Being Differrent

WHEN I WAS ABOUT TEN YEARS OLD, I decided, I realized to my satisfaction, that the Christian religion is a bunch of nonsense. Cruel, frightening, illogical, predicated up a good man being tortured to death to achieve salvation for cowards unwilling to suffer the consequences of their own actions. I have never wavered from this viewpoint. It has tended to guide mer towards philosophical closeting. My Victorian grandmothers never found out, and my parents, protecting me from my grandmothers, didn't care, bless them. Le the kid do his own thing. In 1967 I was twelve, and became a secret Viet Nam war protester. I could see through the scam, and the impossibility of winning a war halfway around the world in which the enemy was invisible, ubiquitous, and committed to the long haul. I kept that secret too. My parents wouldn't've been so sanguine on the issue of patriotism. Also, I agreed with martin Luther King, and his protest methods, secretly. My middle class white world thought him a troublemaker, a complainer. A full blown radical revolutionary I had become before I was a teenager. My choice was to conceal my true identity, or risk widespread disapproval among my family and friends. The makings of a troubled, double life, clearly evident from an early age, Dr. Freud. This couch is comfortable. I grow sleepy. I also concealed the fact that I was a Yankees fan, until I came out of the baseball closest at about the age of twelve. Thank God I aint gay, eh? Its a miracle I aint schizophrenic. Or am I? (am I making all this up?) Now, at the tender age of sixty two, I am positively mouthy, when I choose to be. No more cowering in closets. My beliefs about all the above haven't change, have instead fortified, evolved, filled me with pride and confidence. I try, not always with success, to avoid broaching religion and politics, which my sixth grade teacher advised us in 1967. I remember thinking that she was truncating the two most interesting topics, and she was, but for a very good reason; human pride and anger. I still don't like her advice, but I see the wisdom of it. Throughout my entire life Christian have been trying to save me. Really, they needn't. My religiosity is good enough, for me, if not for them. They don't count. If someone invites me to church, I decline, with thanks, If they ask me why I declined, I say I am not religious. If they question why, I tell them because I consider their religion primitive, barbaric, cruel, and insane. They ask, I tell. But I know better than to bring it up. To encourage others to adopt your religion is arrogant, insulting, and condescending. At least I understand that. And, if you try to dissuade me from rooting for the Yankees, you won't succeed. But I have no trouble understanding why you might hate them.

The Unchristian Founding of America

PEOPLO, BEING PEOPLE, view the world through rose colored glass and paint it with colors which best conform to their own biases and prejudices. We make the world in our own image, as people, and as collections of people, called cultures. Consider the founding of the United States of America. Benjamin Franklin, for instance. Franklin and his fellow founders, for the most part, conceived of God as an impersonal, rational entity who made the laws of nature, then receded into the background. An unemotional creator who got out of the way. Those wo believed that God spoke to them in books and stories, books which contained stories of an emotional deity who intervened directly in human affairs, often harshly, was not the preferred ultimate cause of Franklin and his fellow "deists", as they were, and still are called. john Adams wrote a letter to Jefferson in which he expressed concern that his son, John Quincy, might spend the rest of his life studying biblical prophecy, and another letter in which he admonished Jefferson to avoid hiring European professors for his new University of Virginia, because, as he said, European academics might be Christians, and might turn Jefferson's shiny new center of learning into a theological seminary. Adams wrote to a friend in Europe that the bible consists of "millions of fables, tales, and legends", and that the Christian religion had "prostituted" all forms of art "to the sordid and detestable purposes of superstition and fraud." According to Jefferson, George Washington is an "unbeliever", and only "has believers constantly about him because he thinks it important to keep up appearances". Nobody could tell for sure what Washington's religious beliefs were, but everyone noticed that he never took communion, never genuflected, even though he as formally an Episcopalian. Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton had an ongoing wager as to what the father of his country actually believed; neither ever collected on the ten dollar bet, because Washington never divulged his secret religiosity. Jefferson himself kept up appearances by attending church but instructed his teenaged nephew to "question the existence of God, because, if there is one, he must surely prefer inquiry and reason to "blindfolded fear". Jefferson thought all religions were alike, "founded on fables and mythologies, including our particular superstition, Christianity". While president, Jefferson cut a copy of the bible into pieces, and separated out the parts of scripture he thought were reasonable, and threw away those passages, most of them, he considered nonsensical. When asked what he was doing, he replied: "I am extracting diamonds from a pile of dung." He compiled the good stuff into his own little book, a copy of which can be obtained from any good university library, or from amazon dot com, for about sixteen dollars. Its called: "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth", and its a good read. On his deathbed, Benjamin franklin said: "I have some doubts as to His divinity, though it is a question I do not worry much about, and consider needless to worry about, when I expect soon enough to have an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble." W hen someone asked alexander Hamilton why the framers hadn't mentioned God in the constitution, he hilariously replied: 'we forgot". The man whose writing inspired the American people to start a new country with his pamphlet "common Sense" wrote an article called "The Age of reason". Paine hated the Bible and the Christian religion more than most non believers. Even though a vast majority of colonial Americans were Christian, the founding fathers, in general, were not. they were radical revolutionaries, politically, intellectually, religiously. and yet, even today, devout Christians insist that America was founded on Christian principles, when in fact it was founded on what the framers hoped were scientific, not superstitious principles. An impenetrable wall between church and state is what James Madison wanted, and he said so in a letter to Jefferson. that's what they all wanted, because they all knew that religious liberty must be preserved, and that government must be secular, free from religious control. for their wisdom, we should be eternally grateful, here, and in heaven.

