Water to Baptize, Water to Waterboard

I was struck by the photo of Pope Benedict XVI as he baptized 13 infants in the Sistine Chapel during a Sunday Mass celebrated at the altar at the foot of Michelangelo's "Last Judgment" wall fresco.

The 'last judgment' indeed. I could not help but think of that inhumane torture tactic used by some governments to elicit information from the captured person, waterboarding. Both baptism and waterboarding use water, that precious commodity, for two totally different purposes.

Let us hope that the baby above will never have another water-pouring event in his life as that practiced by barbaric people.

Twice Today I'm been Accused of the Sin of Liberalism

It is only 10:30 in the morning and already on two different message boards I have been castigated as a 'liberal.' Oh, the pain of that word! Twice!

There is an international message board that I occasionally visit and this morning a new thread about how the American voting system works was posted for the non-American audience. Many do not understand just how complex our system is compared with, for example, European Union voting.

I posted a comment about the added complexity of voter-suppression that occurs here aimed primarily at poor people of color. I talked about electronic voting machine manipulation and vote-caging tactics that have been used by the GOP in the past two presidential elections.

Apparently this was more information than could be handled and , bang off, I was slapped with the 'liberal jerk' moniker a few comments later. I'll bet that 'liberal' and 'jerk' are not easily separated in the mind of this person. On ToledoTalk this morning this guy said of me: 'you sick twisted liberal freak.'

My my, some people are angry folks. Where do they get this vitriol, this poison in their veins? I wonder if they are always angry, always 'on edge.' Who would be so hate-filled as to bash a person's political beliefs as if using a club? Is politics so terribly important? If given the chance, would this person actually use a club or fists or a gun?

At least it was a good example the the Europeans of how some folks at the far corners of our political spectrum operate.

Raise Your Hand if you Believe Bush's Trip Was for Peace

I see a few hands up but most of you seem not to believe the White House version of this Middle East trip being about bringing the Palestinians and Israelis to the peace table. So, why else would Mr. Bush want to go to that region? Huh?

Yes, you in the red shirt, in the back?

"I think he went there to look for more coalition of the willing players for his newest preemptive war, against Iran."

"So do I!" "Me too!"

OK, how many of you believe that this trip was just a shill to get Bush into the region to talk about the need to bomb Iran?

Wow! Look at all of those hands up!

Water-boarding 'would be torture' Oh, Really?

The BBC reports today: US national intelligence chief Mike McConnell has said the interrogation technique of water-boarding "would be torture" if he were subjected to it.
Mr McConnell said it would also be torture if water-boarding, which involves simulated drowning, resulted in water entering a detainee's lungs. He told the New Yorker there would be a "huge penalty" for anyone using it if it was ever determined to be torture.

If it ever would be determined... What a joke. Who would determine it, Mr. McConnell, the Bush Administration??

About that 'huge penalty,' would it be 'impeachment,' for example? That, too, would be a joke; just ask Nancy Pelosi about impeachment.

Nice story, but the main suspects, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and Bush, will skate, as usual.

The End.

Bush, the Troops, and His Conscience

On his trip to the Middle East, George Bush, naturally, stopped for a photo-op with the troops. He gave a speech, cracked some jokes, told them that they were doing a fine job, shook a few hands, and got back into his secure vehicle and got the hell out of there.

If he has a conscience at all, and the jury is out on that, what does it say to him as he looks at these men and women whom he placed in war?

Franklin Roosevelt was the last president to honestly and justly send troops into a war. All others were optional. George Bush's was folly.

Does he think of that when he looks into the soldiers' eyes? Does his conscience speak to him and say, "I sent you to Iraq because I was too weak and a naive president who listened to people with an agenda of their own." Does it ever say, "A pre-emptive war on Iraq was not necessary at all and if I had waited for more data, it would not have been needed."

Naturally, this assumes his brain functions as a 'normal' man's would. That is not at all a correct assumption. The man has both organic brain damage due to excessive alcohol abuse as well as a personality disorder or a more severe mental illness. Few psychologists doubt that just from what they have seen and heard from the man in the past 7 years.

President U.S. Grant was a known alcoholic, but few would judge him as mentally ill. Nixon was mentally ill, but not an alcoholic. George W. Bush will have been the first president to suffer both illnesses while in the Oval Office. It is clear to all of us and especially clear to 3,918 dead American troops, that whatever conscience the man has, it functions very poorly.

Time for Some Straight Talk, My Friend

John 'Straight Talk' McCain needs to explain some simple mathematics using his famous straight talk. It's not too complex: how does the government cut taxes and pay down the debt? Here's part two: how does a state government cut taxes and provide services to the residents?

I heard a speech, no doubt the run-of-the-mill, insert name of town, stump speech he gave to a Michigan audience on Saturday. The phrase 'cut taxes' rolled off his lips like spittle from a hound dog. Before that phrase finished bouncing through the audience he praised the [insert name] 'fine community college' where laid-off auto workers would get the re-training they would need to get back to work.

