The GOP seem to attract the morally bankrupt

In case you're wondering about why the Jeffrey Epstein case is so troubling for the GOP -

Republican anti-abortion activist Howard Scott Heldreth is a convicted child rapist in Florida. (Search the Florida Sex Offender Registry and he shows up, but I can't find a direct link to the flyer.) ("Online research shows that Heldreth was arrested after an incident at Ohio University and charged with two counts of rape and one count of kidnapping." Source.)

Republican County Commissioner David Swartz pleaded guilty to molesting two girls under the age of 11 and was sentenced to 8 years in prison.


Republican judge Mark Pazuhanich pleaded no contest to fondling a 10-year old girl and was sentenced to 10 years probation.

Republican anti-abortion activist Nicholas Morency pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography on his computer and offering a bounty to anybody who murders an abortion doctor.

Republican legislator Edison Misla Aldarondo was sentenced to 10 years in prison for raping his daughter between the ages of 9 and 17.

Republican Mayor Philip Giordano is serving a 37-year sentence in federal prison for sexually abusing 8- and 10-year old girls.

Republican campaign consultant Tom Shortridge was sentenced to three years probation for taking nude photographs of a 15-year old girl.


Republican racist pedophile and United States Senator Strom Thurmond had sex with a 15-year old black girl which produced a child.


Republican pastor Mike Hintz, whom George W. Bush commended during the 2004 presidential campaign, surrendered to police after admitting to a sexual affair with a female juvenile.


Republican legislator Peter Dibble pleaded no contest to having an inappropriate relationship with a 13-year-old girl.


Republican Congressman Donald "Buz" Lukens was found guilty of having sex with a female minor and sentenced to one month in jail.


Republican fundraiser Richard A. Delgaudio was found guilty of child porn charges and paying two teenage girls to pose for sexual photos.


Republican activist Mark A. Grethen convicted on six counts of sex crimes involving children.


Republican activist Randal David Ankeney pleaded guilty to attempted sexual assault on a child.


Republican Congressman Dan Crane had sex with a female minor working as a congressional page.


Republican activist and Christian Coalition leader Beverly Russell admitted to an incestuous relationship with his step daughter.


Republican congressman and anti-gay activist Robert Bauman* was charged with having sex with a 16-year-old boy he picked up at a gay bar.


Republican Committee Chairman Jeffrey Patti was arrested for distributing a video clip of a 5-year-old girl being raped.


Republican activist Marty Glickman (a.k.a. "Republican Marty"), was taken into custody by Florida police on four counts of unlawful sexual activity with an underage girl and one count of delivering the drug LSD.


Republican legislative aide Howard L. Brooks was charged with molesting a 12-year old boy and possession of child pornography.


Republican Senate candidate John Hathaway was accused of having sex with his 12-year old baby sitter and withdrew his candidacy after the allegations were reported in the media.


Republican preacher Stephen White, who demanded a return to traditional values, was sentenced to jail after offering $20 to a 14-year-old boy for permission to perform oral sex on him.


Republican talk show host Jon Matthews pleaded guilty to exposing his genitals to an 11 year old girl.


Republican anti-gay activist Earl "Butch" Kimmerling was sentenced to 40 years in prison for molesting an 8-year old girl after he attempted to stop a gay couple from adopting her.


Republican Party leader Paul Ingram pleaded guilty to six counts of raping his daughters and served 14 years in federal prison.


Republican election board official Kevin Coan was sentenced to two years probation for soliciting sex over the internet from a 14-year old girl.


Republican politician Andrew Buhr was charged with two counts of first degree sodomy with a 13-year old boy.


Republican politician Keith Westmoreland was arrested on seven felony counts of lewd and lascivious exhibition to girls under the age of 16 (i.e. exposing himself to children).


Republican anti-abortion activist John Allen Burt was charged with sexual misconduct involving a 15-year old girl.


Republican County Councilman Keola Childs* pleaded guilty to molesting a male child.


Republican activist John Butler was charged with criminal sexual assault on a teenage girl.


Republican candidate Richard Gardner admitted to molesting his two daughters.


Republican Councilman and former Marine Jack W. Gardner was convicted of molesting a 13-year old girl.


Republican County Commissioner Merrill Robert Barter* pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual contact and assault on a teenage boy.


Republican City Councilman Fred C. Smeltzer, Jr. pleaded no contest to raping a 15 year-old girl and served 6-months in prison.


