RED). All of this is in contrast with movies, which are made for viewers in the 18 to 30 age bracket. Movies are more heavily advertised than films which explains why they usually make more money. Movies star actors like Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn, Jennifer Aniston and Cameron Diaz. Nicholas Cage can go either way, although he’s primarily a movie guy.

Here’s the important distinction between films and movies. Movies are ONLY made to make money from younger viewers. Films are made to be an artistic statement, and many of them are made with the Oscar in mind. As a result, the Oscar— the Academy Award— is only given to the best film in a group of films which are nominated. Movies don’t get nominated. So it comes as no surprise to hear that younger theater goers in the 18 to 30 year old age bracket are not major viewers of the Oscar ceremonies each February. Why should they watch the awards when they haven’t seen the films? They go to movies.

And this finally brings me to James Franco and Anne Hathaway who co-hosted the Oscars last Sunday. The official story line was that the Academy Award producers were reaching out to younger audiences (who usually never see the nominated films). If youth was the objective, then why not Justin Bieber instead? Most people who’ve grown up with the Oscar ceremony over many years agree that Bob Hope was the best there ever was at hosting the Oscars. I think he did the job 19 times. For those too young to remember him, he was a witty, funny grownup who could make it through the whole night wearing the same tuxedo (in stark contrast to host, Anne Hathaway). There’s the model, the template, the prototype— Bob Hope. The Oscar producers didn’t need to reinvent the wheel. They just needed to find another Bob Hope, and Franco and Hathaway were not the answer.

Following the Will of the People

2011-03-03T14:26:00.001-07:00

I’m not an expert on finance or monetary policy. I’m not a businessman, and I’m certainly not a politician, although I do vote in most elections. The one thing I’ve got going for me is that I’m smart enough to know what things I DON’T know, and one of the things I don’t know is how to save America from bankruptcy. So when a politician proudly proclaims that he or she is just following the will of the voters, then we’re all in trouble, because most voters are just like me and don’t have a clue. If the Founding Fathers had wanted politicians to follow the will of the voters, they would have given us a democracy. Instead, the U.S. Constitution gave us a republic, which means that elected representatives are supposed to learn enough to gain insight about problems and situations, and then make their own governing decisions based on their own knowledge and judgment. To put it less delicately, the Founding Fathers knew that most voters were imbeciles and would always be imbeciles, and if the elected representatives followed the will of the voters, then the nation would be governed by imbeciles.

What the Founding Fathers could never have foreseen is our modern public education system which turns out graduates who think that a billion is twice as much as a million, and a trillion is three times as much as a million. This leads to constituent voters who are thrilled when their elected representative proposes cutting one billion dollars from National Public Radio to solve a trillion dollar deficit problem. Voters figure that’s two-thirds of the way toward balancing the nation’s checkbook. But here’s the really, REALLY, scary part. There’s no evidence to show that the elected representatives don’t share the same mathematical misconception and ignorance.

After Khadafy, How About John Paul II?

2011-02-28T13:55:00.000-07:00

The protesters who changed regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, and who are about to do the same in Libya, utilized social media like facebook and twitter to organize themselves in order to create strength in numbers. My question is, why not apply the same strategy to bring down icons other than Arab dictators? How about a Pope?

The Catholic Church is about to build on its 1600 year history of making bad decisions by making, perhaps, the most egregiously flawed decision of all. They actually propose elevating Pope John Paul II to sainthood, starting first with canonization. Wouldn’t it be nice if all the living victims of priestly sexual abuse could band together via social media to protest the canonization of John Paul II? The Arab dictators denied the democratic vote to their people for 30 years, or more than 40 years in the case of Khadafy. John Paul II coddled pedophiles and ignored the sodomy of young children for almost 27 years, and even took measures to perpetuate the ghastly transgressions by moving clerical perverts from parish to parish, and by instructing bishops to silence the victims with bribes and intimidation. To be consistent, the Church should probably also move to canonize Mubarak and Khadafy.

U.N. Sanctions Strike Fear into Khadafy. Not!!!

2011-02-26T17:11:00.000-07:00

The U.N. is threatening sanctions against the Khadafy regime in Libya, as if this would change anything there. It’s like an 1893 court of law in New Bedford threatening to take away the household telephone privileges of Lizzie Borden AFTER she murdered her parents. I have a solution— not for Khadafy— but for the United Nations. If the City of New York is strapped for operating cash (which it is), the city should declare eminent domain on the U.N. and kick all the diplomats out of the country, then tear down the U.N. building and sell off the land for condo and business development. This would satisfy, not just New York taxpayers, but also the citizens of the world who have waited 62 years for the U.N. to do something that even remotely approaches the lofty goals and expectations that were set back in 1949.

The Explanation of Everything

2011-02-26T09:26:00.002-07:00

The human race simply can’t create jobs and wealth as fast as it adds new human beings. This explains everything. We see violent protests in Tunisia and Egypt and Libya and we’re told it’s all about democracy. It’s absolutely not. We also saw protests (admittedly less violent) in England and France and Greece and, recently, in Madison Wisconsin— and the last time I checked these places were all run by democratically elected governments. And even as I write this blog, the citizens of Iraq are staging a “Day of Rage.” I thought the Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld installation of democracy in Baghdad (remember all those purple fingers?) was supposed to make everybody in Iraq happy. Evidently I was misinformed.

People lash out at governments for three reasons— unemployment, corruption, and lack of services or government provided services which don’t meet expectations. If people have jobs (or individual wealth from national oil revenues), and if the government is somewhat honest and provides basic services, citizens could care less about who runs the show. King, Monarch. Emperor, or just some guy who got the most votes— it makes no difference to people who governs them if they don’t feel cheated or deprived. At least that’s my opinion.

Is “The Rite” Right?

2011-02-21T10:00:00.000-07:00

Question. What’s the difference between paranoid schizophrenia and demonic possession? Answer. Catholicism. My wife and I went to see the film, “The Rite” with Anthony Hopkins (I think it’s the best of all the demonic possession movies) and as we were leaving she asked, “How come only the Catholics do exorcisms?” Good question.

In the past, up until fairly recently, The Catholic Church charged money for doing an exorcism (imagine my surprise). Now, of course, exorcisms are done for free, as kind of a loss leader in the total marketing scheme of the Church. That explains part of it. But the bigger reason, in my opinion, is that other churches in the Abrahamic monotheistic tradition (most of which believe in Satan) take a different view of what the devil’s work looks like to the untrained eye. The evangelicals believe that Satan is so devious and powerful that he would never betray his presence by outwardly changing the personality of some lowly mortal. Evangelicals believe that Satan is too clever for that, and this opens up a landscape where Satan can be anywhere at any time. That’s the whole idea, of course, since this is supposed to bring people to Jesus who can also be anywhere at any time. There’s an old saw, “No Satan, no God.” For evangelicals, insane behavior is a sign of insanity and nothing more. For Catholics, insane behavior is a sign of possession which requires Church intervention. It’s all in the interpretation.

Campaign 2012— Sock It To Me

2011-02-19T13:40:00.002-07:00

Speaking only as an inadequately-informed average citizen/voter, I feel personally that American politics is maddening at best and positively excruciating at its worst. What’s needed is for politics to become entertaining, and for a sick and cynical person like me, the best entertainment is humor. And for politics to be humorous, the best recipe would be a strong dose of self-satirical buffoonery from one or more candidates. We haven’t seen anything like this since Dan Quayle left office nearly 20 years ago.

Happily, we might be in store for just what we need. It looks like both Michele Bachman and Sarah Palin could throw their hats (or bras) into the political race and try for the presidency. I can hardly contain my glee at this prospect. Back in the late 1960s there was a weekly television program called “Laugh In” which had, among the cast, Goldie Hawn (known for being ditzy) and Ruth Buzzi (known for being truculent). Now just imagine a pair of hot-ass egotistical shrews with each of them having the ditziness of Goldie Hawn and the truculence of Ruth Buzzi, and this would give you a picture of Bachman and Palin both on the campaign trail. Now all we need to do is resurrect Rowan and Martin to run the House and the Senate.

What Did Watson Really Tell Us?

2011-02-19T13:32:00.003-07:00

I believe it was the most astonishing and significant demonstration of hard science since the first atomic test in July of 1945. I’m talking about the IBM computer, Watson, and its three night test on the TV show, Jeopardy. Few TV viewers could even comprehend what it took to assemble the background data and then accurately connect the relevant points using self-generated algorithms. But, whereas the first atomic test was only seen by government insiders, my fear is that nobody from federal agencies other than the military was watching Watson’s performance.

