This one’s dedicated to the moderate Christians who actually practice the teachings of Jesus instead of just paying them lip service: Where are you? We’re waiting for you to take your faith back from the nutjobs.

“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”
– Stephen Roberts

What prompts such an obvious jab at the Christian faith today, you might ask? If I replied with just the two words “Tom DeLay”, it’s a safe bet that a lot of people that read this will immediately understand. “The Hammer” is in the news today for criticizing Supreme Court Justices that make public comments on conservative death threats against them as out of touch with America. Yes, that is our problem in a nutshell. Our impartial judiciary feels that it should not have to put up with menacing emails and obvious hazards to their safety and the well-being of their families, and these are the people that “don’t get it.” After all, this is a nation founded on Christian principles, so the rights of the Constitution that guarantee life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness only really apply to Christian Americans, right Tom?

Even though trends and polls show an increasingly conservative leaning to America’s political ideology these days, it still enrages me that this “moral majority” thinks that it is right to impose such a religious viewpoint on the country as a whole. This is STILL AMERICA. My atheist beliefs and his Muslim beliefs and her Buddhist beliefs and their Jewish beliefs are still entitled to freedom from overwhelming persecution from ANY majority that is in power in our government. For Christians, the overwhelmingly dominant demonination in our country today, to claim that they are being harassed by anyone is an affront to reason and reality. Instances in which the power of Christianity in government (state or federal) are limited or removed is nothing more than the minority fighting for its Constitutional rights under the law.

Tom DeLay is the one out of touch here, not Justices O’Connor or Ginsburg. What is sadly true is that he believes that it is right to enshrine bigotry, misogyny, and ignorance in our country’s founding charter. The GOP has lead efforts to fight civil rights for decades and is supported by the populations of states that are largely filled with racists or the descendants of racists who haven’t fallen far enough from the tree. The solid base of the Republican Party actively works against efforts to increase our wealth of knowledge and education learned through science and understanding, as opposed to policy dictated by a religious figure of questionable intelligence. Actions to curtail the rights of women, be they black, white, asian, or whatever, are mainly spearheaded by religiously conservative Republicans. And given that the struggle to maintain the rights that the GOP has worked so hard to eliminate has stretched on for so long is an obvious indicator that the majority of Americans do NOT subscribe to the vicious rabidness of fanatics like Tom DeLay.

That is why I continue to call on moderate Christians to retake their religions. There exist millions of Protestants, Catholics, Methodists, and Baptists (sorry if I left your sect out) who live day by day with their nieghbors of different origins and beliefs and don’t even feel the urge to call anyone a sinner. These are the true practitioners of the Christian faith. They exemplify charity and understanding and compassion in ways that the most visible Christians do not. Pat Robertson calls for assassinations. Jerry Falwell criticizes soldiers that have died for our country. The Reverends Graham (Billy and Franklin) have not one kind word to say about their Abrahamic brothers, the Muslims, equating the entire religion with evil and injustice. (The irony is that the imams across the oceans use these individuals to do the same, kind of like a self-perpetuating problem.) These are the people that you want to represent your faith to the world? These are the people that you follow? If that is the case, then you are all hopeless and deserve the eternity in Hell that your complacency will earn you. But if you are tired of the hate and bigotry that is spread about in Christ’s name, then WAKE UP already and take back your religion. Send money to churches that focus on good works and political causes. Is the life of a person already alive worth so much less than that of an embryo that you’d rather your contribution go towards buying picket signs instead of soup and blankets? Does it mean more to you to focus on preventing gays from marrying that you don’t want to direct any attention to the divorce rates among regular people and address the real ills that affect our families today?

Christians today have a choice. There is the path that Jesus walked, which is of love and brotherhood and compassion for all living peoples and creatures under God’s creation. This is demonstrated by showing real concern for others and not making the creation of a totalitarian government under some fanatic minister the goal of your life and your congregation. Then there is the path of pride and glory and greed personified by so many televangelists shown in the news today. These men who preach intolerance and support measures in government to remove rights from people that are different from them or worship a different supreme being or choose not to worship one at all. Suppressing anyone’s rights was not part of Jesus’ plan for the world. It should not become the foundation of the Christian faith in the 21st century. Stand up, real Christians, and be counted. Your voices, so currently silent in fear of some rebuking sermon, are the ones that matter and should be heard.

