Oh, So What?

Tags

Common, Corporate American, education, Fox Noise, Friday 13th, GOP, Humor, John Ensign, Louis Gohmert, myths, racism, Rand Paul, rap, right wing wackos, Sarah Palin, Sean Hannity

I could have passed the entire day without even knowing, but the MSM in its infinite infantile judgment, of course made sure I did.

It’s Friday the 13th. *yawn*

So, okay, I looked it up, frankly having no real idea what was behind it, other than it was a day of “spectacular” bad luck.

*yawn*

The explanation, which you are free to read here, was both stupid and boring.

I awoke with a mission. Which isn’t any big deal, it just means I had plans. So I scurried to get a load of wash in and running, and got to my routine stuff. Then I made spring rolls. The crab Rangoon turned out so great that I was emboldened to try my hand at the spring rolls. They are chillin’ in the freezer as we speak. We are having Chinese in a couple of weeks, and I’ll give you my opinion of how they turned out. And perhaps a recipe, but they are fairly standard–meaning you can put in about anything you wish. More on that later, as I said.

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There are times in this world when God blesses us with a perfect identifier.

Rep. Louis Gohmert, (R-TX), looks like an idiot. His name is idiotic. He is an idiot.  Thanks God, for the perfect storm.

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John Ensign (R-NV) couldn’t resign quick enough to avoid a public airing of the House Ethics investigation. And now we learn that his chief of staff has been granted immunity from prosecution.

Whatcha wanna bet that John will be wearing some striped clothing sometime soon?

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Rand Paul (R-KY) says that universal healthcare is akin to slavery. It forces him (the doctor) to be enslaved to caring for people even if he doesn’t want to. As was pointed out to the man of small brain, um…lawyers are provided free of charge to the indigent (and yes, the court can assign an attorney without their agreement to do a pro-bono case.

Did you know that Rand changed his name to Rand in honor of Ayn Rand? Ya know, the woman who had no use for the working class and poor because they are just parasites? Yeah, you go RAND. [h/t Under the Lobsterscope]

Actually Randy, slavery is not being able to live your life in a meaningful way because every damn dime you have must be devoted to paying bastards like you who want to charge whatever the richest can bear. Just sayin’.

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Did you hear about the mock horror expressed at Fox over the rapper Common? Turns out he had some lyrics that Foxy Duh “interpreted” as anti-cop and violent. Course most of that is sheer nonsense. What was best was Jon  Stewart’s smack down of Sean Hannity. Go to the Daily Show and look up the video from I think Wednesday.  Hannity had decried Common, and of course implied that his invite to the White House to read his poetry is really cuz the President and the First Ladies, are violent gangsters themselves. Which is what Hannity wants you to believe about all black folk.

Stewart showed with video that Hannity would defend the president against vicious attacks, should there be any. Turns out there was. Ted Nugent made some pretty nasty remarks of violence against the President and Hannity publicly said that Nugent was his friend and he would not condemn his violent remarks.

Yeah Sean, you pathetic excuse for a human being.

By the by, if you didn’t see Stewart’s rap smack down, you really should. He simply skewers Foxy. It’s classic.

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For those of you in need of a Sarah fix, I understand that there is a fun hash tag on Twitter called: #palinrapfacts. Have fun with that.

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One of the funniest little asides I read over at the Blaze the other day was this, and I do paraphrase:

“What’s all this crap about the beautification of Pope John Paul II I keep hearing about? Could somebody explain why he needs prettying up? “

Um that would be beatification dear, not beautification. And try a dictionary. I suspect you haven’t spent time with one of those in many a year.

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Ya gotta watch the slime balls at all times, cuz they will slip by when no one is looking. Maybe you heard that the Koch bro’s have endowed a couple of chairs at Florida State University. Yeah, well wealthy people do that all the time. Except this time there are strings, which amount to the Koch’s buying a way into teaching a type of economics that favors the rich and their way of doing business. Read it and weep, and send your kids elsewhere.

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Now get out there and make a day of it.