Standing Up Against Injustice, by Respectfully Kneeling

THERE ARE EIGHT MILLION Jehovah's witnesses in America who do not salute the flag by placing their hand over their heart during the national anthem, on religious grounds. One salutes God, but not some flag, no matter what it represents, if it does not represent God. there are two hundred thousand Amish in America who do not stand for the Star spangled Banner, for basically the same reason. Your loyalty is to god, and you stand when god commands it, sit when God commands it, but you do not stand like some secular sycophant in praise of something which has no fundamental connection to god, which if fact represents a worldly political and military power, not the Lord. Quakers do not recite the pledge of allegiance. their allegiance is to the Word of God, the Bible, not to any secular power of this corrupt world, including the United States. These are all examples of people who are deadly serious about their religions, and although none of them inhabit the mainstream of either American society or the Christian religion, in general, we the American respect them for the sincerity and depth of their devotion to what they truly believe in. we not harangue them or call their patriotism into question because of their refusal to put any of their temporal loyalties anywhere near the level which they reserve for God. Most American are wither unaware of their lack of showy patriotism, are not concerned about it, or respect it, because most Americans respect the Christian faith and the right of all Americans to practice it as they see fit. All these options are acceptable. this is what we should do; live and let live, leave well enough alone. And yet, let one African-American man kneel on a football field to protest a societal ill, and he loses his job. let a few dozen of his athletic peers do likewise, and the nation, in particular the conservative, ostentatiously patriotic part of it, throws a temper tantrum, suggest that the men should be fired, that the football games should be boycotted, that the football players should lose their job. What an incredible display of shallow hypocrisy by millions of sanctimonious people, who thought they would furiously deny any racism in their motives, are clearly showing just that; racism. To fail to stand for our national anthem is perfectly acceptable, but only on religious grounds. To do so for the purpose of pointing put a social and national injustice which has prevailed for centuries and prevails to this day, to knell in order to point out something truly important and wrong with our society; well, that's just not acceptable. Better to sweep racism under the rug, to pretend that it never happened, or has been long since done away with, than to confront the reality of its pervasive presence in contemporary American life. Typical right wing nonsense. hypocrisy, ND EVIL. The NFL players are not disrespecting the nation anthem or protesting it. they are reminding us of our urgent need to finally address a great evil which has lived among us, and still lives among us, by every study ever done. Racism, and the obvious fact that it remains among us, is our great national evils, and what would our right wing sanctimonious segment have us do? Ignore it. If someone must point it out, at least have the decency to do so in private, where no body has to be forced to see the protest. W shouldn't be surprised. Racism has been, and still is, a force found almost entirely among the Christian right wing of America. At any point in America's history, including now, the Christian community has had the power to eliminate racism entirely, such is their influence. Instead, what do they do? They ignore it, or complain when someone has the courage to speak out against it. Black NFL players love America as much as anyone. they love the flag and they love our silly sounding national anthem. What they don't love is four hundred years of grave injustice, a national American formally sanctioned injustice, and what better way to speak out against it than when we are giving thought to our nation, and what it represents, or what it should represent?

