God's own pimp

Most non-Christians are acutely aware of the crusade although it may be invisible or at least unnoticed to others. To many Americans, this is Jesus Christ's own country and it's just natural, rather than sectarian to point this out on every possible occasion; on occasions like Memorial day.

Now, my family has been in this country for 6 generations which should be long enough to consider oneself an American, but particularly here in the South, it isn't -- at least if you're a Hindu, Muslim, Jew or none of the above. If you're one of those, you probably, like me, wish the mood of the country was less of a relentless crusade and more of the attitude: you go to your church, I'll go to mine, but the rest, like a veteran's cemetery, is neutral ground.

This weekend, as expected, I'm getting forwarded messages about "treasuring our war dead" and supporting the troops and how we'd all be shackled slaves if it weren't for the US military bombing all those third world countries and kidnapping people like Noriega and overthrowing any democracy that seemed too socialist. Of course I'm one of those emotional types who is known to get teary-eyed at war memorials, but it's more about the lost youth and the precariousness of life than the glory of war and the glory of Jesus the divine ( or Yahweh, or any of the infinite number of gods we go to war for.) We've lost enough over the glory of some myth, thank you very much. If the flag pin patriots don't mind, I'd rather reflect on history by myself rather than to conform to some ever more sectarian ritual of self congratulatory jingoism.

I don't think I'm alone or out of the mainstream to think that a cornerstone of our country was religious neutrality; a country where the government neither supported or suppressed any religion, any god and in the name of freedom -- but that mainstream seems rather silted up and narrow and unnavigable on occasions like this when people who speak for our government decide their personal gods are superior to those silly, second-rate gods of others and the courts share their smug, condescending crusade.

So when the Rev. Scott Rainey decided to give a Memorial Day invocation, as he's been doing for a couple of years at the Huston National Cemetery and which closed with

"While respecting people of every faith today, it is in the name of Jesus Christ, the risen Lord, that I pray. Amen."

The Veterans Administration said no, you don't and presumably because it's not a Christian cemetery exclusively for Christians and because doing so at least hints at the establishment of a preferred state religion. Apparently Texans are offended that some heathen would dare to sit in the front of America's bus and took it to court. It being Texas, a judge arrogated that the government cannot

"gag citizens. . . in some bureaucrat's notion of cultural homogeneity"

Not even if that bureaucrat wrote the First Amendment. In fact it's the court's notion of homogeneity, that we're all Christians here, that it's a christian universe but we'll allow you lesser folks to sit in the back if you keep quiet, that stinks up the polluted air of Texas.

Thus spake U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes, God's own pimp. Did the VA have the right? Was this an unconstitutional integration of church and state? Was this about 'homogeneity' or about respect for the feelings and rights of others including the non-Christian dead? Even if not, it's a slap in the face, whether thoughtless or intentional, to every atheist who died in a foxhole, every Navaho, every Jew, Every Muslim or Buddhist or follower of Shinto who served in our armed forces and the families who honor them and mourn them today. They are ours, not the property of Hughes or Rainey or the State of Texas and not to be used as a sales tool and if there is some special circle for such people, may they reach it soon.

If they're for it, we're against it.

By Capt. Fogg

The natural state of men, before they were joined in society, was a war, and not simply, but a war of all against all.

-Libertas, Thomas Hobbes -


Scanning the Facebook page of my congresscritter, Tom Rooney (R-FL) I find the real interest not to be the simplistic banalities and the strained attempts to generate outrage against Barack Obama. It's not the continuing effort by Rooney to portray the assistance being given NATO's actions in Syria as a constitutional violation; it's more about the truly demented calls for impeachment by the people who post there; calls that remain in view without comment by Mr. Rooney, who claims that he maintains the page to be more "in touch" with the sentiments of his constituents rather than as a tool to promote irrational rage for political purposes.

If he has some constituents other than me who disagree with the "Oh I just hate, hate him" and "Oh he just makes me sick" and the "he uses the constitution to line his bird cage" swamp dwellers, they must indeed like me, be very reluctant to post comments there under their real names. He's created a milieu quite hostile to reason and reasonable people offering constructive criticism.

Yes, of course there are many questions about the legality of George W. Bush's legacy, some of which -- too much of which -- remains in place, but the War on Obama is not really based on his alleged and often misrepresented constitutional infractions, and we know it because they weren't presented as such during the previous administration and indeed were eagerly supported by the reactionary beasts who hang out on the Rooney page to congratulate themselves and outdo each other on the size of their hate. Indeed, that place is a microcosm of our war against ourselves, a war of all against all.

