If you listen to Billy Graham’s son, Franklin, there should be a religious test for office.  That is why the Muslim thing is thrown around about President Obama.  Muslims need not apply.  It is against the very foundation of our Constitution (actually Article VI, paragraph 3), and frankly what should you care about his religion, only what his policies are.  Franklin Graham represents everything that is wrong with religion and why organized religion could bring us the Inquisition.  But that is only the tip of the iceberg.  What is really going on is to say to evangelicals and other religious purists, that if you are not like us, if you don’t think like us, you are not fit to hold office.  Ideas don’t count.  Policies don’t count.  Adherence to religious dogma is what counts.  Purity tests for all.  Retrograde doesn’t even begin to describe our descent into the Dark Ages and ignorance.

Then we have Rick Santorum and the Catholic Church (not to mention the State of Virginia) trying to return women to domesticated slaves.  The really clever thing is that they have turned the argument on its head.  President Obama wisely said that like Viagra, contraception must be covered by our nation’s health care insurers.  But the child molesters that masquerade as Bishops (they at best tolerated it) and Rick Santorum claimed that President Obama was forcing Catholics to go against their basic beliefs (the domestic enslavement of women).  What the Catholic Church and Rick Santorum are about is using institutions to force their belief on others by denying them the choice.  I always wondered if a man was virtuous if he was never tempted?  Instead of believing what they believe and holding their followers accountable, they believe what they believe and want to make sure you can’t act in any way contrary to those beliefs.  How can that be virtue?

Then there is the State of Virginia (and others) who have decided that women, if they want an abortion, must go through an invasive vaginal procedure. An ultrasound will be done by a vaginal probe.  Many women call it forced rape by the state.  This once again is the crowd who wants to get government out of our lives, except when it comes to their religious beliefs which they want to force down the throat of the rest of us.  Gee, if guys wanted Viagra prescribed shouldn’t they have an anal exam to make sure they aren’t gay?  What’s the difference?  It is using the state to identify  humiliate their citizens who don’t believe as they do even though it is within their rights to act that way.

What can I say?  This is what is being discussed as rational political dialogue in the 21s century.  We have let ignorance and religious dogma once again overcome civilization and we are falling back into the dark ages where rational though could get you killed.  This is what the present crop of Republicans have brought us and anyone who calls themselves a Republican should be ashamed.  No they may not support them, but their conservative belief system is what created these monsters and when voting time comes, they will still vote for them.  Conservatism is the force that is holding America back and keeping us from being a great nation once again.  It is kind of funny in a way.  They so claim to love America and to want to reclaim it.  But what they really want to reclaim is the Dark Ages and the death of the American Dream.  Yes Virginia, Republicans are evil.  They are enabling this lot.

Oh sure, you can find the anecdotal case where some left wing nut job is off the deep end, but take a step back and consider where we are today and what conservatives are telling us.  Global warming?  Doesn’t exist except of course that every respectable scientific body today endorses it.  Evolution?  Oh why go there.  Lower taxes will spur the economy, except as a percentage of GDP they are the lowest in 60 years and where are the jobs?  High tides lift all ships, except the vast majority of us are losing ground while we have the mass transfer of wealth to a small percentage of our population.  We have the best medical care in the world, except we don’t and it costs twice as much as what others pay for better outcomes.  The market place will create jobs if government will just get out of the way, except it got out of the way and the financial Masters of the Universe almost destroyed us. These are all indisputable facts supported by tons of data, and yet conservatives are in denial about it.  Why?

Well a conversation I had recently may shed some light.  Remember with conservatives, pointing out the actual data just gets them frothing at the mouth and does no good.  You have to understand that this is a visceral thing.  It is highly emotional and rationality doesn’t have a chance.  It is all about order and justice.  They believe in it.  It is at the core of their belief system.  It is a the core of their terror.  Many studies have shown that Progressives are more open to change than Conservatives, hence the term conservative.  At some deep psychological level we are either predisposed to handling innovation and change or we are terrified of it.  This has, I think deep roots in our survival as a species.  Being too adventurous in a hostile world could get you killed.  But not trying new things and being open to change, could also destine you to the trash heap of evolution.  Seen any Neanderthals lately?