 

Related articles

• Jon Stewart’s Epic Takedown Of Fox News For Pushing Rapper Common’s W.H. ‘Controversy’ (mediaite.com)
• Rand Paul equates Universal Health Care with slavery… (underthelobsterscope.wordpress.com)
• The Daily Show On Common & The White House (dayandadream.com)
• CLASSIC Jon Stewart Rap Rips Fox News For The Common Controversy (businessinsider.com)

The Only Thing That Changes is the Window Dressing

Tags

education, GOP, middle class, poor, Recipes, religious rightwing, rich robber barons, Stupid America, tex-mex meets China, working class

The religious right-wing nuttery learned that if they put their agenda out front, it was soundly rejected. So they went stealth. They infiltrated got elected to public office in statewide and local jurisdictions, never letting out a peep of what their agenda was.

Once on school boards and in state legislatures, they began pushing their fundamentalist-based principles into our school curriculums and city ordinances.

Karl Rove (Turd Blossom) was pretty darn up front about his desire to turn America into one gigantic GOP juggernaut. That failed to.

It is now quite clear that the GOP, too, has played the magician. While keeping us distracted with the usual dog and pony show of Palin/Bachmann/Limbaugh/Beck/Hannity/Gingrich/DeMint/Huckabee/King circus act, why they went out and got themselves installed in state legislatures and governorships all around the land.

While bowing to the “teabagger” agenda of cutting all them “freeloader” programs such as Head Start and food stamps, and introducing all that right-wing “freedom” to worship and live as you wish as long as it’s “Christian” and between a man and a woman, the really ugly work is being done quietly but efficiently by true blue GOPers.

And what does that entail you ask? Nothing less than the utter reduction to slavery of the poor and working poor, the elimination of the middle class and their endless liberal leanings, and the support and coddling of the rich and wealthy.

In state after state, Repulsigans are systematically lowering taxes for the rich, cutting programs for the poor, and increasing taxes on the working and middle classes.

These immoral hard to call them humans, really believe the bastardization of Darwin’s survival of the fittest, as translated in the 19th century to mean, the worthy rise and become wealthy and powerful, and those doomed to be the rightful underclass, well, they are naturally where they are supposed to be. Married to an interpretation of the bible that then instructs the slave to be obedient, we have voila´, the natural order of things. Now that is some science and bible interpretation going hand in hand if you ever saw it!

Crooks and Liars, building upon Rachel Maddow’s show, which is embedded, shows how the GOP has lackeyed for the uber rich again, following their successes in the 2010 election. Armed with majorities and control in most legislatures, they are busy as bees. Featured are twelve states and the actions being taken to accomplish this fiendish agenda. If your state is listed, well you know what you need to do.

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Stoopid is as Stoopid does. That’s a saying I guess that makes some sense, but sounds more so than it actually is. And stoopid, as we’ve pointed out innumerable times, is what the American public is, by and large. Another of those polls, this time by Newsweek, proves again that the average American is amazing for its ability to walk and talk and maybe even chew gum, all the while knowing almost nothing about the world she or he lives in.

One of the things in this country that is apparently sacrosanct is the educational system. We have always, as far as I know, educated our kids based on localized school boards, supplemented marginally in many cases by a few scattered state laws. Shockingly, we learned that in some states, homeschooling is completely unregulated for instance, meaning a parent who has an IQ of dirt can “teach” their own child, and get them a bona fide “graduation” certificate.

Meanwhile, GOPers/religious fanatics around the country are forcing “balanced” teaching of creationism and intelligent design into science curriculums, revisionist history downplaying racism, American imperialism, and other “embarrassments”.

Is it time to have a serious discussion about how we teach our children? I certainly think so. I think we have to conclude that what may have once worked, no longer does. Our educational system is a failure today for most students, leaving them ill-equipped in the world they are entering, a world that requires some reasoned sophistication about the global issues that now intertwine with America. Our colleges and universities are having to spend nearly the first full year in some cases, just shoring up their freshman on the basics. My god, this was true when I went to college in the 70’s!

Weigh in and tell us what you think.

