FIVE SUPREME COURT TRAITORS UNDERMINE DEMOCRACY

These five men are traitors to the American Constitution. From left to right, the traitors are Antonin Scalia, John Roberts, Clarence Thomas,  Samuel Alito, and below right, Anthony Kennedy whose smug crooked smile (up on one corner, down on the other) could be put on the face of all five of these very average men. They have made a mockery of the idea of fair elections in America, helping to return America to the days of Jim Crow election practices in the South. The most frightening thing about this Supreme Court misruling is the realization that these members of our Supreme Court are so corrupted by partisan politics that they willingly and openly participated in the brazen Teapublican plan to disenfranchise American voters. Not since Hitler's days has a top court of justice gone along so brazenly with one political party in an effort to destroy the right to vote of another group of voters. In Hitler's Germany, it was the Jews who were disenfranchised. In America, it's blacks, Hispanics and older citizens that these corrupt Supreme Court justices are helping the Teapublicans to disenfranchise. When a nation's supreme court of law is so corrupted as this one is by one party, no citizen is safe from politicians willing to destroy the democratic ways in which we select those who will represent us in our Republic. I think, if honest lovers of our Republic should ever achieve enough power to do it, these five Justices of the Supreme Court ought to be tried as criminals for their aid to the Teapublican Party's plan to undermine the Constitution of the United States. They are due no respect. They've dirtied their pants, crapped on the bench where they sit in shame. They stink. The five are corrupt Teapublicans, root and branch, with loyalty only to the wealthy people who fund the Teapublican Party.  

REPLY TO AN EMAIL FROM A CATHOLIC FRIEND #2

Aquinas

"The reason the Church opposes contraceptive devices is because it is a DEVICE. It is not human, it takes away from the humans involved any control of their own wills and leaves it in the hands of some device made in a FACTORY. The Church wants men and women to try to the best of their ability to give their trust into the hands of God their Father. He knows what is best for them. WE have done that, Yuri, and it works! The church's stance is a call to human beings to take responsibility  for their actions, not to give that responsibility into the hands of the corporate world who make theses devices for a profit. How much of that profit goes back to society, very little I would bet. Take care. [Your Catholic Friend, in Jesus'name]." 

Some humans choose to be responsible. Others throw up their hands and take no responsibility at all. Birth control decisions are responsible HUMAN decisions, my Catholic Friend. I suppose you have given up driving because god gave you legs to walk on? The Catholic Church’s logic, if its logic is your logic, is as full of holes as Aquinas’s five non-proofs for the existence of his imaginative idea of a god.

What is the responsibility of the Catholic church for the overpopulated world which over-population is the direct cause of poverty, inadequate potable water in much of the world, the wars, recently decreasing life spans and increasing infant mortality? Your church’s policies are death warrants for the poor and, perhaps, for the human species. I don’t care if the Catholic church wants to keep most of its women barefoot and pregnant, but its irresponsible birth control practices are harming my paradise, the Earth.

If you're wondering how my "god" looks at these global issues, follow the sensible and intelligent argument offered by my higher power:  

"You have received by 'my will' a wonderful and abundant place for the human species to live. If the balance is right between the numbers of your species and the natural resources I have provided, then you are in harmony with 'my will', but if you are profligate in your procreation, then you will suffer the natural consequences of your profligacy. Further, if you do not believe me and need proofs of the result of disobeying 'my will', look around you at the paradise 'my will' gave you and recognize how your profligacy has fouled it. Look specially closely at all the vanished species and ask yourself why they vanished. This is how you will know 'my will' for you."  

My dearest, one of my oldest Catholic friends, the marvelous thing about my higher power, my god, if you will, is that It does things in such a way as to make Its laws easily available to human reason. An intelligent human animal can study the will of my higher power and draw verifiable facts from that study. 

EMAIL TO A CATHOLIC FRIEND...OR ANY RELIGIOUS FRIEND

Dear friend, I liked the Catholic Church when its priests were into liberation theology, supporting peasants in their armed battles against wealthy conservative forces in whatever nation they found themselves. Yes, that was good stuff, but the big dogs didn't like that and liberation is dead now. I see the Pope did tell the impoverished youth of Brazil to "shake up the church", then he directed them to proselytize on the streets which has nothing to do with shaking up Mother Church. He appears to want Catholics to be more like dogmatic Muslims, Mormons and Protestants, knocking on doors.

I understand his wish to grow the Church. When you promise impoverished masses they'll be rewarded in the afterlife, you help keep them cooled down and obedient to their masters on earth...the wealthy. Jeez, Friend, nothing new there. I wish I could eavesdrop during those Cardinal gatherings when they elect the Pope. Their strategies and aims are obvious: "Okay, we put in a conservative Pope when that's likely to more popular, and we put in this more liberal Jesus type when the liberals and socialistic forces are on the ascendency." It's coldly calculated to keep the Church in the best possible light. 