If you doubt that the U.S. government is incompetent, then you probably don’t know about criminals in prison who collect social security checks and unemployment benefits, or federal workers who double dip by collecting disability payments because they, supposedly, can’t work, or doctors who bill Medicare for imaginary procedures. And the list goes on and on. All of this could be prevented by a computer system with less than a millionth of Watson’s capability, and the savings through fraud prevention would more than pay for the investment many times over. It’s not that the government doesn’t know about computer capability, or that there isn’t a willingness to spend the money. The CIA and NSA and the Pentagon all have computers which, I’m sure, would put Watson to shame. So why won’t we use advanced computer systems to do things other than detect foreign threats and blow enemies to smithereens?

CPAC Calls for the Deployment of Michele Bachman’s Flying Monkeys

2011-02-13T17:13:00.001-07:00

In a cosmic coincidence of timing, the once-in-a-century historic revolution in Egypt occurred simultaneously with the annual CPAC convention in Washington DC, allowing television viewers to get a side by side comparison of angry citizens in two different nations as they vented their wrath and hatred focused on their respective presidents. Clearly, the CPAC crowd would have been just as thrilled as the Egyptians if Barack Obama had stepped down from power on Friday along with Hosni Mubarak. The fact that Obama was duly elected by a rather substantial majority of voters in a totally democratic process— this didn’t seem to be a reason to cut him any slack within CPAC, and it raises a question. In America, do we love and embrace democracy? Or do we love and embrace the IDEA of democracy? For the past twenty or so years, I’ve seen both political parties in Washington heaping constant and glorious praise on the idea and theoretical concept of democracy, even as they manifest contempt and disgust for the constraints of an actual democracy in operation.

This is something for Egypt to keep in mind as that country now strives to build its own democracy. I’m not sure that, among the democracies of the world, the United States of America is the very best example for the Egyptians to copy.

It Was All About Ms. Aguilera

2011-02-07T18:42:00.003-07:00

Let’s face it. July 4th really isn’t America’s day to shine, at least not beyond our borders. July 4th is our homeland celebration, but when it comes time to show the world why the U.S.A. is a big deal, that honor is reserved for Super Bowl Sunday. It was claimed that Sunday’s game was seen by one billion people, which means that 850 million foreign TV viewers were watching. America does three things in a bigger way, and better than any other nation on earth— self-congratulatory patriotism, television advertising, and good old rugged, smash-mouth football (not to be confused with soccer), and Super Bowl Sunday showcased all three of these core competencies. And then, just to show the world that we have a sense of humor, we selected— to lead us in singing our Nation Anthem— a “vocalist” who looked like a Barbi doll, but who didn’t know the lyrics or the melody to the Star Spangled Banner. Francis Scott Key’s musical composition was evidently viewed as merely a guideline for individual interpretation by Christina Aguilera.

There was an even more patriotic time in America’s past, during and after World War II, when a singer named Kate Smith routinely sang God Bless America and The Star Spangled Banner. She knew all the lyrics, and she hit every note with perfection. She always made the song be “about America.” Christina Aguilera made Sunday’s performance of our National Anthem be all about her. It didn’t work out all that well.

Ungovernable? You Bet!

2011-01-31T17:25:00.003-07:00

During the last ten years, I’ve become increasingly convinced that the human race (whatever the culture) has pretty much become ungovernable, and this week’s revolt in Egypt helps prove my point. Blame it on the Internet. Even back at the inception of the Internet more than two decades ago, the really smart people realized that this new way of sharing knowledge was inherently seditious, and there’s no doubt that— if the governments of the world had known then what they know today— the Internet never would have been allowed to flourish. Even the best futurists back then, however, could never have predicted the impact of social mediums like FaceBook and Twitter, and WikiLeaks.

For ten thousand years or more, governance has always been a delicate dance between government and the governed. The United States, over the last 235 years, has arguably done the best job of consistently getting this balance right, but even this nation has experienced some monumental hiccups. Coming out of WWII, I believe that the American people were far too compliant and trusting of their government. The delicate dance was unbalanced, and McCarthyism and Vietnam were two pathetic results, both fueled by a government that exploited paranoia about communism and citizen trust to prey on the governed. The HUAC congressional outrages of the early 1950s could have been stopped before they gained any traction by just a few well-placed riots and a press that was willing to explain what was happening. Facebook and Twitter would have had a monumental influence as well.

The last two years have shown us street riots in France and Greece and England and Tunisia and, now, Egypt— but most Americans still think that it could never happen here. I say, “Wanna bet?” The U.S.A. is dead broke. The ultimate solution to the deadbeat status of the country is new taxation, most likely in the form of a national sales tax on everything but groceries and medicine. Problem is, now you’ve got the Tea Party (Taxed Enough Already), and these are some of the same self-proclaimed patriots who rushed out after Obama’s election and stocked up on guns and munitions in quantities never before seen by the American arms industry outside of a wartime setting. They weren’t doing this just to boost the economy. Wait and see what happens if the U.S. government, led by Obama working with the Republican congress, decides to try and implement a national sales tax. Wait until the Tea Party gun owners all simultaneously get cheesed off about a second presidential term for Obama, and they network with each other on the Internet. Wait until there’s a convergence between a new tax policy and a mindset that believes Obama is a Muslim and foreign-born (and did I mention that he has dark skin and kinky hair?)— and all of this is played out within a poorly educated, white trash population of people who can’t find a job or pay their mortgage. You think it can’t happen here? Guess again.

WTF is Up with Sarah Palin?

2011-01-28T15:25:00.001-07:00

I’m starting to really enjoy Sarah Palin. Really. She provides just the right mix of amusement and astonishment that I used to get from a fresh copy of Mad Magazine back in my teenage years, but even publisher William M. Gaines could never have dreamed up something as outrageous as the cartoonish diva from the frozen North. Tuesday night in Obama’s State of the Union speech, Palin must have felt that she hit the mother lode. In the President’s slogan, “Winning the Future,” she saw the acronym WTF, and she made the connection with the same three letters used on her favorite communication medium, Twitter, as raunchy shorthand for “What the Fxxx?” Then Palin immediately posted a video and a tweet to let all her fans know how clever she is. Watching the video, it’s obvious that she was experiencing the same snickering titillation that a pre-pubescent child feels when it first learns that the word, “pussy,” has a double meaning.

Months ago, I decided to give it a rest with Palin on my blog. To use an old cliché, writing about her was like wrestling with a pig. It just made me feel dirty, especially when I knew that the pig actually liked it. But as I said, I’m starting to enjoy her more and more. You don’t hear much from the Democrats about her these days, but now the Republicans have taken up the charge. I think I know why. The Tea Party is a very real problem for the Republican Party, and since Palin seems to be the de facto leader, taking shots at her has the effect of clipping the wing of the Tea Party movement without overtly offending the Tea Party constituents. And god knows, she is such an easy target. I almost feel sorry for the Republicans. George W. Bush was not exactly a modern Jeffersonian version of presidential genius, but Bush was intellectual light years ahead of the Tundra Tootsie.

Obama’s “Sputnik Moment”— a Flawed Analogy

2011-01-26T08:33:00.004-07:00

Born almost four years after the launch of Sputnik, Obama should be forgiven if he shows a somewhat naïve understanding of that galvanizing event. The fact is— October of 1957 and January of 2011could not be more different in terms of American capability and motivation. Sputnik was not so much a Soviet triumph of superior technological ability as it was an American blunder based on bureaucratic infighting and outright government departmental incompetence. Once the U.S.A. got serious about orbiting a satellite, this nation had the Explorer in orbit just 84 days after Sputnik.

Only 12 years previous, we had emerged from WWII with half of all the world’s GDP and half of the world’s manufacturing capacity, as well as the world’s pre-eminent rocket scientist in Dr. Wernher von Braun whom we had obtained from Germany. Moreover, we had the world’s highest scientific and mathematical literacy levels in our workforce as a result of having the best educational system on earth. We could make anything, and we did make everything, and compared to every other nation we were wealthy beyond measure. With an income tax rate at 90% on the richest Americans, the U.S. Treasury was awash in money that we could spend on going into space, or creating an interstate highway system, or anything else that suited our fancy. In 1957, the only thing keeping us from going into space was United States Government policy.

The Eisenhower administration had decided that the space race should be waged within this country as a friendly rivalry between the military services (sound familiar?) The Navy had the Vanguard satellite and the Army had the Explorer, but because the Army launch vehicle for Explorer was a converted ballistic missile, old Ike thought that the Navy project would be less likely to ruffle Soviet feathers. Vanguard was given the inside track, but when the pathetic little Navy rocket exploded on the launch pad, Ike took the leash off of Wernher von Braun and his Army ballistic missile team, and they had Explorer up in orbit almost overnight. As for American paranoia over Sputnik, and the national perception that the Soviets were somehow superior to us— nothing about that situation was based in reality.

