“Simple minds can only hold simple ideas and produce only those kind if ideas.” I knew it was just a meeter (sic) of time before you ran out of gas and went for the ad hominem attack.”rfidler

Did I refer to you? If it applies then yes, if not then no. The guilty always know when it is about themselves. Ad hominem is correct when it is applicable.

Since you brought it up can you locate a figure of Americans moving away from the USA? Or at least a web site to look at? I can tell you that it isn’t publicized or else it would be more readily known. Just as the substitution of “recession” for “depression” works wonders for the corporate press. Like “collateral damage” replaces “innocent murders” in some war the USA is engaged in someone’s country. Words do matter. Now how about something concrete from you too beyond your opinion?

All you seem to need to do to make something true is TALK about it. Numbers, stats, hard evidence, are completely unnecessary for you. “Think it, and it shall be so.”-rfidler

Why don’t you show me how a hard number has “no meaning” to you? Does any number have a meaning for you or are they all meaningless abstractions to brush off? Follow your own advice rfidler.

Gaunt:

I didn’t take exception to your unemployment figure, I just suggested that it has no meaning.

I’m impressed by your research. Having said that-
Now you prove MY point: “The Depression we are in just doesn’t show up because it isn’t talked about much.”

All you seem to need to do to make something true is TALK about it. Numbers, stats, hard evidence, are completely unnecessary for you. “Think it, and it shall be so.”

“No numbers are ever given for those who leave the USA to leave (sic) in places like Sweden and Denmark either.” Of course they are! I’m quite sure the INS has excellent stats on the number of people who emigrate to Denmark and Sweden.

“...food pantries are chronically running short of food as they are being overwhelmed with the newly poor.” Where do you think the food in those pantries comes from? Poor people? What will happen once your dream comes true and there are no more rich people?

“Simple minds can only hold simple ideas and produce only those kind if ideas.” I knew it was just a meeter of time before you ran out of gas and went for the ad hominem attack.

Well if you knew the History of Haiti and how the USA and France destroyed it and kept it to the most poor nation in this hemisphere you could see my point. As to facts I gave you some, you just don’t want to look them up. It is easy enough these days.

By-the-way the number of un/under employed is from how they use to count it back in the 1940’s before it was changed to not reflect the reality you so desire not to see. Between 16.77-17.5% of people who can work and use to have jobs that were full time an paid well for their efforts till it started to be debased and sold off in 1980 to now. The Depression we are in just doesn’t show up because it isn’t talked about much. Though you will find that library closings (didn’t happen in the last one in 1929-1943), over 20 states are bound for financial collaps and food pantries are chronically running short of food as they are being overwhelmed with the newly poor. And you are confusing just what the “alternative press” is since Chavez isn’t part of it. But then you knew that didn’t you? You just picked out the most obvious Socialist/Communists i the media and bane to the Imperial USA and mixed them in. Simple minds can only hold simple ideas and produce only those kind if ideas.

First our boarders aren’t “liberal” just very large. Fewer people are coming here and staying here when they can go to Europe or even the Middle East. No numbers are ever given for those who leave the USA to leave in places like Sweden and Denmark either. Of course the Haitians come here, and they are sent back just as fast since if they aren’t from Cuba then the false humanitarianism isn’t accorded them since the propaganda value isn’t there.

From what I can see you are the one claiming sentiments as facts. I have searched the internet, it easy, just type in the main information and go from there. I am not going to do your work for you and then get put down for it. Have you searched the articles here to see if Hedges or anyone else have broached those topics?

Here is a small sampling for your perusal:

#
Broader Unemployment Rate Hits 17% in September - Real Time ...
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The View From 1776
Obama’s 17% Unemployment Rate. That’s what we got for almost a trillion in stimulus spending. Read More… Read today’s Washington Times editorial. ...
http://www.thomasbrewton.com/index…/obamas_17_unemployment_rate/ - Cached
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Section 277-B:17 Unemployment Contribution Liability.
277-B:17 Unemployment Contribution Liability. – I. Until an employee leasing company has been in business for a period of 2 years, including any time prior ...
http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/rsa/html/XXIII/277…/277-B-17.htm - Cached - Similar
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City Brights: Zennie Abraham : U.S Unemployment and ...
Jan 19, 2010 ... Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com A 17 percent unemployment and underemployment rate. The real problem behind President Barack Obama’s. ...
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/abraham/detail?entry_id=55573 - Cached
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EDITORIAL: Obama’s 17% unemployment rate - Washington Times
Jan 28, 2010 ... The president is full of it when he talks about creating or saving jobs. During his State of the Union address Wednesday night, he said, ...
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/.../obamas-17-unemployment-rate/ - Cached
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Sen. Sanders: Unemployment Rate At 17%
34 sec - Sep 18, 2009
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT): “The middle class in this country is collapsing. We’ve got 17-percent of our population who don’t have jobs; people have ...
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2009/09/17/sen_sanders_unemployment_rate_at_17.html - Related videos

Chew on that.

Gaunt:

Here’s the reality I live in:

Haitians manned leaky boats to come HERE. Why didn’t they just walk into the Dom Rep? Cubans the same. Why didn’t they go south to Jamaica instead?

These are facts not sentiments.

Show me one person who has been kept from LEAVING this country for economic, political or religious reasons. (NO the Gitmo boys don’t count!) Show me one other country, that anybody would seriously want to live in, as liberal with its borders as the US.

Also, why doesn’t your vaunted “alternative media”, maybe Chris Hedges or David Sirota, report your claims? Or Fidel’s “Granma” or Hugo Chavez’s or Iran’s national rags? Are THEY still in thrall to Dick Cheney too? Does your preferred media “dare to tell the truth” or doesn’t it?