Perhaps Mr. 'tax-cut' McCain could explain how the community college rose from the dirt; could it have been a supernatural miracle? Did it suddenly appear one morning without the financial resources of the county and state treasury? By the way, as long as you are listening, my friend, how will these laid-off workers pay for the college classes?

And that airport at which he landed- was that also a miracle creation as well? No doubt the highway his straight-talk bus rode upon was a mysterious creation too!

'Cut taxes,' he repeats mindlessly. Sure, Mr. McCain, let's cut taxes some more and borrow another billion from China or Saudi Arabia. Spend-and-borrow Republicans like John McCain live in quite the fantasy world, my friend.

"Jews don’t feel good or safe when flags and religion get all mixed up."

This line is from an op ed in the Kennebec Journal by Naomi Schalit titled, Religion-Politics Mix Gives Rise to Fear. She begins her story like this: I grew up in a household where among our many guests were older people with tattooed numbers on their arms. They spoke with accents — Polish, German, French and what they spoke of, over and over again, was the danger that comes when government dictates which religion is good and which religion is not (and thus which religion’s adherents are good or bad).

Ms. Schalit further says, "But these days, I see that changing. I’m a Jew and I’m scared.
It’s not just that Mike Huckabee, an Evangelical and self-described “Christian Leader,” won the GOP Iowa presidential caucus last week. It’s the photos of his supporters praying and holding American flags."

She and I both commented fairly similarly on this: My jaw dropped when Mitt Romney said that “freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom.” I wrote about this in another thread just after he said this ridiculous statement, pandering for the right-wing fundamentalist votes in Iowa.

Not only Jews are 'scared' about what Ms. Shalit sees but surely Muslims, atheists, and traditional Christians are equally mortified at what has been happening in the GOP this electoral season. Apparently the history teachers of America are slack in helping our students understand that this nation was founded implicitly because of religious intolerance in Europe.

Did our public school teachers fail us or does the problem lie in Sunday school? Are these religious teachers failing their children by telling them that 'this' faith is the only true faith; that all others are corrupt and incomplete? That there is only one way, their way, to God?

Perhaps the pendulum has begun to swing back to where it was in Europe in the 1700's, when religion defined the person, the family, the culture.

My g-g-g-g-g grandfather had to leave his home in Lyon France in 1720 because he was a Huguenot living in a Catholic culture. My grandfather left Germany and came to America in the 1800's because of Bismarck's Kulturkampf, the oppression of his Catholic faith. Freedom of religion and, more importantly, freedom FROM religion.

George and Dick Sure Want Another War!

But why, one might question, would Dick and George want another war? After all, the two wars they started aren't going too very well as it is.

Cover-up. Remember that other GOP president who had to resign because of the cover-up of the Watergate debacle?

Cover-up is the name of the game. If three wars are raging all at the same time, perhaps the citizens would be so confused that they wouldn't realize that all three are hoaxes.

Today's headlines: U.S.: Iranian bombs rise in Iraq

Yesterday: US discloses two other incidents involving Iran speedboats

Three days ago: Iran speedboats 'threatened suicide attack

Of course you and I 'get it.' But do the dumbed-down voters?

Methinks they Arrested the Wrong Group

Eighty people were arrested at the Supreme Court Friday in a protest calling for the shutdown of the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Demonstrators wearing orange jump suits intended to simulate prison garb were arrested inside and outside the building in the early afternoon. "Shut it down," protesters chanted as others kneeled on the plaza in front of the court.

They were charged with violating an ordinance that prohibits demonstrations of any kind on court grounds. Those arrested inside the building also were charged under a provision that makes it a crime to give "a harangue or oration" in the Supreme Court building.

I believe it would have been fitting if Dick Cheney, George Bush, Condi Rice, Alberto Gonzales and Don Rumsfeld had been put into those orange jumpsuits with black bag headcovers and transported to Guantanamo.

Garden of Eden: A Radioactive Beach

So Adam and Eve were on a tropical beach with palm trees and some radioactive sands for a little excitement. A leading astrobiologist claims that the basic building blocks of life on Earth began on a radioactive beach.

Zachary Adam, an astrobiologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, believes that life on our planet first evolved through the collection of radioactive material on a beach. Adam [coincidence?] suggests that the more powerful tides generated by the moon's closer orbit billions of years ago compared to today could have separated radioactive material from other sediment. [link]

Adam showed that such a deposit could generate the chemical energy which is required to produce some of the molecules in water that create amino acids and sugars, the key building blocks of life, when irradiated. Further, a deposit of a radioactive material called monazite would also discharge soluble phosphate, another important ingredient for life, into the gaps between sand grains, thus making it available to react in water. "Amino acids, sugars and [soluble] phosphate can all be produced simultaneously in a radioactive beach environment," he said.

Atomic-Adam and Bionic Eve were thus created. Apparently God used radioactive beach 'mud' [Ce, La, Th, Nd, Y)PO4] to form the pair. It brings up the question: should the hunt for that Garden of Eden now move to those tropical islands rather than the heart of the Ethiopian rift valleys?