So conservatives like to keep it simple and we are back to order and justice.  If things are ordered and you follow the rules, justice follows.  It is as simple as that for Conservatives.  It allows them to order anything and understand their place in that order.  That is why Conservatives are so arrogant about their place in life.  They earned it, they deserve it, and those that are less fortunate, well hell, it has nothing to do with fortune, but with discipline and rule following. Paying taxes simply allows government to reward those who don’t deserve it.   It orders the world’s chaos by blaming the victim.  One has to think no farther than looking at Conservatives and their religious beliefs that tend to be dogmatic and rigid, uninformed by the injustice of those beliefs in the real world.  The market place is the ultimate objective decider of fates if you just let it operate without interference.  If things are bad, blame the government as interfering and making it bad.  Never question the basic assumption about the market place, or for that matter, their religious tyrannical beliefs.

Okay back to the conversation.  It was a simple statement, but it embodied all of the above.  “What this economy needs is just to let entrepreneurs operate freely and they will create the jobs and economy that will take off.”  See, that mean old government is keeping us from excelling.  Order is out of whack because government interferes with the natural order of things.  Except, during the Bush years regulations simply weren’t enforced, tax rates were the lowest in 60 years and the middle class tanked.  Or even more salient today, innovate all you want, bring on great products, but if the middle class doesn’t have sufficient income to support a thriving economy, there will be no one to buy it.  It really is the chicken and the egg.  Which comes first, the goods people want to buy (supply), or the pent up money people have to spend (demand).  The answer which Conservative don’t want to hear, is demand.  And demand means first creating jobs so people have disposable income to buy stuff.  That would force you to admit that government has an important role to play and that brings into question the whole justice and order thing.  Could it be that no matter how carefully you follow the rules and regulate your life, shit happens?  If that is the case, is it not government’s role to keep the playing field level?  Oh my God, heresy.

So for Conservatives, chaos reigns if those they perceive as deserving of their fate get a helping hand from government.  It interferes with the natural order and justice in the world.  It terrifies them and allows them to try to reinvent reality to maintain their belief system.  Until shit happens to them, they are oblivious to it, and then it is a special case.  How do you explain the Log Cabin Republicans (gay Republicans)? Because they are Conservatives in that they believe in the order and justice thing, and just see the Conservative denial of their rights as an aberration instead of a logical extension of their belief system.  How do you explain a Conservative who sees the light on gay rights after their own child comes out?  Until it becomes personalized, they can simply shut it out in a whirl of denial or reinventing reality.

My favorite is austerity.  Yes, that was part of the conversation too.  Europe just had to get things back in order and they can’t afford all the entitlements they want.  Austerity is enforcing the natural order of things.  It means that justice will prevail if you follow the rules and the free loaders are put back in their place.  Evil doers must be punished to realign the natural order of things.  Except it doesn’t work.  Every nation that has gone on an austerity kick has seen their GDP not recover, but decline further.  While it violates in a basic way, Conservative ideology about blame the victim, ECON 101 and the data from our experiment with austerity has shown a disastrous outcome.  In order to get out of debt, you have to grow the economy and austerity simply depresses it.  Paul Krugman put a wonder graph out about what happens to countries that forgot everything we learned in the last 80 years or so and decided on punishment as the way forward (Austerity and Growth).  The data is incontrovertible and overwhelming, yet Conservatives will twist themselves into pretzels to try to explain it away because it violates their whole concept of the natural order of things.  Bad things only happen to bad people right?  And if you do bad things, you must be punished.

I guess I can rest my case with watching the Republican Presidential Primary where up is down and down is up, where facts are so distorted that only true believers could accept these people as rational humans, much less as leaders of our country.  It is where this conservative logic has finally taken us to maintain its basic underlying beliefs, into the world of fantasy.  Melissa Harris-Perry, on her new show on MSNBC, made a wonderful point the other day.  Our democracy needs a strong and vibrant two party system to work.  When one party gets out of hand, as power always corrupts, the other side is there to right the balance with new ideas.  But the problem we face with the Republican Party is that they have no new ideas.  They only have the old failed ones that they cling to with all their might, while reinventing reality to make that possible.  They have got theirs and they selfishly don’t want to risk having to share.  Until they actually become a rational and thinking political entity again, we have a real problem in this country.  I only hope the rest of America sees the absolute failure of conservative ideas and puts them out of their misery.