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What’s on the stove? Wanton pulled pork. What’z dat? Take your basic pork butt, slap some barbecue seasoning on it, lock it in a secure house, bake it at 325° until you can fork break it up into shreds. (3 hours or more) Leave it in its juices, add some of your favor-ITE barbecue sauce. Make a batch of coleslaw, a bit on the sweet side. Take some wonton wrappers, deep fry them, pressing with a spoon to make a depression, fry until crispy, drain…fill up with the pork and top with the coleslaw.. eat until you can’t walk.

Related Articles

• Republican Control Of State Legislatures Brings Record Number of Creationism Bills (outsidethebeltway.com)

The White Man Shuffle

Tags

budget, CBO, compusory service, Congress, Constitution, economy, GOP, health care act, Huckleberry Finn, Literature, Mark Twain, Michele Bachmann, military service, sociology

Nothing could be finer than to be in the 112th Congress, watching all the mutual self-pleasuring by the GOPers today. All those fresh-faced deluded newbies, all so sure they are gonna “shake up” Washington.

Today we humbly, and with great awe, read our “sacred” document, the US Constitution. But not just any old Constitution, but the new and sanitized version, you know the one without that troublesome stuff about certain people being 3/5 of a human being?

That sons and daughters of the republic was A MEND ed, and so we are gonna skip that part. No need to be reminded that our not so sacred forefathers were a bit on the bigoted side. That would not square with the story they are trying to tell. The GOP is always in control of the story–lie as it usually is.

So, we are treated to this pretense, with all the pomp and circumstance these somber, awed blowhards can muster before the cameras. Each solemnly walks to the podium and with deliberate seriousness, mouths the holy words. We sit in hushed silence, afraid to even breath, should we not exhibit the proper respect.

HOLY CRAP.  Psst? Do they get it that the Articles of Confederation, that document of state’s rights, was SCRAPPED as unworkable in favor of a strong Federal Government?

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There is movement afoot to change the wording in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. You have probably heard–to take out that “N” word. Such a thing is nonsense, and wrong. In my opinion. Twain was making a point, and the language used helps drive home that point. It reminds us of who we WERE and STILL ARE in some places.

We need to confront those ideas in our own heads, and in our communities. Not sanitize them, much as the crazy right-wing revisionists want to rewrite our history to make it Judeo-Christian in orientation, and plan. Truth is always the best defense.

Do you agree or not?

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Well, the computer has acted up, and went dead. When it revived and I got back to this post in progress, over 50% of it hadn’t been saved. Got just love that.

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I did write that the CBO had just screwed up the GOP’s claim that the Affordable Health Care act was “too expensive. It turns out that the repeal the GOP wants, but will never get, would cost 230 billion over ten years. Of course the GOP answers that by simply not paying any attention to the non-partisan body. They don’t count costs in cutting programs, just require finding money for new spending. Watch the deficit climb under them. If for sure is gonna happen.

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On another note, Infidel 753 has taken issue with TomCat at Politics Plus. I know the post in question, though I’ve fallen off Tom’s blog for a while now. It’s about compulsory national service. Either military or some sort of public works work. Infidel argues most convincingly it seems to me, that such is an affront to liberalism.

I hadn’t thought much about it, but I found his arguments persuasive. The discussion is worth your time I think.

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We here in Iowa are just bouncy bouncy, happy happy, wiggly, and jiggly, over the prospect that unfavorite daughter, Michele Bachmann is heading our way to discuss the relative merits of her tossing her wild eyes into the 2012 run for the WH. Yes, you heard that right. I am apoplectic with excitement.

Imagine seeing her and the Sarah on the same stage having a GOP debate? If you can call it a debate that is. Can’t you just die for it?

