What Trump’s Victory Means

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Last night, Donald Trump won the Presidential Election of 2016, which strikes me as by far the worst one I’ve ever lived though.

Trump’s victory means that America’s tendency to be hypocritical and white male dominated will continue just as it did before. Barack Obama’s election eight years ago was an exception, not the rule. We may not see another black person or woman elected President for decades after this.

When Trump first started to run for President last year, many people, including myself, dismissed his candidacy as a joke. “He is even worse than Bush Jr!” I thought, knowing Trump never held any public office before. Seems I underestimated the collective arrogance of my fellow white men! We tolerated Nixon, Reagan, Bush Sr and Bush Jr despite the dishonorable natures of all their Presidencies. How low could America go, I wondered. Now we know!

Black lives are supposed to matter, but black VOTES do not!

Women do not matter, unless a man wants to assault them.

Gays and lesbians do not matter.

Christians matter, but no other religion does. Atheists will be even more screwed.

America will not have justice and compassion for those who want to come here and make a living and be treated fairly, but are not white and do not speak English.

We feel more comfortable electing an obvious crook because he tells us what we want to hear instead of a principled person who does not. Just like in 1972.

Americans love to talk about equality, rights, and how free we are. Never mind that the very man who wrote the Declaration of Independence and later became our third President was both a slaveowner and a rapist. He also took part in a massive land grab that would later displace lots of non-white people.

And let us not blame third parties and their supporters or Bernie Sanders and his supporters. The problem is and always should be squarely placed on the shoulders of Donald Trump and those who were stupid enough to vote for him.

I am ashamed to be an American and even more ashamed to be a white man in America!

Milo Yiannopoulos, Liar, Bigot, is Banned from Twitter

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Read this story:

Twitter permanently bans Milo Yiannopoulos for abusive comments on ‘Ghostbusters’ star Leslie Jones

The move came after Yiannopoulos led an online troll against Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones who vowed to leave Twitter over her treatment. Image: @myiannopoulos Facebook/AP)

NEW YORK: After several complaints and repeated suspensions, the micro-blogging site Twitter has permanently ban Milo Yiannopoulos, the tech editor at conservative news site Breitbart and one of Twitter’s most offensive users.

The move came after Yiannopoulos led an online troll against ‘Ghostbusters’ star Leslie Jones who vowed to leave Twitter over her treatment, prompting a major outburst on social media, engadget.com reported on Wednesday.

“People should be able to express diverse opinions and beliefs on Twitter. But no one deserves to be subjected to targeted abuse online, and our rules prohibit inciting or engaging in the targeted abuse or harassment of others,” Twitter said in a statement.

“Over the past 48 hours in particular, we’ve seen an uptick in the number of accounts violating these policies and have taken enforcement actions against these accounts, ranging from warnings that also require the deletion of tweets violating our policies to permanent suspension,” it added.

Yiannopoulos reacted to the ban, saying that the site has “confirmed itself as a safe space for Muslim terrorists and ‘Black Lives Matter’ extremists, but a no-go zone for conservatives.”

The Breitbart tech editor has been disturbing Twitter users with his trolls for the past few years. Twitter earlier removed his verified status, but allowed him to keep tweeting.

Last March, Chuck Johnson who once argued that homosexuality caused a horrendous Amtrak train crash, was permanently barred from the site.

Just to verify this guy’s claims, I checked to see if other prominent conservative media personalities are still on Twitter.

Here is Rush Limbaugh’s Twitter account:

https://twitter.com/rushlimbaugh

Here is Bill O’Reilly’s Twitter account:

https://twitter.com/oreillyfactor

This is Ann Coulter’s Twitter account:

https://twitter.com/AnnCoulter

Donald Trump also has a Twitter account, and uses it often:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump

No, Yiannopoulos, you were not banned for being conservative, because they all are too. You were banned for being a worse racist asshole than any of them. And that is saying a LOT. So you lied and I am calling you out on it.