Killing Obamacare, Trump Style

ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, Donald J. Trump is going to kill Obamacare, for two reasons. First, because he said he would, and secondly, because Obamacare was spearheaded in its creation by Barack Hussein Obama, whose middle name, "Hussein", in the fun house world of Trump types, means that the former president is a Muslim. Oh, how our right wing crazies hate Muslims, since they consider all one point five billion of them to be terrorists, even though most terrorism on American soil is perpetrated by - right wing crazies. (see:KKK) Trump and his extreme right wing followers hate Obama to this day, and race has nothing to do with it, so they say, although most of these people spent years claiming that Obama was born in Africa, which to any sensible person raises the red, white, and blue flag of good ole fashioned conservative American racism. Objective, dispassionate experts on the economics of health insurance tell us that Obamacare is actually working quite well, with but a few rough patches which could be smoothed out by making appropriate changes. The people whose premiums have increased because of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, are people with sufficient means to purchase health care insurance in several other places. The millions of poor people who are now insured but weren't before Obamacare are proof of the efficacy of Obama's brand of semi-socialism. First, Trump signed an executive order stopping payments to reimburse insurance companies who provide insurance to the poor under the ACA. Then, he greatly reduced the time frame in which people can sign up for health care, from twelve weeks to six. Rumor has it that the president plans to further the window from six weeks to fifteen seconds, on Halloween. Is this pernicious, or what? the president is hell bent on becoming a self fulfilling prophet: by god he said Obamacare would fail, and now he's going to make damned sure that it does, by strangling it to death. Maybe someone should remind Trump that Obama is actually half white; that might reduce Trump's hatred for the former president by about fifty percent. What will our arguably racist arguably pernicious president do next to kill health insurance for the poor? Perhaps he will oversee the injection of a computer virus into the government website on which people can sign up. Or maybe he will sabotage the website with a hacker's touch, putting a computer generated image of a dark skinned terrorist with Michelle's Obama's facial features at the bottom of the page. Be assured that it will be crafty, whatever it is, and that it will happen soon. The disdain of billionaires for the poor knows no limit.

Suspecting That The Climate Is Changing

QUICK QUESTION: where is autumn? For those of you who through adherence to a rigorous indoor office schedule might not have noticed, its mid October and autumn has not yet begun. In my neck of the woods, the trees, deciduous, which once upon a time began changing colors in early October with regularity, have not yet begun to become red, orange, and yellow. Green they remain, or rather an off putrid green due to our mid August to the present drought, after an auspiciously rainy early summer. Drought is now the new normal in my neck of the woods. On some trees, leaves are falling, but falling green and dry. Then too, every day during October here on the 36th parallel the temperature has been close to ninety degrees, when formerly this time of year was characterized by folks in coats and sweaters. The same is evidently true throughout the country. Green trees, late fall colors, hot temperatures. Then, there's California, ablaze up north of San Francisco in regions which used to be wet and cool this time of year. Worst wild fires in the history of the state, they say. Drought in Europe, wild winds across the Asian steppes, huge hurricanes, of the once every thousand year variety, showing up in the south Atlantic with regularity. If one didn't know better, which is to say if one were not an arrogant American conservative, one might suspect that the climate is changing. You'll recall that most conservative republicans do not believe that global warming/climate change exists, but that if by some weird set of circumstances it does, it is entirely the product of natural, not human forces, and is the result of cyclical patterns beyond our control, nothing to be alarmed about. The best possible scenario is that the progressive world of science repairs the damage, reverses climate change with sustainable technologies, the world returns to a healthy state, and the conservatives say: "see, we told you so. Like we always said, there was never any problem in the first place." And more power to them, bless their little smug hearts. the conservatives who are the most certain that climate change is a liberal hoax are those who never attended college nor passed a chemistry, physics, or biology course, like say Rush Limbaugh.the less educated, the more certain. Typical human behavior, especially among conservative climate change deniers, who fear even the remotest possibility that humanity will be forced to make fundamental changes to its economic and political systems to save the species from itself. Let's repair the environment, then give republicans credit for it; they love being flattered.