You can’t just SAY we’re murdering millions of people all over the world, that we’re in a Great Depression, that unemployment is “16.77%” whatever that means. Those are mere sentiments, not facts. Back it up with bodies, numbers, facts. Those pesky little facts. Damn them.

Fidler:
I have been almost apoplectic over how Dims like Nelson and Bayh and Landreau have not only destroyed the health care bill, but have DESTROYED the Dims control of Congress. Of course they are “Dims” because Reid and Pelosi and Obama LET this happen!

Dims and Obama STILL don’t understand: you don’t expect Marquis of Queensbury to be followed in a street fight.  The GOP has drawn their line in the sand.  Fine.  Let them rot on their side of it and do WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE without them. They have forfeited their right to participate with their bad faith.  It is clear that their strategy is to make sure NO bill gets passed, even if it has EVERYTHING they want.

I’m hoping (but no longer believe it) that Obama is a good enough tactician to realize that his latest olive branch can be no more than a way to get the GOP to reveal that it can’t be negotiated with—and more and more they are doing so.  If so, Obama’s NEXT move will be to clearly and publicly close the door to “bi-partisanship” and simply lock them out of EVERYTHING.

In every relationship, from a man and a woman, to a boss and an employee, to political parties in great nations this is axiomatic:

The one who controls the relationship is the one who has less to lose.

Time for Obama, Reid and Pelosi to take control and stop dicking around with the GOP.

All it takes is for it to be just a little better especially when the Drug War in Mexico is a real live fire kill zone so grinding poverty here is better. Even being unemployed here is better than there, even if it is only slightly better, or just is advertised that way. However last that I saw the geography one doesn’t need a boat, leaking or otherwise, to leave. Nor would such a thing be reported if it did happen in your caricature. Just as the Great Depression here isn’t being reported. Nor how our IT has been sold out on the cheap overseas. H1-B’s are not needed yet they want more of them here while millions of high tech trained and experienced are without work in their fields. Unlike the last Great Depression, here they sell us out to the lowest bidder or bring them here to take our jobs. At least with the last one they did not. So I would ask you what reality are you living in?

ITW:

The Dems aren’t without fault. Ben Nelson almost crippled the Senate bill unless he got favorable treatment for Nebraska hospitals. And Mary Landreau in La.?

Night-Gaunt:

If it’s false advertising that brings people here, what is it that keeps them from going home once they’ve been turned on to the con?

You’ll respond that many people are indeed returning to their home countries, and I’ll agree.

But I’ll respond that they are mostly professionals and the educated who are scared off by the prospects of high taxes.

But you’ll respond that even the flow of Mexicans is down, and I’ll agree. The economy sucks right now and they aren’t stupid- no lawns to mow, why come?

When is the last time you saw a leaky boatload of refugees trying to escape the US? When’s the last time Mexicans were shot at trying to escape back to Mexico?

You and I live in different realities.

Inherit The Win you managed to miss my point that it is false advertising that are still bringing people here to work when we have 16.77% unemployment!

But then the largest lie must be propped up by many more smaller lies. We are in a Great Depression. We are still on the brink of a Greater Depression. A war with Iran would do it all it takes is for oil to shoot up to over $100 a barrel for a long time will collapse the weak infrastructure we have right now economically.

The disaster capitalists are ready to rebuild the USA in their own image. Like what has been done in Iraq and Louisiana.

Funny, fidler:
The ones who bitch the most about welfare and government handouts ALWAYS seem to come from the states that feed MOST at the tit.

We just have been watching Sen. Shelby from Alabama deliberately paralyzing the fed judiciary unless he can KEEP the tit flowing to ‘Bama.  That’s MY money flowing there, pal!

Yeah, the anti-government types all are REALLY pumping the money out of the Blues states into their own red-state pockets.  They are EXACTLY what they condemn.

As long as Alabama wants to preserve class-based status, support corporations while electing the MOST reactionary fools imaginable (and that’s not easy when Oklahoma is SO close by), then I’m damned if I want to support them!

ITW:

Of course we all suck at the government tit. It’s just that some of us are stuck with having to feed the pig and others get a free lunch!

Your New Jersey/Alabama comparison (I’ll assume it’s numbers are accurate while I know that your red/blue alignment is not) is a perfect example of successful progressivism. Alabama is certainly poorer than New Jersey. It’s perfectly in keeping with progressive governance to see to it that Alabama gets more help than New Jersey. You must agree.

Are you happy with the New Jersey/Alabama imbalance? I’m guessing you’re not. I’m pretty sure you secretly hate sending your money to those Bible-thumping crackers down there. But don’t tell anybody- you’d weaken your progressive bona fides!

I’ll tell you where I live if you can assure me you helped feed the pig today.

rfidler, February 10 at 12:13 am #

Go to school. Get a job. Play by the rules. Quit bitching. Your sorry-ass life is not AIGs or Citibank’s fault. It’s yours!
************************************************

Rfidler: What state do you live in? Is it a “red” state? If so, like Alabama, Mississippi, or many others, you ARE sucking on the Government Tit!  MOST red states get back more in Federal spending than they send to DC.  And MOST “Blue” states, full of “liberals” send more to DC than they get back.  I live in NJ and for every dollar I send to Washington, NJ gets 62 cents.  For every dollar an Alabamian sends up, they get back about $1.80.

So….In what red state sucking at the tit, eating at the trough FED by us blue-staters, do YOU live in?

canyon critter:

Well said. (If not well spelled.)

All you whining (wining) libs out there ought to take his/her post to heart.

You suck on the government tit. You pay no taxes. Why do you keep insisting that making rich people poor will make your life any better?