Which brings us to January, 2011. Americans are NOT paranoid (unfortunately), and most of us carry a perception that we are somehow superior to every other nation. Nothing about that situation is based in reality. The thing is, thanks to our own widespread ignorance and a school system that fails to educate, we are just too stupid to see that the “Sputnik Moment” is not at all analogous to the present state of affairs.

The NFL Playoffs— It’s About More Than Football

2011-01-19T15:38:00.002-07:00

Last weekend’s two day’s of NFL playoff games offered some of the best football in recent memory, but the TV coverage away from the field also captured my interest. On Saturday, a network promotional piece proudly announced that the game was being seen by United States Military personnel in 175 foreign countries. When the same promotional piece was telecast on Sunday, the number of foreign countries where the U.S. Military was said to be watching the game had grown to 177. I figured that Saturday night while I was sleeping, U.S. troops must have invaded two new countries. Another explanation, I suppose, would be that two new embassies might have opened, and a squad of Marines might have been detached to both locations to watch the NFL playoffs while they guard the operation of whatever the hell it is that we do in 177 countries. I wonder. Am I the only guy who notices this crap? Or am I just the only guy who’s naïve enough to question it?

And then there’s the product commercials— not as spectacular as the Super Bowl commercials— but still worth a look. Kraft Foods advertised a macaroni and cheese product with the voice-over done by the silky baritone of Ted Williams. Williams, for those folks who don’t watch Oprah or Dr. Phil, is the formerly homeless and alcohol addicted radio announcer who has been given a new 15 minutes of fame because of his voice. When Kraft quickly paid Williams the big bucks to peddle macaroni and cheese, Ted looked to heaven in a staged TV close-up and appeared to say, “Thank you, Jesus.” However, as I watched the Kraft commercial several times and listened carefully to the famous Williams voice, it’s now evident to me that he was really saying, “Thank you, cheeses.” When he gets out of rehab, Dr. Phil can ask him about this, but I’m pretty sure I’m right about this. There’s no such thing as macaroni and Jesus.

A Second Miracle for John Paul II?

2011-01-16T06:42:00.001-07:00

Being Pope has to be the best job in the world. Unlike the position of a football coach or a corporate middle manager, or any other job you can name where your success depends on achieving positive results to improve the institution that is paying your salary, the job of being a Catholic Pope means you never have to do anything that makes any difference. It’s like being an absolute monarch or an emperor, but with less accountability. If you spout a papal utterance of some kind that condemns birth control and unplanned teen pregnancy at one and the same time, nobody will differ with your convoluted logic because implausible double-speak has always been an integral part of Catholic dogma. Or maybe you denounce homosexuality but totally ignore that same trait in your worldwide clergy. Everything is window dressing because that’s the main part of your job. And when your career finally comes to an end, maybe you can become a saint. As Dana Carvey’s church-lady used to say on SNL, “Isn’t that special?”

All the Vatican needs to make sainthood happen is a miracle or two. No problem. The process employed by the Vatican to find miracles is identical to the process used in the early George W. Bush administration to find reasons for invading Iraq. What’s required is a commitment to the ultimate goal, and nothing more. Then the necessary facts and data are simply manufactured to gain public support for that goal. This process works particularly well with Catholics and miracles because a person who can believe in the virginity of Mary will pretty much believe anything. In the case of John Paul II, the bar is set especially low because of his immense popularity and lifetime celebrity status. He could have taken the path that Pope Benedict has taken and done everything in his power to stop the Catholic priests from molesting little children. That would have been a true miracle. But he didn’t do that. Window dressing was easier for him. And when he needs that second miracle to gain sainthood, the Church can say that he once boiled a potato which came out of the scalding water looking like the face of Jesus.

A Word or Two About a 2nd Amendment Remedy

2011-01-09T16:11:00.004-07:00

During the recent senate campaign in Nevada, Tea Party candidate, Sharron Angle, freely talked about a 2nd Amendment remedy for political disagreement with a Democrat incumbent. Yesterday in Tucson, Arizona, Americans got to see a 2nd Amendment remedy in action, and that statement applies even if the crazed shooter wasn’t politically motivated because the 2nd Amendment covers every situation where a gun is involved.

I’ve always been wary and skeptical of people who worship documents. I try to avoid people who believe in the literal truth of the Bible or the Koran, and I even feel uncomfortable in the company of people who accept the perfection of the U.S. Constitution. I think that the framers of our Constitution, the Founding Fathers of our nation, were brilliant and principled men— but they weren’t fortune tellers. When they wrote the 2nd Amendment, they could never have foreseen a world where amoral and mentally-deficient people can easily arm themselves with devastating automatic weapons, and then network with other unhinged minds over the Internet to gin up each other into a mass frenzy of ideological hatred. The Founding Fathers would have seen this scenario as a recurrent and structural recipe for disaster. They might still have made gun ownership legal, but they would not have enshrined gun ownership into a sacred constitutional right.

Should O.P. Honors Get the Mark Twain Prize?

2011-01-05T16:13:00.001-07:00

Facing national bankruptcy, we expect our cash-strapped citizens to dig into their empty pockets and cough up enough money to fund a fleet of 12 aircraft carriers. This single American military expenditure, alone, is greater than the total military budget of any other nation on earth. Then we outfit the carriers with nuclear-tipped weapons, and send them out on the high seas to bully and intimidate any other nation that opposes or even mildly disagrees with our national objectives (whatever the hell that means). And nobody, absolutely nobody, in this country ever says that anything about this is distasteful or offensive or inappropriate. But if the commander of one of those carriers (albeit a commander with an adolescent level of maturity) tries to jump start a new career for himself as a sketch comedy writer and producer, the nation rises up in indignation. I wonder if Cleopatra held the crew of her royal barge to a similar high standard of conduct. Or maybe Cleopatra recognized that the whole idea of maintaining a royal barge to project a power-image was absurd, so absurdity on board should be tolerated as just a natural part of the bigger picture. If this was the case, then Cleopatra was smarter than any of us.

Will This Cut Into the Summer Baseball Schedule?

2011-01-03T15:52:00.002-07:00

Harold Camping says he’s not making any long term plans. As the head of Family Radio Worldwide— an independent Christian ministry— he and his minions are spreading the word that the End Times (JesuSpeak for the end of the world) will start on May 21 of this year. Given the fact that old man Camping is 89 years old, he might be correct in his forecast, at least on a personal basis.

He and Christians just like him are looking forward to this final judgment day on the basis of predictions spelled out in the Book of Revelations that seem to match up with current events. In other words, a lousy global economy, an American ass kicking from the Muslims in the Middle East, and the fact that Jews still inhabit Israel— all of this means that the rest of us are toast come May 21st. You just gotta love the way that these mental-case Christians take a single incident or situation and extrapolate it into a hard and fast rule that governs the entire world and the future of mankind. “Ancient cultures always walked in single file. We know this because Biblical scholars have found an ancient illustration of the three wise men approaching the baby Jesus in the manger, each following one behind the other.”

These are the same brilliant intellectuals who think that the world is less than 6000 years old. Their god might be eternal, with the power to create heaven and earth, but his master work (the human race) — according to their belief system— is exceedingly temporary, lasting a mere nanosecond on the time scale of eternity. My question is this: will the end times cut into the summer baseball schedule?

What Do You Get When You Marginalize Women?

2010-12-22T16:03:00.001-07:00

More than ever, I’m now convinced that the fable about “The Emperor’s New Clothes” was actually meant to be a metaphorical jab at the Catholic Church. Growing up Catholic in the 1950s, I was taught that the Pope spoke with infallibility when he spoke “ex cathedra” on matters of faith and morals, so I assumed that his recent comments about condom use carried some substantive weight on the subject. I know now that, what I wasn’t taught in the 1950s, is that papal infallibility is subject to a vetting process by the Vatican PR machine, whereby an infallible comment by a Pope can be “clarified” so that the pontiff doesn’t come off looking like a befuddled old fool. It was in this spirit of Vatican “clarification” that I learned today that condom use hasn’t received a green light after all (see my blog of 11/23). What was I thinking??

This “clarification” comes on the same day that the archdiocese of Phoenix, Arizona severed its affiliation with a (formerly) Catholic hospital because a nun at the hospital chose to end an 11 week pregnancy to save the life of the mother. If you’ve ever wondered which life is valued most highly by the Catholic Church— the life of an adult woman or the life of an unborn fetus— the Bishop of Phoenix has answered the question. Incidentally, the Bishop excommunicated the nun at the hospital who made the life-saving decision. By contrast, priests who sodomize and molest young children are NOT excommunicated.