Deciding Whether To Be Equal

LOUIS BRANDEIS, who served on the U.S. supreme Court from 1923 to 1939, once said: "you can have democracy, or you can have economic inequality, but you cannot have both." Brandeis never clearly articulate which he preferred. It a difficult choice, to be honest. For the sake of his legacy, let us assume that he wanted democracy and economic equality, rather than plutocratic oligarchy, which is what we have, and what we have always had. brandies was doubtless fully aware of the prodigious price our society would have to pay for actual democracy, and that he surrounded to the inevitable plutocracy. We must further conclude that we the American people prefer inequality and an undemocratic political system, for we acquiesce to it without much complaint, although every so often the meager beginnings of social and economic reform appear, only to wither away beneath an unassailable mound of vested interest money. We give lip service to inherent, classless human equality in America, and we give lip service to our cosmetic democracy, an illusion perpetuated by our ever potent gift of self deception. We pretend that we have democracy, and that everyone's economic status is self inflicted, just, the wages of hard work and smarts, or the lack thereof. Its all a lie, of course. The system is rigged for the wealthy, by the wealthy, and of the wealthy. Plato, in ancient Athens, and James Madison in ancient America, both wrestled with this salient question: which do we choose, economic equality and democracy, or economic inequality and plutocracy? Plato choose the former, in his classic book "The Republic". Distribute wealth equally, and political power in an equally equal manner. Madison opted for the latter, along with the other founders, all of whom were men of means. They chose to dispense with democratic government, in favor of rule of the elite wealthy, and to limit the power of government to change that arrangement in any way. Today, we remain content, even the teeming poor majority. Now, however, our inequality of wealth and power has reached grotesque extremes, and there are signs of trouble. The poor are showing signs of becoming aware of their systematic exclusion from the political process. if current trends continue, there will come a time in the United States in which all political power and all wealth in concentrated in a single pair of hands, but let us hope and assume that before we reach this bizarre state of affairs that we will finally do something about it, something to reform our unbalanced and unsustainable social system, one way or another.

Living Large, Literally, In the Library

RONALD CLARK GREW UP in the new York City public library, lucky fellow. During World War Two, his father was a custodian in the building, and spend much of his time keeping up appearances. One thing led to another, the family spent time there, enjoyed it, and just sort of moved in, setting up house in an unused upstairs storage room, while the man of the house did more than his job description called for, waxing every shelf in the place to a reflective sheen. the young boy, surrounded by knowledge, grew to love books and what they did for him. He grew up a scholar, and ended up spending his career as a college professor. he says he spent hours each day roaming among the stacks, picking and choosing at will, unhurried, being alone when hw wanted to be, while still enjoying a social life at school, with friends, with family, and on playgrounds. Kind of makes you jealous, doesn't it? I didn't literally grow up in a library, but I spent, and still spend, a fair share of my time in them, and consider libraries to be my natural habitat, as I'm sure many other people. The Library of Congress is, essentially, on the same level as your local library with fifty thousand books. the same atmosphere, the same opportunity for learning, especially in our computerized era. Strangely, ever since I was a child, I have never tended to like librarians. I have found them to be petty, vindictive, pious, priggish, emotionally parsimonious. That's only because the librarians in the public schools I attended tolerated not a single hurled paper wad, and no whispering whatever. They're a bit looser now. By the same toke, your basic police officer personality has never appealed to me; too much of the stolid, silent, suspicious type. And yet, I recognize them as heroes, as I recognize librarians as professional community servants. There is no excuse for not liking librarians as a class, all you have to do is avoid them by remaining ensconced in the stacks, out of sight. you can fine your own books, even if it takes an eternity. But librarians are like cops; if and when you need one, you suddenly become damned sure glad that one is available, and they are invariably willing, able, an willing to render assistance, even if they happen to be looing over their thick rimmed glasses, and down their nose at you while doing so. Ronald Clark led a lucky life, and a magical, blessed childhood. I'm jealous. and maybe I'm a little jealous of the librarian profession as well; they get to spend eons of time in libraries, and they get paid for it.