Go to school. Get a job. Play by the rules. Quit bitching. Your sorry-ass life is not AIGs or Citibank’s fault. It’s yours!

Night-Gaunt, February 9 at 7:59 pm #

Have you seen the advertisements for the USA? The propaganda paints a far better picture. Remember the aparthied S. Afrikaa? They made sure that no matter what they did they were still looking better than the surrounding countries so blacks from them came for years for “a better life.” Did they actually get that?
***********************************************

Um, actually, yes, they did. From a purely economic POV.  Just like they do in France, Italy, Spain, Britain, Netherlands and Germany.

Have you seen the advertisements for the USA? The propaganda paints a far better picture. Remember the aparthied S. Afrikaa? They made sure that no matter what they did they were still looking better than the surrounding countries so blacks from them came for years for “a better life.” Did they actually get that?

sharonsj wrote:
<This country is in very serious trouble and needs real solutions.  You may find religion comforting, but it doesn’t get anybody a job when so many companies are outsourcing or just plain moving overseas.  I’d like to see more factual discussions of solving the financial problems we face.>

You are right in saying religion is not often a source of employment and others seem to think that Christians claim too much connection to the founding. There is no need to do that even though it was far and away the dominant and driving force needed for survival!

The key question today is:
Why should any entrpreneur/inventor want to hire anyone?

When the government wants to increase taxes, take away savings on death, overload employers with more taxes and worse an endless array of reports to prove that one is not offending anyone’s human,natural or civil rights?

Men like Obama really don’t care about this because they want to be the only employer via government so they can be exempt from the rules but enjoy personal special benefits. A political career can be a road to great power and riches!

However, this type of mind fails to understand that killing the geese that provide the golden eggs is not a very smart move for most of us.

If we do not have a partnership based on mutual respect and acceptance of different incentive rewards, then we will have mediocrity, poor jobs and poor people. It has never been possible elsewhere to redistribute wealth and expect endless prosperity in a competitive world.

We may have to vote the Obama type idealists out of office soon?

Roberto’s kind words are appreciated, though it should be noted that “certainty,” about anything, is viewed with great suspicion these days by those who get their kicks flip-flopping-around in the heated cesspool of “relativism,” where ‘ownership’ is CONsidered to be anything BUT responsibility.  Anyway, this Old Indian only describes, too often inadequately, what is plain for all to see….even if most, for now, just haven’t the ‘stomach’ to look.

The simple truth is that this Old Man, when young and foolish, once made the mistake of asking to be given just one thing to know for-sure….one true note to sing in Life’s Song, one firm step to take in Her Dance.  Evidently She doesn’t ‘roll’ that Way, so the one ‘thing’ alway leads to another, and another, and….well, you get the idea.  Besides, how else could it be, if it is to BE at-all?

Right now, because so much of Humanity is sick almost to-death of “civilization,” there is a lot of what is supposed to be the organic responsibility of Human Beings, for the health and wholeness of the Natural Living arrangement of our Mother Earth, just lying on the ground everywhere.  Among us surviving free wild Native Peoples it is our Way to pick-up and carry as much of that as we can, as Persons and as a People. 

There is nothing of ‘martyrdom’ in this.  We’re only doing ‘what-comes’naturally,’ after all, like breathing.  So “certainty,” as such, doesn’t even come into play. 

It is indeed good not to have to be “at-war” with anyone or anything, knowing that CONtrary to popular misCONception that’s not what any Natural Immune System or any of its components is ‘about’ anyhow.  So our tame Sisters and Brothers, if they notice us at all in the midst of all the increasingly terrifying make-believe surrounding their own “individual” ‘selfs’, will often see us smiling….all together.

‘Cause the ‘one thing’ we ALL know for sure is…..

HokaHey!

No, actually, the Soviet Union provided food, housing, education, and work, which was taken away by the far-right chicago school economics, and millions of people died.  They wanted, as I told you, to turn those companies into employee owned cooperatives, and keep the guaranteed housing, free education, free healthcare for all that places like Scandinavia enjoyed.  That is what comes down to to most people; not abstract BS.  Furthermore, it is a bad thing because the collapse of the Soviet Union emboldened the free market fundamentalists to make them think it was now safe to privatize and disinvest in the commons everywhere; including the US, which is in a worse state as to providing essential services to it’s people than the Soviet Union was.

Just remember any “dystopia” for most of us is a “utopia” for those who rule. Whether in the Roman Empire, any empire, any other form of gov’t where a certain elite rule over everyone else. Even a democracy can be very bad for those in the minority.

Yours are certainly obvious especially seeing things where none exists. (A confirmed habit no doubt.) I was saying that those Chicago Boys made things worse than they already were which is saying something eh? I am no Communist. More of an Anarcho-Capitalist/Socialist. [Definitely against any style or type of dictatorship right or left, theocratic or secular! Do you agree?

It is the Humanism that is important in any organization, without it we see human lives and needs are the first to be discarded over economic, military, religious and corporate needs. Do you agree?

Pronouncements of my leaving is premature, by you <b>Keepontryon, but then I suspect your “cup” is full all of the time. Mine never is.

Search me out in “Rogue Evita” and others and get a more rounded perspective of me why don’t you?

keepontryon:

You’re wasting your time with lichen. He’s impervious to reason.

Lichen needs to consider:

When you say:
“Yes, it is a fact that Russians did not want to move into homelessness, starvation, and unregulated capitalism that they were thrust into in the 90’s.” are you trying to say that the collapse of the Soviet system failed to include in its master plan a provision about what to do when:

a. The great lie about constant improvements could no longer be hidden because the fax let the people know that they were way behind the more productive places in the world in terms of food, shelter, and opportunity for individual and private business development.

b. When the printed rubles were worthless and everyone had to depend upon barter exchange.

c. When factories produced millions of left shoe only baby sizes so that raw materials could be used at night to make something that could barter in the black market to subsidize nearly worthless ruble wages that one could not afford to save as they declined hourly in value.

d. An exit plan to provide for replacing the government that just collapsed.