The global scandal over priestly pedophilia, by grabbing all the media attention, has masked the fact that the Roman Catholic Church is dysfunctional and morally bankrupt in many other ways that have nothing to do with children. What we see in Catholicism is an example of an institution that, by marginalizing women, has denied for itself the civilizing and soothing influence that women bring into every aspect of human affairs where they’re allowed to participate. For the life of me, I’ll never understand why any woman would freely choose to be Catholic when they have so many better options.

No Love Story for Pfizer

2010-12-07T09:13:00.003-07:00

It was just 15 months ago that Pfizer paid $2.3 billion in the largest healthcare fraud settlement ever. It also happened to be the largest criminal fine of any kind ever paid. Moreover, this was the fourth time Pfizer had been punished for illegal marketing activities since 2002, although the previous settlements had been much smaller. Most of the Pfizer malfeasance occurred in the form of “off label recommendation,” a common practice by pharmaceutical salespeople in which doctors are encouraged (and oftentimes even bribed) to prescribe medication in cases where the drug is not approved by the FDA, and the activity is played out within the incestuous relationship that’s evolved over the years between physicians and drug reps. Unless you’ve actually worked as a drug rep or worked in a medical office, it’s almost impossible to understand how a vendor-customer relationship can become so devious and dysfunctional.

I’m happy to report that, as of this week, the average person now has a voyeuristic window into this shadow world of back-scratching drug promotion. Just when Pfizer was comfortable knowing that the general public had forgotten about the $2.3 billion fine, Pfizer now has to watch its marketing machine pictured for all the world to see on the giant screen in the nearest multiplex. “Love and Other Drugs” is the title of a surprisingly good chick flick which opened in movie theaters this week, and the love story is played within the context of the world of medicine and big pharma (Pfizer), depicting pharmaceutical industry shenanigans with such uncanny accuracy that at times it almost informs the viewer like a documentary.

In a massive irony of coincidental timing, Pfizer CEO, Jeff Kindler, “resigned” (winky winky) this week to spend time with his family. The fact is, I don’t see how he tolerated the job at the top of Pfizer as long as he did. It was only twelve years ago that Pfizer, under the brilliant stewardship of Bill Steere, was voted by Fortune Magazine as the most respected corporation in America. Not only was Pfizer the best in both science and ethical marketing, but it was the darling of Wall Street, earning legitimate billions for its investors. It’s tantalizing to speculate what might have happened if Jeff Kindler had followed Bill Steere twelve years ago when Pfizer stock was at $48 and the shares were splitting every two years. Such was not the case, however. Kindler came in after eight years of Hank McKinnell, and by then the damage had been done. If you wonder about Pfizer stock, its price— just like the age of Peggy Sue— will forever be under 21.

Vatican Gives Green Light To Concom Use

2010-11-23T13:01:00.003-07:00

This week, Pope Benedict issued new guidelines for the use of condoms. I'm surprised at this for two reasons. First, I'm surprised that old "Nazi Ratzi" even knows what condoms are. Who would have thought. Second, I'm always surprised that there are people who consider these Papal announcements to be important. I suppose that these are the same people whose lives would blossom and whose hearts would flutter if some old airline chef gave out his obsolete recipes for in-flight meals.

The Vatican announcement about condoms comes on the same day that a Catholic Priest in Texas, John Fiala, was arrested for plotting the murder of a teenager whom he had been sexually molesting. Fiala said he wanted to silence the teen to "prevent embarrassment for The Church." I believe that the Catholic trolley jumped the track back when the definition of "Hail Mary" was changed to mean a last ditch attempt to win a football game with a a long, desperate pass to the end zone. Maybe Benedict's relaxed views on condom use are his "Hail Mary" attempt to regain some respect for his troubled and tarnished Catholic Church.

What is Sarah Palin Telling Us About Herself?

2010-11-19T11:01:00.002-07:00

Here’s the only statistic that we need to know. The top 1% of the American population owns 34% of the personal wealth in the country. Financial inequity like this doesn’t exist in any other developed nation on earth, and historically this kind of outrageous distribution and concentration of wealth has usually been associated with African dictatorships and banana republics and Iron Curtain oligarchies during the middle of the last century.

In her newest book (according to excerpts leaked this week before the book’s publication) Sarah Palin has said that Barack Obama sees America as unjust and unfair. Since this wasn’t meant to compliment the President, the clear implication is that Sarah sees America as just and fair, and this isn’t surprising given the fact that she is being paid a million dollars per episode for her new reality show featuring the Tundra Tootsie and her family frolicking in their home state of Alaska. Sarah is rapidly worming her way into that top one percent, and I’m sure that this looks perfectly just and fair to her.

What we are seeing in America is, in the light of history, a familiar picture. Nations in decline always show the same indicators. The flags get more numerous (yes, the definition of flags includes all those obnoxious little ribbon loops plastered on the back of automobiles). The patriotic parades and celebrations get larger and more passionate. The rhetoric gets more disconnected from reality, and eventually a dangerous, and often cartoonish, demagogue emerges promising to lead the failing nation into a new dawn. Enter Sarah Palin. Following in the footsteps of Imelda Marcos or Eva Peron, insisting all the while that she's not really a diva, Sarah Palin seems to see herself fulfilling some kind of queen-like destiny as she exhorts the peasants to take up their torches and pitchforks so she can lead them out of modern American serfdom. The thing is, most Americans are just dumb enough to go along with it. I wouldn't bet against her.

"Waiting for Superman" is Worth a Look

2010-11-13T08:35:00.004-07:00

A minister, found guilty of disreputable or squalid behavior, can lose his church and even be shunned from his congregation. A physician found to be incompetent can lose his medical license. Incompetent or unethical lawyers can be disbarred. Even in the military, top officers can be drummed out of the service if they are pathetically unable to perform their job as required, although it happens rarely. Only one job in America offers the prospect of total freedom from accountability with almost no chance of being fired for non-performance. That job is the job of public school teacher.

I’ve just seen the film, “Waiting for Superman,” and it’s evident to me that American public school children are being allowed to fail to protect teacher tenure. Once in a rare while, a teacher does get fired, but a doctor’s chance of being barred from practicing medicine is 50 times more likely than a teacher’s chance of getting fired. Does this mean that teachers are 50 times more competent than doctors? Not a chance.

We in America have always put public school teachers on a pedestal, and I’m always skeptical of hero groups that are put on pedestals. Growing up in the 1950s, Catholic priests were put on pedestals, and 50 years later we all know how that worked out. Public school teachers consider themselves “professionals,” but one definition of a professional is someone who can charge more for his services if he does a better job than his counterparts. Thanks to tenure and the teacher unions, wages for all teachers are pretty much standardized, and exceptional performance is not allowed to command a larger paycheck. Fact is, public school teachers, by this definition, are not professionals. They are public employees, and this puts them in the same class with garbage collectors.

What Makes a Cyber Bully?

2010-11-08T10:32:00.004-07:00

Overcome with humiliation and shame, a college student ends his own life after his single flirtation with gay sex is exposed on the internet. At about the same time, a teenage girl is accused by a friend on facebook of being "ugly," and after failing at her own attempt at suicide, she enters into psychological treatment and counseling to repair her shattered ego. These and numerous other incidents of cyber bullying take place within a social network where popularity and status is viewed as a zero-sum game, and one person rises in stature by driving down the reputation or image of someone else. There is additional power in the ability to electronically communicate the slander and negativity to the entire world.

These and similar recent incidents happen against the backdrop of a political campaign season, and in this arena, every politician uses outrageous accusations and egregious falsehoods to degrade the opposing candidate's image and reputation. This arena truly is a zero-sum game where the goal is to totally destroy the opposition. Here, too, the squalid negativity and outright lies are communicated electronically to the greatest possible audience. I believe that these two different scenarios are connected.

I don't hold a very high opinion of my fellow American citizens. I think that basically we're a nation of nitwits. Readers of this blog, however, should be aware by now that my low opinion of the population doesn't extend down to the teenage level. I believe that maladjusted teenagers, as well as the public school system which incubates them, are all just reflections of the greater adult society. Teenagers don't invent their despicable actions, they mostly just copy them from the adults they see. And when it comes to destroying reputations, the recent example seen by the teenagers comes from the adults at the very top of the food chain.