Pentatonix

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A cappella is a kind of musical performance in which no instruments are used other than human voices and other body parts. There are quite a few excellent a capella groups, but one of the most astounding, to me at least, has been one that originated right near where I live: Pentatonix! Specifically, they hail from Arlington, Texas.

This was the first video of theirs I saw:

Being a typical guy, I paid more attention at first to the beautiful girl than the others. But that would not last long, because then I saw THIS:

 

WOW! And then I saw this, which proved they could do just about anything:

And here is a collection of facts about them:

Here is their Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/Pentatonix/

I think I will be paying much more attention to these people over the next few years.

 

 

Abortion Autonomy

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Read this story:

http://womendeliver.org/2016/women-perform-abortions/

Inna Hudaya was a woman in trouble. Lying in a shoddy hotel room, she squeezed her eyes closed as an old woman performed an abortion on her with no anesthesia and no painkillers. They barely spoke a word after the exchange of money — a lot of money, money Hudaya had borrowed and for which she had sold many of her possessions including her motorbike to repay. This, Hudaya thought to herself, is how I will die.

But what else was she supposed to do? She was 22, pregnant, unmarried, and living in Indonesia, a country where abortion remains illegal in nearly all cases and out-of-wedlock pregnancy is intensely stigmatized. A medical student, Hudaya was just getting a toehold on a life she hoped would keep her out of Tasikmalaya, the conservative city she fled after high school. Having a baby would mean the end of everything: her studies, her relationship with her family, her freedom.

The procedure ended, and Hudaya walked out of the hotel room alive. The pain, though, persisted. Her relationship ended. A close relative disowned her, telling her it is a sin for a woman to kill her own blood. For years, Hudaya had the same dream: a baby chasing her, crying.

Continue reading →

The Downfall of Billy Graham’s Legacy

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Long after I abandoned Christianity as a college student (after I learned that most of the claims made to support it were nothing but double standards and even outright lies), I continued to respect evangelist Billy Graham as one of the genuine Christians I knew of. While some of his fellow Christian leaders would join together to form the despicable scam known as the “Religious Right”, Billy Graham steered clear of such things and continued to merely preach the Gospel with no political references. He also befriended and advised both Democratic and Republican Presidents regardless of their political or religious background, even the first Catholic President John F. Kennedy.

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What is really “dangerous” within Christianity?

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First, consider this Bible reference:

Luke 9:49-50
“Master,” said John, “we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we tried to stop him, because he is not one of us.”
“Do not stop him,” Jesus said, “for whoever is not against you is for you.”

That seems like an absolute proclamation. Jesus certainly did not say, “Whoever preaches my doctrines exactly according to some standard made long ago is for you.”

Continue reading →

History repeats itself in World of Warcraft

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This is a direct sequel to Corruption and Betrayal in a WoW Guild.

In 2012, I and Stormchick started the guild Stormchasers in World of Warcraft. Then the following year, Stormchick’s owner left the game and turned the guild over to me as Bichorak. I worked very hard over several years to build it up until it had hundreds of characters and had gained many guild achievements. One of the members that joined it later was named Rolltowin, a monk. He also worked very hard to help me and the others, so I generously rewarded him with promotions, until finally he was a high-ranking officer second only to me in authority over the guild. But it seems that was not enough for him. Not content to offer me helpful advice and suggestions to improve the guild, he often issued harsh personal criticism of my leadership decisions. Over time, these attacks eroded my self-confidence, and also by the fall of 2015 my work schedule was actually hindering my ability to manage the guild properly. Of course, the guild HAD grown too big for one person to handle, hence my appointing officers like Rolltowin and several others. I finally decided I needed a break from handling the guild so much, so I agreed to make Rolltowin the new guild master. I instead became HIS second in command.

Later, I quit the real life job I had been doing, but because things seemed to be going smoothly with the guild under Rolltowin’s leadership, I was content to leave him in charge. But everyone still knew I was a co-founder and earlier leader of the guild. Rolltowin seemed to resent that, because he continued to criticize me on many occasions whenever I did something he did not like, claiming I was breaking guild rules and abusing my power. But in fact he often did not clarify rules when he made them and so I was caught off guard when I did things the way I was used to doing them when I was guild leader. It was very frustrating!