When the remnant and new faces took charge and asked for help, they did not ask for a Western occupation, but did seek economic advice. Picking the Chicago source, a liberal bastion of Keynesian economic theorists was perhaps a poor choice; but, did not Lenin provide a better answer or did he incorrectly assume that Marx was right in saying that ALL VALUE comes from labor and none from capital?

The privatization did do away with the inept central planning approach and it did result in a vast improvement in terms of people once again being able to eat better and find goods to buy in stores that were nearly bereft of anything by 1991. That it let crime and corruption create what we call now oligarchs to thrive may be the price necessary to pay to get anyone be willing to work to produce a meaningful way to survive.

Once again, the Russians have found ways to tax away the wealth of the ‘oligarchs’ to rebuild the military capacity to threaten and invade several break-away regions so as to stop them from engaging in profitable trade with other western nations and to cement in place a new dictator that may be able to move back to the kind of central control that his party lost with the collapse.

Do you expect that the Russian people now want to return to central planning and government control of the economy as we find a noisy minority wanting to do in the U.S.?

  If the “Chicago School economics committed a genocide against the Russian people—killing millions at it’s outset, and stealing (privitizing) companies built up by the public trust for decades”, can you tell me what millions and where and when following the collapse of 1991?

Are we about to see a new central plan to increase the birth rate with special benefits to mothers to encourage making more boys for the army to protect the motherland against foreign invaders waiting at the borders? Would they be Chinese or some other group imagined to be a class to fear, despise, and have to destroy? Maybe Iranian extremists from Gaza?

It appears that atheists from the old Soviet Union have not yet stopped trying to spread the notion that secular humanism,run by some dictatorial authority should be able to make our world into a Utopian place. They want to believe that all mankind can learn to be perfect like those who wish to believe that God did not create but that it was and is only chance via evolutionary change that makes this corner of the universe with people who want to take charge eventually of the rest of the universe too!

lichen:

What frigging planet do you live on??????

You’re insane.

Free market capitalism is a failed experiment; free market capitalism has killed millions of people in it’s despotic, anti-democratic quest for ideological purity.

Yes, it is a fact that Russians did not want to move into homelessness, starvation, and unregulated capitalism that they were thrust into in the 90’s.  Chicago School economics committed a genocide against the Russian people—killing millions at it’s outset, and stealing (privitizing) companies built up by the public trust for decades. 

Regardless of what some pathetic anecdotes by a rich conservative who claims to have travelled there at some point, it is a sure thing that the undemocratic way in which the Soviet Union was dissolved, thus derailing the plan of it’s last leader to transform it, as the Polish people wanted as well, into a sort of Scandinavian social welfare state with cooperatives; that is what the people wanted, not a progression into a highly unequal third world country.

What was all this about anyway?  Religion or Conservative Dystopias?  Or both? And is there a connection?
  Traditional Christianity teaches Adam’s (human) “dominion over” this, that and the other—a key doctrine that has been made to support exploitation of people and resources under capitalism and other marauding economic systems, whether Christian or not.
  The idea that humans are “superior to” animals and plants has morphed into Americans are “superior” to all other nations. And further, white Americans are “superior” to almost everybody else. This notion metastisized into the system of unbridled greed which we feel we are stuck with as we watch it dying of its own dominance.
  Such beliefs breed dystopias everywhere they touch down on new territory to exploit.  They corrupt and overwhelm indigenous cultures by substituting a phoney “competition” for cooperation, or money for goods, and thus kill human community.
  Maybe we should establish a “won’t buy and cannot be bought” campaign within our own reach, refuse to “consume” and to “be bought”, reclaim our independence as fully as we can—come together and practice cooperation, person to person.
  Utopia would not be the result, but at least we might learn where our friends are, and how to take some control over greed, consumerism, exploitation and dystopia.

purplewolf, February 7 at 3:10 pm #

keepontryon are you related to christian96?

ans. NO unless purplewolf is really someone named Tryon

I do not choose to hide my i.d.but suspect that I failed to be able to communicate with a Russian atheist when he left the U.S. in 1966 and told me it was too dangerous to his career to correspond about economic cost issues between a free market world and one managed in all details by the state.

The writer Night-Gaunt appears to also be restricted from communicating with those not in full agreement with him, a precondition to which I do not subscribe. He seems to be unable, or perhaps afraid to consider a universe in which a superior power of creation is needed and/or helpful to achieve anything positive to his mind that might go beyond his keen support of secular humanism.

Unfortunately such persons tend to be unable to converse without establishing a need to destroy Christianity to make secular humanism work. I probably will not see anything more from him.

keepontryon are you related to christian96?

you are getting off topic here people.

Anyone remember the “Christian” community only being built several years ago, where only certain people were allowed to purchase homes in, that is if you passed their ideals? Latest news this week was about how this project was a failure. Kind of like the Twilight Zone show where a man wanted everyone else in the world to be exactly like he was-it turned out to be a bad thing, just like trying to make an “all republican mind set or all christian mind set of peoples to be allowed in certain groups or towns, it will not work either. Maybe for a while, but not in the long term.