Notice that where poverty is greatest so also all religions have the most members. Sadly, the Pope once a year, around Xmas time, says, "Hey, World, help the poor," but the church does nothing constructive to help the impoverished masses except dole out insufficient charity, enough to hold the poor just above starvation levels and dependent on the Catholic Church. The Church officially sponsors no progressive legislation in any nation that is aimed to lift the poorest peoples out of poverty. Nor does the Pope support liberal and progressive forces in any nation that are struggling to make REAL POLITICAL CHANGE happen. In fact in America the church supports the Teapublicans who in North Carolina actual ended unemployment payments and supports the Teapublicans in other Southern states who are dumping the poor off Medicaid. My friend, the Pope is all smoke and mirrors, mouthing platitudes while doing exactly nothing to really help the poor.

If there were such a thing as an anti-Christ, the Catholic Popes, most of them, have fit that bill. I'm glad I don't believe in religious ideas or I'd be frothing at the mouth about the Pope's anti-Christ identity, but since I interpret what's happening through the rational lens of science, everything makes sense. Everyone is acting just as you'd expect they'd act if they had evolved out of jungle roots and each of them was desperately struggling to keep themselves alive in anyway they can—the Pope being no exception.

If the human species really did have souls and free will, if it really did obey a higher directive, if it really believed in the afterlife of punishment and reward, this globe would be a very different sphere. Modernity wouldn't look so much like the product of a species a few thousand years out of the jungle. My dear Friend, it's so obvious what's going on I think any intelligent human computing machine would see it, but my wish, again, is hoping that people were more than they are, but, so far, they are performing right to type as evolved animals struggling to adapt to modern civilization and not doing too well at it...liberality bless them in the name of goodness.

From your friend, another human being, doing the best he can to stay out of harms way,

Augusto Philipi Lovingstone

IF YOU SING, TEAPUBLICANS ARREST YOU

I'm 75 and these parents are older than that. We remember the Depression and we don't forget, either, what wage earning was like before strong unions were born, back when Teapublicans (still called merely Republicans back then) fought in every way possible to eliminate unions in order to keep profits high for their extravagantly wealthy owners. At least in those days there was some risk involved in getting wealthy. Now, with our tax dollars continually insuring that corporations don't fail, there is little risk for the biggest fat cats. Teapublicans! The wage earner's curse! Who insures the wage earners? Certainly not Teapublicans in North Carolina where unemployment benefits no longer exist.

As to a person's age, Teapublicans don't care a hoot about that. Their attacks at the federal level on Social Security and Medicare proves they don't care about seniors. We wage earners and retired wage earners, the young and the old, the union wage earner and the non-union wage earner who hopes for better wages and benefits, the unrepresented wage earner at Walmart and Poopy John's...we must begin to stand together to reverse this Teapublican attack on wage earners. It's no accident that they've been responsible for the greatest transfer of money from the middle and lower classes to the top 1% since the early days of the last century. Since 2009, the wealthiest Americans have seen their incomes increase by 123% while the poorest Americans have seen their incomes decline by 4%. The middle class remains stagnant. Solidarity, friends.

WHO MADE ME AN INURANCE POLICY FOR THE RICH?

All the historic financial dislocations of the last hundred years whether it's the Great Depression or the Great Recession have something in common. They're all caused by under- or unregulated financial schemers. 

I'm tired of bailing entrepreneurs out of their messes with my tax dollars. Time to return to the good old days when they go broke and end their lives in poverty. Entrepreneurs claim they deserve more reward than wage earners because they take risks. Well what happened to that risk factor when wage earners continually pay their way out of their stupid messes? The wealthy capitalists continue to live in mansions while the rest of us see our American Dream fade into the past. Who named us and our tax dollars their insurance policy? 

A way to budget surpluses? Long jail terms for financial malfeasance. Split the giant financial corps up so that their failures won't threaten America's economic well-being. Cut way back on the bloated military budget. Increase the tax rate on just the top 10% of Americans. See how much better the situation becomes for education and the social programs that benefit us all by making sure that no one among us lives in poverty.  

Return to the visions of FDR and cast off the blinders of pure capitalism. Vote a progressive ticket and continue to work diligently at your own jobs too. You might even consider unionizing or, at least, support unions anywhere you find them. Look to sports unions to see what excessive unions can do, but also at public service jobs which are middle class unions, smack in the middle income range all wage earners expect for themselves.

FREE WILL, AN IMPORTANT ILLUSION

Tonight on Through The Wormhole, the subject was free will. Do we have free will? Of course not, but the human animal must cling to the concept for the sake of its mental health. To feel as if one does not have "control" of one's behavior is a bewildering state of mind. I felt that way many days back when I drank. Now that I understand I have no free will, I actually and paradoxically feel more in control. In a sense, the truth has set me free, but free from what?

If you watch this particular episode of Wormhole, you'll quickly see that the men who are doing the experiments are the ones concluding that the human animal does not have free will whereas those who believe we have free will did a lot of philosophizing. Stick with the experimenters, the scientists. You'll always be closer to the truth, and I generally feel better the more I know the facts. Odd...that no women were featured in this episode. Why?