Things came to a head on August 30 of this year, the same day the new WoW expansion Legion was launched. Nerevar, another officer of Stormchasers, abruptly left the guild saying he wanted to join some friends in another guild. Rolltowin was not online at the time, but I was, so in his absence, I did two things I thought would be done normally:

  1. I removed Nerevar’s alts from the guild as well.
  2. I scheduled a new guild officer election to replace him and even made a couple of nominations to help the process along. With the Legion expansion in full swing, I felt we needed to do this ASAP.

I assumed that if Rolltowin did not agree with my actions, he would simply countermand them later and tell us to wait. Instead, when he came online later he actually DEMOTED me from my officer status and made an issue of that in open guild chat, much to my shock and anger. He did allow the officer election to go forward, however.

It was incomprehensible to me that I as a co-founder and former guild master would be treated so badly by someone I considered a friend and loyal to the guild. After a final discussion with Rolltowin in which he stated that my demotion might be only temporary, but refused to clarify under what conditions I would regain my officer status, I concluded that he actually had no intention whatsoever of restoring that status and really wanted me out of the guild completely. So on September 14, I left Stormchasers and pulled all my alts from it too.Then I, along with others from Stormchasers and some strangers, formed a new guild, originally named Freedom Raiders but now titled Guardians of Lore.

After another member of Stormchasers moved from that guild to my new one, Rolltowin attacked me over it. I then put him on ignore.

wowscrnshot_091616_192105

wowscrnshot_091616_192105-2

A couple of nights later, Rolltowin denounced me in my former guild, proving he was NOT ignoring me at all and was out to ruin me.

wowscrnshot_091716_200614-2

I admit that I am far from perfect and have made some mistakes, but it seems to me the biggest mistake I ever made was listening to Rolltowin so much and allowing him to take over Stormchasers. From now on, I will never allow someone to take over a guild of mine unless I know I am leaving WoW completely, just as Stormchick did for me. I was naive and was taken advantage of and now I know better! If people do not like my leadership, they can just leave and form their own guild! I have done that twice so far in my WoW career and it is not as hard as it might seem at first glace.

Governor Bevin is a traitor, just like his Confederate ancestors

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Read this horrible story:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/kentucky-gov-matt-bevin-says-bloodshed-might-be-165058821.html

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin says bloodshed may be needed to protect conservatism

Michael Walsh

Reporter
September 13, 2016
Bevin speaks at a picnic on Aug. 6, in Fancy Farm Ky. (Photo: Timothy D. Easley/AP)
Bevin speaks at a picnic on Aug. 6, in Fancy Farm Ky. (Photo: Timothy D. Easley/AP)

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin said conservatives may need to turn to physical violence in order to protect the United States against contemporary liberalism.

The Republican governor put forth the controversial suggestion after speaking of the “degradation of society” during an impassioned, 15-minute speech at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C., on Saturday. The provocative comments started to gain national attention at the start of this week.

“America is worth fighting for ideologically. I want us to be able to fight ideologically, mentally, spiritually, economically, so that we don’t have to do it physically. But that may, in fact, be the case,” he told the crowd.

Bevin suggested that if Democrat Hillary Clinton were elected president, she would set the nation on a dangerous course that might require bloodshed to correct. He told the audience that the “candle” of liberty might go out “on our watch.”

To hammer home his point, he paraphrased a famous quote from Founding Father Thomas Jefferson: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

“Whose blood will be shed? It may be that of those in this room. It might be that of our children and grandchildren. I have nine children,” he said. “It breaks my heart to think that it might be their blood that is needed to redeem something, to reclaim something that we, through our apathy and our indifference, have given away. Don’t let it happen.”

Bevin encouraged young conservatives to speak up, be bold, sound the alarm and wake up others. He told the conference attendees to not keep what they’ve learned from speakers and their books to themselves.