Republican activist Parker J. Bena pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography on his home computer and was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison and fined $18,000.


Republican parole board officer and former Colorado state representative, Larry Jack Schwarz, was fired after child pornography was found in his possession.


Republican strategist and Citadel Military College graduate Robin Vanderwall was convicted in Virginia on five counts of soliciting sex from boys and girls over the internet.


Republican city councilman Mark Harris, who is described as a "good military man" and "church goer," was convicted of repeatedly having sex with an 11-year-old girl and sentenced to 12 years in prison.


Republican businessman Jon Grunseth withdrew his candidacy for Minnesota governor after allegations surfaced that he went swimming in the nude with four underage girls, including his daughter.


Republican director of the "Young Republican Federation" Nicholas Elizondo molested his 6-year old daughter and was sentenced to six years in prison.


Republican benefactor of conservative Christian groups, Richard A. Dasen Sr., was charged with rape for allegedly paying a 15-year old girl for sex. Dasen, 62, who is married with grown children and several grandchildren, has allegedly told police that over the past decade he paid more than $1 million to have sex with a large number of young.


Republican state senator Ralph Shortey from Oklahoma admitted to being involved in sodomy with a 17 year old male prostitute and transporting child pornography.


Republican Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert in jail for the payments he made to cover up raping his wrestlers when he was a high school coach.


Republican Judge and campaign official for President Donald Trump, Tim Nolan, indicted for human trafficking and forcing a minor (9) to engage in sexual activity and giving alcohol to minors (results from the court pending).


(info courtesy of /u/frying_dutchman)


I'm not sure what "/u/frying_dutchman" is - is that a reddit thing?


I got it from a friend, who got it from https://www.facebook.com/grey.grooters/posts/2545722932152298

Not reaching my audience anymore and it sucks

...and to the surprise of no one, my blog Stats have tanked since the demise of G+.  Sigh.  The entire fucking point of linking this blog to G+ was to have a nice, easy way to reach people and let them know the blog existed, posts were going live, and content was flowing.

Thanks a lot Google management team. You suck.

Mike Pence thinks men are dogs and Muslims have good ideas

Vice President of the United States of America Mike Pence thinks men are dogs and Muslims have great ideas.

So, here's the deal: Vice President Pence won't have a meal with a woman without his wife present, because you know, men only think women are good for sex and without his wife there to chaperone him, poor Mike might be unable to control his urges to fall in bed with her, if she so much as looks like a woman, instead of looking like a man.

Listen, Mike, you're kind of pathetic. Did you know many Muslims hold this same view? Well done!

Also, Mike won't attend any functions where alcohol is served. Maybe it's because his lack of self-control might lead him to drink, and you know, really fail to control his urges regarding women and he might grope someone. You know, people kind of frown on groping, so probably a good thing he choose stay away.

Or, hey, maybe I'm being unfair to poor Mike and his Evangelical beliefs. Maybe he just avoids events with alcohol, because he thinks alcohol is the root of all evil. That belief would put him in good company. There are at least a billion people in the world who avoid events where alcohol is served for exactly this reason: they're called Muslims.

You know, Mr Vice-President of the United States, this would all be resolved if you just grew up, accepted that women are people, that men really can control their own urges better than dogs can, and that grown-ups accept responsibility for their own actions.

If Clinton was President - the GOP would have rioted

Of course they would. The GOP about power, fuck pansy concepts like fairness, ethics or morality.

(Source)

If you look across the inconsistent mess of GOP behaviors and choices, they look like complete and inconsistent flip-floppers. They appears to be all over the place.

Until you step back and realize every action by the GOP promotes GOP by - either direct power brand like gerrymandering and North Carolina, or "fuck you" damaging policies like Ted Cruz shutting down the government or repealing the ACA/ObamaCare without any plan for replacement.

Then you realize the GOP have been consistent all along. It's always about power, and it's always about hurting people.

It's Class Warfare, Bitches.

You Love Trump - Jesus is Weeping

FUCK YOU, AMERICA!