***

What’s on the stove? Lasagna, salad, rolls 

Related Articles

• Changing Huckleberry Finn Is To Change Mark Twain | Controversy Rages On (realestateradiousa.com)
• Sanitized Edition Of ‘Huckleberry Finn’ Causes Uproar (npr.org)
• Bring it on — Michele Bachmann mulls 2012 presidential bid (pinkbananaworld.com)
• The CBO tells Republicans what they don’t want to hear (washingtonmonthly.com)
• Funny how Boehner and Cantor used to like CBO (americablog.com)
• The rationale behind Cantor’s dishonesty (washingtonmonthly.com)
• GOP won’t count cost of repeal (politico.com)
• Cantor: Health Law Full of “Budget Gimmickry” (cbsnews.com)

What’s Up? 06/18/10

Tags

BP, education, empathy, environment, evolution, God, Jewish history, Joe Barton, medicine, Obama, oil spill, Reagan, Sarah Palin, Sharron Angle, wingnuttery

I awoke to day two of sunshine! Well, it was a shock of course, and I don’t want you to get too excited, for the forecast (I know, why bother?) is not good.

Decidedly not good. The heavens are scheduled to spew! later today, and perhaps dangerously so.

I’m trying to be stoic and not spew here.

So, hopefully there is a thing or two out there that we can find that will enlighten our souls and raise us all to a higher plane of contemplation. Yep.

Science takes a look at figuring out why we like what we like. It’s a long, but thoughtful review in part of Paul Bloom’s book, How Pleasure Works.

Emory University studies chimpanzees to help learn when and how humans developed the valued empathy behavior. These nearest cousins of ours regularly sympathize and comfort members who have been victimized by aggression from others.  

Ever since South Carolina was placed on the terminally stupid state list, well we expect about anything. Senator DeMint, (the one running against the fake Democrat Greene, who barely knows that he lives in South Carolina), is helping out pal Sharron Angle ( the uber nut case running as an uber teabagger in Utah against Harry Reid), by getting the uber crazy right wing American Vision (who wants Merika governed by the bible as they interpret it), to help raise funds for said Angle’s campaign. Crazy is as crazy does.

Everybody knows that education in this country is pure crap. D-Cap via BMT makes a good case that it went off the trolley with the Reagan administration (you know the ONLY freakin’ Rethug administration in modern history that they can cling to [and they do] as something to tout?). He makes a good argument. Read Bob Bennett is a jackass.

Idiocy rules in Rethunglian land as we know. Butthead Joe Barton, (R-TX) saw fit to apologize to BP for the terrible treatment they had received at the hands of the Obama administration. Guess Joe figures the oil won’t come to Texas and that his constituency are unlike the rest of the Gulf residents who patently dispise the company. Par for the course since so many Rethuglicans are back to drill baby drill rhetoric. No shame and no brains. I simply cannot wait to see what kinds of money Barton gets from oil interests. Oops, gee. what a surprise. Turns out Barton gets more money from the oil industry THAN ANY OTHER HOUSE MEMBER. Read it!

Andrew Sullivan wrote a good piece on Obama and what he has done. Blame the media for focusing usually on the wrong stuff, and the progressives wanting too much, and the right just crying non-stop, Sullivan argues that Obama has and is taking the right tone and tack. See what you think.

For the first time, a significant Jewish history site, centering on Eastern Europe,  has been created. It is supposed to be friendly to both the casual reader and the reseacher and student alike. Take a look.

A commentor left a lovely link to a great article on Chance, Choice and God. A thoughtful post.

For chuckles, read Liberals Hate Palin Because She’s  Beautiful. The writer seriously claims that this is behind the media’s and general populations dislike of  the Palinator (that woman is an idiot). It’s kinda sad to think that conservative thinking is so shallow, and if you don’t believe me, read to the end and see that the author just wants to paint as “ugly” all liberal women. Dude you are so superficial it’s pathetic.

Best not to miss D-Caps great parody of our Sarah (that woman is an idiot) gettin’ in touch with the Prez with advice on how to handle the oil spill. Pricelessly hilarious as always.

hope you find sumpin’ to read here! lol…

Plagued with Thinking

Tags

100 top books, Books, education, liberal arts, Literature, reading

Excuse me, but my fixation continues. Don’t blame me, I can’t help what my reader continues to throw at me. It’s all the fault of Dr. James McGrath really–I swear.  I had to go and follow his link to 3quarkdaily, and well, it can all be traced to that–mostly.