According to Bevin, too many people these days are following the example of former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who infamously tried to appease Adolf Hitler and promised “peace for our time,” as opposed to his successor, Winston Churchill, who is widely celebrated for understanding and combating the threat of Nazism.

He said liberals mock conservatives into silence by accusing them of being intolerant when they speak their minds. He lamented, for instance, that many conservatives have remained silent concerning “the atrocity of abortion.”

“It’s a slippery slope. First we’re killing children. Then it’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ Now it’s this gender-bending kind of ‘don’t ask, don’t be a bigot, don’t be unreasonable, don’t be unenlightened, heaven forbid, just keep your mouth shut.’”

On Friday, at a banquet in Washington, D.C., Bevin was awarded the Distinguished Christian Statesman Award from the D. James Kennedy Center for Christian Statesmanship, a ministry of Evangelism Explosion International.

Bevin’s office has not responded to a request for comment from Yahoo News, but he did post a statement on Twitter encouraging people to listen to his comments in their entirety. He suggested that the mention of bloodshed in his remarks was a reference to military sacrifice and that “any intelligent person will easily understand the message” if they listen to the speech.

And some might call me intolerant for saying there should be no place for conservatism in our governments? This is why! If we do not destroy them, it is increasingly clear that they will destroy us, just as they tried to do 150 years ago during the American Civil War! It was indeed conservatives who led the southern states to secede from the union to preserve the institution of slavery, resulting in vast numbers of unnecessary deaths! And what motivated slavery in the USA? Racism. Indeed, racism and fascism are the actual ideological roots of modern American conservatism, not liberty and justice for all. Gov. Bevin is not fighting for America at all, nor is he asking his bigoted followers to do so, but to fight for the society he lives in to continue to be white dominated forever. BTW, need I mention that Thomas Jefferson was himself a southern slaveowner?

But no, I do not want conservatives like Bevin to be silent at all. The more those idiots rant, the more liberals like me can expose and react to their hateful rhetoric and discredit it at every turn.That’s what free speech and freedom of the press is all about.

Trae Crowder, the “Liberal Redneck”

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Ever heard of the “Liberal Redneck”? He is a comedian who has recently begun making political statements through the New York Daily News and on YouTube. He talks with an accent that makes him sound at first like a typical southern white man…..but his messages are very different!

This was the very first video of his I saw:

Satire in general is often amusing, but pairing it with serious issues like this is….HILARIOUS! Sometimes the best way to respond to absurdities is with ridicule.

Such as…..

The first video mentioned suicide rates among veterans. This video expands on that point:

A video released this month strikes directly at the “war on drugs” we have been fighting constantly since the 1970s.

Below that video is a  link to a petition that I will reproduce here:

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/please-do-not-make-kratom-schedule-i-substance

Here’s one more from him:

I hope he keeps it up for years to come!

Compassion and Human Dignity

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One of the most powerful appeals of dogmatic God-centered religions like Christianity can be summed up perfectly in this song by Steven Curtis Chapman that was all over Christian radio back when I was a Christian. Even now, it is beautiful to me.

Sometimes His eyes were gentle
And filled with laughter,
And sometimes they cried;
Sometimes there was a fire
Of holy anger,
In Jesus eyes.
But the eyes that saw hope in the hopeless,
That saw through the fault to the need,
Are the same eyes that look down from heaven
Into the deepest part of you and me.

CHORUS
His eyes are always upon us;
His eyes never close in sleep.
And no matter where you go,
You will always be in His eyes, in His eyes.

Sometimes His voice comes calling
Like rolling thunder,
Or like driving rain;
And sometimes His voice is quiet,
And we start to wonder
If He knows our pain.
But He who spoke peace to the water
Cares more for our hearts than the waves,
And the voice that once said “Youre forgiven”,
Still says “Youre forgiven” today.