Dear Night Gaunt,

I now appears that your convictions are showing:

1. You are indicating that the failure after 70 years of glorious success of the Soviet Union were destroyed in a short time by the Chicago school of Economics, apparently during the 1991 – 92 period with stupid help from Yeltsin.  Considering how few Russians came to me while I visited to tell me how full and secure their lives had been under the watchful eyes of government spies that made neighbors afraid to talk to each other, it must be your experience that they enjoyed wonderful education, medical care, ample food and drink certainly by the last of the post WWII decades. But, best of all, the notions of secular humanism had totally displaced the Russian Orthodox Church and its obsolete notions of morality driven by their love for a caring God that gave them the strength and courage to endure those decades of being told what to do, when and where to do it, and all in exchange for whatever number of rubles the government chose to award them in addition to opportunity to buy whatever was available at the government stores reserved for commoners to use. Odd-  how I saw many church museums for tourists to see. They were in active use by parishioners that came forth when glasnost made it possible.

2. Somehow compassionate concern by free people for one another may not have reached you in ways you recognize. Therefore secular humanism creates notions of morality that need no respect and love for God to want to obey His moral laws. You must prefer those agreed to by some man made legal process, as I don’t think you write like an anarchist.

3. The rest of my last memo for which space is not allowed, gave more extensive response to the reasons that the U.S. Constitution was mainly a document to organize government. The founders assumed that their American history as a religious people made it unnecessary to put “In God We Trust” on our money. You are right that periods of our reaction to communist notions, usually clocked in socialist rhetoric, so as to not look like the government would steal the means of production because such writers knew that control and regulation are more important than ownership, caused some excess responses.

Your faith in humanism is not shared by those who have no place for God, but do have a common inability to take full responsibility for their own failings that makes obeying the notions of the humanists unimportant!  I am not sure if we can instill such convictions until folks get very hungry and anxious to find ways to follow those Christian principles that have worked in the past. However, some may be sufficiently successful already in tearing apart the fabric of human kindness that blossoms with each natural calamity as to give help to your cause.

No, I do not accept your charge that my awareness of history is driven by what you label as Christian Re-constructionism for I have both lived, witnessed and studied many different writers views about interpretations. I have no real faith in secular humanism as a movement that will lead to happy campers and progressive solutions to social problems in ways that work- especially after the leaders with minds to help are destroyed or denied a chance to contribute for reasons of endless political bureaucracy, of a sort somewhat worse than what we see in place all to often now.

keepontryon:

Yo. Shorten it up. Attention span and all that.

Thank you Night-Gaunt for explaining to this Christian what Atheism, or at least your version of it, assumes about the philosophical underpinnings of Christianity!
Did this wonderful knowledge come to you from some past incarnation or just a period of your life somewhere in the world where Christianity was common, uncommon, or rarely known? From independent study? Or from some available educational resource or another type of religion or church within one?

Since you further identify yourself as being part of the U.S. by referring to ‘our’ founders, I can express a bemused response to the notion of my ‘conflating’ or merging words used by a specific religion and its theology. 

My MS Word dictionary- not my favorite- defines theology:
< the·ol·o·gy n
1.  the study of religion, especially the Christian faith and God’s relation to the world
2.  a religious theory, school of thought, or system of belief
3.  a course of specialized religious training, especially one intended to lead students to a vocation in the Christian Church

Encarta® World English Dictionary © 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.>

I am not sure that the Greek-Roman origins of the word preclude its use regarding the study of other religions, although it seems to be a lot more developed in Christian thinking than in the more limited writings of the Jewish Torah. This may, in part be due to the fact that the Jewish thinkers are still waiting for the Messiah to be sent by God to presumably save them from perceived or real attacks that seem to violate the simplistic notion that God made them his chosen people and this therefore has always required a purity of marriage to insure that future generations will not be tainted by blood lines not so endowed.

To me, the point of theology is to study not only all religion’s history, but science and usually within the context of Christian thinking, not necessarily that of any particular faith or church within the global body of those who profess a connection to Jesus as usually known to most Christians and perhaps to many non-Christians as the only evident claim of a human who preached for about three years some 2,000+ years ago in what many in science tend to think was one of the earliest parts of the world to leave traces of organized human presence and thought. It is seemingly unique also in persisting to show an impossible to prove connection with a monotheistic God with whom he claimed to have learned to communicate and understand his mission. Key to our Christian faith is celebrated at Easter to commemorate the time when he was victim of a well documented crucifixion from which he was apparently spared a common act of breaking a leg as he was thought to have already clearly died.

That he arose from a borrowed tomb three days later is widely accepted by non-Christians as well, but many, of course, attach different interpretations as to what actually happened and what it means.

Islam in its two main divisions are not nearly alike in the philosophy or array of pronouncements that came forth somehow to advance the life of Mohammed and his followers.  Their distinctive way of spreading their law and leadership in not all like that of Christianity, although it too persecuted my ancestors in the Great Spanish Inquisition. Much confusion and error seems to be tolerated by God or whatever creative force that may include an on-going provision of more advanced elements of creation that would have been hard to achieve at various points since the Big Bang gave us a place to be.

If you want to read the rest, you will have to send me an e-mail at infogratisbooks.com

ITW:

Actually, Pittsburgh is alive and well. It managed to regroup quite nicely after the departure of big steel.

Detroit, of course is another story.

Keepontryon you are conflating words used by religion with the theology itself. Our founders were aware of the history of Europe, many bloody wars based upon religion (official), and the theocracies founded here in the century before them. They, in general, could be called Christian, but Deism was the kind most of them followed. [God exists, created everything then left to not interfere evermore.] Most of the founders weren’t evangelical or any other type of the aggressive kind that is so prevalent now in this country. We are on the verge of becoming a corporate theocracy if we are not too careful—-by the most rich an powerful among us.