45% of the electorate is embracing racism, bigotry, ignorance, tax-evasion, draft-dodging, hatred, arrogance, religious dogma over science, destruction of the planet we all live on, pride in rape and sexual assault, homophobia, philandering, lying, meaning marriages, cheating, scamming, inciting violence, calling for murder of opponents, bankrupting small businesses, nakedly declaring to let the poor starve and die - 

ALL OF THESE THINGS ARE WHAT DONALD TRUMP HAS DONE AND CALLED UPON YOU TO DO - AND 45% OF YOU EMBRACE THIS!

45% OF YOU ARE IMMORAL TURDS
WHO HAVE DECLARED YOUR LOVE FOR THE DEVIL!

JESUS IS WEEPING.

(image source - 2016-1103 - 9:30 AM PST)

Making the Presidential Debates more exciting

You know what would be cool? If All-Father Odin was the moderator during the Presidential debates. He wouldn't take any shit.

I mean, can you imagine Trump or Clinton trying to dodge and dissemble against the Divine Wisdom Odin gained by hanging himself from the World Tree?  

Yeah, Odin be all like "Well, that's nice, now stop lying and do try to answer the question this time."

Would the Real Anti-Christ Please Stand Up

Can we please NOT have another "Trump vs Clinton: Would the Real Anti-Christ Please Stand Up" competition, in any thread, ever again?

This post is not about advocating for any candidate.  I'm just fed up with the stupid fighting.  I'm finding the "anti-Clinton" crowd to be at least as madly passionate as the "anti-Trump" crowd, and that's not necessarily a compliment.

I'm fine if people want to discuss the actual and factual skeletons in Clinton's closet. There are plenty of those. But, I've had it up to HERE with "liberals" chanting right-wing talking points about Clinton as if they've somehow magically become legitimate.

I mean, it's becoming a case of rhetoric, and frankly anyone who thinks Clinton is the Anti-Christ needs to ALSO wake up and remember that's the Anti-Christ suckling at Trump's teet. Given the historical financial relationship between the imagery has disturbing literal connotations as well as allegorical ones.

And, wasn't Saddam Hussein the Anti-Christ? Or Barack Obama? Or Ronald Reagan? No, wait I'm sure it's Benjamin Netanyahu this week, right?  What does Cracked have to say; they're always authoritative on this kind of shit.

 

Does That Even Make Sense?

One of the principles I try to live my life by is "Does that even make sense?" It's a good rule, because it keeps me out of a lot of trouble and is a great way to cut through the Stupid.

(Usually, there's an f-bomb in there, but I'm trying to keep this clean, so as not to distract from the philosophical point.)

It's kind of like detective work, or maybe just like thinking, like at all.

If someone says something, for example, the sky is green, then "Hey, does that even make sense?" I mean, I can look and usually the sky is blue, or white, or a murky shade of grey, depending on the rain, so I highly doubt it was actually green. Now, I'm open to the idea that the lighting of the moment, or the beer bottle the person was looking through made the sky appear green, but that's not the same thing. The latter, however, is an example of me using my brain to help me make sense of what this person is saying. (In this example, the speaker is most likely pulling my leg, but you already knew that one, so I had to offer something else, because my secret agenda is to get you thinking.)

Now, we can go to another example, such as "All Christians are good and kind people." Well, basic experience says that is wrong, too, since Christian People are People-who-happen-to-be-Christian, and you can't take the Pee out of People, so that doesn't make sense.

But, now you're comfort zone is a bit rattled, and you're trying to figure out which part of that last paragraph I'm referring to when I say "that doesn't make sense."

Cleaning the roaches out of the old social circles

It's really interesting how the Rise Of Trump is bringing out the cockroaches all across the board. I think his naked racism and sexism has really emboldened people to embrace their own petty hatreds from straight-up racism, to compassionless (and unthinking) hatred of "illegals," to sexist attitudes, to Romney's iconic "47% freeloaders," and whatever, whatever.

I expect all across social media, people are doing the same thing I'm doing now, and trimming their connection lists.

I mean, you get the "liberals" pointing out that white supremacist-like attitudes of treating all black men as "thugs," and all Muslims as "terrorists" are "racist," and you get the "conservatives" screaming about how they're being treated unfairly by the "racist, faggot-wedding, muzzy-loving, white-excluding, Christian-hating libturds."

Which is too bad, in a lot of ways, since I've found, as a general rule, that I can get along with almost anyone with half-a-brain and a willingness to find common ground. I mean, I play D&D - ever been to a convention? You get a lot of people having a blast slaying the dragon together, and chatting about The Hobbit, who would probably kill each other in a heartbeat if they tried to discuss Real World Politics or Real World Religion.