I say mostly, because my love affair with arts and letters is pretty well life long anyway, but I managed to submerge it to a degree in favor of politics and religion. It seems to be rearing its head again though. Along with science. I think most of the new sites I’ve added recently are a compilation of those three.

Just so you understand. My head seems a barely contained explosion of thinking. I have to list things, and I’m good at that. It’s the Martha Stewart desire in me to organize.

Once upon a time there was such a thing as a liberal arts education. I think it still exists in some form, but is rarely evoked nowadays. Everyone is in a hurry to learn something applicable–as in making a living. I know I skipped it. Like I said, the best I could do was give a passing nod to a list of 100 books “everyone should read before attending college.” I did maybe thirty.

Years later, when I looked that list up, I was shocked to find that there were tons of such lists, and they sure didn’t agree much. Oh, there were obvious choices in the realm of Shakespeare and Plato of course, but there were tons of alternatives. They all have one major flaw–they are hugely Western in orientation. Some were so European they thought America contributed nothing to the mix whatsoever.

Still, I have tried, over the years to dive into more French and English literature. I’ve read all of Plato, most of Aristotle, all of Shakespeare, a smattering of writings from at least Enlightenment philosophers. Hit and miss. I’ve read a fair amount of the fiction listed on most lists.

Since there are few liberal arts students these days, colleges and universities find themselves in somewhat of a quandary. Too many of their incoming freshmen are, shall we be delicate? less than adequately educated in the world of ideas? Big ideas that is. And so lots of schools send out reading lists to prospective freshmen, asking them to read some books before arriving.

Bard college sends out this requirement:

Syllabus Fall 2010

Required Texts (Bard Bookstore):

• Genesis (Norton; trans. Alter);
• Plato, Symposium (Oxford; trans. Waterfield);
• Virgil, The Aeneid (Penguin; trans. Fagles);
• Virgil, The Aeneid (Vintage; trans. Fitzgerald);
• St. Augustine, Confessions (Penguin; trans. Pine-Coffin);
• Dante, Inferno (Oxford; trans. Durling and Martinez);
• William Shakespeare, Othello (Norton);
• Galileo Galilei, Discoveries and Opinions (Anchor; trans. Drake).

Symposiums are scheduled to discuss ideas. Another list is set for the Spring of the year.

As I said, scholars argue even about these lists, finding them often one-sided. They tend to favor more recently published books over older ones, they tend to favor liberal interpretations over conservative. There are often intellectually unchallenging.

One of the better programs around seems to be the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Big Read program. It focuses on fiction and poetry.

A huge list is compiled and broken into categories which seems quite thorough. It is called the College Bound Reading List.  Compiled by the Arrowhead Library System in Wisconsin.

Penguin Classics lists 101 Best Written Books, but from the comments a lot of people don’t agree, and it seems limited to fiction. 

Oh and if you buy Barnes and Nobles “classics” they have all their available titles at the end. I’ve read probably ten or more of them. Nice and cheap, none over $9.95 I believe.

Berkeley gathered their list from their faculty and grouped them into broad categories which you can link to. It is decidedly modern in its outlook.

Many colleges and universities use lists compiled along the lines of the Great Books system, begun in the 1920-30’s. It was developed to use as the basis of a liberal arts education in those years. Optional use of the list is offered in places like Notre Dame and Pepperdine. A sample of “a” list is included in the above link near the bottom. A complete original list of the 60 book set and 90’s additions are located here.

Want to see lots of more book lists? Go here. Actually this one is worth your time. It’s nicely broad.

And I make no endorsement of the featured book in the image. It merely had the right topic. It might be worth a look see at Amazon, but that’s up to you.

Happy reading.

I Coulda Been a Contender!

Tags

Books, children, education, psychology, reading

Oh the things we learn! I was rather pissy, as I recall, a number of years ago when I learned that pregnant women who gain a good deal of weight, give birth to babies with more fat cells than other babies. So? Well, it means said children (me that is) are prone to weight gain and fight (mostly lose) the battle of the bulge all their lives.