Humans can ordain things can’t they? Secular things too. I am so tired of the religionist canard that Atheism is just another religion. Only there is no worship, no holy book, no churches but we do advocate for Nature, for it is what sustains us and from whence we came. A logical deduction no? However no matter what philosophy or theosophy that motivates us it must be centered on Humanism, or for the benefit of us all and the world we live on or it will sooner or later become destructive. Whether theological or secular. History shows this time and again. Wouldn’t you agree?

Yes undobutedly, this is true, unfortunately it’s also true that people’s real income is dropping, and most working people cannot afford anymore taxes.

This is a problem for Democrats. Because Repbulican’s pretty much own this issue. Until Democrates come up with a better idea, such as taxing corporations for exporting jobs, then they won’t be able to get much traction here.

If this article is factually correct, Colorado Springs is the next Detroit and Pittsburgh—towns that saw their principle means of income destroyed by the idiocy of the fools and bankers who took over their industries.

Steel Town and MoTown didn’t die overnight.  They were killed by short-sighted bankers.  When Andrew Carnegie sold Carnegie Steel to J.P. Morgan, it was the most innovative and progressive steel company on the planet.  If AC didn’t invent the technology, he’d be the first to buy it, even BEFORE it was proven to work, and then, if it worked, implement it.  Morgan’s US Steel froze the steel technology in time, running the same blast furnace technology for the next 70 to 80 years—until it was long past viability.  Then Ronald Reagan assaulted the unions and gave tax incentives to companies shipping their production off-shore to kill unions and…..Pittsburgh died.

MoTown was killed from the inside.  For 40 years GM, Ford and Chrysler have ignored the warnings and the trends and kept on making Town Cars and Impalas and other big, crappy, bad-handling, gas-guzzling unreliable POS vehicles that ignored what more and more of the world wanted.  Meanwhile, Asia and Europe saw the trends and jumped at them.  Either cheap, reliable, economical cars, or powerful, safe, tight-handling road cars that ate up the miles.  And Detroit changed the styling year after year without fixing the bad designs of turn signals and wheel bearings and all the big and little things that turn people off American cars.

Killed. By short-sightedness, lack of vision, and lack of patriotism.  Yes, these steel makers and auto makers and Republican corporate zealots are traitors.  They KNEW they were selling out their nation but they wanted their bonuses and they didn’t care.

I’m always amazed at a man or woman who would rather pay to have a Porsche or Mercedes or Lexus repaired than pay taxes to have the ROAD repaired so the car doesn’t break. Or who’d rather pay for private security and gated fences than pay taxes to support the police.

You don’t have to be a genius to know that in towns with good public schools, schools that succeed with their kids, drive UP real estate prices.  Who wants to invest in a house in a town with lousy schools if they have kids, expect to have kids, or hope to eventually sell to people with kids?

The Rethugs are like flat-earthers, insisting that THEIR view is correct even if a flat earth means you can’t have satellites for communication, weather analysis, GPS, defense, etc.

I’ve said it before: Chico Marx epitomizes their POV: “Who you gonna believe? Me or your own eyes?”

to Night-Gaunt I respond to note that you are correct! Nobody writing the Constitution, as a document to organize the workings of a tri-partite government had any need to include offices or rights for God,to be allowed for the well understood and virtually universal Christian heritage of the founders.

There is not a Constitutional article dealing with the use of prayer at the beginnings of each day’s deliberations via a paid Chaplain, but it has been an established practice for over 200 years. But, the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution use words that clearly show a connection between our founders religious faith and its importance to all that we wanted the Constitution to support.

<We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence,[1] promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.>

Any wordsmith knows that words like blessings and ordain have a long root in faith. Count your blessings may seem to some to be a noun that relates to non-religious material possessions or success at whatever personal goals individuals may seek. But most Americans will not have a hard time relating this word to gifts from God in the form of genetic as well as religious words of encouragement. Most sacraments include many references to blessings, perhaps starting with “blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth”. There are countless additional similar references to this point.

The word ‘ordain’ is another with a great religious heritage. Ministers, priests and many others are ordained in religious services and the word ordained has been commonly used in laws that go back to church related Canon laws. We do not use the word much today in any other context.

Of course, atheists may have little use for either of these two words and even less thought that they even have taken time to think about them. In the age of PC, however, this does not mean that their ignorance is reason to contend that our government should not contain God fearing individuals to stand alongside those who only regard those with greater political or economic power as being superior to themselves.

For those who look at the Universe and see how intricate it is both in terms of that much bigger or smaller than what we can observe without magnification, it is very common to find that most allow that something bigger than any of the plant or animal species living around us exists. How you name this superior power and intelligent connection to us is not necessarily important, as we enjoy many languages and faiths all dealing with the same idea.

Taking up space in the working document to define powers, duties, and means of operating was not the place chosen for this type of observation, for that which was so close to being a universal conviction did not cross their minds as an important detail to note.

When the U.S. reaches a point where the First amendment right to maintain or establish religions is taken away; or when the government tries to mandate one for all, you will see a new revolution in the making. Confusing separation of any particular religion or church from control of government with the notion that all evidence of religion can be made illegal is unfortunate. It is the flip-side of the words immediately above. We will not tolerate a religion of no-God, called atheism, as our state religion either.

Corporate Greed is the root of all our problems.
They(corporations) will wither and die if we simply Stop buying the things we, at
bottom, can live comfortably without. Sick and tired of Corporate Greed? Boycott their
widgets. Liquidate your 401k and mutual fund accounts. Cut up all of your credit cards
and pay cash. Grow your own food and trade locally in neighborhood exchanges. Sink
a well and install a filtration system. Install solar or wind for power. Cancel your cable
TV service. Read. Ride a bike or walk to work. Call your senator or representative
regulary to communicate your expectations.  If WE do not change, nothing will. Our
salvation will be bottom up or there will be none.