And did you know that on this day in 1861 Serfdom was abolished in Russia (that didn’t work out so well); in 1884 Tornadoes in Miss, Ala, NC, SC, Tenn, Ky & In kill 800 people (I think some of them are still voting Republican); in 1913 1st prize inserted into a Cracker Jack box; in 1942 FDR orders detention & internment of all west-coast Japanese-Americans (a dark day for America); in 1945 30,000 US Marines land on Iwo Jima; in 1952 the French offensive begins at Hanoi (a war I would eventually take part in); in 1959 a USAF rocket-powered rail sled attains Mach 4.1 (4970 kph), in NM (where I would spend my first year in the Air Force and volunteer to ride a sled at a somewhat slower speed); in 1985 Mickey Mouse was welcomed in China (and thus begins their descent into fantasy land); and in 1987 Anti-smoking ad airs for 1st time on TV, featuring Yul Brynner who later dies of lung cancer.  I think the cure for cancer or world peace will be announce on February 19, in the future.

Today I join the elite who are sucking the government dry with their claws into entitlement programs.  The difference between about half of them and me is that I truly appreciate my government and what it does for me.  Social Security starts today for me which makes retirement, real retirement an option in a couple of years.  It is also a life line for so many elderly Americans.  It is amazing to me when I hear people talk about how we can’t afford it.  Of course we can afford it.  We can’t afford not to.  And I hate to break it to my conservative friends, but you can’t get health care without Medicare.  Being 66 is a per-existing condition.  So when all those fools whine about big government and wanting lower taxes, remind them of all the things government does for them that they ignore or take for granted.  I am proud of my government and what it does for all of us.  Take that you government hating know-nothings.

But back to my birthday.  I am in good health, I have wonderful loving friends and family, a once in a life time love affair with my wife, and kids who love me.  It has been a wonderful run and I have no complaints.  As my good friend Mike Ward used to say, “It is a good day to be alive.”  Yes it is Mike and I do miss you.  Losing you just reinforced how precious our lives are.  So happy birthday to me.  I am damn lucky and I wish some of this good fortune on the rest of my fellow human beings.

Yes, even in paradise where the weather is wonderful, even when it rains, and ocean is still blue, we can’t really seem to get away from the problems we cause with our greed and failure to pony up for what we want.  Still it has been a nice break from winter.  And of course, the locals are always friendly and nice.  But if I were a true Hawaiian, I think I would be holding my head in my hands and wondering what we let these white devils do to us.

Then I realized how foolish that was.  When you are addicted to drugs, you can’t hear and you certainly can’t think straight.  And then my mind leaped to our Republican Primary Campaign where these pandering, or maybe just loony candidates are telling the most outrageous and easily debunked lies and the conservative right is lapping it up.  Then I wondered if there is a parallel.  Is the behavior of drug addled cocaine and meth abusers any different than the behavior of religious and Tea Party addled conservatives who deny reality, wildly make up outrageous claims, while denying the very government that brought them their prosperity.  If drug addicts live in a world of denial, they have nothing on the Republican Party right now.

Even more revealing is that the “Cardinals” rejected Obama’s compromise.  Now here is where you see the whites of their eyes.  You are up close and personal to what they really believe.  That belief is quite straight forward, “Do as I say, think as I think, and I will make sure if you want another path, it will be denied to you.”  Here, as I understand it, is the issue.  These Catholic institutions (note not churches or purely religious organizations) who accept Federal funds, accept students and employee of non-Catholic persuasion, felt they were being forced to fund something against their religion.  Okay, so Obama said you don’t have to.  Insurance companies will bear the burden.  Now what is their objection?  Well clearly it is given other people choice they don’t agree with. Hmm.  I wonder what you call that?  Tyranny?