Finally It's Over

2010-11-02T09:00:00.003-06:00

Today finally marks the merciful end of three months of "death by attack ad." If it seems like nasty TV political campaign advertising has dramatically escalated this year, it's not your imagination. The Supreme Court (those same mirthful jokesters who installed George W. Bush in 2000) decided last year that corporations could pour unlimited dollars into campaigns without telling the voters who they were supporting, or what they expected for their money. The result is that this 2010 campaign season has given us a 200% increase in negative attack ads. For those who learned arithmetic in public schools, that means the number of ads had tripled. Furthermore, FactCheck.org says that their monitoring of these ads shows that fully 85% of the negative ads are either nothing but manipulative distortion of outright bogus lies. This is what passes for campaign activity in modern America.

I have a confession to make, here. For the first time in my adult life, going back to 1964 when I became old enough to vote (I voted for Goldwater) I deliberately chose not to vote this year. The Democrats deserve to lose, and the Republicans don't deserve to win, and casting a vote for any candidate this year just seemed to me like rewarding bad behavior. The good thing is that I can watch the election results tonight with complete impartiality, knowing that whoever goes down to defeat richly deserves to lose.

Mark Zuckerberg— You Wanna Improve Public Education?

2010-09-24T12:55:00.004-06:00

With the release of the film, “Waiting for Superman,” and with Facebook’s CEO donating $100 million to improve the schools in Newark NJ, America suddenly has its underpants tied up in knots over the pathetic state of the nation’s public schools. Predictably, all three major television news networks will piggyback on this hubbub by serving up their own version of concern about education— promising major news coverage of public school shortcomings to be broadcast over the course of all five weeknights next week. Gee, I can hardly wait. In the meantime, I have two cents to throw into the pot.

One of the smartest guys I know is my own brother-in-law who retired from a career in public education, most of it spent as the principal of an Iowa elementary school. Thirty years ago he told me something quite profound. He said, “The primary role of public education is to perpetuate the culture and values of the nation, so the state of public education simply mirrors the state of the country.” WOW, he nailed it, and I never forgot what he said. In the thirty years since then I’ve added my own caveat. American culture is portrayed, and to some degree even shaped, by network non-cable television, so if you want to understand what’s going on in schools, just watch network television. And not just the programs, but the commercials too, because television commercials keenly reflect societal tastes and behaviors.

It’s just a given that in any representation of the American family on television, the father will always be portrayed as the family nitwit— usually being upstaged by his own kids, sometimes as young as three or four. The little child actors spout wisecracks and put-downs like tiny miniature Jon Stewarts or Will Ferrells, and the clear message is that kids start out incredibly smart and grow progressively more stupid as they grow older. Being cool or hip (are those words still in use?) is always shown as more desirable and fashionable than being intelligent, and any teenager would rather be able to come up with a perfectly-timed punch line than to be able to solve a quadratic equation.

It’s not just the present school age generation that’s being dumbed down. American ignorance and stupidity didn’t just happen overnight. It took 20 or 30 or 40 years to take root. A recent study found that a majority of American adults of voting age thought that a billion was twice as much as a million, and this misconception is constantly exploited in this voting season by political television commercials that skew the reality of how much money it takes to actually run the largest economy on earth.

American public education was shaped in the 19th century to meet the need for workers who could transition from the farms into the factories of the industrial revolution. Back then, the United States actually made things, but those days are gone forever. America is now primarily a service economy, as everyone knows, and maybe some of the skills that we see lacking in the school curriculum are no longer relevant. Maybe the kids are actually the ones who have it figured out. Maybe a wisecracking quick wit would be more useful than fluency in calculus or algebra if your role in life is to grow up and sell real estate or high-priced automobiles and techno-gadgets. One thing is sure, the culture of America won’t go back to the way it was 50 years ago, so likewise, the public schools will never again look like schools did back then. In the meantime, I have some advice for Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg. You wanna improve public education? Keep your $100 million— and make a high school diploma mandatory for all Facebook users

A Love Song for Papa Ratzi

2010-09-16T17:03:00.000-06:00

Papa Ratzi (short for Ratzinger), otherwise known as Pope Benedict, is visiting the U.K. this week, and the advance media report states that sometime during his visit, he will be serenaded by the lovely voice of a winsome homegrown lass from the British Isles. It turns out that the singer will be Susan Boyle. Too bad. I was hoping it would be Sinead O’Connor.

The Tea Party, and Why I Love It

2010-09-15T17:16:00.001-06:00

I love watching the Tea Party for the same reason I always loved watching Wylie Coyote chase the Road Runner out beyond the edge of the rock precipice. It’s just a lot of fun to see that look of surprise that comes with the realization there’s nothing underneath but empty air. Tea Party candidates will undoubtedly win seats in congress come November, at which time they will come face to face with a number of unsolvable problems. The jobs necessary to bring down unemployment simply no longer exist in sufficient quantity. The national debt can’t come down when people absolutely refuse to pay higher taxes. The war in Afghanistan, like the war 40 years ago in Vietnam, is not something we can win. Deregulation, “getting the government off our backs” in TeaPartyspeak, is guaranteed to result in more episodes like the BP oil spill, and the home mortgage meltdown, and the salmonella-tainted egg recall, and the Wall Street derivatives scam, and the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical failures— because as hideous as government is, it’s not nearly as damaging as the unregulated and unprincipled corporate pursuit of profit above all else.

Unsolvable problems are a gift from heaven to a candidate running against the establishment, but a nightmare to an elected official when it comes his or her turn to make things better. The American electorate has basically become ungovernable— a good thing for those outside government looking to get in, and a frightening thing for those in power. One thing I would like to see is a breakdown of the unemployed along party lines, because it seems like unemployed Republicans blame the Democrats, and unemployed Democrats blame the Republicans. This, of course, raises the question of what happens when both disgruntled groups turn their sights on the Tea Party?

During the next two years, watch for the Wylie Coyote look of helpless resignation on the face of newly-elected Tea Party honchos. For a sicko like me, who gets off on the humor of satire, cynicism, and sarcasm, it just can’t get any better.

It’s the Oil, Stupid

2010-09-12T17:26:00.001-06:00

As a wave of anti-Islamic hysteria sweeps the U.S. on the 9th anniversary of 9/11, patriotic pundits tell us that this behavior runs counter to our basic notion of American pluralistic tolerance and inclusiveness. Oh, really? Tell that to the Indians (the kind on the buffalo nickel, not the citizens of India). In the last 150 years, in addition to the Indians, the following groups have been on the receiving end of intolerance, bigotry, xenophobia, prejudice, racial violence, and outright hatred from good upstanding patriotic Americans— Irish Catholics, non-Catholic Irish, Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Mexicans, Italians, people with black-colored skin, people with brown skin who look like they might have a tinge of African ancestry, Jews, non-Jews who have Jewish sounding surnames, and most recently the Muslims. Add to this list, anyone who might have once entertained a private curiosity about Communism, or anyone who ever had sex with someone of their own gender. I apologize to anyone I might have overlooked who’s earned America’s contempt by being “different.”

This analysis would seem to suggest that Muslims are merely the latest group being picked on by a nation that has always picked on one sub group or another. Actually, the Muslim situation is far different. None of the other groups mentioned above owned any oil. The Indians, back in the early days, didn’t have any oil, but they controlled every other natural resource on the North American continent, and for this they were subjected to a century of genocidal extermination. Our government leaders constantly tell us that we, as a nation, are not at war with Islam. Yesterday, on 9/11, Obama expanded this to say, “We are not, and never will be at war with Islam.” The Bureau of Indian Affairs spouted pretty much the same message throughout the nineteenth century to a people who were being slaughtered or driven into refugee status. Watch and see what would happen if Saudi Arabia, the home of Mecca and the very center of Islam, ever cut off our supply of oil.

We All Get On Each Other’s Nerves

2010-09-07T13:21:00.004-06:00

Shock and awe was NOT what took place over Baghdad in March of 2003. It’s hard to achieve any shock value from an event when you use the months preceding it to tell everyone that soon you will do something shocking. Because of all the hype leading up to that fiasco, the exercise itself was little more than an overblown 4th of July fireworks demonstration that surprised nobody and produced no lasting benefit. Shock and awe was what took place over lower Manhattan nine years ago this coming Saturday, and America was so shocked and awed by 9/11 that we, as a nation, will probably never get over it. It explains why, today, most of us view Muslims with at least a tinge of cautious suspicion (if we are completely honest about it). This isn’t racism or xenophobia, it’s enlightened self-interest.