It's not that I like Senator Rand Paul or his familiar pose of principled outrage, but I am indeed on his side when it comes to addressing the real constitutional outrage of the Patriot Act. I have to smile at what may be the end of his naivete because it isn't the Democrats at war with the Leahy-Paul Amendment, designed to allow greater oversight of ever increasing Government warrantless surveillance powers under that cynically named act. It's the Republicans supporting precisely the kind of power they pretend to oppose while posturing as libertarians to the frothy-mouthed and furious rabble.

“Unfortunately, what we’re finding now is that the Democrats have agreed to allow me to have amendments but my own party is refusing to allow me to debate or present my amendments.”

Said Paul. Imagine that.

But as the man said, the joining of people into a society serves to prevent the chaos of nature, and I have to ask myself whether the effort to portray anything social or designed for the common good as the unqualified evil of Socialism, did not have the promotion of that very bellum omnium contra omnes; everyone at war with everyone and every man for himself as a purpose. Perhaps when everyone is against everyone, such things as consistent viewpoints are illusory as is anything resembling principle. If you're for it, I'm against it may be as close as we can get.

The Last Hooyah

The next big, impossible debate in the budget boondoggle is defense. The president has called for reducing defense spending by $400 billion over the next twelve years. I'm all for those cuts, but, as usual, where to start? Cue the hue and cry, including mine.

"U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned on Tuesday that policymakers would face tough choices trimming military budgets, weighing cuts in pay and benefits against delays in updating aging ships and jets." (Reuters, May 24, 2011)

[QUOTATION MARKS AND SARCASM ALERT]

The Pentagon has begun a review of priorities and spending to meet the President's budget requirements. And Gates, who retires "in 2011" interviewed spoke yesterday before the conservative "think tank" American Enterprise Institute, arguing for "absolutely critical" new aerial refueling planes and F-35's for the Air Force and new ships and "eventually" new ballistic submarines for the Navy, and a "recapitalization" of the Army's infrastructure spending. And then had the nerve to offer up the following:

Part of this analysis will entail going places that have been avoided by politicians in the past.  Taking on some of these issues could entail:

• Re-examining military compensation levels in light of the fact that – apart from the U.S. Army during the worst years of Iraq – all the services have consistently exceeded their recruiting and retention goals;
•  It could mean taking a look at the rigid, one-size-fits-all approach to retirement, pay and pensions left over from the last century.   A more tiered and targeted system – one that weights compensation towards the most high demand and dangerous specialties – could bring down costs while attracting and retaining the high quality personnel we need;  and
• It will require doing something about spiraling health care costs – and in particular the health insurance benefit for working age retirees whose fees are one-tenth those of federal civil servants, and have not been raised since 1995. (DOD transcript)

As an Air Force wife (ret.) and Navy mother-in-law, I can tell you I don't want our poor pilots left fuel-less over the Atlantic nor our valiant submariners forced to find jobs on land in this economy. Nor do I want our kids in  uniform patroling IED'd roads in vehicles that offer them no protection, but that happened even when our military budget was at its highest. And, full disclosure, I sure as hell don't want the kids who have served multiple combat tours to be threatened by cuts in retiree pay, higher Tricare premiums, or reduced veteran's medical benefits just as we're bringing them home from combat zones. Therefore, I can't even write about this subject without all the marks of emphasis available on the Blogger post composition toolbar to express my sarcasm.

Because it seems to me that Gates is knowingly opening the political argument to sacrifice pay and benefits for both past and future personnel in favor of the continued development of the kinds of weapons that we once used to rattle at Russia. And he's doing it with all the timing and finesse of an Ahmadinejad. He's got his, he's preaching to the well-lobbied choir, and he knows the mood of the country has justifiably, exhaustedly, declared it ain't gonna study war no more. We've been told we won't need so many boots on the ground in wars (we won't even have to fight) in the future, because we'll have all these high-tech robotics that will sniff and snuff troublemakers for us (before they've even decided to think about attacking us) and the rest will be up to an All-Special Ops military. It's another War To End All Wars mindset.

US Navy Seals Website

I confess I couldn't bring myself to read the entire Gates speech as printed on the DOD website, so I supplemented it with the summaries of a few people who actually get paid to do this stuff. I'm afraid I only got more confused. As an example--and, by no means, the most confusing one--there's this from Bloomberg,

Gates also called for a more flexible retirement system to retain military and civilian personnel with critical skills. The current system provides full retirement benefits to those who have served for 20 years or more, giving them “every incentive to leave,” even if the military needs them.