Meanwhile back with “Father Bill”.  Doesn’t that sound so, well, paternal and safe?  He is not really a dictatorial nut, but just a guiding friendly fatherly figure who thinks the Church is more important than kids or women, and by the way, think women are second class citizens.  Father Bill was asked why over 98% of Catholic women have used contraception and is the Church not behind the times.  He explained to us anecdotally how he had heard lots of woman in the confessional feel real misgivings about their use of contraception.  Don’t you just love this Church.  Do what you want, get absolution and move on.  He doesn’t have to deal with the economic plight of young woman who don’t want to get pregnant and live in poverty the rest of their lives.  On the other hand, they choose to be Catholics, so they can live by its dictates, but why should the rest of us?

But here is the real pièce de résistance.  If we had a single payer system like the rest of the modern world, this would not be an issue.  Contraception would be offered as a normal healthy way to allow people to plan their lives and guard their health.  Catholics and their Cardinals could choose or not choose to avail themselves of that service, and the rest of us could not be living at the tyranny of these and the rest of the religious nut balls who want to use government to keep you from exercising your free will.  Like so many have said, what does it say about us as a society that in this day and age, we are even having this discussion?  Oh, I should I even mention that planet is being overrun by the masses?

One person casually mentioned to me that they needed to get their Social Security as soon as they could because it will soon run out.  Well, I see Fox News dominates.  I left it alone.  Social Security is fully funded through 2030 and some minor adjustments and it can go on forever.  Now these would be the same people who probably think we live in an entitlement world, but they sure want to get theirs.  I think what was most disturbing was the airport and overheard casual conversations in Texas where I heard racial things that I haven’t heard in years.

Then of course, I turned on the TV to find Rick, the Pope, Santorum is making the big comeback and I wonder if the country has lost its mind.  Let’s see, Obama gets up every day to destroy the country, and if you don’t live by my religious beliefs and you are given the freedom to choose, it is religious tyranny.  And the press talks about these people as if they are rational.  Oh, and lets not forget global warming is a hoax, and we Republicans did not cause this mess.  All I can sumise from all this is that the country is dumbing itself down and we are becoming this little religious, white, backward hick country.  It is really scary.

Or, I took a few comments out of context, I am tired and grumpy, and as my son says, I have become the grumpy old man who yells, “You kids just get the f*&k off my lawn.”  This is going to be an interesting November because I think it will tell you all you want to know about whether we can still think and are a leader in this world, or we are becoming a Southern Nation where ignorance, connections, and being white are all that matters.

Oh the Republicans have a hot one here.  They are claiming that President Obama is forcing religions to violate their basic beliefs.  But they have it just backwards.  Here is the issue:

On Jan. 20, the Obama Administration issued a decision to include contraceptives as part of the package of women’s preventive health services in the Affordable Care Act (ACA, the 2010 health reform law). Beginning in August 2012, all of the services in this package will be available in new insurance plans without any out-of-pocket costs to women. In a country where half of all pregnancies are unplanned and the cost of birth control is high, this decision is an important step in promoting women’s health. The rule specifically exempts pervasively religious institutions like certain houses of worship from offering their employees birth control coverage as part of their health insurance.

Now think about this.  Religious hospitals that take and administer federal programs to their benefit  have employees who are not necessarily of that religion, yet they can dictate what care they can receive based upon their religious beliefs?  Who here is being intolerant.  What if the hospital decided to offer plans that refused hysterectomies because it interfered with the natural reproductive cycle even when medically required?  Where do you draw the line?

What is interesting is what the Republicans are promoting is the religious intolerance of organizations and their ability to force their views on others.  Government is actually supposed to prevent this kind of thing.  This, by the way is the same group who would like to dictate their own religious views on when life begins on all of us.  Note also the the biggest complainers are the Catholic Church, that institution of moral guidance that allowed child rape to be ignored.  But the religious intolerance gets even more interesting.

The nation’s leading breast-cancer charity, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, announced it was halting its partnerships with Planned Parenthood affiliates in providing breast cancer screening.  The stated reason for this was that they would no longer contribute to agencies that were under the cloud of investigation.  The “investigation” is a trumped up look at Planned Parenthood by one of the abortion Nazis in the Republican caucus with absolutely no evidence of any wrong doing.  The reality is that a small but vocal group had threatened to pull their support from the Cure if they continued funding breast cancer screening done by Planned Parenthood.

