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DAnneMarc: I agree that, without empirical proof, UFOs, Gods, Demons, whatever, are nothing more than unsupported beliefs. And yes I have a belief system (note: not a religious system..there is a difference..as religion connotes a belief in a supernatural being...ie: God or gods). And you know, if religious people didn't try to proselytize me I would not try to proselytize them...although my proselytizing is more of a defensive one because I don't go around knocking on doors trying to get people to join my belief system as so many religious people do.
But then again..maybe I do on this blog at least. I have been outspoken on my belief that 911 was an inside job as well as other subjects. And people are welcome to espouse their views on the subjects. And I guess we are all guilty of trying to convince others of our belief systems.
But, there are people on this blog that try to slip in religion from time to time (even quoting "scripture" to some length) and I feel that I am equally compelled to argue my opposition to their nonsense just as they are compelled to argue against what they might view as my nonsense.
Do religious people "respect" my atheist views? No, they don't! Religious people have it drilled deep withing their superstitious brains that Atheists are, if not evil, they will surely go to Hell, and they are influenced by Satan. At least, many believe that way. Heck some even believe that children are possessed and need to be exorcised even murdering them in the process. And I believe that many of these religious people would just love to revert to an atavistic behavior of burning heretics to the stake.
Money has always been speech in the Criminal world. The supreme corporate court made it legal speech now. Could it be those on the court who did this are of the criminal persuasion? Every thug in the world knows nothing speaks louder than cash.
Thom Hartman has it exactly. Furthermore, C. Wright Mills outlines in his book "The Power Elite" the interlocking directorate of the state, corporations and the military. We have evolved to the next epoch. As Mills describes, the public has been silenced by the power elite. Halliburton, Palantir, Booz Allen, Boeing, and Raytheon are just a few of the corporations that have co-opted the government. There is explicit and formal coordination between the regulatory agency and regulated industry; contracting agency and contractor.
Gen. Dempsey, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is on a lecture circuit giving the military definition of reality. The Koch brothers buy politicians and crush public opinion with their money. Congress no longer debates anything. They have abdicated their responsibility and they obstruct public opinion and discourse. Half of the Representatives in Congress are millionaires.
The political directorate, the corporate rich, and the ascendant military look upon the government as an umbrella under whose authority they do their work.
And what of the Great American Public? We hear how Federal judges overturn laws voted on by the people; we have democratic elections overturned by courts and judges. We are a mass society; no longer the public. We have evolved to the next epoch. The names may have changed, but Mills' book is as relevant today as it was in 1956.
Mark S -- How do you get 2 different monikers? Everything you said is right on. The thing you forgot to include is the effect of extra cortisol on the unborn in the mother's womb. The extra cortisol is produced by the Mother due to the stress of the environment she lives in. By the way, I am convinced Obama's Mother had no cortisol in her system.
As one of those people who live on Social Security Disability I know from real experience what it is to live on the edge of disaster in my life.
I have to live on a check of $724 a month. My SNAP went from $138 to $131 a month. I am on Medicare and Medicaid. I still have to pay for fuel, maintainance, and insurance on my 2001 Ford Focus to get the doctor's and to the store. I cannot always get what I need in food and have to go to a food bank to supplement my Diabetic diet.
The only things I splurge on is an internet modem on my home telephone.
I challenge any Congressman or Senator, Lobbyist or Corporate head to live on my income and try to live a "good" life.
Could any of you do it? Would you even try?
Many people live in our country who get even less to live on than I do. I live in subsidised housing and there are always others here that do not have even what they need to function.
Homeless try to take shelter in the hallways and stairwells to avoid bad weather and are turned away by security people.
This is happening more and more in our country and if the Legislators in Congress don't start serving the People and not the Corporate interests, our country will fall apart.
Pal--ary -- Incidentally, the book I mentioned starts out studying non-religious meditation. They use brain scans to see what happens. You should really read the book to understand how all those myths are so effective. That is, how the myths, rituals etc. effect brain ciruitry.
Palindromedary ~ Um.... By the way... I was just watching Thom's show and noticed in the background image of the White House that about 70 UFO's just flew by Thom's head while he was on the phone with a caller. Correct me if I'm wrong. Unbelievable!
It was at the end of the show starting at 3:40 min.
HisLowness -- I disagree. It is run by billionaires.
K.W. -- I think the new budget eliminated the military cuts and social security cuts.
The system is corrupted. It's run by millionaires that are beholden to corporate America. Nothing will change until the system itself is revamped to one that puts it's citizens first. Changing the players does nothing.