About 70 percent of the military force doesn’t stay for retirement. 'Somebody who serves for 10 years leaves with nothing,' Gates said. 'That doesn’t make any sense. That’s not fair.'

What does that even mean? That we shouldn't let those poor, exhausted careerists go because they want to leave at the end of twenty years of sheer hell for low pay or that we should start paying benefits to anyone who re-ups past their first commitment? I would assume that, if you've survived the US military for a twenty year career, you're chock full of "critical skills," but that doesn't mean we should ask you to stay for thirty, much less that you'd agree after all the rule changes you've suffered in the first twenty. But, if we don't want to pay full benefits for a twenty year stint due to budget cuts, why discuss benefits for a ten year commitment? Gates is right; it doesn't make sense and it wouldn't be fair.

Yes, I'm just a wife and MIL, and I'm obviously missing the Big Picture. So, help me with this, Readers, because I have questions.

If we cut pay and benefits and lengthen the career commitment, who's going to volunteer for this All-Volunteer military? We'll be continuing the trend of pulling from those who, by virtue of minority status or sheer bad luck, have no other job options--only we'll be offering them less to work longer and harder. We already pay our military personnel poorly for their services at every level and rank, promising to make it up to them in future benefits and retirement pensions. If we're going to make further cuts both before and after retirement, we might as well turn the DOD over to the private sector and let them outsource this entire national security gig to developing countries. 

And make no mistake, it'll be about the pay. The last hooyah generation, the last of the kids who wanted to go out and fight for this grand country because it's just so darned grand, are within a few years of military retirement, themselves. And they've seen how this grand country values their well-being. The long, slow decline of taste for the kind of patriotism that spurs volunteers to fight some politician's wars began in the sixties and has picked up speed ever since. In an election cycle where neither party wants to go on record as being in favor of continued presence in Afghanistan, where will we find the psychological underpinnings of the gee-whizz, gung-ho attitude that helped the services meet their recruitment quotas, the attitude that still existed in some parts of the US in 1965? Which little girl's daddy is going to raise her to believe that fighting for her country is honorable work to be proud of after the exposé on the story of Private Jessica Lynch?

For today's Seal Team Six, it's about pride and country, but dick around with their families' benefits, their buddy's benefits, and pride won't be enough for them to recommend the military to their kids. The last hooyah will belong to Future Seal Team Six and the special ops personnel like them...those highly paid, highly skilled, highly educated, unimaginably well-equipped few who unquestionably have lifetime benefits that put congressional benefits to shame because there is national recognition of the Seal's comparative worth. It'll either be that down the road or the draft.

Stop listening to him! Pay attention to me!

OK, let's see if I can use one of these "internet memes" that all the cool kids are into.

Shorter Pam ("I probably am a vampire") Geller (Big Government)
AIPAC Applause-O-Meter

I don't care if you did hear cheering for Obama in the videos from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee meeting. That wasn't cheering, it was just polite applause. And you know those crazy Jews - they'll applaud anything. Who are you going to believe? Me, or your lying ears?

Cameron and Obama, Addicts and BFF

Recent op-ed piece in the Guardian by Simon Jenkins is worth a read. Here's an except:

"Obama and Cameron have let themselves become trapped in a lethal military embrace, one that has failed to deliver peace in Iraq or security in Afghanistan. It has destabilised Pakistan and spread al-Qaida's influence. It has killed hundreds of thousands of people to no one's obvious benefit, and cost billions of dollars that would have been better deployed on peace and reconstruction. Today, London and Washington are fortress cities through which their statesmen must travel like frightened rabbits, like Obama during his London visit.

"This was the legacy of Bush and Blair and it is the most barren in recent history. Yet it holds those successors in thrall. Neither has shown a capacity to disengage from the drums and trumpets of warin favour of a more subtle and more productive diplomacy. Until they do, any hope that the west's leadership might gain traction in the Muslim world is futile."

For full story go to Addicted to War.

School Superintendent Asks Gov. Snyder to Make His School a Prison

Nathan Bootz, the Superintendent of Ithaca Public Schools in Michigan, wrote a letter to the editor asking Gov. Snyder to make his school a prison:

Dear Governor Snyder,

In these tough economic times, schools are hurting. And yes, everyone in Michigan is hurting right now financially, but why aren’t we protecting schools? Schools are the one place on Earth that people look to to “fix” what is wrong with society by educating our youth and preparing them to take on the issues that society has created.