So, yeah, I expect social media circles are all in massive upheaval right now. 

Obama the world's first multiclass Christian Muslim

Listen, either Obama did attend the Christian church pastored by Rev Wright, in which case he's a Christian "that hates white people,"

OR

He's a Muslim who never attended Rev Wright's Christian church, because "Muslims hates Christians."

You can't have it both ways, Fox Puppets, because the two are mutually exclusive.

In either case, it means the assholes at Fox fabricated a campaign of lies and shoved those lies down your throat so often and so hard that you believe them true.

Which means the talking heads at Fox lied to you. Hard.

Tell me again why you believe anything they say?

Jesus hates the Interweb bloodlust

So, just to harp on this again, the Interwebs Blood Beast neither forgives, nor grasps scope.

Before I launch into the rant, some context. Ever see the old "Clash of the Titans"? Awesome line in there, where Calibos shouts "I demand justice!" And his goddess mother replies "Justice, or revenge?"

Most Americans, and quite possibly most humans, confuse the two. Most people really want revenge, even when they say justice. Most people count themselves as victims of a crime they only hear about, arrogant and stupid as that is.

I've been screwed several times in my life on false charges, or mistakenly, or just inappropriately.  There is no justice when someone throws you under the bus, "because there must appear that something was done," there is no fairness when a minor infraction that only warrants a private and uncomplicated warning results in a public dressing down.  I know what it means to be shamed, screwed and treated badly for no good - no justifiable - reason at all.

Imagine the most unjust treatment you've ever had. Now magnify that by a million screaming idiots sticking their nose into your business and making your humiliation worse.

Now, you may be ready to read this rant.

I'm appalled by the number of people who make remarks like "This wouldn't be an okay remark in person, why would they think it would be okay online," in reference to a story about a woman makes a poorly-worded tweet and gets on a plane for eleven hours. By the time the plane lands, thousands, tens of thousands, or possibly millions of people are clamoring for the bloodsport of watching her face when she gets off the plane – tired, cramped, looking forward to seeing her family – and watching her face as she realizes the world hates her, that her friends, family and co-workers are being attacked and shamed, and her life is destroyed. People clamored to see the confusion and pain on the face of this woman they knew nothing about, except what they had invented in their own minds.

So, let's clarify:

1) The remarks were taken out of context, and shoved into a different context, creating the illusion that a normal person, doing a normal thing, was somehow the next incarnation of the anti-Christ, Satan, and Barney the Dinosaur rolled into one;

2) If these comments had been said in person, then someone would have said "don't be a jerk," and that would have been the end of it, so you don't get to self-righteously - and foolishly - compare apples to a shit-ton of dung dumped by a million people being selfish tits;

3) The online world doesn't forget - ever. These "one time events" lead to public humiliation, loss of employment, loss of friends, loss of family, loss of homes, and literally having to run for their lives from death threats (yes, seriously, dear God I wish I was exaggerating).

Plus, this shit will be cyclical - every few years, an entirely new generation of arrogant self-righteous warriors, and blockheaded crusader-wannabes, and chest-thumping bullies, will find the memes all over again and decide they need to have their revenge against these people who have already been pilloried and crucified several times already for making one small, inconsequential decision.

This is NOT about the people who make these dumb choices. This is about the bullies who launch some assnine crusade against some person who made a dumb choice.

Or, how about the meme with the girl who was crying while holding an iPhone and someone captioned it "She wanted the other color; this is why we can't have nice things" - I bet she was crying because she was so fucking happy someone gave her an iPhone, but no - some asshole decides to make a joke, and now the girl is crucified for a crime she didn't commit. 

Crucified, I will remind you, by a million people who have no clue who she is, why she was crying, or if she is a wonderful person - and worse, they don't actually care, because the truth is that it's all about their own pissant anger, and the target is the real victim of this ignorant mindless animal bloodsport rage.

Interweb rage and crusading isn't about the victims at all. It's about the selfish assholes who decide to be angry about something they know nothing about. They decide to be bullies and lash out. They decide to hurt other people over imagined wrongs, on trumped up charges made up from nothing.

You know, rather like Jesus was crucified for crimes he didn't commit, on charges that were trumped up out of nothing.

Funny thing, though - Jesus knew that is what he was here for, and happened to be the son of God.

