Scenario at 2:30 am:
I'm in a strange town, visiting. I don't know anybody in the town
except my Dad, and I'm walking home to my Dad's house down a strange
street in this strange town when some crazy guy comes after me and shows
me a gun in his pants belt and seems to be inappropriately crazy-acting
angry. I've got three choices...fight or flight or freeze.
If I freeze
the dude could easily shoot me. If I run he might
shoot me in the back. I know the dude must be crazy to be confronting
me when all I'm doing is walking home. Paranoid crazy people do that
sometimes, attack others for no sensible reason. So, my only choice, faced with this armed madman, is attack so
fast that he doesn't have time to pull his weapon and quickly do enough
damage to the dude so that he won't be able to pull his gun and kill
me. That's what any sensible male, acting on instinct, would do when
confronted by what seems to be an armed maniac in a strange town.
The only error I make is I don't beat the guy senseless. I let up a
minute because I'm a human being, and I don't like to kill people.
That's my mistake...I don't knock the guy completely unconscious, so,
because I'm a human being with a conscience, I'm dead, and a shyster
lawyer makes sure that the paranoid racist, nut job gets off by making sure that
nobody gets a chance to really understand the dynamics of the
situation. The prosecutor began by reading the very clear racist remarks
of that nut job when he reported "suspicious" [walking down the
street?] behavior. Zimmerman made clearly racist comments at the time. What he
committed was a clear hate attack that he instigated, and only in the
deep South would he get away with it. We all know that, anybody my age
of 75 with a bit of brain in his head knows it, anybody who saw McCain
defeated by the race card in South Carolina during his first run at the
presidency knows it...the South is full of prejudice. Hell...it's the
whole reason the South went from Democrat to Republican after Johnson
signed the Civil Rights Act.
Now...will I be able to sleep?
This was first posted in April 2006:
If you're lucky enough to be a
member of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, you'll receive the kind
of news 6 times a year that I'm passing on below for your
attention. Crime amongst the clergy is as active as in any other
profession, and, if you ask me, sexual crimes are more prevalent within
the clergy than without it. That's because of the peculiarly repressive
attitude in churches toward sex. Not only that, churchly codes of silence
means that in many churches children are protected from the sort of information that
might save them from predators. Thus predators enjoy church congregations
and have an easy time of it in houses of worship and within naive
congregations. Not only that—most sexual attacks come from people known
to the child. Where else but in friendly, close congregations can
predators have such easy access to naive children? There's so much
unwarranted trust within congregations.
It's a shame, I
suppose, that childish innocence must be shattered, but how else do you
protect children from predators? If they see only Disney movies,
designed for kids and adults who are still like children, then they'll
be vulnerable when confronted with danger, nor will their erstwhile
protectors be any more likely to see through a predator's sweetness.
As you peruse the list below, remember that the list of crimes does not count the other lists
in the paper such as "convicted and sentenced" and "civil suits settled"
and cases under investigation. Not only that, this list only
scratches the surface since it is only people aware of the FFRF
publication who will send these in. That number will be only a small
percentage of Americans. Imagine how long these lists would
be if everyone contributed their local news to this national paper.
Arrested/Charged
•
Rev. Eugene Marriott, Fort Washington, MD: raping & beating a
woman in Fairfax, VA. The minister for men at Ebenezer African Methodist
Episcopal Church was accused of attacking and raping the woman in his
car. Her body showed signs of having been hit with a belt &
fists. Marriott told police that the attack was a form of role-playing.
Sources: United Press InternationaI 3/8/06, wtopnews.com 3/8/06
•
Michael Willis Heard, 27, & Gregory Railey Jr., 26, Canton, OH:
4 counts of theft by deception. Heard is founder & chief
executive officer of Xzuberant Faith Basketball Association, a
Christian-based basketball league. Railey is chief operating officer.