Sometimes I look above me when stars are shining
And I feel so small;
How could the God of heaven and all creation
Know I’m here at all.
But then in silence He whispers,
“My child, I created you too
And youre my most precious creation;
I even gave my Son for you.”

CHORUS
His eyes are always upon you;
His eyes never close in sleep.
And no matter where you go,
You will always be in His eyes,

No matter where you go,
You will always be in His eyes

Sometimes His eyes were gentle
And filled with laughter,

Christians often say that we are called to be like God and Jesus, to be as loving towards lesser beings as possible. Meanwhile, when we look at how atheists often present themselves on the internet, we see very little compassion or respect for the downtrodden and broken. Instead, we see bigoted crap like this from the “Amazing Atheist”:

No, you bastard, you know nothing about the topic of triggering….

14184568_10207261404429809_5954210709831897282_n

That video comes from the same sort of atheist who claims that religion itself is a scourge to society. I referred directly to such an atheist fanatic while commenting on a much earlier blog entry:

https://dalehusband.com/2010/08/09/misdefining-terms-for-purposes-of-propaganda/#comment-677

http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2010/06/in-defense-of-m.html#comment-219719

truthspeaker | June 15, 2010 2:53 PM

It wouldn’t matter if all religions behaved like the Society of Friends and the ELCA. It is still based on the premise that believing in things without evidence as a virtue. As long as it starts with that premise – and it always will, because if it didn’t it wouldn’t be religion -, it will always be evil. There’s just no getting around it – promoting irrationality as a virtue is bad for humanity. No matter how much you polish the turd, it will still be a turd.

Both the Unamazing Asshole and the “truthspeaker” can go fuk themselves. Denying something does not disprove it, in both cases. And ignoring the good that religious people often do in the name of their religions is, well…..IGNORANCE!

I will rewrite the song by Steven Curtis Chapman to reflect how I wish white male atheists would conduct themselves, instead of only thinking about themselves.

Sometimes our eyes are gentle
And filled with laughter,
And sometimes they cry;
Sometimes there is a fire
Of righteous anger,
Deep in our eyes.
But the eyes that see hope in the hopeless,
That see through the fault to the need,
Are the same eyes that look within ourselves
To seek the best of what we can be.

Our eyes should always be looking;
Our eyes never close in sleep.
And no matter where we go,
We will always see with open eyes

Sometimes our voice comes calling
Like rolling thunder,
Or like driving rain;
And sometimes our voice is quiet,
And they start to wonder
If we know their pain.
But if we speak peace to the world
And care for their hearts anyway
Then the voice that once says “You are loved”,
Will say “You are loved” every day.

Sometimes we look above us when stars are shining
And we feel so small;
How can such tiny creatures on this one world
Make a difference at all.
But then in the silence remember,
That we exist in vast numbers too
And when we all work as one species
There is so much good we can do

Our eyes should always be looking;
Our eyes never close in sleep.
And no matter where we go,
We will always see with open eyes

Could that happen? Perhaps, but we would have to look to these:

http://americanhumanist.org/

http://huumanists.org/

http://iheu.org/

Because it is HUMANISM we all need, not just atheism. If the progressive humanists among atheists can defeat and drown out the conservative bigots, and then provide all the charitable and emotional needs of people who need help and comfort, then they will cause the final downfall of dogmatic religion around the world. Let it be so.

Radical Reincarnation

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Reincarnation is the notion in some Eastern, Indian or Dharmic religions that people who die later return in a different body to start a new life, usually with no memory of their previous life. Often this is paired with the concept of karma, the idea that people go to a higher or lower form of existence based on how they lived in their previous lives.

By contrast, in Western religions that are based on the Jewish and/or Christian scriptures or at least are descended from them, reincarnation is rejected and instead people’s souls are assumed to either go to a place called heaven if they are good (or are true believers) or hell if they were evil (or followed a wrong religion) and never return to life.