One philosopher among them did say that the more each of us knows, the closer to having a sense of control seems possible. I agree with him because the computer with the most data in memory will naturally have more information informing the decisions it makes for the consciousness called "I" that it makes decisions for.

MOST TOP APES ARE LESSER HUMANS

I'll tell you what's scary. I'm certain of the facts of evolution, and I understand the sense of entitlement these "top apes" in the Teapublican Party were lucky to be born with and the adaptive and conscienceless emotional drives that force them to drive for the top, but those drives also make MOST of them more selfish and less caring than the average monkey.

The saddest fact is that the Teapublican power base in the American Bible Belt does not understand or recognize evolution. Thus those Southern "lesser monkeys" go right along currying favor (i.e. picking the nits off those top gorillas' backs by voting for them). However, these Teapublican gorillas at the top don't return the favors of the "nit pickers" like real gorillas do. 

Evolution stands out so clearly in these battles between we clever liberal chimps who can understand the dynamics of the situation and the selfish gorillas of the Teapublicans who are fighting mad to maintain their dominant place in the concrete jungles of the globe. If only MORE of our brothers and sisters to the American South understood the actual situation that they nourish with their nit picking votes and began to vote as if their personal welfare depended on it. If only...! Sadly, at this time, these nit pickers in the South remain the tools of the greater apes who use those lesser monkey's Yankee hatred to divert them from the damage being done to them everyday in the Southern concrete jungles.

A FEW MORMONS LEARN WHAT ALL FAITHS NEED TO KNOW

studying fossil evidence through a Bible

Some Mormons have found internet evidence that many of their beliefs are doubtful, but any rational examination of any faith would lead a rational human animal to conclude that all religions serve human emotional needs, and that none of the evidence for supernatural activities has any testable evidence to support it. These conclusions are so obvious one must be blinded by fear or religious books (like, for example, the Koran) not to have arrived at them and found them to be true. 'Nough said.

REPUBLICAN, LIBERTARIAN, PROGRESSIVE.

We are fighting wars and not increasing taxes to finance them. Thus we finance our wars on the backs of the poorest Americans and by letting America's infrastructure rot, and by depriving children of inexpensive college educations through which they can compete with the children of the wealthy in our free market economy. 

Republican Eisenhower held the lowest tax rate at 19% until the 2nd World War and the Marshall Plan were paid for. Deficits can be met by increasing revenue as well as by slashing social programs and privatizing everything and letting corporations own all of America. Corporations aren't good citizens. Corporations gave us Enron, our Great Depression, the recent Great Recession, the dot.com bubble, the penny stock fiasco and the Savings and Loan crash. We taxpayers underfund education and social programs to bail corporations out of the messes they make of our economy. If we didn't have to keep bailing out business and financial corporations, we'd have money to maintain our social programs, our infrastructure and our educational systems.

We Americans must stop blaming politicians for our personal poor budgeting that has made us live beyond our means so that we are not willing or unable to meet our responsibilities to the poor, to our children and to our infrastructure. Bitching about taxes plays into the Republican plan to undermine and weaken government so that deregulated businesses can repeatedly rip us off and, then, blame government for what business has done to the American economy. It's the Republican strategy. When a Republican says that "government is the problem, not the solution", he's misrepresenting the facts.

Libertarians would turn everything over to businesses and, thus, they also will give us more of the same unregulated free market scams that have ruined the American economy time after time. They are Republicans in disguise, but they've sure got the pot smokers behind them. I'm beginning to think of myself as a Progressive. We might become as happy as the Danes under Progressive leadership, but Americans have been brainwashed by the idea of personal freedom to the point they can't see themselves as one among many in a nation of millions. Pride is our weakness. We like the idea of the dog eat dog struggle that is capitalism, no matter how unhappy it is making us.

DETROIT BANKRUPT FINANCIALLY AND AMERICA MORALLY

When I read today that DETROIT has filed for bankruptcy, I was moved emotionally in ways I was surprised to understand and wrote the short piece I've linked to above. Then I realized that all human animals with their complex consciousnesses experience these feelings if they live long enough. Nothing special, I guess, but if you're the animal feeling that feeling, the experience seems to be unique and quite original. If this is how all older citizens feel who've witnessed much change in their culture during a long lifetime, I guess I'm okay with how I feel because I'm experiencing a piece of the universal pattern of all human lives in these days, full of fast-paced change, more change than one human animal can take in and keep up with at the same time. 

The photo above is from a Time Magazine photo essay, revealing Detroit's decline. It's specially ironic to me to see that news magazines like Time are also in decline. Decline within decline. 

Excuse me a moment, please, while I sit down on this curbstone beside the street and remember the rag man's horse drawn cart, clopping down my grandmother's street in Dayton, Ohio where I was raised as a child and, also, the ice man toting in a huge block of ice on his shoulder to put in the top of my grandmother's brand new ice box.