The league scammed at least $60,000 from hundreds of people, by
promising that nobody would be refused pro contracts as long as they
paid registration fees. Sources: The Repository [OH] 3/5/06, 2/11/06
•
Rev. Terry Hornbuckle, 44, Arlington, TX: failing to stay in custody
long enough to be fitted with an electronic monitoring device. The
pastor of the Agape Christian Fellowship Church has been in &
out of jail since March last year. He was initially arrested for drug
abuse & sexual assault, then arrested three more times for
violating the terms of his bail. He was ordered to pay the costs of his
twice-weekly drug tests & monthly bond supervision. He cannot
consume alcohol or drugs unless prescribed by his doctor &
pre-approved by the court. Source: Dallas Morning News 3/3/06
•
Rev. Elidio Tapia-Renteria, 45, Owatonna, MN: 4th-degree criminal
sexual conduct. The preacher at Calvary Church in Owatonna &
Rios De Agua Viva in Faribault was charged with molesting his assistant
several times over a 7 month period. He reportedly told the woman she
was doing God's work by helping him to liberate himself, &
threatened that something bad would happen to her & her family
spiritually if she refused. Source: St. Paul Pioneer Press 3/1/06
•
Rev. George Silva, 73, Raton, NM: 4 counts of sexual misconduct
involving a minor. The Catholic priest was arrested by FBI agents on
charges including transporting a boy under age 16 from New Mexico to
France & Portugal for criminal sexual activity. He is on
administrative leave pending an internal church investigation. Source:
Santa Fe New Mexican 2/24/06
• Rev. Morales Saintilus,
Long Island, NY: 4 counts of incest, 2 counts of endangering the welfare
of a child, & 2 counts of sexual abuse. The pastor &
owner of the Ebonizer Baptist Church, attended by Haitian Americans, was
charged with raping at least 3 female family members under age 17, some
as young as 12. One teen said she was raped nearly twice a week for 4
years. Saintilus is a fire-&-brimstone preacher who often speaks
about atoning for one's sins. Source: WABC- TV 2/9/06
•
Rev. Kevin Thompson, 48, Bay Area, CA: illegally catching &
selling 465 juvenile leopard sharks. The pastor of the Bay Area Family
Church & 5 other people were charged with harvesting leopard
sharks that were too small for commercial distribution &
therefore protected under state law. Source: San Francisco Examiner
2/9/06
• Rev. Vincent Kohn, Springfield, FL:
abandonment & cruelty to animals with unnecessary suffering. The
pastor of The Anointed Church of God was arrested after a witness saw
him throw several puppies into the woods from a pickup truck, leaving
them to die. Police who went to Kohn's house found more puppies
& their mother, all malnourished and/or with no food or water.
Source: local6.com 2/7/06
• Rev. Michael Peters, 36,
Denver, CO: 2 counts of sexual assault of a child by a person in a
position of trust. The minister at New Hope Baptist Church was charged
with sexually assaulting a girl, 17, in 2003. He was then pastor, choir
director, & counselor at the 2nd Baptist Church in Boulder. The
girl was in the church choir & had come to him for counseling
after being a victim of a previous sexual assault. Source: Denver Post
2/7/06, 9news.com 2/7/06
• Rev. Jimmy McCants, 54,
Chicago, IL: misdemeanor criminal trespassing. The pastor was arrested
in the middle of his sermon at the Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church. The
church's board of directors told police they had fired McCants in
December, & a woman affiliated with the church had signed a
complaint against him for trespassing on church property. Source: AP
2/7/06
• Msgr. Bernard Prince, 71, Ontario, Canada: 2
charges of sexual assault. He was accused of abusing an altar boy, 12,
when he was a parish priest in the 1960s. Now retired & living
in Rome, he was once secretary general for the Vatican's Pontifical
Society for the Propagation of the Faith, & was close to the
late Pope John Paul II. Source: AP 2/3/06
• Rev.