How about these people who have their tweet stolen, and spend a year (or years) running from mindless rabid Interweb mobs of selfish idiots, some of whom send threats involving rape with a crowbar.

Yeah, I rather think Jesus would disapprove of the Interweb Blood Beast.

#IAmIcarus

another one about unwanted pregnancy

If you are going to congratulate yourself for righteous responsibility ensuring 'the innocent' are dragged into this world, then you must also accept responsibility for ensuring they have a quality of life. Failure to follow-through is merely kicking 'the innocent' to the curb, and the equivalent of consigning them to Hell, while patting yourself on the back. God keeps a special place for those of such deep hubris.

Every Sperm is Sacred - Masturbation is Murder

Science has determined that every sperm represents half the genetic make-up of a human being. That means that each and every sperm is a potential human being.

Therefore, the destruction of sperm is the destruction of human life.

God, in His Infinite Wisdom, has designed the male body to expel thousands of sperm with every ejaculation. Since we lack a method to save all these lost potential souls, we can only do as God has ordained, and limit the loss of life.

Therefore, in order to honor and protect life, henceforth the following actions are illegal for any man to do:

• Masturbate (alone or with a partner);

• Anal sex;

• Oral sex;

• Premature Ejaculation;

• "Nocturnal Emission" (whether at night, while sleeping, or not).

The evidence on presence of sperm in "pre-cum" for stimulated males is pending.

Only the following methods of sperm release shall be permitted to men:

• Vaginal orgasm with a consenting, adult, female, to whom you are lawfully wed.

Only the following method of "birth control" is acceptable, since all others require the murder of human life, either the slaughter of sperm, or the death of a fetus:

• "The Pill";

(Note that use of "the pill" might be morally objectionable under the "promotes being a slut" provisions, even when used by a lawfully married woman, prepared to provide documentation she is having sex only with her husband, and prepared to sign a pledge saying she will not become a slut, harlot, or loose woman.)

(Note also that we have given this a lot of thought. If you fancy you can think of a method of "birth control" that we haven't, then you're wrong and should seek medical attention - from a licensed doctor, or aggressive religious leader, whichever - for your deviancy.)

• First time sperm murdering men will be sent to self-control education classes;

• Second time sperm murdering men will be put on medications to control their unnatural, psychotic, murdering urges;

• Third time offenders will be shot by a robot-controlled gun, on a random timer, because every life is sacred, and guns don't kill people, people kill people, and the random timer means that God ordains the moment of death for the sick, murderous sinner.

Theological Thursday: Your church probably says abortion has a place in reality

Given the aggressiveness of the lunatic fringe and Republican politicians to prohibit and restrict the artificial termination of pregnancy, almost invariably while screaming "because, God!", it is very nearly shocking how moderate most of the official church policies are.

And by "official," I mostly mean "established more than 20 years ago," since let's face it: the last twenty years have seen an insane growth in mom-and-pop and for-profit "Christian" churches, and these people lack any sense of history.  Without that history, none of the bugs in their doctrine have been worked out, so they keep making the same radical and stone-headed mistakes the "established" hierarchies sorted out decades or centuries ago.

#abortion

Old Posts Need Love #1

I was going through my old posts, and I'm proud of everything I have written (and very proud of some of it).

Here are some oldies, but goodies, that haven't gotten as much love as I think they deserve.

Lord, grant me the strength to enlighten those who will listen, and ignore the rest, because I have better things to do

One of my many "stupidity annoys me" rants, with some good scientific flavoring.

Can't Vote? Blame a Republican

This is an ongoing issue.  For well over a decade, the GOP have been flogging the bogeyman of fraudulent voting, and then strained like crazy to find any examples of it.  As I recall, the one or two examples they did find, were a small handful of votes, and - whoa, no way! - black people.

Not to be confused with the dozens of cases of white people  doing "voter registration drives" and then tossing all the ones marked Democrat (which is not illegal, but is extremely unethical and immoral, because it's called lying), or making fraudulent registrations (which is illegal).

When really, the entire function of "voter ID" laws is really to stop "the wrong kind of people" from voting (like  tens or hundreds of thousands of lawfully eligible voters blocked from their Constitutional right to vote).

Abortion (Y/N?) is not a valid question, you asshole

A basic root cause argument. Like "making feeding homeless people stops people being from being homeless, right?"  or "make drugs illegal, and people magically stop wanting drugs, right?"