Quickly, what is the best way to ensure the survival of an uneducated population? Move it to Kansas! Not content with being the vanguard of the miseducation movement, the Sunflower State’s Board of Education has re-written rules governing sex education in the state to allow more parental control of student participation. Now, I am not against parental control in education. But I am against excessive control to the point that the religious beliefs of the parents conflict with important educational lessons like sex ed. Parents send their kids to school to get educated, to pursue studies of knowledge previously unknown to them and expand their minds to learn how to incorporate new facts into their lives. This isn’t something that should be limited in any way. If your religious beliefs conflict with what your child is learning, it should be your responsibility to use your time AT HOME to teach whatever you want your child to learn. Schools should be realms of uninhibited knowledge and discovery. If you don’t want your child to participate, take them out of school and begin a home education program. Social conservatives have no place in changing the way schools work to actively decrease the amount of available knowledge. It serves our children, society, and species very poorly to suppress knowledge for the sake of religious or “moral” control.

“Quality of life.” Just what the hell does that mean, anyways? Quality of living, or quality of being alive? To some, it is more important that you are alive, just living and breathing and eating and shitting, than it is that you have a functioning life to live. I personally believe that how you are able to live is just as important as the fact that you can. This news story about cancer treatments reminds me of how our culture is increasingly placing more importance on a pulse and less focus on the actual quality of your waking hours.

Do I want to live? Yes, most of the time. But to me, death is preferential to becoming a bedridden slab of breathing meat, kept alive by machines or medication. The hilarity of it is that many of your drug companies are very upfront about the side effects of their most popular medications and people still sign up for them. Who wants migraines when they can be migraine-free with only minor side effects like diarrhea, dry mouth, acid reflux or some other equally-annoying by-product of your “medicine”? If the cure is only slightly less bad than the disease, is it even worthy of being called a cure at all?

For-profit drug companies are not trying to cure diseases. There’s no profit in it. These places work to cure symptoms. Cancer got your skin all pale? They’ve got a drug for that. Are you so unhealthy, as a man, that you can’t get excited enough to perform in the bedroom? Forget addressing your poor heart health, bad cholesterol, and sedimentary lifestyle. Pop that blue pill and give it to her, big guy, you half-healthy stud! Even the drugs for the big tickets like blood clotting, high blood pressure, and heart disease all come with side effects that rival the worst day you can imagine for yourself. Why? Because cures make disease go away. Stop-gap relief like the stuff they peddle now? That’s addiction. That’s dependency, because when the pills go away, the disease comes back. Stop paying and you can wave goodbye to your good times.

People need to take a hard look at the drug business in this country and find out if they honestly think that we are being served by this industry. Companies that won’t invest their billions in profits back into research into real cures are not helpers, they are parasites. This isn’t to say that some hippie-minded commune of pharmaceutical companies should be set up. Yes, allow companies to research medicine for profit. But when subsidized by the government as much as this industry is, there should be more public control of what gets researched and how much of our resources are dedicated to that. You think AIDS victims and cancer patients are cheering the cure of erectile dysfunction ahead of cures for their ills? Think again.

Check out The Huffington Post and this article by Deanne Stillman regarding the fate of the wild horses that live in our remaining western frontiers. I can’t think of much that I can do (living as an east coaster renter and all), but I hope that by putting this up here I can help spread the message just a little bit more.

In America, it is becoming the trend that the more you are responsible for something, the less you are accountable for your actions. The too-numerous-to-list news stories involving the daily activites of the Bush White House illustrate this point. But other examples include Enron, DHS and FEMA directors, and, of course, the EPA. Today I am taking a look at two very different areas of responsibility and accountability, the first being that of American students in regard to their own educations.

America has adopted a complete and total “blame the system” mentality that continually increases the burden placed on teachers while removing accountability from the people who matter the most and should be the most involved: parents and students. Parents will complain about work overload and lament their inability to spend quality time on education with their children. Why should this concern teachers? Teachers are responsible for providing educational information to kids present in class who are willing to learn. If you can’t raise a child who can go to school and make the effort to learn, why should the buck be passed to a teacher? This is not the teacher’s child, only a temporary resident of the educator’s classroom. Students themselves are increasingly led to believe that their lack of effort is not the problem as their whiny Baby Boomer parents and grandparents force schools to lower standards to accomodate their idiot children rather than tell Junior to lay off the X-Box long enough to read a chapter or write a report. Dumbing down education serves no one, least of all the students it is intended to “help”. Are we going to reward lack of effort forever? It’s time that students are made more aware of how their choice of uninvolvement will come back to haunt them. Teachers are not parents, and shouldn’t be made to coddle children in the classroom. If Junior turns out to be an idiot, that should be something his parents work to correct, not reward or overlook out of love. Real love would dictate a stronger hand at making eduction the kid’s top priority.