Charles V. Shifflett, 54, Culpeper, VA: taking indecent liberties with a
child. This is the 3rd time he was arrested in just over the same week.
The pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, who resigned last November, was
charged with an incident occurring in March 1998. He was previously
charged with 2 counts of child endangerment in incidents occurring in
1992-93, & taking indecent liberties with a child between
1991-93. He was a leader at Calvary Baptist Academy, a church-run
private school. Source: Free Lance-Star 1/27/06
•
Timothy Robert Frahm, 40, San Antonio, TX: indecency with a child by
contact. The religion, literature, & physical education teacher
at Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church School was charged with
molesting a female student, 12. He has since resigned. Source: San
Antonio Express-News 1/26/06
• Rev. Lorenzo Dixon, 40,
Arcadia, FL: simple battery & improper exhibition of a firearm.
The pastor of Assembly of Praise Church was arrested at the Fairfax
Tabernacle Church in Jacksonville for being involved in a fight with
another man. During the argument, Dixon wielded a handgun. Source:
local6.com 12/28/05
• Rev. Galen Ermil Peckham, 71,
Waterloo, IA: indecent exposure, assault with intent to commit sexual
abuse, & 2 counts of simple assault. The visiting minister at
First United Methodist Church resigned after being arrested for
molesting an elderly woman at a care facility. Peckham was also told to
refrain from active ministry pending the investigation. Source: Waterloo
Cedar-Falls Courier 12/22/05
• Rev. Joseph Briceno,
Phoenix, AZ: 8 counts of sex crimes involving 2 minors. The fugitive
priest was arrested near the Mexican border. Source: AZ Daily Star
12/17/05
I'm always
troubled when I discuss atheism or religion with fundamentalists because
they're so sadly dead and plodding and unpoetic. They don't know what
they're missing. Oh, they're emotional enough, writhing in the clutch of
their Jesus experience, but they are also like frothing pit bulls who
won't let go the seat of his pants. As to any larger feel for the
visionary Universe, they get nothing. Their god is a puppet maker who
whittled humans from mud and who never left earth. Their god has no
imagination. He's a petty choirmaster who punishes them or the
choirmaster's wife who gives them milk and cookies.
Never mind
that in every encounter with the details of science, fundamentalists
have, throughout history, lost in the courts of time. You would think
that, therefore, they would embrace a less literal interpretation of
their big book and take up a poetic and symbolic interpretation.
Christian
and Muslim fundamentalists are more alike than they are different when
it comes to a contrast with most rational Americans. They are ever
people of the law rather than people of the spirit. As Thomas Merton
writes, "One cannot apprehend a symbol unless one is able to awaken, in
one's own being, the spiritual resonances which respond to the symbol
not only as sign but as 'sacrament' and 'presence.'"
I've lost
much of my own poetic spirit with the ravages of time. A certain ability
to concentrate my consciousness seems to have declined, but, still, I
recall how spiritual and painful is the truly poetic way of experiencing
reality. The poetic and symbolic way challenges the petty laws of the
literalist and allows doubt to flourish. In the brief passage I quoted above from the Dartmouth Bible, I found for myself an explanation of the literalistic problem
which I have never forgotten, and then, recently, Joseph Campbell
explained further:
"The symbols of the higher
religions may at first sight seem to have little in common," wrote a
Roman Catholic monk, the late Father Thomas Merton, in a brief but
perspicacious article entitled 'Symbolism: Communication or Communion?'
"But when one comes to a better understanding of those religions, and
when one sees that the experiences which are the fulfillment of
religious belief and practice are most clearly expressed in symbols, one
may come to recognize that often the symbols of different religions may
have more in common than have the abstractly formulated official
doctrines.
"'The true symbol,' [Merton] states in another place, 'does not merely
point to something else. It contains in itself a structure which awakens
our consciousness to a new awareness of the inner meaning of life and
of reality itself. A true symbol takes us to the center of the circle,
not to another point on the circumference. It is by symbolism that man
enters affectively and consciously into contact with his own deepest
self, with other men, and with God. God is dead . . . means, in
fact, that symbols are dead.'