The flip side of this, of course, is that ordinary citizens in Baghdad or Mosul or Kabul or Kandahar view all American soldiers with suspicion. Our troops will never be loved over there, and Muslims will never be loved in our country. For at least 60 years, the United States has subjected Muslims in the Middle East to political manipulation and lethal skullduggery just to get at their oil, so when one of them straps on a bomb vest and blows a few of our troops to smithereens, it should come as no surprise. Similarly, when some Christian pastor in Gainesville, Florida plans to burn a few Korans on 9/11, it should come as no surprise. Top U.S. military commander, Gen. David Petraeus warns us that burning Korans will inflame Muslims around the world and put our troops in harm’s way. My question is — how would we be able to tell, since Islam looks pretty inflamed already and our troops are already dying with extreme and violent regularity, so how would that be different? Maybe Muslims are inflamed by 60 years of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, going back to our installation of the Shah in Iran. I’d like to hear Petraeus give us his thoughts on that subject.

Basically, there are seven billion people in the world and we all get on each other’s nerves. It’s no more complicated than that. We in America think we’re exceptional, but every nation and culture on earth thinks the same thing, and here’s the deal — all of us are right about that.

Total Victory (But Not Recently)

2010-09-02T21:00:00.000-06:00

65 years ago today, the Japanese formally surrendered to the United States, ending World War II. It would be the last time that a wartime foe would unconditionally surrender to us, although it would certainly not be our last war. For the last two days, some of my conservative friends have been behaving as though this total wartime victory happened just last week as they complain about Obama’s end of combat in Iraq, acting like they think it should have ended like just World War II. That fact is, a lot has happened between those two events.

We left the Korean peninsula in 1953 leaving the power and prestige of our enemies, the Chinese and the North Koreans, undiminished in any way. But Eisenhower was president then, and he was a Republican. We left Vietnam in 1975 after having been defeated ourselves, leaving Ho Chi Minh victorious and 58,000 of our young men dead for no good cause. But Gerry Ford was president then, and Ford was a Republican. We pulled out of Lebanon in 1983 having achieved nothing whatsoever but the loss of 241 Marines who died while sleeping in their own barracks. But Ronald Reagan was president then, and he was a Republican. We left Iraq (the first time) in 1991while George H.W. Bush (another Republican) was president, leaving Saddam Hussein and most of the top Iraqi leadership firmly in place to fight another day. That could hardly be called “unconditional” surrender on their part.

What makes Obama unique is not that he is ending a war under conditions that are worse than when the war started. All U.S. wars have ended that way for 65 years. What’s unique is that Obama is the first president to go through this frustration who happens to be a Democrat. And by the way, he’s also black. That’s why my conservative friends are upset.

Restoring the Honor of America

2010-09-01T07:54:00.004-06:00

The Beck - Palin rally at the Lincoln Memorial last Saturday seemed to be all about restoring our nation's honor, so why am I so disgusted?

At the rally in Washington D.C. on August 28th, Glenn Beck wasted no time in bringing God on board to help solidify his cause, and while he didn’t specify which God, it was a sure bet that he meant the one who goes by the name of Jesus Christ. This isn’t the first time that these two forces, the white Christian conservatives and the Lord and Savior of All Mankind, have teamed up to restore the honor of the United States. In the past, their cooperative efforts involved the wearing of white robes and hooded masks and the burning of crosses. The cross burning was to let everyone know that Jesus was OK with the whole “honor restoration” thing. Of course, The Prince of Peace and Son of the Everlasting God never actually showed up at any of these old-time cross burnings, but that never mattered. It was always well understood that white conservatives were empowered to speak and act on His behalf. It's still that way today.

It’s just a little curious to me that these people choose to restore America’s honor at the very time when the nation elects the first black man to the Presidency. Where was their concern about honor during the Bush administration when the entire world considered the United States of America to be something of a “scumbag” country? Oh wait. Now I remember. Bush was white and Christian.

Palin – Beck, 2012

2010-08-31T08:26:00.002-06:00

Last week on the main street of Golden, Colorado, my wife and I saw a 1984 Ford pickup truck with hunting rifle in the back window and a bumper sticker that read, Palin-Beck 2012. My wife asked me if I thought that such a ticket had any chance of becoming a reality. I told her that I would answer that question after the Beck-Palin pep rally at the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday, August 28th, and now, after that event last Saturday, I’m convinced that Palin and Beck could well become the future of the Republican political leadership. For white conservatives, it’s hard to disagree with their message of restoring the honor of the United States, which basically is just euphemistic wording for a call to recapture the America of the 1950s when they were freely allowed to trounce on Negros and communists.

There’s one small problem. Anyone who isn’t black-skinned or communist would love to go back to those prosperous and optimistic days before Vietnam and Watergate when everyone could find a well-paying job and immigration wasn’t a dirty word. But those days are gone forever. Somewhere between the 1965 escalation in Vietnam and the criminally unlawful invasion of Iraq in 2003, the United States of America lost its virginity. And virginity never can be regained. It’s wishful thinking to look at a drug-addicted, middle-age whore and think that she can go back to her adolescence of sweet innocence.

The Palin-Beck crowd seems to think that flag waving patriotism and ubiquitous Christianity can carry America back to greatness, and with 30% of young Americans lacking a high school education, and about 14% of all Americans unemployed, a gullible and frustrated pool of eager believers is certainly there to receive the Palin-Beck message. Only time will tell if there are enough of these people to win a major election for a populist ticket like Palin-Beck, but at this point I wouldn’t bet against it.

This Week’s Timely Lesson from Iraq

2010-08-26T19:23:00.001-06:00

“The Christian missionaries came to Papua New Guinea two hundred years ago,” said an anthropologist to my wife and me over cocktails one night in Alotau, Papua New Guinea. “The missionaries had an abundance of bibles, and the local indigenous people had all the land. A century and a half later, the local people had all the bibles and the missionaries had all the land.”

I was reminded of this during the last two days. On Tuesday (August 24th) the last of the American combat troops left Iraq, and the following day the insurgents (or al-Qaeda, or the Taliban, or whatever the hell we call the bad guys this week) unleashed a torrent of terror across Iraq, killing at least 60 people in a dozen or more coordinated locations, just to prove that they still had real power. When the United States unlawfully invaded Iraq seven years ago, Iraq had dysfunctional and internationally distasteful leadership and America had an abundance of deadly munitions. Seven years later, Iraq has an abundance of deadly munitions, and the United States has dysfunctional and internationally distasteful leadership (mostly at the congressional level).

From Vietnam to Cambodia to Somalia to Lebanon to Iraq to Afghanistan, the lesson is the same— when the U.S. comes into your land to bring liberty and democracy, it’s a death sentence for your innocent people.

Why Do They Think the Truth Is So Unworkable?

2010-07-28T08:47:00.002-06:00

There’s an old adage that says, “In war, the first casualty is the truth.” The problem is that modern institutions (government, business corporations, and religions) all seem to look at everything as a war. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that all these institutions have systemic lying as one of their primary functions or core values, but I will say that the truth is looked upon as their enemy. Whistleblowers don’t get their power and their 15 minutes of fame by lying. Whistleblowers threaten institutions by telling the truth about institutional lies, and that’s considered dangerous.

It wasn’t always this way. During World War II, Edward R. Murrow reported bad news for war-torn and bomb-ravaged London with nightly candor, while Gabriel Heater gave his unvarnished assessment of U.S. setbacks in the South Pacific with no attempt to sugar coat the losses. By honestly admitting some of the truth to the American people, the real and essential “secrets” like the Manhattan Project could be safely kept under wraps. That’s because the American people, and people in general, aren’t totally stupid. When they are fed a constant diet of happy talk, they develop an intense hunger and craving for some real undiluted truth, and this is grounded in a certain kind of intuition that people have about happy talk. They instinctively know it’s mostly a lie. This isn’t being cynical, it’s being wise.

In the last four months, we’ve seen what happens when the truth is finally exposed after all the “happy talk” efforts have been tried, only to fail. Who can forget the images of the Vatican during Holy Week, 2010, as the Pope tried to swim against the flood of pedophilia accusations that poured in from around the world? You could almost sense his frustration that his traditional authority and power to burn heretics at the stake had been taken away from him. And this was followed by revelations about the devious inner workings and vulgar bonus payouts that defined Wall Street, even as that institution demolished a half century of American prosperity. Then came the BP oil spill. If happy talk and lies from CEO Tony Hayward could soak up oil, then the Gulf of Mexico disaster could have been minimized. Trying to repair the corporate image, BP hastily hired some local Cajun goobers to appear in the BP television commercials in the hope that happy talk would still carry the day if it came from someone without a British accent.

Which brings me to Julian Assange and his WikiLeak revelations about the Afghan War. We should ignore the Pentagon assertion that the leaked information will threaten American lives. The military always makes this claim when any truth whatsoever comes out about the conduct of a war. The only thing threatened will be Pentagon credibility. Now we know that at least one helicopter was brought down by a heat seeking missile supplied by Iran. News flash to the Pentagon— the Taliban already knew about this, and if young American servicemen who fly on helicopters don’t know about this, then they have a right to know the truth.