The Meaning Of Words

AMERICA'S GREAT PREVARICATOR, Rush Limbaugh,harms the country on his Excrement In Broadcasting network by duping the gullible, snake oil style, selling snake oil to snakes, the sort of reprobates who voted for Trump, and amazingly, probably still would. However, in several decades of spewing bile and gibberish, he unwittingly told the truth, once. What he said was: "words mean things". Indeed they do, or are supposed to. here wee wish to consider how our country might benefit from taking advantage of a few well placed words. Consider, for instance, our thoroughly corrupt political system. Corrupt in that ist for sale, every molecule of it. It is owned, entirely, by billionaires, because they can afford it. Every elected politician in America, in fact, is either a billionaire or is owned by a billionaire. Every piece of legislation which becomes law is carefully crafted only with the prior approval of our billionaire corporate masters, for the exclusive benefit of the billionaires themselves, to the detriment of everyone else. Minimum wage, the destruction of labor unions, and on, and on. This sad state of affairs could be revolutionarily, easily remedied with seven simple words: "the purchase of political advertising is prohibited". The limits would be on paid speech, not free speech. or consider this: the United States of ammunition is an ongoing shooting spree. Right? The NRA, in effect a billionaire, is intent on putting handguns in everyone's holster, everyone who is a certified "good guy". We are dared to do anything about it, at great personal peril. We could demonstrate our deep devotion to the second amendment by adding the words" while serving in a militia". They could be inserted between the existing second amendment words "arms" and "shall". A capital idea, it would work like a well oiled rifle barrel. Several Supreme Court justices, most notably John Paul Stevens and warren burger, have suggested it. Ah, the power of words, which mean things, and which, if used judiciously and in the right places, can transform society, and make it more like the sort of society in which we all want to live.

Scouting With The Girls

THE ERA OF "Separate but Equal" in the realm of girl and boy scouting is apparently soon to be over. Inclusiveness shall rule the day. Beginning next year, girls will be admitted into the boy scouts, a celebration of gender equality and neutrality. This is the evident culmination of a trend which began several years go. In 2013, gay boys were for the first time allowed to join, openly, with no mention of "don't ask eon't tell". Up until then, they joined, but clandestinely. A couple of years later, scout leaders were allowed to be gay, without pretending otherwise. The coup de grace came when transgender boys, formerly girls, got the keys to the kingdom. Membership in the Boy Scouts is like membership in everything else in America; declining. Meanwhile, the national chair woman/person of the female scouts of America has issued a statement accusing the male scouts of opening their door to girls only for the purpose of boosting their sagging membership by stealing people, luring little girls away from their proper places and kidnapping them, or something like that. The lady is either jealous, unaware of modern society's current politically correct egalitarian tendencies, of just plain old crazy, with a head full of conspiracy theories, which most Americans are these days. In the United States of Accusation, there is a conspiracy theory for every conceivable occasion. Next, we may expect to see reciprocity, the Girl Scouts admitting boys, in member stealing retaliation. Will the day come when one can simultaneously join both, and learn camping and citizenship skills twice, like beans fried twice on the open campfire, outdoors, for good measure? Stay tuned. Considering how tolerant and open minded we are all trying to become, straight, gay, bi, and former boys-turned-transgender newly minted girls will be flocking across the isle soon. The next phase is of course conservative reaction on social media. Never doubt the right wing's intent to weigh in with guns and hatred blazing. Will there be a spike in underage sexually predatory incidents and accusations among kids in green uniforms and merit badges? If not, surely one will be invented, using statistics, to fill the void in conservative thinking. Who will go to the bathroom first, with whose supervision, and the biggest question confronting us of all: which bathroom? You can bet your kind, reverent and obedient merit badge we will soon begin tacking these urgent issues, vocerifously.