From the mountain once held sacred by the Cheyenne—now the vaulted inner sanctum of mutually-assured-destruction—
to the crumbling ruins of Pueblo’s steel mill, the entire I-25 corridor reeks of decay.

But the distant rumble of tanks on maneuvers and the southern night sky glowing with munitions fire are reminders of the
Springs’ true life’s-blood: Fort Carson, Norad, Peterson airfield, and the air-force academy. I’m told they are thriving still.

Seems as long as ‘Merica can still get it up for a little shock ‘n awe, and keep enough of the complainers
silenced/marginalized, the rest of us remain fresh out of rat’s asses when it comes to giving one for the likes of our
economically-strafed brethren huddled under the shadow of Pike’s Peak.

At least those mountains held off the fallout from Nevada’s nuclear tests, other wise those clean-living family values
scarecrows would have faces to match their stunted spirituality and mutant minds.

Meanwhile the bloodless strip mall tumor continues to metastasize eastward across the plain with its endless gun shops and
tattoo parlors and drive-through feed stations. If ever there were livers-of-the-dream in those parts they have long since
pulled up stumps and abandoned it to the rust and the dust.

The only place a future like that could look good is in your rear-view mirror.

It’s been awhile now since the last such ‘run,’ but not so many Winters ago this Old Indian used to travel several times a year between Taos Pueblo and Home on the Northern Plains.  We often stopped with Friends and Family among the sizable Native Community in Denver, so in the earlier years more often than not our route (north- or southbound) would be through ‘The Springs’ on I-25.

Northbound we always got gas in Walsenberg, southbound in Denver, so we wouldn’t have to stop for any reason in the excrescence of “civilization”  that is the subject of this article.  It’s not easy to explain the ‘why’ of that, except to say there was (and evidently still is) the distinct odor of ‘death-trap’ about the grid-locked holding-pen CONfiguration erected there by the american occupation forces.

So the last several times we made the trip, we went the ‘inland’ route by-way-of South Park and Ute Country, instead.  It’s not as ‘fast,’ but a lot easier on the eyes, ears, nose, and nerves.

David Sirota is likely onto something in his suggestion here that as Colorado Springs goes, so goes the rest of theallamericandreammachine….though he seems not to’ve noticed (or is reluctant to admit) just how far down that DEAD END road the damned thing is already.  This Old Savage can tell you, though, having been ‘out’ there recently, his expressed hope that the Oregon ‘trail’ offers a viable alternative is doomed to disappointment, as the very same continent-wide karmic burden is also dragging the heirs of the ‘pioneers’ there down to a fate different only in its superficial details.

Despite all the hype, theamericanexperiment isn’t even all that original….nevermind its spurious claims to divinely-ordained glorious nobleness.  Not that the “....huddled masses” of themericanpeople are anywhere near catching-on to how thoroughly they’ve been and are being HAD, but from ‘places’ like this site (and just about any big-box-store check-out line anywhere) one gets the impression there’s a growing sneaking-suspicion that something is rotten deep in the core of the make-believe ‘land’ of “individual” opportunism.

Now if they’ll just figure-out that it’s “individual” opportunism itself CONtributing significantly to the already degenerate and rapidly deteriorating ‘condition’ their CONdition is in….

HokaHey!

California and Colorado are not only examples of the effects of conservative-inspired tax-revolt policies, but also examples of something more fundamental, and more important, namely, the lack of any conception of “the greater good of society,” or even a utilitarian variety of one, “the greatest good for the greatest number of society’s member.” Without any such moral view inhering in citizens’ conceptions of themselves as members of a society, a Hobbesian arrangement emerges….

Of course, the real joke is this.

Colorado Springs is probably one of the most highly government subsidized towns in America due to all the handouts it gets from the Federal government via the Pentagon.

Typical conservatives.  Grab as much as they can from the government, then yak a lot about free enterprise and self-sufficiency.  All the while working to increase their own government handouts while trying to cut everyone else’s.

However it must be remembered that soon after agents of the Chicago School of Economics came and destroyed what was left of the Russian economy with their privatization schemes. The creation of the oligarchs was also a stupid measure, by Yeltsin that made things far worse than they needed to be.

“Of course, we could restore what the founders ordered via our under God’s help idea of a Constitution. But that allows religion to provide a moral framework that can make the Constitution work.”-Keepontryon

YOu have the distorted view of history that the Christian Reconstructionists promote. There is no “God” in the Constitution or Bill of Rights is there? No there isn’t. Also the part “Under God” wasn’t in the original Pledge of Allegiance (1892) either, it was added during the Red Scare of the 1950’s. Get your history straight then we can talk.

Considering all the horrors over the centuries including today, religion isn’t the only bastion of morals either. If it doesn’t matter whether secular or religious they must have humanism in or it will be anti-human.

Not sure who is thinking what about who is doing what to whom?  However, of this much I am sure:

a. If all the rich either give away everything they have or have it taken away, and if it is all consumed, so that no houses or businesses remain standing, all but the government buildings and staff will be living in tents or under bridges.

b. If the government has some willing to give orders to create jobs for which no money is left to pay those taking them, unless it is just printed script, then it will not take long for all government employees to also be living in tents or under bridges.

Then we will be exactly where I found the Soviet Union to be in 1991- people standing in lines trying to buy with worthless rubles, whatever the government stores still received to sell at prices not yet updated for yesterdays rate of inflation. All real economic activity at that point was barter exchange. My carton of cigarettes for your bottle of Vodka, etc.

With this condition, the poor had no rich to point to as ones that could be taxed. The government had nobody left able or willing to decide anything. This is either a Rx for chaos, or it is a peaceful way to die by starvation, because one has anybody to blame, who is not in the same circumstance; or else some manage to overpower those with remaining things to eat until this equilibrium is reached.