I have no empirical reason to believe in reincarnation or indeed any form of an afterlife and it is my understanding that the idea of a soul that can be separated from a body and exist apart from it is simply impossible. Indeed, when a person’s brain is damaged in some way, it is clear that the person is also damaged, so why not just assume that when the person’s brain is completely destroyed at death, the person ceases to exist completely? But that idea seems to frighten most people witless. Why? How did we come up with the idea of an afterlife to begin with? Perhaps because of near death experiences that someone might have had on rare occasions?

Read my earlier statement about spirituality. Because of my open-mindedness on that issue, I have created a concept called “Radical Reincarnation” in which every person and animal that has ever lived was once within every other person and animal that has ever lived. In short, we were all Adolph Hitler, Albert Einstein, dinosaurs, cavemen, and dodos at one time or another and we are also part of the universal life force that we return to when we die. This life force, timeless and incredibly powerful, is what most of us have mistaken for “God”. And it is greater than we will ever know. Of course, I cannot support this idea with any evidence whatsoever, but I also know of nothing against it……..and no, it is NOT the default position to say something is not true just because it has not been proven.    Atheists who assert that are as narrow minded as some religious bigots. Rather, individuals are free to believe or not believe something that has no proof and no disproof. I reject the idea of heaven and hell for eternal souls because it HAS been disproven. Radical reincarnation certainly has not…..yet it does not exist in the Dharmic religions either.

Why party labels in the USA are completely useless

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Watch this video:

The anti-slavery party of Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War was NOT the party of Big Business from the 1870s to the 1930s. The party that defended slavery before and during the Civil War was NOT the party that fights for the rights of blacks and other minorities today.  The Religious Right which infested the Republicans in the 1980s had almost nothing in common with the likes of Donald Trump now.

This is why we need a MULTI-PARTY system like in some European countries. The two-party system we Americans have always had is by nature misleading. The south has ALWAYS been conservative compared to the north. If the Ku Klux Klan was founded today, it would be founded by southern REPUBLICANS. Conservatism is the ideology we must always fight, no matter what party label it marches under.

For the record, it is not BIG government we should oppose, but STUPID government which is a problem no matter what its size. Did you know that Ronald Reagan, a conservative Republican, actually increased government by massive military spending….that we also never needed in the first place?! And why did Reagan do that? Because so many big businesses have had contracts with our military and profit from every war we end up fighting in! I can guarantee that if a Republican gets the Presidency in the next decade or so, then he will find an excuse, any excuse to get us into another overseas war like Bush Sr. did when he pushed us into war with Iraq in 1991. and his son did again in 2003. Consider yourselves warned!

As for illegal immigration, the rules were designed beforehand to exclude non-white people from Latin America, including Mexico. Ironic considering we conquered and annexed half of Mexico’s territory in the 1840s. “Hey, thanks for all your land, but we do not want your people! GO AWAY!!!” Meanwhile, Puerto Rico, which is majority Spanish-speaking and non-white, remains a mere possession of the USA and not a state. Go figure.

This corporate backstabber belongs in PRISON!

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Read this outrageous story (emphasis mine):

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/08/epipen-makers-stock-value-plunges-nearly-3-billion-as-investors-panic/

EpiPen maker’s stock value plunges nearly $3 billion as investors panic


25 Aug 2016 at 10:18 ET

Mylan CEO Heather Bresch speaks to Fortune's Most Powerful Women summit in 2015 (Screen capture)

Mylan Pharmaceuticals — the company that makes the EpiPen rescue device — has watched its stock value plummet over the last five days as panicky investors jump ship.

According to U.S. Uncut, outrage over Mylan’s decision to jack up the price of the EpiPen has spooked shareholders, whose departures have reduced the value of Mylan stock by 12.4 percent. On August 19, Mylan stocks went from $49.20 per share to $43.11 on August 24, a net loss of nearly $3 billion for the company.

The EpiPen is a popular rescue device for food allergy sufferers who run the risk of anaphylaxis — a potentially lethal reaction to allergen exposure. The device rapidly delivers a dose of epinephrine to the system, which for severe allergy sufferers can mean the difference between life and death.