So here’s the question. Why do they think the truth is so unworkable? It’s because the true believers who populate all modern institutions think it’s their God given right to insult the intelligence of others outside the walls of their own particular institutional fortress, and to do so with impunity.

Whatever Happened to Murphy’s Law?

2010-05-12T14:10:00.005-06:00

“Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” That’s Murphy’s Law, and most of us over the age of 30 probably heard it for the first time in high school. Whether we knew it or not, it was our first brush with philosophy. But then, like so many other iconic principles from the 20th Century, it just went away.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, an endless parade of “glass-half-full” happy talkers and human resource motivators and self-help gurus bombarded us with platitudes like “Failure is not an option,” and “Life rewards the risk takers,” and “Success is just a matter of learning to manage the expectations of others.” Murphy’s Law was deemed to be too pessimistic and negative for this new culture that preached unbounded positivity in all aspects of modern life. The final nail in the coffin was Y2K. Never before had a potential calamity been subjected to study and pre-planning with such attention to ultimate disastrous consequence as this predicted failure of the world’s computer systems. But then, when midnight December 31, 1999 arrived— nothing bad happened. Everything that could go wrong, didn’t go wrong, and Americans mistakenly assumed that Murphy’s Law no longer applied. Then came the 21st Century.

In the last decade, America has suffered through the Stock Market plunge of late 2000, followed by 9/11, followed by Enron, followed by the embarrassing and pathetic military failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, followed by the in-flight destruction of the space shuttle, Columbia, followed by Hurricane Katrina, followed by the real estate bubble collapse and subsequent epidemic of home foreclosures, followed by the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and skyrocketing unemployment, followed by the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, followed by an instantaneous 1000 point drop in the DOW. And if that wasn’t enough, there’s the disgusting, dirty little secret that many wing-nut Americans see the election of a black President as yet another tragic failure in “the system.” What all of these events have in common is that they came as a complete surprise to just about every American, including the people in high places who were being paid big money to avoid being surprised. Surprise is what you get when you ignore Murphy’s Law. Only the surprise of Hurricane Katrina was excusable.

So now, as we enter the second decade of this dysfunctional 21st Century, it should be evident to everyone that Murphy’s Law is still alive and well. It’s always been true that the failure to imagine and anticipate a downside betrays a shallowness of intellect, and this is the case now more than ever before. Recapturing our healthy sense of modern reality means ignoring the happy talkers, and realizing that failure is not optional— it’s inevitable, and appreciating the fact that carnival magicians are the only people who can reliably count on achieving success in their chosen profession simply by managing the expectations of others.

Nothing is “For Sure” Anymore

2010-04-30T12:13:00.002-06:00

There’s no such thing as a farfetched idea anymore, and people who are young enough to have grown up with the Internet don’t even know what the term, “farfetched idea” means. The Internet changed everything.

There was a time when certain ideas and beliefs were so preposterous that the vast majority of people rejected these notions, and the people who did actually believe the unbelievable were labeled as “crackpots.” Believing that the earth was flat, or that a new living man could be constructed from dead body parts, the crackpots, as portrayed in those early films, were usually old codgers who lived out beyond the edge of the hamlet until the townspeople eventually came at night like an invading army carrying fiery torches and pitchforks. But not anymore.

The townspeople don’t object to anything these days— even if you believe that Obama was born outside of the United States, or that childhood vaccines cause autism, or that 9/11 was orchestrated by the Bush administration, or that we need our gigantic military to defend America’s freedom, or that melting glacial and polar ice doesn’t equate with a temperature increase, or that the Apollo lunar landings were staged here on earth, or that America can “drill baby drill” its way to energy independence, or that the entire American economy and foreign policy has always been controlled by a tiny cabal of ultra-powerful men who operate in secrecy off the radar of the public and the media.

Pick your own paranoia and wrap it into a crackpot theory. The townspeople will never come for you with torches and pitchforks because you’re no longer alone, no matter what you believe. Thanks to the Internet, any person with any idea or belief whatsoever can connect with other people of a similar mind. This builds a coalition of like-minded activists who soon become numerous enough to be classified as a real honest-to-goodness minority group. And as everyone knows, it’s unthinkable to question the beliefs of a minority group. This is why there are two sides to every issue, and I do mean EVERY issue. Nothing is “for sure” anymore.

The problem is, real life has a one-sided reality to it that can’t be changed by contrary belief.

What On Earth Is Weaker Than Eskimo Chili Salsa?

2010-04-20T07:23:00.002-06:00

With PR efforts that have been weaker than Eskimo chili salsa, climate scientists have consistently shown that they just don’t understand public relations, and that’s why American public opinion polls (not that this is any measure of scientific wisdom) now show that only about 57% of us accept the science on global warming, and this is down from 70% back before the economic meltdown. Curiously, in Europe where the downturn in the economy was equally bad, about 90% of the people have unquestioned faith in the data showing that our planet is getting hotter.

One thing that Europe doesn’t have is our system of ideologically conservative think tanks like the CATO Institute, and the American Enterprise Institute, and the Heartland Institute (my God, don’t these names make you feel safe and comfy)? Fifty years ago when the EPA was moving to ban DDT, these think tanks took money from the chemical and pesticide industry and put the cash into the pockets of scientific experts-for-hire who appeared on television to say that DDT was, not only safe, but a boon to agriculture and food production.

Twenty-five years ago, these think tanks were used to launder money from the tobacco companies and transfer it into the pockets of scientific experts-for-hire who would vouch for the safety of carcinogenic smoke in the human lung. Undoubtedly, this effort helped delay anti-smoking legislation by several years, during which time smokers continued to die who otherwise might have lived. But now the stakes are much higher. For the last dozen years, these very same conservative think tanks have funneled money from oil and coal companies into the pockets of new experts-for-hire to muddy the water around the issue of global warming. In the U.S. this effort has had the same success in delaying needed change that we saw with tobacco. Unfortunately, climate change is a global problem and not just an American policy problem, so the outcome involves— not dead smokers— but flooded coastal dwellers, perhaps a billion of them. That’s billion with a B.

How effective is the campaign to deny global warming? Right outside my back door in Colorado is the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). This is the world’s leading institution for climate modeling, and it should be the world’s strongest voice in raising the alarm about climate change. I’ll bet you’ve never heard of NCAR, but I’ll bet you’ve heard of Exxon Mobil and the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. Recently, a friend of mine with a local television station wanted to do an interview at NCAR about the link between the much-publicized rain-induced flooding in Rhode Island and global warming. His producer insisted that he interview an advocate from the “opposing side of view.” In other words, the television piece should be constructed as a balanced debate about global warming. With disgust, I need to say that NCAR and the TV reporter both capitulated, and the illusion was perpetuated that global warming is still an unproven hypothesis. My personal opinion is that none of this matters. The tipping point has already been passed, but twenty years ago a competent PR campaign on behalf of the world’s scientific climatologists might have saved the planet.

I Can Let You Look At It, But You Can’t Touch It

2010-04-18T07:13:00.004-06:00

A group of radical, dark-skinned, fundamentalist Muslims plans to bomb an American law enforcement target, and they are labeled as “Islamic terrorists.” Nine whacked-out, white, fundamentalist Christians plan to bomb an American law enforcement target, and they are labeled as “Hutaree militia.”

Islamic madrassas whip dark-skinned Muslims into a frenzy of anger at the U.S. government, and they are creating “radicalized terrorists.” Tea Party assemblies whip white Christians into a frenzy of anger at the U.S. government, and they are creating “patriotic activists.” Frankly, other than calculated semantics, I don’t see any difference.

At last week’s Conference on World Affairs, one of the discussions dealt with “Modern Crusaders, religion in the military.” Ike Wilson, a professor of modern warfare tactics at West Point, expounded on the influence of fundamentalist Christianity in the conduct of our current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The indoctrination starts early. Each Sunday morning, freshly enlisted Marine Corps trainees at boot camp are given the choice between cleaning latrines or attending a fundamentalist Christian worship service. And then, once they are deployed to a war zone, they shoot their bullets through gun barrels that are engraved with Old Testament bible verses right next to the weapon serial number. Troops are supplied with small Christian bibles that have been translated into the local Islamic, Middle-Eastern language, and they are expected to leave these bibles behind in houses where they conduct “searches,” although Pentagon rules prevent them from personally handing the bibles to local Muslim citizens. This nuanced religious conversion policy is typical of a pervasive Pentagon schizophrenia that reminds me of the high school girl who tells her boyfriend, “I can let you look at it, but you must promise not to touch it.”