"The poet and the mystic regard the
imagery of a revelation as a fiction through which an insight into the
depths of being—one's own being and being generally—is conveyed
anagogically. Sectarian theologians, on the other hand, hold hard to the
literal readings of their narratives, and these hold traditions apart.
The lives of three incarnations, Jesus, Krishna, and Shakyamuni, will
not be the same, yet as symbols pointing not to themselves, or to each
other, but to the life beholding them, they are equivalent. To quote the
monk Thomas Merton again: 'The symbol is an object pointing to a
subject. We are summoned to a deeper spiritual awareness, far beyond the
level of subject and object.'
"Mythologies, in other words,
mythologies and religions, are great poems and, when recognized as such,
point infallibly through things and events to the ubiquity of a 'presence' or 'eternity' that is whole and entire in each. In this
function all mythologies, all great poetries, and all mystic traditions
are in accord; and where any such inspiriting vision remains effective
in a civilization, everything and every creature within its range is
alive. The first condition, therefore, that any mythology must fulfill,
if it is to render life to modern lives, is that of cleansing the doors
of perception to the wonder, at once terrible and fascinating, of
ourselves and of the universe of which we are the ears and eyes and the
mind. Whereas theologians, reading their revelations counterclockwise,
so to say, point to references in the past (in Merton's words: 'to
another point on the circumference') and Utopians offer revelations only
promissory of some desired future, mythologies, having sprung from the
psyche, point back to the psyche ('the center'): and anyone seriously
turning within will, in fact, rediscover their references in himself." (from MYTHS TO LIVE BY, Joe Campbell, pp. 265-266)
______________________________________________
"All
God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in fact,
barely presentable." —Fran Lebowitz (She spends lots of time looking in
the mirror too.)
You ain't going to believe this, but a crow has a grudge against me.
Last week, as I walked to the bank, a crow began to caw loudly and
circle above me and swoop down. It was so continuous that I watched it for quite some time
till it perched on a light post nearby and quieted down, then I continued on. This week, at the same spot, a crow again began
to caw and circle above me. I took videos of it, but I also noticed
that another crow and a small (baby?) crow eventually joined in the cawing and
circling. I began to think it was a crow fight, but then, returning back
from the bank on the other side of a wide main street (Mill Plain), at the
same point, this crow swooped down on me again, cawing like mad. At that point, I took this video. No
other crow came near. Here's the video of the second attack. No kidding.
I'm pretty sure it's personal, and I've recently read that crows do
remember offending members of the human race, but, as far as I know,
I've done nothing to offend this old crow unless it's the crow in Spokane that I tried but failed to shoo away from the sparrow he was pecking to death, but that was a decade ago.
If you live in the South of the US, in almost every bad thing that can be charted, you are at the top of the chart. Conversely, almost every good thing charted, you are at the bottom of the chart. Southerners, as a Yankee who cares for you, I must ask how long will you let the man hold you down by his constant tactic of directing your hatred at those of us Yankees who have escaped the power of the man? Look at the policies and people who keep you poor and in bad health. If you cannot see how you are being treated by the policies and people you follow, then don't blame others for your plight. Wake up Johnny Reb. You're being taken to the cleaners by your leadership. Up here, we're all cheering for your recovery. We need your strength beside us to make America work again for the middle class and the poorest Americans. Come join with us. It's a win win situation.
Recently, advanced imaging techniques have allowed neuroscientists to watch what happens in the brain of a member of the human species when it smiles. They found that when a smile breaks upon the human face, the chemicals that create happiness are engaged. When happy-making chemicals are released in the human brain via a happy
circumstance, those chemicals also create a smile as a byproduct to show a fellow robot, most likely, that he or she is making us happy. If they like us, they'll be sure to do that action again to us or in our presence. It's a social thing for survival's sake.