In fairness, my mother had a rotten doc to be sure, and knew no better, so I can’t really blame her.

Ditto here. It turns out that children who grow up in homes with books simple  have the same advantage as children who grow up with parents who are college educated. In other words, books can mean the difference in the level of education attained even when neither parent had much of an education at all.

Course, I’m the exception to that rule. My father did not finish high school, although my mother did, apparently not learning much of anything, as far as I could tell. Books? There were hardly any, maybe a dictionary though I’m not clear on that even. I recall that my dad read WWII and wild west fiction, books that he would acquire at the drugstore. Perhaps a Reader’s Digest condensed book or two.

As I recall, this was not unusual among any of my relatives. Those pesky Reader’s Digests again. My grandmother had a homemade book case at the cottage up north. In it were a few books on agriculture, obtained free of charge from the Department of Agriculture, and so devoid of anything interesting, that try as I might, I could not manage more than three pages before I gave up.

The funny thing is, my parents bought me children’s books. I clearly remember having a couple, even Alice and Wonderland, which I could never manage to overcome–I was not a kid who fantasized a good deal, and talking rabbits and such just seemed crazy to me. I’ve related before that the book that most seared in my mind was one, written for pre-teens, that attempted to describe the possible ways our moon came to be ours.

From that I graduated to Little Women and My Friend Flicka. By then, I was pretty much hooked on reading, and a birthday or Christmas never went by without a request for a book or two. As I said, I was not encouraged nor the opposite as regards reading.

Summers, the bookmobile would come to the grade school parking lot once a week, and I was there to “find a book” for the week. I think I always read one a week, at least when we were not at the lake. I read comics of course as well.

I am not sure where this love came from. Probably it came from a couple of things. One, I was an only child, and that forces one to spend some times alone. And that gets boring quickly. Remember, this was not the time of video games, lots of kids programming and such. No, books were kinda one of the only things to do when you had to be alone, on Sunday mornings and in the evenings after the play day was concluded.

So, even though our house didn’t contain books, I managed to discover them somehow and thrived. Apparently I was inquisitive, and books fed this. Imagine what I coulda been had I been introduced to all those classics early on! I recall, as I graduated from high school, receiving something that listed 100 books every college student should have read. I was in a word, woefully behind. I actually started the list, never finished it, and lost it along the way.

I still feel inadequate (as I’ve mentioned here) in my classical book reading.

Which all leads me to this idea. The link above also links to a story about a program going on in a few states this year to do book donating to children. I think this is a classically wonderful idea, and wonder what we can do to push this idea along. Churches it seems would be a wonderful vehicle. But truly, anyone could contact their school district and see about organizing to collect books within the district for distribution to kids as they depart for summer vacation. They say as little as 12 books a kid makes a huge difference.

I confess that I am addicted to books, and addicted to reading more importantly. It has been a gift to me in so many ways, under so many circumstances. I wish that everyone could realize the wonders of reading.

What do you think?

Hard Head Meets Immovable Object (Part I)

Tags

critical thinking, evolution, fundamentalism, God, open/closed mind, Politics

It is commonly claimed that two subjects that should be avoided at all costs are politics and religion, and this blog specializes in both, so controversy is no stranger here. That of course is tempered by the fact that people who don’t agree with me, seldom bother to stick around for long. And much the same may be said when I travel the blogosphere as well.

You may have noticed a rather strange comment to a post I did Thursday on the Ascension. It had nothing whatsoever to do with the topic, and was rather hostile to me personally and to the idea of evolution as well as same sex unions.

Tim jumped to my defense, and I am so grateful of course, but, I received a couple of other distressing e-mails from folks who were unhappy that such a post which was intended to uplift, was rather doused with such an unfriendly comment. And so, alas, I concluded that further explanation was due, since certainly it is hard for anyone who has not been privy to the entire episode to understand what was going on.

If you are interested you can go to Answer the Skeptic, especially to these two posts and more specifically, the comment section to both. The links are here, and here.

