GOOD NEWS

Psychology Today's June 4th Issue on page 54 comes up with some well researched figures on religion and church attendance in America. In Brooke Lea Foster's article, "The Soul Searcher", the atheist can take even more heart from the figures. Supposedly, evangelical Christianity is the fastest growing denomination (and Buddhists) and Protestants are the fastest shrinking denomination, specifically, the Methodists. Though, if you ask me, evangelicals are just one branch of the Protestant category, so I don't think Foster is entirely conversant with her topic. In my history, there are two types of Christians: the Catholics and the Protestants. But what of Mormons?

The best news, however, is that a little over 29% of Americans list no church of attendance. Reason and good sense are continuing to spread in our culture. I won't live to see the triumph of reason over superstition, but it will happen. If these Bushmen evangelicals just keep starting enough wars, the rest of America will see that light. I suspect it may take a few more millenia though before reason fully emerges in the human animal. Evolution works at such a slow pace, doesn't it?


BUCK KNIVES SLASH LABOR'S THROAT

To repeat. I know I’ve said this in another post, but... Buck Knives is moving to Idaho from California and plans to pay its labor force 30% less than what it’s paying in California. Buck, the president dude, will stay competitive by cutting wages rather than by cutting his profits. That's the way it always works, eh? This means Idaho workers will continue to come over to my state, Washington, to get better wages and their coming here will, then, hold down our wages. It’s a nasty game the lone worker can’t win.

So, isn’t that a case for unionizing Buck’s shops? Well, I don’t know if that will do any good either because, if he goes out of business or moves elsewhere, the labor force is screwed again. Is there no way for labor to win? I’d say, no, not in a classic labor/management battle.

Currently, productivity is up by at least 40% but wages are down. Economic forces are powerful and without conscience. So if labor can’t win the wage battle, what can it do? They can run an end run. They can vote for compassionate liberals who long ago saw that there was a need for an effective safety net to take care of people when economic conditions are driving workers into the ground. That’s what Roosevelt was all about, and what we’ve forgotten in the modern world. Republicans hated and hate Roosevelt because he gave workers power by making sure that they weren’t so desperate during downturns that capitalists could screw them at will and get away with it.

Capital wants desperate workers. That’s why the stock markets go down when the number of unemployed goes down. It’s a cruel world out there so I suggest laborers gather together under the banner of united labor and vote liberal en masse rather than be that lone sucker out there in the rain, crowing about his all wet independence.


MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE WALL,
WHO’S THE CRUELEST ONE OF ALL?

Sawing heads off is what I expect from fundamentalists of all religions. If they’re not sawing off heads, they’re cutting out tongues or burning out eyes with red hot pokers or stoning witches or spanking children until they die or bombing government buildings or killing abortion choice providers. Anyone who thinks their holy path or book is the “word” or “way” of some hypothetical god is already irrational and, therefore, dangerous. I don’t expect reasonable behavior from them. All that holds them in check is the fear of punishment in an imaginary afterlife. Once they decide that their imaginary god will reward them in the afterlife for killing living people they feel threaten their god, watch out! And if you don’t think Christians are every bit as capable of wild destruction and murder as any other religion’s fundamentalist, remember Paul Hill who was certain his hypothetical god would reward him in heaven for killing a doctor who offered women a choice.


"The way to make money is to buy when blood is running in the streets." —John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937) A Republican's favorite era, when worker blood was running in the streets.