The best off will be living on remote islands far from the cities that are dying who are clever enough to figure out how to invent their own survival.

God will have to let a new civilization rebuild the population albeit with new bias, if any historians are able to record it in twenty second sound bites for the brilliant new age folks to use to learn enough to elect another great Messianic leader.

Of course, we could restore what the founders ordered via our under God’s help idea of a Constitution. But that allows religion to provide a moral framework that can make the Constitution work.

This reminded me of another social experiment done by the Disney Company, can’t recall the name but it is a planned community so pristine humans get in the way. So planned you get into trouble if you step out of line. So rigidly organized only a few can get in in the first place. It is a plastic-natural as any Disney concoction can produce. “We do Natural—-Only Better!”

I wonder how such Libertarians as L. Neil Smith thinks of what has happened to his stomping grounds?

The “shining city on the hill” is a necropolis, a city of the dead, and very possibly the future of the USA.  Bush and Cheney set something in motion that apparently can’t be stopped.

To the repukes who have yelled that by cutting taxes on the rich they create more jobs, this lie has come to roost in C.S. If that mantra they continue to chant actually were true, they would not be cutting services and losing jobs. According to the repugs they created jobs with Bush’s tax cuts for the rich. Well, where are those jobs and why are you having to close other things down totally? Unfortunately the repugs only know 1 thing and that doesn’t work and the sheeple are so dumbed down they don’t realize it.

And they forgot about the garbage pickup or does C.S. have that privatized too? Don’t forget to throw the teabaggers out in the trash.

Think globally—Act morally!

Conservatives envision a world where an obscenely wealthy elite rules
benevolently over a mass of submissive peasants. They’ve gotten us about half
way there already. Time to stop bowing and scraping, and get out the pitchforks.

djnoll reports about Colorado Springs:
<When the wealthy abandon this city in search of a better quality of life, then those who advocated for them will find themselves out on the street and the people of the community that are now living in tents will rebuild it in a way that will hopefully make it sustainable and balanced.  It may be the only hope the city has if things continue the way they are headed.>

One should recognize that if the wealthy move, usually after the poor have been either forced to move sooner, or left behind to go broke, it is because the city no longer can sustain the same kind of life style that the wealthy can find elsewhere. If the city could tax away all of the wealth of those who have it, the city could afford to heat the tents a little longer, but that tax only produces revenue one time!

Next crisis becomes the coup de’etat.

For those of you in Oregon who are afraid that businesses will either pack up and leave or not move to Oregon because of your minimum tax structure, here is a newsflash:  You have one of the lowest minimum tax structures, if not the lowest, in the nation.  Corporations will stay and jobs will not be lost over this. Other corporations will come to get this tax base, just as they always have.  It was a scare tactic that worked successfully here in Spokane to defeat a citizen’s bill of rights, and it did not work in your state.

As for Colorado Springs, when a large city such as this continues to pander to the wealthy, it is not surprising that the rest of the community suffers.  But history and Mother Nature have a way of teaching harsh lessons, and the leaders of that community who cower before their wealthy citizens will find that tent cities move, and people leave to find other places to live where they can get services, both poor and wealthy.  When the wealthy abandon this city in search of a better quality of life, then those who advocated for them will find themselves out on the street and the people of the community that are now living in tents will rebuild it in a way that will hopefully make it sustainable and balanced.  It may be the only hope the city has if things continue the way they are headed.  It should be a lesson for cities like Las Vegas, Dallas, San Francisco, Sacramento, ...

I have visited Colorado Springs many times, a city much dependent on Ft. Carson and its obsolete abilities to teach men how to fight in tanks and in trenches and how to dig ‘fox-holes’. When huge military budgets spend a lot of money on the base, Colorado Springs does very well.

When the federal government had to adjust to fighting a new kind of survival game, now called dealing with foreign criminals who violate our criminal laws, it is clearly the time to see that Ft. Carson is not a place to spend money needed for more important problems like insuring that illegal aliens have medical insurance.

Downsizing Colorado Springs is painful. Lack of water resources is inevitable on the front range as its climate has always been volatile. Too much water now and then, and not enough are common because of its proximity to the mountains and the location on a globe that rotates but wobbles to cause greater seasonal changes in some places than others. Toss in an irregular elliptical path around a Sun that has flashes of greater or lesser heat, and one wonders why C.S. happened? Well, the land was cheap after we decided to fight the Japanese on Dec. 8,1941.

In an age where our population appears to be heading for a forced need to be sustainable in order to survive, we may as well expect that the ‘Springs’ will become smaller, with fewer people, less of almost everything no matter who passes laws aimed to artificially try to force it into some politically acceptable mold.

Oregon here as well. Measures 66 & 67 were a double edged sword. This needed to be passed at the national level for all state budgets. Even though it is the right thing to do, it will surely cause businesses to move elsewhere. Oregon already suffers from staggering unemplyment as is.

Makes me think of P.J. O’Rourke: “Democrats are the party that says government can make you richer, smarter, taller, and get the chickweed out of your lawn. Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work, and then they get elected and prove it!”

I live in Oregon and I split my vote…66 hit single taxpayers @ $125,000.00 household income @250,000.00 the single person was wrong in my opinion. The tax on corp is temporary, also wrong but I did vote for it. How did we get into this mess? Easy, PERS and manager salaries did it. Also giving the rich folk the same percentage of taxation as the poor folk. Quite wrong, now they want a sales tax..ain’t never gonna happen. Problem is the entitlements to government employees is way out of order. Mis-mangement of bureaus is the norm..look at DHS as example.