You should note that this topic will take two good posts, and I’ll do my best to finish it off when I return from church tomorrow.

Now a bit of history. I have no hidden agendas about what I believe. You can read it in all its long and perhaps boring glory under the autobiography category, I believe the last ten posts. In any event, many of  those who have been with me now for some time know that I used to frequent Catholic Answers. I did that after giving up on discussing issues with unchurched fundamentalists. I, (don’t ask me why, I have no rational reason) assumed that I would receive a more thoughtful response from Catholics, both by having been one, and having been taught by some extraordinary nuns and priests whom I to this day regard as highly educated and highly logical.

Alas, I learned that I could not rationally discuss evolution or biblical study with them either. Most of the fundamentalist Catholics turned out to be converts from fundamentalist denominations, and they brought their thinking with them I found.

Ironically, I often told those Catholics that I found most atheists rational, thoughtful, and considerate debaters. So, when I could take it no more, I went to atheists blogs to have some conversations there. Alas, I found that they are as closed minded as fundamentalists in their views. Not all of course, but the Internet does bring forth the extremes more than the middle. Most atheists online who blog seem to view Christianity only through the lens of fundamentalism, and I usually agreed with their criticism if not their broad brush of inclusion of all Christendom.

Next I went to conservative evangelicals, mostly to get their theological take on social justice issues, of which I had never received a good explanation. And that is where I ran into John from Answer the Skeptic and “Mark” who left the comment.

Although Tim has suggested to  me more than once that I am barking up a futile tree, I guess I believed otherwise. I was wrong. I have a hard head about some things.

There is no basis for discussion with the mind that is closed to other possibilities. And I know, for I have some familiarity with the subject. Let me explain.

My politics is informed by my faith certainly, but it also goes the other way as well. I have had deep internal beliefs about justice issues since I was at least in college, maybe even before. They have of course grown and filled out over the years.

I am a believer in climate change, and although I agree that we may be entering a cycle of normal weather change, the human has added significantly to it, and may well have made it exponentially worse.

I believe in the basic equality of all humans, and I believe in concepts such as institutional favoritism otherwise known as affirmative action to redress past wrongs. I believe that the “developed” world owes much to those who have been exploited by us all, in terms of assistance and debt forgiveness.

I believe in universal health care. I believe in the ending of the death penalty, and a serious revamping of our penal institutions. I believe our educational system is rotting, and that most of us got little more than an education in how to be a lawful and voting citizen, and a hard worker.

I believe that religions serve people in ways that are valuable even though some, Islam, Christianity, and Judaism have strong minority fundamentalist groups that are prone to violence and desire to impose their worldview on us all. I believe strongly in separation of church and state.

I believe that a free market economy, in a global sense is dangerous and if left unchecked will end up being our real rulers. The increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer suggests this most strongly. There is no such thing historically speaking, in the concept of “trickle down economics.” Is has been gloriously proven not to happen. Greed supersedes all.

I believe that immigration was of little concern to anyone until the brown population grew to levels that now threaten to become the major voting block in some states, threatening the white Republican power base. As far as I can remember, not a single “terrorist” has crossed the Mexican border into the US, while a few at least have entered through the Canadian, and not a whimper is heard.

I admit, that I look for articles, blogs, books, and so forth that substantiate these views. I have little in the way of an open mind since I believe these issues essentially proven to my satisfaction by competent evidence. Those of you who followed this blog during the last election know that I was relentless in attacking John McCain and Sarah (that woman is an idiot!) Palin.

The Contrarian would freely tell you that he has said to me more times than I can remember, “If George Bush discovered a cure for cancer, you would reject the treatment!” And he is probably right.

Yet, I do read critically, as best I can. I am careful that my sources are accepted as reasonable by moderates at least. I stopped following the Daily Kos during the election when it became apparent to me that they were unfairly bashing Hillary Clinton because they favored Obama. I distrusted their coverage and stopped reading them.

So I have some familiarity with closed minded thinking. I confess to being thus to a degree as to political issues.

What has this to do with evolution and fundamentalists? Stop by tomorrow.