Just a reminder: The founding Fathers weren't christians

In this year's election, we hear a good bit here and there about the Founding Fathers of our country and the way that they were all wise and shit.  Additionally, it is often proposed by the New Right Tea Party demonstrators  that prominent founding fathers  would certainly have their back regarding the  establishment of Christianity as the official religion of the USA.

This idea is so absurd that it hardly seems to need refuting.  But luckily, my time is not so valuable, and so here for your delectation are some quotes and tidbits from some of our founding fathers, so that their own words might set the record straight. 

Ben Franklin

"As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupt changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his divinity; tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and I think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble...." -Ben Franklin, six weeks before his death in 1790

So here Ben Franklin is clearly saying that he holds Jesus' actions to be a moral guide, but has no particular opinions about whether he was the son of God or something, and furthermore, he isn't worried that he'll die without having made that decision.  That is just about the opposite of the Baptist creed.   Does this sound like a guy who would support the likes of Christine O'Donnell? 

Thomas Jefferson wrote the text of his own epitaph and boasts in it that he authored the Virginia Statute for religious Freedom.  This document says in part:

Whereas, Almighty God hath created the mind free; ...all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness...no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of Religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities.

 Here Thomas Jefferson explicitly states that religion is and should be a matter of personal belief.  In fact, in the text of the document he goes on to say that attaching any consequences in life to a person's religious beliefs is harmful to their spirituality.  That sure as shit doesn't sound like what Rand Paul is talking about to me.

James Madison, the guy who wrote the US constitution (a holy document only just a bit less so than the good old King James Bible in the minds of the Tea Party), has this to say about the meddling of religion into the affairs of state:

Experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.  

 I don't think you gotta read into that much to come out thinking that he doesn't like the idea of government as a religious institution.  Madison also points out that:

...Freedom arises from the multiplicity of sects, which prevades America and which is the best and only security for religious liberty in any society. For where there is such a variety of sects, there cannot be a majority of any one sect to oppress and persecute the rest.

So he not only believed that the government shouldn't be in the religion business and vice versa, but he also thinks that having widespread variety of religions help keep everybody free.  Try and reconcile this with Sharron Angle's xenophobia.  

Thomas Paine wrote the pamphlet Common Sense, a rhetorical work arguing for American independence from Britain. He also wrote The Age Of Reason*, a book devoted to the systematic, smartassed demonstration of the improbability of the christian myth.  In it, he says of Christ's birth and resurrection:

The story, so far as relates to the supernatural part, has every mark of fraud and imposition stamped upon the face of it. Who were the authors of it is as impossible for us now to know, as it is for us to be assured that the books in which the account is related were written by the persons whose names they bear.

To interpret a bit, he says that the bible certainly sounds fake, and that there's no way to say who wrote it.  This is important, since there were folks like Roger Sherman around who said that the bible was the inspired word of God.  Of the bible as a whole, Paine had this little gem to offer:

When we contemplate the immensity of that Being, who directs and governs the incomprehensible WHOLE, of which the utmost ken of human sight can discover but a part, we ought to feel shame at calling such paltry stories the word of God.

The whole book goes on in this vein.  It is a mean spirited, insulting book.  It could not be more antichristian. Here is a bit about his feelings on established Christian religions:

out of the matters contained in those books, together with the assistance of some old stories, the church has set up a system of religion very contradictory to the character of the person whose name it bears. It has set up a religion of pomp and of revenue in pretended imitation of a person whose life was humility and poverty. 

What I'm trying to drive home about this Thomas Paine guy is that he would have nothing but contempt for any biblical literalist sect of Christianity.   He would mainly have extreme skepticism and scorn for people attempting to suggest that Christianity is the basis of morality.

If you got the founding fathers together in a room, once they had been resuscitated, they would all argue that the US is not a Christian nation and that that fact makes us a stronger country.  Then, if we are lucky, they would spearhead the zombie apocalypse, because it would be about the only way to get idiots to stop quoting them like they were prophets or something.  Plus it would be awesome.


* If you have not read The Age Of Reason, you really ought to do so.  It's a quick and easy read, it's text is available online, and you can honestly say you have read a treatise on the bible written by one of the founding fathers.  It's the sort of thing that impresses the ladies.  The first part of The Age Of Reason was written hurriedly because he assumed that he was to be arrested and executed in France, and in fact he was arrested on the day that he finished the manuscript.  While on his way to prison, he arranged to visit a friend and gave him the manuscript. This gives you some impression of what a different world it was at the time.  Knowing himself to be under imminent threat of arrest and probable execution, he made no effort to escape France.  Then when under arrest, he visited a friend.  It's all so ludicrously gentlemanly.

Typical left-wing establishment media hoax

You may have heard that a Rand Paul Supporter stomped on the head of a moveon.org demonstrator outside a debate in Lexington last night.  This has been creating a bit of hubbub on the interwebs today.  One major reason is that the moveon activist was a chick.  There is talk that the whole thing was a staged event by moveon.  Watch the video and decide for yourself.

I heard this guy's name was Curby.

 I’d like to take a moment to help explain the actions of the apparent woman abusers in this video.

First of all, these guys had been drinking bourbon and snorting meth all night.  Sometimes your response to a situation is a little too exuberant when you’re tanked and cranking, take it from me.  I once climbed up the side of an apartment building and bit a lady on her calf for wearing white Capri pants in December.  Stuff like that just happens.  These people shouldn’t be blamed for getting a little riled up.  They probably thought she was there to hurt Rand Paul.  They probably don’t even remember it.