Having Way Too Many Boys

IT IS NOW POSSIBLE, IN THIS AGE OF MIRACLES, to determine, in advance, not only if and when you get pregnant, but also whether you want your child to be a boy or a girl, and to implement your decision. We are living in a science fiction world. Of all the people who decide their child's gender a priori, ninety percent choose male. Seventy five percent say that, if and when they are confronted with the choice, they too would choose to have a boy. This may be a good thing. Maybe the human species is subconsciously deciding to reduce its population, by having fewer girls available in the future to get pregnant. This is nothing new. the Chinese have for years, in rural areas, been aborting their baby girls after they were born. Boys can get more work done around the farm. On the other hand, this is probably not a good thing. What it probably means is that we humans tend to value men more than women, we humans are universally misogynistic. Of course, as they say, when you are a parent, with a son you only worry about one penis, with a girl, you must worry about hundreds of penises, to put it crudely but honestly. We have invented the ability to predetermine our children's gender at great moral risk, without due prior consideration, just like we developed atomic bombs, automatic rifles, opiates, and just about every other technological advancement ever made. Will we reach the point where our first grade classrooms across the globe are filled with young "gentlemen", assuming that any first grader anywhere is capable of being a "gentleman"? And when we reach this point, will anybody stop, look around, and say "oops, Houston, we have a problem?" I for one do not wish to live in a world dominated by men, like I already do. If it gets any worse, chauvinistically, we might end up with more Vladimir Putins and Donald J. Trumps than we can stand, if we haven't already, which we indeed have. As matters now stand, about fifty two percent of the world's population is female, the rest male. So maybe a bit of evening out is due, but at a ninety percent male preferral rate, we run the risk of overdoing the boy thing. We certainly don't need more soldiers, and, in any event, women make better soldiers, just like they make better about everything else.

Looking For ET, And Carrying On, Even thougth There Is No Hope

SUPPOSE, IF YOU WILL, that there exists a planet orbiting a star one thousand light years from earth, on which adheres a highly technologically advanced, intelligent civilization. Advanced, because they have smart phones and space flight; intelligent, because they have avoided self destruction through nuclear bombs, environmental suicide, and the like. They know when to turn their smart phones off, say, and they know when to stop worrying about manufacturing wealth and when to start caring for their planetary ecosystem, for instance. Thus, they have survived, so far, just like, so far, we have. (knock on wood). They are curious, like we are, let's assume, and like we do, they turn their telescopes towards the heavens and start looking for other intelligent life, like, say, us, assuming you can call us "intelligent". They point their antennae at us, by sheer happenstance. Out of the entire sky, they just happen to take a look at little old blue earth, which is a stretch, but could happen. We humans are their next door neighbors, because a thousand light years is nothing; a mere hop, skip, and jump. The point is, they are seeing the Earth as the light from earth arrives at their telescope, which means they are looking at the earth as it was in the year 1017, before we started sending signals and spacecraft into outer space. They have no way, in other words, of knowing that we are here, in the year 2017. The whole point here is; even if there is a perfect storm; a smart alien species living on a planet fairly close to us, looking for us, and they happen to find us; they will not be able to see us, because they will not be able to see us as we are now, but as we were, when we were, um, primitive. Which means they won't see us at all, because in 1017, we gave off no signals or light of any kind. The whole point is that, no matter how many advanced, intelligent life forms there are in the galaxy, looking around, the chances of their finding us, and the chances of our finding them with our search projects, is, well, infinitesimally slim. Here on Earth we have been looking for smart life on other planets for over half a century, with several different projects. The SETI (Search (for) Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) project is now privately funded, because government lost interest, but it is up and running, still. And yet, in all these years, the actual amount of space we have covered in our search is equivalent to one glass of water in the Atlantic ocean. Not surprisingly, we have found nothing, so far. we probably never will. And anyone who thinks that there has been, currently is, or soon will be contact with extraterrestrials, is, well, most probably completely full of it. And that, I for one find incredibly depressing. Somehow, we must carry on.