Moving on, a growing movement in America is working for an increase in men’s reproductive rights. Sounds silly or stupid? I agree that it partially is. But it is not so clear cut or black and white. Men are still regarded as the primary instrument of pregnancy in this country, and rightly so. Women aren’t walking around the streets getting knocked up by osmosis or something like that. But at the same time, there are examples available of women telling the men they are with that they do not want children or can’t have children only to reveal later that she is pregnant and the man is now responsible for child support for a child he did not want and did not consent to creating. Men like these are victims of theft, basically, as their sperm is stolen for impregnantion without their agreement. But because the welfare of a child comes before the “free-wheeling” lifestyle of any man, it’s just and right to force a man to pay for some woman’s duplicitous actions? Child support can run into the thousands, depending on the type of life the court dictates the child involved should have. Now a man who was duped into fatherhood has his entire livelihood strangled, essentially robbing his future legitimate children of part of the income and resources that would be reserved for them when the man is ready for his family. Theft? It’s almost more equatable with rape. Sure, it’s doubtful (if not completely unlikely) that the man in question wasn’t enjoying the act of reproduction, but is enjoying sex a punishable crime if you believe a lying woman about her methods of birth control or reproductive ability? I am not signing completely on board with the movement to abolish child support from fathers who do not actively raise their children. But at the same time, men should be allowed to have as much input in their reproduction as women do, especially in cases where a woman deceived a man into getting her pregnant. Courts often make the case that it takes two individuals to make a child. This is technically correct, although if you bring the issue of consent into the case, that is not always true. A woman raped into pregnancy is (in anywhere but South Dakota) usually given the option of aborting such a child. That a woman could do the reverse to a man and take his sperm for her own aims is an idea that may strike some as silly, but this is too-often a real situation that men find themselves in. Is equality under this democracy too much to ask? And even if the case mentioned here is eventually thrown out, isn’t this an issue that should be discussed more by people who want to focus on building better families and raising support for all children being raised in this country?

Bob Cesca from The Huffington Post says it a lot better than I can.

The great state of South Dakota. The home of Mount Rushmore, Deadwood, and… Mount Rushmore! And now, after the passage of new legislation this week, South Dakota can add something even more special to its license plates: The Home of Rapist Bastard Children!

That’s right, Rapists. If you want your twisted, evil chromosomes to live forever, South Dakota welcomes you with open arms.

Republican lawmakers in Pierre passed a law which prevents your victims from aborting your rapist children, even if your rapist child is just a clump of a dozen rapist cells.

Break out the celebratory cigars, Rapist Dad, because now you can sleep at night, comforted with the knowledge that any woman you assault and violate — perhaps torture — won’t be allowed to abort the fruit of all your planning, stalking, and raping.

Whether your victim is a young girl or a pre-menopausal older woman, they’re stuck with you. So while you relax in your rubber pants gazing up at the wall filled with the clandestinely attained photographs of your past and present victims, you’ll be satisfied to know that there’s a good chance several of them will be the Mommy to your bastard rapist baby.

Maybe the rapist child will have your eyes, or your embarrassingly sweaty palms. Maybe your child will have the gene that eventually triggered your decision to become a rapist. Then one day, should the stars align, you and your rapist offspring will reunite — perhaps walking hand-in-hand down to the playground after dark to rape someone together as father and son. But don’t expect greeting cards from your rapist children. South Dakota isn’t quite ready for “Happy Father’s Day… To My Dad Who Is A Rapist!” cards. Yet.

Even if you’re arrested and convicted, or if you’re crafty enough to get away with it, you can rest assured knowing that your victim will have a daily reminder of you for the rest of her life. It’s like a walking, talking, breathing post card of your time together — a cherubic face in the back seat saying to her on the way to therapy, “Hey Victim! Me again. Your rapist. I brutally raped you, thus ruining your life and now you get to sacrifice your remaining years raising my rapist child! A child who looks almost exactly like me — the dude who raped you!”

So if you have a penchant for homespun frontier living; a natural urge to procreate; and are a rapist, then South Dakota could be your next home or vacation destination.

You can check out the original column here along with some comments by everyday online citizens (as in people who have to rant so fast that they can’t spare time to check spelling, grammar, or sentence structure).

Some people may see this piece as a satire, mocking the law for lacking a rape protection clause, but unfortunately, it is currently the truth. When the law goes into effect, rapists will have more of a right to procreate than the women they rape. As if being a rape victim weren’t bad enough, now you lose personhood and become a breeding device for some degenerate’s seed. If that isn’t something that would drive a woman to suicide, what is? Why does the culture of life conveniently leave out people that are actually living? Death row inmates, rape victims, abortion doctors. Why do the lives of unborn fetuses matter more than functioning, living, breathing, talking, thinking human beings?