Second and more importantly, they thought she was a guy.  She had been wearing a blonde wig, and underneath she appeared to have short hair.  So the guy who stomped her just momentarily thought that she was a guy (who had earlier been wearing a blonde wig) and thus a fag.  If you watch the video, you can see him experience doubt about this idea around the same time that he gets his stomp in.  That’s why he doesn’t kill her.  In Kentucky, you can legally do anything you want to a fag.  You can even fuck them and you’re still not gay as long as the fag doesn’t come.  So they had originally just been planning to kill a fag that was there to give Rand Paul AIDS.  As soon as they realized she was a lady, they backed right off.  I really don't see what the big deal is.

Thirdly, He didn’t stomp on her head.  He clearly stomped on her neck.  This is probably the most blatant media smear ever.  The head is where the brain is kept.  You’d have to be a total moran to step on somebody’s head.  You could really hurt somebody that way.    That poor guy is getting a bum rap.  He just stomped lightly on her neck.  That’s what it’s made for!   It just made her skull bounce off the pavement a little.  No harm, no foul.  (Remember: they though they had a fag on their hands).  

Word is, the activist, whose name is Lauren Valle, has a concussion from the incident.  Although we don't yet know the name of the bubba involved, we probably will.  I hear Fox News wants to hire him as a commentator.

UPDATE:  ...and another life is ruined. The neck-stomper's name is Tim Profitt.  It sounds as though Valle has filed a complaint and so Profitt will likely have assault charges at least.  The guy who held her down is named Mike Pezzano.  I think it's interesting how good of an intelligence network the internet is when something is sufficiently viral.  For instance, we not only wknow who Mike Pezzano is, we also know what he cares about.   In Mike's interests, he points out a bunch of things that I'm interested in too.  Even though this guy and I would probably consider each other to be on opposite ends of some kind of spectrum, the truth is we're concerned about a lot of the same problems in our country.  

A bold election proposition.

Hey, would you fill out a survey for $45?  What if we made it easy for you and told you the answers first?  Would that be worth half an hour of your time?  Well I go this idea, see?

The economy, in case you haven't heard, is still in the toilet.  The number of foreclosed mortgages has because so large that the onerous task of keeping track of the paperwork to legally foreclose a house is too big to actually do, making it necessary to forge the necessary documents.  This leads to mistakes, such as foreclosing on homes that don't actually have mortgages.  Regular Americans just don't have enough money to throw around.  I have thought of a solution.

Conservative estimates of campaign spending this year suggest that a total of at last 3.7 billion dollars will be spent on midterm elections this year.  This money is spent largely on advertisements meant to induce people to vote for somebody.  That's a shaky way to get someone's vote.  Ads can misfire.  There can be backlash.  It's hit or miss.

Somewhere around 40% of eligible voters vote in midterm elections.  There are 200 million eligible voters in the USA.  40% of 200 million is 80 million.  Why not just divvy up the 3.7 billion and pay people to vote for you?  It works out to about $45 per voter.  I think plenty of people would get to the polls if they were paid to do it.  Somebody who works in a Pringles factory is not going to be insulted if you offer them $45 to vote Republican.

I'm sure we could institute some receipt system so that the folks cutting the checks would know we didn't screw them and vote our conscience.  Whaddya say, America? 

Small government + limited resources = we are doomed

Hey, let me explain something to you.  It'll just take  a minute, so put down your tuna sandwich and give me your undivided attention.  I'll be done before the bread gets soggy.

In Alaska, an idea that sells well with the public, politics-wise, is "small government."  Alaskan citizens think the  idea of efficient government is pretty cool.  We like our taxes low.  We don't want a bunch of weird projects on the ledger.  You know what else sells well in Alaska?  SUVs. 

In case you're braintarded, here's the connection: taxes on petroleum production account for 90% of the state's income, not counting federal largesse.  Petroleum is also (if you believe the scientists, anyway) a non-renewable resource.  That means that we'll run out some day.  In fact, the production trend would suggest that we are in the process of running out.

If you want to make a lean, mean government, you have to do it on a tax base of stable revenue.  Then you can balance a budget and coast along on the proceeds as you go.  It would be like, say, having a solar powered car: the sun comes up every day, you can get to work on the energy it provides.  The Alaska economy model should be different.  It should be more like a rocket: you have a shitload of propulsion up front, and it gets you to escape velocity so you won't need it anymore.

So in Alaska we have an expendable resource and we're trying to use it for our daily commute for the forseeable future.  Unless you flunked thinking, it ought to occur to you that this will not go on forever.  One day, perhaps one day soon, Alaska's last drops of sweet, precious, nourishing oil will trickle out of our hose, and we will lay spent and forgotten, a crushed beer can on history's highway. 

Of course, this isn't inevitable.  It's merely very likely.  What Alaska needs in order to survive the petrocalypse is some kind of industry.  Preferably one that provides energy.  Something along the lines of wind, hydro and geothermal.

If you want small government in Alaska, you want renewable resources in Alaska.  But don't bother writing your congressman about it: he's an oil man.

See, your tomato soup doesn't even have a skin on it yet.  

America never was

Ever hear of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment?  It went on till 1972.

When you see representatives of our nation
apologizing for things done long ago,
or as if they were long ago,
things so terrible,
When you see them apologizing so often,
you have to wonder
What are they doing now
that someday, someone
will have to apologize for.