If al-Qaeda or Taliban fighters find one of the small Christian bibles in a private home, they routinely murder all the residents of that house. One Pentagon estimate puts the number of these “religiously motivated” murders at a level equal to the number of civilians accidentally killed by misguided American bombs and gunfire. If these murders are reported at all, they’re typically dismissed as “sectarian conflict.” It’s easy to say that fundamentalist, radicalized Islam is insane, but then how can we not say the same for fundamentalist Christianity? We can’t condemn one and embrace the other without sacrificing our intellectual integrity. Personally, I don’t see how we can have it both ways.

Oil is the Least of Our Worries

2010-04-17T08:16:00.002-06:00

I spent last week at the annual Conference on World Affairs in Boulder, Colorado, as I’ve done early in the month of April every year for the last twenty years. This conference brings together over 100 leading intellectuals from the fields of business, politics, science, entertainment (mostly Hollywood), education, medicine, religion, technology, and modern culture, and one thing I’ve always appreciated about the CWA is that the conference discussions tend to explore global problems with refreshing candor, seldom trivializing bad news with Pollyanna, “glass half full” happy talk. Not that I’m a Danny Downer, but I’m realistic enough to know that any glass— whether half-full or half-empty— will still eventually need to be washed and put away.

And so I eagerly attended a panel discussion titled, “Peak Oil,” where I fully expected to hear the latest data on petroleum production and extraction and depletion— all of which was predicted half a century ago on a bell shaped graph called the “Hubbert peak curve.” I knew the drill. I just didn’t know if the latest predictions called for the oil to run dry in 30, or 40, or 50 years. Not that it will make any difference to me since I’ll be dead by then.

To my surprise, the discussion veered off into the “Hubbert peak curve” as it applies to finite, non-renewable commodities other than petroleum. It turns out that oil is probably the least of our worries. Before the world runs out of oil, it will run out of platinum and copper (not to mention edible fish and fresh potable water), and all of the rare earth minerals that make our micro-electronic gadgets possible. The calculation has often been cited that it would take six earth-sized planets to supply the raw material if every nation in the world had the American standard of living. It’s no wonder that current Exxon Mobil television commercials now talk about job creation rather than “sustainable” fossil fuel.

Following the Digital Slime Trail

2010-04-16T06:18:00.001-06:00

The Library of Congress announced today that they will digitally archive every tweet that’s been posted since the inception of twitter. This, they tell us, will give future researchers a kind of snapshot of everyday life in our time. In other words, live people in the future will be able to follow the digital slime trail of dead people. Question is— why would they want to?

Not As Long As I’m Alive

2010-04-09T18:19:00.001-06:00

Following the holy week troubles for Pope Benedict over the issue of sexual depravity (I refuse to minimize it by calling it priestly abuse), a friend of mine observed, “The Pope is his own worst enemy.” I immediately responded, “Not as long as I’m alive.”

Today, April 9th 2010, a letter written in 1985 surfaced in which old Joe Ratzinger (now the beloved Pope Benedict) refused to defrock a California child-molesting pervert (he tied child victims to the bed while he sodomized them) priest for, quote, “the good of The Universal Church.” Thank God, Ratzinger was wrong about this too, Catholicism is NOT universal.

No sooner was this letter exposed to the world than the Vatican issued an edict to the world’s Catholic dioceses to be completely transparent and compliant with local criminal law when local child abuse is found to be perpetrated by local priests. Sorry, “Papa Ratzi.” Too little, too late. This is like the teenager without a valid driver’s license who kills a pedestrian with a stolen car, and then agrees to take driver’s training class. But here’s the kicker. For faithful Catholics, this wipes the slate clean, and all is forgiven. Belief is a crippling attribute.

The Vatican Lays an Easter Egg

2010-04-03T17:35:00.002-06:00

It’s Easter Sunday, a day that celebrates the historic occasion when the body of Jesus Christ was misplaced or stolen from the grave. Exploiting the media attention covering this holy event, a key Vatican official compared the criticism of The Church and the Pope over the sadistic sex abuse of children to anti-Semitism. As the public remarks were televised, the Pope sat nearby, looking comatose in what appeared to be a drug induced stupor. The video filming crew made sure he was on camera. So now it’s out in the open. In the mind of the Vatican, the reality of indulging in sexually perverted child molesting sodomy and the reality of being Jewish are equally offensive to would-be critics. Can it get any more pathetic?

This is what happens when 21st Century investigative media zeal meets up with a 14th Century mindset of unquestioned authority lacking any modern competent public relations expertise. Here’s my little Easter present to The Catholic Church in the form of some free and unsolicited advice to the Vatican— in a power struggle between The Church and the world’s secular media, The Church will come in second. Quite simply, the Vatican isn’t smart enough to compete with the probing intellectual capability of media professionals around the world who want to save innocent children from abuse by bringing down the Pope. Moreover, there are probably a thousand journalists who now recognize that this current religious crisis facing the most arrogant institution on earth is actually another potential Watergate, and whoever finds the true “smoking gun” will be the next Bob Woodward. In his Easter homily to the world, the Pope made no apology for anything, but he said that the coming year would bring “anguish” for The Church. He has no idea.

Good Friday? Not at the Vatican

2010-04-01T16:11:00.000-06:00

Bristling at the fact that they no longer have the power to burn non-believers at the stake, the Cardinals and other honchos in the Vatican are mounting an all out push-back against the world’s media for questioning the sanctity of Pope Benedict. As more allegations of priestly abuse (a quaint little Catholic euphemism for pedophile sodomy) pour in from various nations, implicating the Pope himself in the cover-up of sexual misconduct, the Vatican is responding with indignation and outright anger. Whatever happened to that admonition we were given in the confessional, “Now make a good act of contrition”? Clearly, contrition is something expected from all of the everyday sinners like me, and it’s beneath the dignity of someone as lofty as the Pope.

I left The Catholic Church forty years ago. I knew back then that the whole thing was a fraud.

Weirded-Out About Sex

2010-03-30T15:43:00.003-06:00

It’s Holy Week again as we count down to the day that Jesus got himself whacked, and as usual we’re treated to televised images of Pope Benedict reading words from a sheet of paper with all the inflection and passion of a lobotomized automaton. Putting the Pope up there on his little balcony during a week dedicated to holiness is symbolically like putting Bernie Madoff out front as the poster boy for a week celebrating financial security, and that’s especially true this year when revelations of sex abuse are pouring in from around the world that clearly demonstrate the depth of Vatican sexual depravity. The Catholic Church is increasingly seen as a vast child molestation machine, and it’s a sure bet that every victim who comes forward is speaking for ten victims of past abuse who prefer to carry their secret to the grave. Given that Catholic priestly sexual perversion has probably been in place for more than a thousand years, the number of violated innocents must be in the hundreds of thousands. Maybe millions.

Here’s what I don’t understand. Humans have been copulating for a couple million years, and while none of us ever get the sex thing totally figured out, still, as a species, we’ve pretty much been able to form institutions that were normal and mentally healthy about human sexuality. Catholicism stands alone in its category as the one global religion that can’t comprehend the mysteries of normal sex. From masturbation to homosexuality to female equality to birth control to mastering the multitasking capability that makes a career and family both possible for the average man— The Catholic Church is simply weirded-out about every aspect of sexuality. And this is being extremely kind. I’m sure that if I'd been sodomized by a priest, I’d see Catholicism as the epitome of pure evil. For the life of me, I don’t understand why Catholics put up with it.

It’s All About Jobs

2010-03-25T11:54:00.003-06:00

Exxon Mobil. The American Petroleum Institute. Chevron. America’s Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. What a fool I’ve been, because I always thought that these corporations and institutions were primarily involved in pulling fossil remnant material out of the ground to be refined into fuel to produce energy. At one time, I even believed that they contributed to climate change. I could not have been more mistaken.

Thanks to numerous television commercials which played during the Winter Olympics and the NCAA basketball playoffs, I now realize that the petroleum companies and the coal companies are mostly benign jobs programs that exist fundamentally just to put vast numbers of Americans to work. In this aspect, they are similar to the American car companies, and the medical health insurance companies, and even the United States Military. It’s all about jobs, and anyone who doubts that just isn’t watching enough commercial television. The message is clear. To bring down unemployment, we must burn more coal and oil, and buy more cars, and privatize more of the health insurance system, and start more foreign wars— or at the very least, we should maintain the wars that we’ve got. If history teaches us anything, it’s that the most effective national policy for putting people to work is participation in a good old-fashioned war, and two is even better.

And as for climate change, it’s a job killer if it’s taken seriously. Fortunately for hard working Americans as well as those looking for work, nobody in America is taking it seriously.