One solution I believe we must do is take a look at our corrections system in Michigan. We rank nationally at the top in the number of people we incarcerate. We also spend the most money per prisoner annually than any other state in the union. Now, I like to be at the top of lists, but this is one ranking that I don’t believe Michigan wants to be on top of.

Consider the life of a Michigan prisoner. They get three square meals a day. Access to free health care. Internet. Cable television. Access to a library. A weight room. Computer lab. They can earn a degree. A roof over their heads. Clothing. Everything we just listed we DO NOT provide to our school children.

This is why I’m proposing to make my school a prison. The State of Michigan spends annually somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000 per prisoner, yet we are struggling to provide schools with $7,000 per student. I guess we need to treat our students like they are prisoners, with equal funding. Please give my students three meals a day. Please give my children access to free health care. Please provide my school district Internet access and computers. Please put books in my library. Please give my students a weight room so we can be big and strong. We provide all of these things to prisoners because they have constitutional rights. What about the rights of youth, our future?!

Please provide for my students in my school district the same way we provide for a prisoner. It’s the least we can do to prepare our students for the future...by giving our schools the resources necessary to keep our students OUT of prison.

Respectfully submitted,

Nathan Bootz
Superintendent
Ithaca Public Schools

I did not fact-check this as to whether Supt. Bootz's assertions on prisoner treatment are correct; I know that here in California we cut most of these services from our prisons years ago. I also know that anytime you make this kind of comparison, there is a risk of public backlash that will have the result it did here, removing program after program leaving our correction system little more than an overcrowded warehouse that makes serious criminals out of even the least violent offender.

Still, it breaks my heart to see this kind of desperation in a school administrator.

H/T to Big Think

Happy 70th

Before the day is out, all the best to Bob, my northern neighbour to the south...

MEET STORM, A CHILD WITHOUT GENDER

An interesting tidbit flittered across my screen that made me smile on a day when not much is going right. I found this story so profoundly wonderful and wacky I just had to share.

At four months old, Storm is the most recent addition to the Witterick/ Stocker household of Toronto, Canada which includes brothers Jazz and Kio. But for now, Storm’s parents aren’t revealing his/her’s gender.

"We've decided not to share Storm's sex for now--a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation, a stand up to what the world could become in Storm's lifetime (a more progressive place? ...)"

Stocker and Witterick say the decision gives Storm the freedom to choose who he or she wants to be. "What we noticed is that parents make so many choices for their children. It's obnoxious," adds Stocker, a teacher at an alternative school.

HERE is the story.

I found myself being able to identify with some of their ideas and concepts. I remember at the age of 8 wanting desperately to be a boy, mostly because my brother got so much attention from my Dad and a favorite uncle. I thought if I wished really hard and acted like a boy, I’d become one. This quickly passed and I became content to be a girl but many times I was told I couldn’t do something or follow a career path because it was reserved for males only.

One of my sons at the age of four wanted my mother in law to paint his nails with nail polish like hers. He liked the bright, shiny color. My father in law went wild,” You’ll turn him into a sissy!” I had to defend my mother in law’s action and my son’s desire for the innocent interaction it was. Today he is a man who seems quite well adjusted to his gender.

The notion of letting children develop their own personality and perspectives is appealing to me. Think of how much mental illness and or sociopathic behavior might be averted if kids grew up just being whatever they wanted to be.

Forget color, gender, religion and social status…

I’ll let Storm’s, Jazz’s and Kio’s Mom have the last word:

"Everyone keeps asking us, 'When will this end?'" she said. "And we always turn the question back. Yeah, when will this end? When will we live in a world where people can make choices to be whoever they are?"

Lemmings

Well, it's a new week. Apparently the world ended on Saturday not with a bang, but with a whimper. If you're reading this, you're apparently a hopeless sinner, doomed to five months or so of torment before being sent to the fiery pits of hell, or perhaps (just maybe) Harold Camping was wrong.

Christianity tends to get a pass in our society. The most outrageous ideas popping out of the mouths of the sincerely religious are allowed to stand unchallenged (although other religions don't get the same respect).

But not this time, really. Most of us heard about Camping and his idiotic ideas, and most of us thought he was an idiot. But there were some poor gullible bastards who were taken in. Many of them were taken in completely.

A man in Nairobi killed himself because of Camping's prediction. A man in California tried to euthanize his pets. People have spent their life savings, families were torn apart.