Anti-Troll: Avoid Pointless Fights With Friends

This is true in daily life, as well as in social media.  It becomes so easy to knee-jerk argue about everything, when often, there is no point, nor value, in arguing, and doing so just creates conflict where it serves no purpose and benefits no one.

Musical Monday - "Wrong Side of Heaven" - Five Finger Death Punch

Military veterans deserve so much more than they receive. This is a powerful vid.

---@@@---

In hindsight, there isn't a lot of theme here among these oldie-but-goodie posts.  Maybe for the "Old posts need love 2" I'll do a theme.

#IAmIcarus

Musical Monday: The Gregorians

Gregorians - awesome shit

From Wikipedia:
Although Gregorian chant supplanted or marginalized the other indigenous plainchant traditions of the Christian West to become the official music of the Christian liturgy, Ambrosian chant still continues in use in Milan, and there are musicologists exploring both that and the Mozarabic chant of Christian Spain.

I find that highly amusing, since normally the only displacement of indigenous anything is in the context of things like African bees displacing local quiet bees, or kudzu overrunning the Southern United States and shit like that.

Redemption: Punishment with a Purpose

I'm a big fan of redemption, and much less a fan of pure judgment/punishment, for much the same reasons I'm a fan of recycling, rather than landfills.

Punishment that has no purpose beyond revenge is worse than nothing at all, since there are neither lessons nor benefits, and merely more bitter and angry criminals (i.e. "more waste").

Our modern "penal" system is all about revenge (for the real victims, and the self-righteous imaginary victim of "society at large") and revenue (conversion of public-responsibility projects, such as road clearing, crisis management, or prisons, to for-profit institutions is just so stupid on so many levels).

I'm not a huge fan of "Hell," in general, because at the core it is merely a for-profit bogeyman, intended to coerce and frighten children and adults into correct behavior as proscribed by dogma.

However, at a purely philosophical level, there are definitely uses - and a point - to Hells for people who have harmed and committed evils against society for people like Charles Manson and Rush Limbaugh, as long as there is a time limit, or a point, so the recycled soul can be re-made into something useful.

Also, people make mistakes. Sometimes they are honest mistakes - teenager goofing off and driving carelessly accidently kills someone - sometimes it is malicious stupidity leading to an accident - e.g. drunk driving. At what point does revenge end, and forgiveness (or even just letting go) begin?

Redemption allows for those who make mistakes to turn their lives around and do better, and contribute to society.  You see it all the time, people who served their penance - community service, prison time, fines, whatever - and want to do better the second time around - they realize life is precious, they fear re-incarceration, they fear public shame, whatever.

Revenge is petty, short-sighted and wasteful.  Revenge, like trash in a landfill, serves no long term purpose, and just piles up waste that becomes expensive to store and move around.

Redemption is important.   Redemption, like recycling, serves a greater purpose and benefits society as a whole. Call it enlightened self-interest to support redemption and forgiveness.

I don't need dogma; I have empathy

As I've said before, Faith and Dogma are different things.

Most people confuse faith with religion, when organized religion is really more about dogma.

Just to repeat my important mantra at set expectations early: I'm not "anti-religion," I'm not even "anti-dogma."  What I am is Anti-Stupid.

Here is an interesting Op-Ed piece citing studies that show "non-religious" (I'm going to say "non-dogmatic") people are more sane, compassionate and empathic than "religious" (i.e. "dogmatic") people.

“Many nonreligious parents were more coherent and passionate about their ethical principles than some of the ‘religious' parents in our study,” [Vern] Bengston told me. “The vast majority appeared to live goal-filled lives characterized by moral direction and sense of life having a purpose.”

Now, the sociopaths at the Freedom From Atheism Foundation will almost certainly be the first to say "how can you have morality without some skygod telling you what is right and wrong?" which I think says a lot about their own broken - or simply absent - moral compasses.

Dogma is about behavior control, and behavior modification. That means that it is, by definition, amoral. Oh, sure the proscribed behaviors might actually be ethical, but dogma has been used to justify and mandate all kinds of immoral crimes against human beings like murder, slavery, war and robbery.