Living Large, In the Great Swamp of Trump

THE GREAT SWAMP OF TRUMP, it would seem, has not yet been fully drained. Whether the drainage process has even begun, or the swamp has become even more murky, is questionable. The Secretary of health and Human Services, Mr. price, demonstrated his devotion to human services, in the form of his own comfort, by treating himself to every conceivable amenity during travel, spending hundreds of thousands of your money, tax payer dollars, on his own comfort, got found out, and resigned his position, slithering away into the void. He was but one of several cabinet members who don't seem to be terribly concerned about the particular purpose of their cabinet positions, as indicated by their stated values prior to their appointments. The EPA director, for example, Mr. Pruitt, who before his EPA appointment filed dozens of law suits against the EPA, has expressed little interest in environmental protection, and a great deal of concern for the business community and coal industry. He intends to eliminate Obama's clean energy plan, and force coal to make a comeback, whether it wants to come back or not. Even as natural gas prices coal out of the free market, the Trump administration will force coal to come back, kicking and screaming if necessary. One way or another, we are going to enhance the carbon content in the atmosphere under this administration. Most of the cabinet, including Mr. Price but not limited to him, who have demonstrated great faith in the free market, seem quite disposed to use tax payer money to travel luxuriously, burning fuel all the way, and to use their government agencies to damage the causes for which they were established. In essence, Trump's cabinet members are billionaires who are accustomed to living high on the hog, so to speak, and enjoy it immensely, at tax payer expense, while flying around devising ways to destroy their own cabinet departments, which were designed to protect we the people, and are therefore antithetical to the free market process of dog eat dog. Too many pigs as the hog trough, as Abraham Lincoln put it. Billionaires, serving Trump's agenda of corruption and destruction, for their own personal gain. It sounds almost too crazy to be true, but unfortunately, it isn't.

Eternal Holiday Cheer, With Perpetual Entertainment

I LIVE TWO BLOCKS from a Dollar General store, but of course, who doesn't? If you don't, you must either live way out in the country, or two blocks away from a Family dollar store, which will soon be taken over by Dollar General, which a year or two ago made a in e hundred million dollar bid to conquer Family Dollar. anyone know whatever happened to that? Tied up in court, maybe? All I know is, there was a time when damned near everything in a dollar store cost a dollar, but those times are gone. On October first, I made my usual walk (I will not drive two blocks for anything) to the store, to buy, best as I can recollect, either a bottle of PowerAde or a can of Spam, both of which are crap which I love, and I walked in, and noticed that the Christmas decorations were up. Christmas decorations, up, on October first. My first thought was: you gotta be kiddin' me. me second thought was: why should I be surprised? A whole isle, devoted to red and green wrapping paper, baubles, bangles, lights, the whole works. So, they plan to sell this stuff for three months. the best time to buy Christmas bric-a-brac is, of course, during the week after Christmas, to stock up at half price for next year. but most folks can't wait that long, so, on the first of October, out it comes. you can rest assured that extensive marketing analysis has revealed that this is the best way to do Christmas, profit wise. What will they think of next, Labor Day Christmas sales? or perhaps two for one, get your 4th of July fireworks and do a little Christmas shopping while you're at it? is there any limit to free marketing, capitalism, and the American way? Don't answer that. You will notice, or have noticed, that everything that makes money in America is now a never ending, year round enterprise. All professional sports last the year around; we are inundated in a perpetual football, basketball, hockey, and baseball season, all at the same time, the number of college football games per team has crept up from ten to twelve, with more on the way, and the post season playoffs are infinitely long. And so it goes with Christmas. I swear the time will come when first Christmas, then every other money spending holiday will be marketed and sold three hundred sixty five days a year, and you will walk into the Dollar General two blocks from your lovely suburban home, and browse through the Christmas isle, the Valentine's Day isle, and the Saint Patrick's Day isle, while on your smart phone, any of a dozen sports will keep you occupied while you stand in line, waiting for the computer to total your bill.