D.Marc -- You should listen to Thom. Austerity has never helped any economy that was not already booming. The DOD expenditures represents one of the few job programs we have going. It is one of the most inefficient programs one could imagine, but it is still a jobs program. Do you want my lecture again on how increasing the deficit reduces the debt?
D.A.M. - You are correct in your assessment of our current problem concerning the Military Industrial Complex and the vast amount of wasted funds we through to them each year. But to disregard the Sequestration process, which by the way is still in effect, and the damage it will continue to do our society is naive. As you recall the Military budget is also included in the Sequestration and it also is supposed to cut its budget by 10% a year for ten years. Congress seems more willing to let the Military wiggle their way around these cuts with special exemptions on how the cuts will be implemented, then they are with the budgetary cuts to non-military programs. I hope this response is not too lengthy for some of you.
Palindromedary ~ We all have a basic human need to explain the unexplainable. How we do that is only limited by our creativity. To me, there is no difference between believing in a God, mythology, and/or believing in UFO's. All are Supernatural by our definition; and, all cannot be proven empirically. You say you're an Atheist; yet, even so you have a belief system. If you chose to believe that after death you will dissolve into a mound of ashes more power to you. I can't understand why you can't respect another's belief that there is more to the afterlife then simple organic decay. Personally, since you cannot prove there isn't anymore than they can prove there is I think you owe them the benefit of the doubt. To me, you're all grasping for straws and no one has any real legs to stand on. The least we can do is respect the beliefs of each other.
Kend, (this is Mark S. under a different moniker) your facts and statistics are not what are in dispute. What is are the causes for those statistics and what they mean. The social problems of the African American community are largely adaptions to white racist practices and policies.
Crime, for example, I was born in 1960 and even I remember when black folks could get a job scrubbing the floors - i.e., doing the most menial manual labor - and that was it! They couldn't go any higher. There was a more or less plexi-glass ceiling upon their advancement - and it wasn't until MLK that that began to change.
When people are in such a position two things happen, first, they're not very enthusiastic about their work. As they are, in effect, in a continuation of slavery, they acquire the work ethic of a slave. They're naturally and rightly concerned more about, "When's break time?" than about excellence in their performance.
The second thing that happens is they resort to criminal enterprise for their advancement. In the African American community the crimminal professions became respected proffessions. Just as in the white community a carpenter, an engineer or electrician would be respected, so was in the African American community a pusher, pimp or burglar. This, of course, for generations and it was what African Americans needed to do, not just to advance themselves but to survive.
Similar is the effect of racism upon black families. Peole in an urban setting who are unable to earn a living rightly and naturally turn to what we call public aid or welfare. Welfare policies in the United States historically punished strong family units by denying aid to a household that had a man in residence. He was a "bread winner" and thus there was no need for the government to aid this household. This did a lot to undermine African American families.
So anyway Kend, its not enough to cite statistics. What the solution is is another topic for another day but let's not spend Martin Luther King's day casting aspersions and uninformed pronouncements on an entire group of people.
Kend – I would like to apologize for doubting the 80% figure you posted concerning Afro-American mothers that are single parents. It was unfair for me to connect the two rag shows with your facts you posted. It seemed incredibly large for a percentage of that community. I researched it further and found out it is actually closer to 67% to 65% of unwed single parents, because the surveyors lumped two unwed parents (mother and father) into the same category as the unwed mothers. They may have also included divorced mothers into the figures concerning not having a father in the family. I can understand the difficulty of a young unwed mother raising her child, especially if they are living in poverty. But, as a single parent who raised a daughter, being a single parent by itself is no excuse for the child not to be educated. I am proud to say my daughter holds a Master’s Degree in Education and that is in part due to our never ending conversations about the value and necessity for higher education.
A.I.W. – Thank you for your kinds words of encouragement. I think I might just drop in from time to time and voice my views. Everyone needs a voice of decent occasionally. Yes, I do plan on spending as much time as possible with my grand-baby, Aiden Kenneth. Crawling back under a rock, I don’t think so.
By the way...non religious meditation also works very well for those who try it. You don't have to cross your legs in a sitting position or do anything with your fingers pressed together in a weird fashion to get. You don't have to revere some idiot yogi or maharishi. Just the relaxation, sans any kind of religious belief, will work just fine.