This marvelous wiring works either way and, of course, proves once again that humans are electrochemical robots because if we fake a smile, then conversely, the happy chemicals are released in the brain. That means we can all increase our happiness factor if we just smile more. No shit!
With those happy facts in mind, I have
begun to practice a behavior which I hope will improve the circumstances of my life. If faking a smile will release happy chemicals, will strutting like an alpha male, help me increase my image and security among males of my species? If that little pipsqueak Bush Junior could own a ball club and become president of the US, then I figure copying his strut may help me get more done with less worry.
Since I walk every day for an hour, I've got a good forum in which to practice my new strut. I've begun to throw my shoulders back and swing my arms during my walk, like a president approaching the podium. I can tell you already that it takes more energy to walk "manfully" than to do the stroll, but I also notice that hints of aggressiveness come into my thoughts and feelings as I walk like a conqueror. I become more outgoing toward those I pass in my walks. I believe I'm onto something. More later, and thanks again, neuroscience.
This film shows gun nuts from the past in Greensboro, NC, doing their thing with weapons that gun nuts do.
"The marchers killed were: Sandi Smith,[2] a nurse and civil rights activist; Dr. James Waller,[3] president of a local textile workers union who ceased medical practice to organize workers; Bill Sampson,[4] a graduate of the Harvard Divinity School; Cesar Cauce,[5] a Cuban immigrant who graduated magna cum laude from Duke University; and Dr. Michael Nathan,[6] chief of pediatrics at Lincoln Community Health Center in Durham, North Carolina, a clinic that helped children from low-income families."
Readers can see the killings were targeted at leadership types. The murderers were all acquitted. This is what the South does to people who want to advance the welfare of wage earners in the South, black and white. Unfortunately many white wage earners in the South still line up with their masters, their white bosses. This massacre happened in the South where the Republican Tea Party Party has its greatest strength.
I separate from this group of gun nuts all those men (and women) who like to hunt, target shoot, enjoy finely made weapons and the history of weaponry, but I ask all those sane members of the NRA to publicly and frequently disavow those politicized members of their organization who do not recognize the fact that their fellow citizens have the right to want guns regulated. It's not the American government that wishes to regulate guns, it's a majority of their fellow citizens who are asking for these regulations.
Sensible members of the NRA could start by getting rid of their new NRA president who imagines the gun issue is a Civil War issue and who equates Americans who want gun controls with members of the Yankee army who joyfully burned thru Georgia with Sherman to the sea.
Rep. Connie Mack pushes bill benefiting big donor Rep.
Connie Mack, head of a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee, has
scheduled the panel's first markup of the year – on a bill that would
benefit a big donor to his campaign. www.usatoday.com
If
only Republicans were this tough on their good friends, the offshore American companies that
evade paying taxes. In the House of Representatives too...their special
stronghold where the Republicans do much to hold back American progress and protect the plutocracy that owns them "lock, stock and barrel" as the saying goes.
The plutocracy barks and the Republicans leap, asking first, "How high,
boss man?" If only their boss were the average American Joe.
This should be called Republican "ouchreach" rather than "outreach". I can't believe this woman is still around and sounding as awful as always. With a mere change of a letter or two, her name becomes more symbolic of her activities. Phyllis Schaftly.
I just took out all my insulting language. Think I'll just let you judge for yourselves by reading her words.
Does
anyone else find it interesting that Charlton Heston and Ronald Reagan
both moved from liberalism over to pretty far out conservatism as older
men and that both of them also suffered and died from Alzheimer's? How
soon they forget, eh, the reason for liberalism's necessity as a force
to oppose the jungle mentality of dog eat dog capitalism.
A little
wealth can go a long way toward altering one's conscience sometimes.
Today from my AARP magazine, I learned that the wealthy Mick Jagger
endorses British conservatism. I suggest he get a mental checkup soon. — 
feeling amused.