Telling The Truth - At A Cost

COLUMBUS DAY is going out of style, a victim of political correctness. Christopher Columbus has(had) always been an American hero, until recently, when the liberals began to get a hold of him. Essentially, we have always, until recently, been lied to in public school history classes, which traditionally depicted Columbus as nothing but a courageous, exploratory hero, and the Untied States as nothing other than a shining city on a hill, embodying the essence of virtue. The truth, we know, but are only now beginning to accept, is altogether different. Thanks to our politically correct malcontents, we are belatedly taking baby steps in the direction of factual accuracy. Columbus initiated the slave trade,and murdered hundreds of thousands of people in the Caribbean, even though, as he says in his journal, he admired their beauty and friendliness, traits which, he writes, "will make them excellent servants." He was far too busy extorting gold to actually discover America, let alone find an efficient route to the orient. Even his employers, Ferdinand and Isabella, were appalled. So was his priest, who was at his side throughout, and kept his own diary. The priest was concerned about the possibility of time in purgatory for the entire crew. For Indians, whom the politically correct call "native Americans", which Indians generally find patronizing and condescending, celebrating Columbus Day is tantamount to celebrating Pearl Harbor Day. When I was teaching American history, in my overly zealous crusade to teach truth and consequences be damned, I lost several jobs. I should've taken baby steps, seeing as how I worked in the south. Like I tried without success to tell the administrators, it aint my fault that Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine were not Christians, or that James Madison feared democracy, and crafted the constitution specifically to avoid having one. Our non Christian founders preferred science over superstition, and there is nothing we can do about it two hundred years later, try though we do. Here's a possible solution: divide history in twain, after the fashion of our polarized nation. Let the conservatives use traditional texts, with all the attendant mythology, according to which the cherry tree comes chopping down, Washington kneels and prays at Valley forge, and the pioneers head west for the express purpose of bringing Jesus and civilization to the savages. Students of a politically correct liberal complainer bent can take refuge in another art of the building, and denigrate American greatness to their heart's content. And if they want, they can even make up some blasphemous crap about Jefferson cutting a bible into shreds, calling it a "pile of dung", and putting the parts he liked into his own little book, the "Jefferson Bible". If the teacher can't consequently keep her job, she'll at least have her fellow liberal idiots to blame.

Cherishing Our Freedom To own Guns to Protect Ourselves Against Those Bad Guys

SINCE THE MASSACRE in Los Vegas, there have been at least seven other mass murders in America, in one week. A mass murder is defined as three or more people getting killed at the same time by the same killer. Sounds like a reasonable criterion. You gotta start somewhere. All of the mass murders within the past week have been perpetrated with guns, not baseball bats or knives or skillets, or any other the other potential weapons which conservative gun lovers point to as alternative weapons, by which they mean that a gun is a deadly weapon only when fired; guns don't kill people, people kill people kill people, bullets originate from people, not guns. Nearly all mass murders in America are gun related, but, again, it does not have to be that way. keep a watch out for rakes and broom handles. All politics is local. We never hear much about mass shootings, because the news medial can only report so much, there is only so much time allotted between commercials, and we can only absorb so much, there is only so much screen time between tweets, posts, and friend finding and listing. Mass murders in America are a daily occurrence. They are, for American culture, perfectly normal, carried out by perfectly normal people, people wo are mentally ill at least some of the time, as we all are. never was there a human being in perfect physical or mental health, all of the time. We accept our mass murders as media events, and can afford the luxury of ignoring all but the most grotesque and sensational of the many form which we have to choose. Freedom of choice, is after all, the foundation of American capitalism, gun ownership, and personal value system. In America, we can all be quite correct, about everything. I is well worth it, in America, to build our society around the automobile without the slightest reservation, and to accept forty thousand vehicular deaths annually. Our guns protect us from bad guys, and from each other. anything unpleasant we can ascribe to fluke, freak happenstance events, or liberal conspiracies in the mainstream media, sparing us the necessity of examining ourselves, our values, and our culture. The fact that places like England and Australia, where the masses have disarmed, have virtually no gun violence, and virtually no substitute violence with frying pans, shoe laces, or guitar strings as murder weapon is irrelevant; we cherish our American freedom of choice.