All the "Bible churches" that have sprung up over the course of my life time are doing so with the intention of escaping the dogma of the older, more established flavors of Christianity. The two ironies here are 1) they develop their own, enitrely new, and often incompatible (and incoherent) sets of dogma, i.e. proscribed behaviors, and 2) their new dogma lacks the insights and wisdom provided by the centuries of practice and sorting out and shaking out the crap-that-doesn't-work that the older, better established religions have.

So, it's actually kind of tragic that "wanting to return to the roots" turns out to backfire and create a terrible disaster of warped dogma, twisted behaviors, and unhappy faithful.

The point remains that dogma cannot provide a native sense of morality and ethics. Only empathy can do that - the ability to see things from a different point of view. The ability to see what suffering looks like, and seek to bring relief. Dogma proscribes behaviors within a rigid framework, so you can get bullshit like relief agencies only helping those willing to convert to the dogma, while empathy is open-ended - just provide aid, because that's just the right thing to do, and don't play "carrot and stick" games with people's lives.

Theological Thursday: Memo to Christians - You're Unpredictable and that Scares the Crap out of People

People are afraid of you, because - as a collective - you're about as predictable as the filthy, twitchy guy wandering down the street shouting randomly at everyone around while waving a rusty knife.

As a collective, Christians have beaten other human beings to death for what amounts to "being different."

As a collective, Christians have DEFENDED the murder (or any other crime) by BLAMING THE VICTIM.

So much for Thou Shalt Not Kill.

As a collective, Christians are going out of their way to deny options, opportunities, and BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS to other groups "because you think it's bad."

In other words, Christians, as a collective, you are screaming and ranting and raving for how to dehumanize, and denigrate, and humiliate, and harm, other human beings, because they are different than you.

All the while, inconsistently and selectively citing as your source (i.e. "cherry-picking") a self-contradictory collection of stories written across a span of a thousand years, or more, and tampered with by humans for at least two thousand years.

Yeah, as a collective, you're about as sane as a box of rocks, as violent as shark with a brain tumor, and predictable and consistent as a rabid dog.

Oh, all while defending the murderers in your pack, and denying that any of their crimes are wrong, because the victims "weren't really human," and blinding yourselves to the reality of your own duplicity, complacency and stupidity, while screaming that YOU are the "Good People."

So, yeah. No shit people with half a brain are terrified of you.

Theological Thursday: The Fallacy of America as Christian

I'm fed up with idiots chanting "America is Christian." Let's just call them all out in one great smashup of memes.

My rant follows the memes, so skip ahead if you've already seen these before.

Funny thing, how so many of the first white settlers were fleeing religious persecution - from other Christians! - have essentially re-invented the persecution.

Perhaps it is in the nature of Christianity to seek martyrdom. I mean, Jesus was martyred on the cross, and the history of Christianity is filled with epic tales of heroes who died for their beliefs. There are even books celebrating people - stupidly - martyring themselves for Jesus.

The problem being that it's easy to die, but once your dead you no longer matter. Oh, some people say "But the memory lives on!" Well, no, because those who remain re-invent the memory to suit the needs of the moment. Look at President Reagan - the memory sold by the spin-media is nothing like the man who really lived, and even those who lived thru the era don't recall correctly anymore. That's just being human.

So, do modern Christians seek martyrdom as a way of feeling like their faith is being tested and therefore strong? Therefore contemporary Christians wind themselves up over bullshit?

I've got a phrase I like to use: "The other holidays used to think Christmas was a good neighbor until Christmas started picking fights with everyone."

It becomes a self-fulfilling agenda: pick fights because you think you're persecuted, annoy everyone, be persecuted, be validated. Of course, that validation comes only by first having been a jerk and creating a problem where peace stood before, so you decide: is it really martyrdom if you started the fight?

And last, but not least... (rant continued below the meme)...

Ah, Sainted President Ronald Reagan - let's keep in mind that by the standards of today's right-wing rant-chant media, this guy was a bleeding heart Lib Dem of the worst kind. He's only held up as some kind of right-wing icon because the "piddle down" economic models that feed the rich on the backs of impoverished slave labor started under his regime, and because prophets, idols and gods are part of the religion of the right-wing. Reagan smashed up unions, carved up taxes (i.e. massive tax breaks for the rich), and blew all his hot air into inflating the deficit beyond sane proportions (like all Republicans do - they borrow money as the government, and give it to the rich, and then tell the poor to eat dirt, because there's no money for government. Give me a "tax and spend" Liberal over a "spend and spend without income" fake Conservative any day).