Now think about it.  Poor women will be deprived of possible life saving screening because the abortion Nazis don’t approve of Planned Parenthood’s other activities like giving poor woman a choice.  Needless to say there was a great outcry and the Cure had to backtrack.  But that is what these people who want their religious freedom are up to, forcing their religious beliefs down your throats.  I hope women wake up on election day, because the Republican Party will be appointing Supreme Court Justices that will rule, like in the People’s United case, against the freedom of the common man.

Here is what I never get.  If you believe that contraception is wrong, don’t use it.  If you believe woman should never terminate a pregnancy, don’t terminate yours, but to take these beliefs and force them down the throats of the rest of us through government or private institutions is just plain wrong and is the real tyranny we see today.

Now I have to go catch a plane to San Antonio.

A few days ago I heard about a young Hispanic man I was acquainted with who was asked to go to a border town to straighten out his papers, and then they deported him. He was two when his parents brought him here.  He was a good student and a smart, hard working contributor to our society.  America is his home and we deported him.  It is so unfair, it is so wasteful, and yet this is what REPUBLICANS have wrought (DREAM Act).  Got to punish those evil doers, right?  Meanwhile I picked up the paper Sunday to read in the Sacramento Bee, “Colleges forced to cut key courses“.  In California our junior colleges have been the route for many who have stumbled in high school or beyond, who have to work and can’t attend college full time, to get on track and get the education they need to become successful.  With the massive cuts in education, we can no longer educate our future.  How dumb is that? Here is some data that Paul Krugman presented on the impact of the cutting of spending from state and local governments:

“But it’s even worse than he says. Why? Because if you look at what’s being cut, it’s heavily focused on investment:”

As Paul said, “That is, we’re sacrificing the future as well as the present. Oh, and the cuts that aren’t falling on investment in physical capital are largely falling on human capital, that is, education.“  This austerity is insane, we should know better, and we have been stampeded into fearing the debt by the Republicans with some help from feeble minded Democrats (or just pandering to the mob), and in effect, we are eating our seed crop.  I would sum up with another quote from Paul:

“It’s hard to overstate just how wrong all this is. We have a situation in which resources are sitting idle looking for uses — massive unemployment of workers, especially construction workers, capital so bereft of good investment opportunities that it’s available to the federal government at negative real interest rates. Never mind multipliers and all that (although they exist too); this is a time when government investment should be pushed very hard. Instead, it’s being slashed.  What an utter disaster.”

An utter disaster is an understatement.  The way forward is not rocket science,  As I pointed out yesterday, we will all have to pay (no pain, no gain).  That path was laid out by economist (one of many who we are ignoring) Michael Spence, a Nobel Laureate, and professor at NYU:

“I am sure you have heard this, but the great depression came to an end in WWII and two things happened at that point.  One, there was a huge fiscal stimulus because we could not finance a war effort on current income, and then we got rid of it over time, and the second one was that we went to the people and said you know what, it is a war and we are going to have to invest a huge amount of our resources in this and your consumption levels are going to have to go down because we can’t keep them up and make this big investment.  We just don’t have the resources and because it was a war, people said okay.  And so we created this powerful engine that not only took us through the war, but took us into the post period in pretty high gear…If we really wanted to overcome this one fast, then what would happen is a political leader would go and say this isn’t a war, but it is that sort of challenge and create recovery (war) bonds…I mean that is pretty politically unrealistic, but that would really put a jet engine behind this thing over time.”

It isn’t hard.  We need to start investing massively in the future, and making all of us pay for it.  But Republicans offer a free ride saying lets just do austerity, just remove regulation and government interference, and let us all keep our money and it will just magically happen.  Democrats tell you that we just need to tax the rich, and oh yes, austerity for all.  Sorry, they are all lies.  We need to get serious about moving forward and we all will have to pay.  Suppose you could get elected with that message?  Maybe when things get bad enough or we just get tired of standing in one place.  I will tell you this.  Republicans will never get you there.  Democrats have an inkling, but lack the courage.  Maybe the 99% can get their act together.  Remember, just being angry is not enough.