And a woman in Antelope Valley tried to kill herself and her two daughters, by slitting their throats and wrists.

Fortunately, "murder/suicide" now joins "spotting fraud" as just another thing she sucked at.

Some people suggested that Camping had emailed a suicide note to the Family Radio employees and killed himself. Sadly, that didn't prove to be the case. He showed up the next day, confused that he'd proven to be a lying sack of fuck. As I write this, the Family Radio website hasn't changed their "Judgement Day - May 21, 2011" screen:

But I clicked on that microphone in the upper right, and that vicious, unwavering bastard is holding a press conference claiming that God has now judged the world, and it will still end on October 21st.

This evil fucknozzle has earned over a hundred million dollars with this scam, and he is still trying to keep it going.

The saddest part to all this is, Camping's followers will most likely just become more devout because of this. What needs to happen is that his victims need to sue him for his immoral con game. But it won't happen.

Because the one thing that lasts forever is stupidity.

Damon Fowler vs. Bastrop, LA

Graduating from high school is supposed to be a joyous time in a young person's life. For Damon Fowler, however, the celebration involved being lied to and ostracized by his community, and being booed as he walked across the stage in Bastrop, LA. His parents honored the occasion by throwing Damon's possessions out on the lawn in the rain, locking the house, and going "on vacation." Prior to this, they had cut off Damon's internet access and his contact with his brother in Texas who supported him.

It started about a week ago, when Damon objected to a prayer that was scheduled during his graduation ceremony. In 1992, the Supreme Court ruled against coerced prayer in a strongly worded decision which read, in part:

"As we have observed before, there are heightened concerns with protecting freedom of conscience from subtle coercive pressure in the elementary and secondary public schools. Our decisions in [Engel] and [Abington] recognize, among other things, that prayer exercises in public schools carry a particular risk of indirect coercion. The concern may not be limited to the context of schools, but it is most pronounced there. What to most believers may seem nothing more than a reasonable request that the nonbeliever respect their religious practices, in a school context may appear to the nonbeliever or dissenter to be an attempt to employ the machinery of the State to enforce a religious orthodoxy."

Ironically, the original suit was brought by Christian parents who objected to a rabbi giving the benediction at their child's graduation. In the 18 years since this ruling, Christians have repeatedly and vociferously complained and fought against this ruling, illustrating the 'be careful what you wish for' aspect of any such effort.

When Damon went to the ACLU, the school backed down, and agreed to a moment of silence in place of the prayer. He then posted this on reddit.com, a social media site with a strong atheist community. The top-rated out of the 1,771 comments is a response from Damon's brother, who kept the community in the loop after Damon was cut off from communication by his parents. He conveyed the amazing support to his brother in conference calls through Damon's sister. Meanwhile, Damon's teacher Mitzi Quinn told the local newspaper, "[In the past, non-religious students] respected the majority of their classmates and didn’t say anything. We've never had this come up before. Never…And what’s even more sad is this is a student who really hasn't contributed anything to graduation or to their classmates." The paper reported that Quinn was given an award for her "great service." Damon received death threats, and his brother and sister feared for his safety attending the graduation.

I would dare any apologist to defend the behavior of the so-called Christians in this story. One of my dearest Facebook friends posted the graduation video with a comment that she missed the days we could openly make religious references in school, but what I saw was a student defiantly flouting the Constitution and going back on the school's promise, and the crowd cheering wildly:

But while Damon was cut off from almost every avenue of support, wonderful things were happening across the internet. A Facebook fan page now has 10,115 people who "like" it (though some apparently clicked the like button so they could say hateful things and boast about how the prayer was said anyway, that's to be expected). The FFRF had already awarded Damon a $1,000 scholarship, but an additional scholarship fund was set up on ChipIn with a goal to raise $10,000. The total donations now stand at $14,482.75, thanks to support by prominent atheist bloggers like The Friendly Atheist.

The most striking element of this story, to me, is the terrible behavior exhibited by the Christians in contrast with the outpouring of support from the atheists. I'm sure my own cognitive biases are hard at work here, but I just spent the last few hours reading through a huge amount of commentary on this subject and I have yet to find one redeeming comment from a religious individual, even among my own friends. I had intended for my first post to be more of an uplifting story, but the more I read about this, the more I despair for the prospect of coexistence. Yes, this one had a happy ending, but my mind keeps going back to the thought of one kid, alone and scared, publicly shamed and cut off from support. How an entire community, including that child's parents, could come together to do that is beyond me.