So I was thinking today (as usual) and came up with this theory: As more and more American ideas fall by the wayside in our quest for “security”, we’ll begin to see more and more very un-American actions and activities by our governing body, and not just the executive but the legislative and judicial branches as well. It reminds me of Superman’s interdimensional brother and how despite having similar goals, the two characters could not have been more different. I thought that it might be a good idea to keep track of these reversals and changes, so that when our kids wake up in their federally-monitored beds before heading off to Daily Indoctrination and Loyalty Testing, somewhere there will exist a record of what this country used to be like and what its slow decline into fascism looked like to those that lived through it. Taking a cue from Mr Colbert from Comedy Central, I’ve decided to start my own “multi-part series” akin to the Get To Know A District feature from The Colbert Report.

March 6th brings us two interesting pieces of crumbling American ideals: free speech and separation of powers.

The Supreme Court rules today that institutes of higher learning that accept federal money must allow military recruiters equal access to students despite the military’s use of discriminatory policies that these colleges find worthy of protest in the interests of equality. At issue was the “Solomon Amendment” which required schools accepting federal money to give equal access to military recruiters. Some schools feel that the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy again gays amounts to unfair discrimination and wanted the right to refuse the recruiters access to the campus.

Justices heard arguments in the case in December, and signaled then that they were concerned about hindering a Defense Department need to fill its ranks when the nation is at war.

“This is an important victory for the military and ultimately for our national security,” said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice.

Well, without trying to sound too stupid or reasonable, there’s always the untapped population of gay citizens that voluntarily sign up for the military, only to be told that they cannot serve. Recent findings indicate that the military is going out of its way to reject gays, at great expense to taxpayers and military readiness as a whole. $363 million wasted over ten years, under the banner of “maintaining unit cohesion”? And then to try and cover it under the banner of military readiness and national security? I honestly don’t care who’s serving in the military, as long as it’s not me. Chris Rock said it earlier, and better: “If gays want to fight, I say let ‘em. ‘Cause I ain’t fighting!” This being America, if you want to sign up to shoot guns at brown people on the orders of some white Christian dude, you should be able to, straight or gay. And if your school wants to protest policies that bar regular citizens from such service, that should also be your right. It used to be, until the Solomon Amendment, which could possibly be renamed into the Military Policies and Requirements Trump Social Conscience Act.

Moving on to the separation of powers story, I’ll try to be a bit more brief. This one involves George Bush, so I’m not going to have that much to say, in the interests of remaining polite. Anyways, King George apparently wants to propose legislation to Congress to give the executive the line-item veto again. Already ruled unconstitutional once, what are the chances that this will pass again? I’d have to say doubtful. Sure, the GOP may want to hand Bush the keys to controlling spending during this oh-so-crucial election year. But what’s to say that he’ll use them? And even more importantly, what are the chances that he’ll use them effectively or efficiently? I certainly don’t want Bush to be able to cancel any spending in a bill that doesn’t involve the military, faith-based initiatives, or abstinence-only sex eduction. But that is basically want is going to happen here. The president will be able to say what he will support spending money on and what he won’t, and the final approval for that decision will rest with the President and not with Congress. I don’t enjoy seeing massive spending bills stuffed with provisions from every representative for their districts, but it is kind of the way that smaller areas get much-needed federal funds instead of areas with more population and representation taking everything. Allowing an executive (and especially this one) with this power dumps protections in the Constitution that kept the executive hand OFF of the wallet of the country. Changing that now, in these times, with the deficits we’ve allowed to build up, would be a giant mistake.

Keep tuned for more Bizarro States of America. There will undoubtedly be more to write about in the future. Try not to weep too loudly about it, you might wake up the sleeping patriots.

Sometimes it’s very easy to believe that Bush is not serious at all in his proclaimed “war on terror”. Why? Because Bush recently admitted that his campaign for re-election was aided by Osama bin Laden. Bush’s use of bin Laden as a political tool are more apparent every day that the “9/11 mastermind” remains at large. Bin Laden has become a name to be trotted out for fearmongering and manipulation of the American people when it suits the administration. And before the right-wingers read this and think that I’m some terror apologist, let’s review the basic facts: America had bin Laden in its grasp after toppling the Taliban in Afghanistan, but chose to focus on taking out Saddam instead, leaving the leader of the most notorious terrorist group in the world at large. The 140,000 soldiers playing referee in the upcoming Iraqi Civil War would have found Osama bin Laden by now if they weren’t in the wrong country. So the question is, after Bush has admitted using bin Laden to further his own political aims, how much longer are Americans going to sit and take this?