Yes, if you have completely abandoned any kind of freedom of thought and immersed yourself in a religion, for some people, it may have beneficial results...for others...disastrous results...like exorcisms. But then you'll also find that you will be cajoled into having to give up a portion of your worldly goods (ie: tithing, etc) in order to keep in good standing with the head of the church who claims to be the go-between to the path of the ultimate being. It's nonsense, of course, and not recommended if you want to remain sane and still have retirement funds left over.
chuckle8: "God won't go away" because people get brainwashed with that stuff and they brainwash their children...etc...etc. "God won't go away" because there are institutions...ie: churches... that keep proselytizing people.
"God won't go away" because people who write books keep psyching people out with their idiocy...and make lots of money doing it.
But really, one would have just as much success at believing their Teddy Bear is the creator of the Universe, the Savior. You would have just as much chance of success in praying to your Teddy Bear as you would in praying to an invisible make-believe cosmic friend. That invisible God is really not any different that all of the mythological gods of ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia or Greece. Today's concept of God...ie: the one God...is merely an adaptation of the plethora of old gods. It's all make-believe...just pretend! If you are convinced that it gives you special powers then it probably gives you some kind of confidence which can (might..might not) affect how you handle a situation. But the same could be said of any other ridiculous thing you might believe in...whether it is your Teddy Bear deity or the Sun god...Mood god...Satanism...whatever. It's all psychological.
But look what it sometimes does to it's victims...whether they are exorcism victims or victims of religious wars. Victims of an auto-da-fe.
"Mother Murdered Two Children in Exorcism Attempt"
--2 days ago--
"...Avery and Sanford believed they were performing an exorcism when the children were assaulted; they believed they were releasing demonic spirits that had possessed the children."
http://guardianlv.com/2014/01/mother-murdered-two-toddlers-in-exorcism-a...
You know, if the major news media spent as much effort in news stories about the frequent occurring deaths of children from exorcisms as they do from trying to disarm us when putting out news stories about school or theater shootings, then maybe there would be a strong case to ban Bibles.
So have any of you read the book "Why God Won't Go Away - Brain Science and the Biology of Beleif"? I like to think of it as god for atheists; the authors do not. I am only a thrid of the way through the book.
Today on the "View" the had the PA Operator that talked the gunman into to not shooting anyone. She kept saying how god enabled her to do what she did. I am sure she was talking about the Christian God. I think the aforementioned book explains how her belief in God activated the appropriate brain circuits to enable her to accomplish the feat.
Pal--ary -- I know the NSA would not hire you (esecially if they read your blogs here). I just noticed how invaded I felt when you pointed out just those few blog entries I did. Thanks for the heads up.
AIW -- You need to be a constitutional lawyer. They teach you that SCOTUS is god (per Mike Pap...). That is one of the weaknesses of Obama, he is a constitutional lawyer. Unlike you, I think it is one of very few weaknesses he has. Actually, I was assuming the dirtbag's defense of pro-life would be god. Then, I wanted you to tell him that we do not live in theocracy and recommend that he move to someplace like Iran.
All this petty bickering on Austerity measures is ridiculous. All about solely domestic cuts in our social safety net. When are we going to discuss cutting our Military budget? The big difference between our country and every other industrialized nation in the world is that they can afford a social safety net and a national health care program because they don't have this incredible Military burden. I want to hear about substantial slashes in our DOD budget first and foremost. Right now that budget stands at about $1T/year. Our annual Military budget exceeds the combined budgets of every other industrialized nation in the world. We should easily be able to cut that in half and still defend our borders. Before that is done any other Austerity measures are purely bogus. $500 Billion would pay a lot of Doctor's bills and feed a lot of hungry children.
Our government social programs are not charitable gestures on the part of wealthy business owners and their well compensated lackeys. They are part of the just compensation of those who work so hard to make them rich. What the wealthy don't pay in wages they pay in taxes and if they refuse to do either - as they are now - then you have what's happening now, the destruction of the middle class and the pauperization of working people.
Cuts to our social programs is thus an undue tax increase on the working people. It's a matter of justice not charity.
What Obama Really Meant Was ...Remarks by the President on Review of Signals Intelligence
(if he had told the truth) --Jan 19-2014--by Chris Hedges
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/what_obama_really_meant_was_20140119
DAnneMarc: I agree. But, of course, Pagan is just another form of religion. I consider myself an Atheist which is not a religion. So they can cast me out as an Atheist and I would not be insulted. It's something I quite expect from such a community of superstitious people. But in my case I shut the door in their faces when they come knocking rather than expecting to be "cast out" of their community. I don't want to be part of their community to begin with.