The device was conceived and developed for the U.S. Department of Defense by researcher Sheldon Kaplan. The studies and testing were all underwritten by U.S. taxpayer revenues. The device was originally created as an antidote to nerve gas, but it was released to the public as a rapid remedy to anaphylactic shock.

Tom Cahill at U.S. Uncut wrote, “However, in 2007, Mylan Pharmaceuticals acquired the rights to the EpiPen and immediately started raising the price. After Heather Bresch, its former top lobbyist, successfully pushed for legislation in Congress that required all public schools to carry EpiPens for children with food allergies, its price hikes became more frequent and more severe, raising by at least 10 percent every other quarter from the fourth quarter of 2013 to the second quarter of 2016. A score of U.S. Senators are calling for an investigation into the price hikes.”

Over the course of her tenure at the company, Bresch — daughter of U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) — raised her own salary 617 percent and conducted an offshore reincorporation of Mylan, Inc. under the Netherlands’ looser corporate laws, but maintained the company’s headquarters and operations in the U.S.. This practice is known as “inversion” and it has become a popular way for U.S. companies to lower their effective tax rate while continuing to enjoy all the market rights and privileges of companies conducting all of their business domestically.

Bresch — who was one of Fortune magazine’s most powerful women of 2015 — gave a disastrous interview to CNBC on Thursday, attempting to pass off her $16 million salary hike and the 450 percent increase in EpiPen prices as perfectly normal business practices in the pharmaceutical industry.

Interviewer Brian Kelly pointed out that Bresch apparently used her power as a lobbyist-turned-CEO and her influence with heads of state to legislate a market for her company’s product, then inflated the price.

“I’m legislating in the access to EpiPens!” she protested.

An estimated 15 million Americans suffer from food allergies, including 1 in every 13 children under 18. Every three minutes, a food allergic reaction sends an American to the emergency room, totaling around 200,000 hospital visits per year.

This is exactly the sort of despicable thing about “Big Pharma” that progressives like Bernie Sanders were warning us about.

What is especially troubling about that is that the Senator who enabled his daughter to commit these unethical atrocities is a DEMOCRAT. This is one case in which I would be happy to see a Democrat voted out of office, even if a Republican does take his place.

What Heather Bresch did should get her and her father arrested, tried and convicted of a conspiracy charge, and imprisoned for many years! Food allergies are literally a matter of life and death!  WE NEED SOCIALIZED MEDICINE!

Five Things Most Christians Get Wrong About the Bible

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Inspired by atheist YouTube personality Steve Shives, I have compiled the following list of five things Christians, and many other people, typically get wrong about the Bible.

  1. It is treated as a single work, when in fact it was sixty-six (and perhaps more, according to some Christian denominations) SEPARATE works that were never intended by their many original authors to be put together. That did not happen until centuries after the books were written. Imagine a massive English book that assembled some of the works of Dr. Suess, Stephen King, Louis L’Amour, Anne Rice, Barbara Cartland, R. L. Stine, Sidney Sheldon, and Richard Scarry into a single volume to allow people easy access to samples of American literature. Would it ever have been reasonable to claim that those specific works by those specific authors must from then on always be sold together in that specific form?
  2. It combines scriptures from TWO different religions, but misrepresents them in the process. The scriptures of the Jewish religion are called the “Old Testament” and the scriptures of the Christian religion are called the “New Testament”, even though they are actually over 1900 years old and thus are hardly “new” by any standard you can name. The implication that Christians should have any claim to the scriptures of some other religion, even an earlier and related one, would be considered nonsense by most people if we were talking about any other subject. Do Americans have any claim whatsoever to the Constitution of the British government?
  3. It is assumed that these scriptures were intended for all of mankind, when in fact most of the Jewish Scriptures were written by Jews and intended only for Jews. Maybe the Christian Scriptures were intended for all mankind, but…….Jesus only came to the Jewish people and was never known to go outside his people’s homeland. It was only later after his supposed resurrection that he dispatched his disciples to preach the Gospel around the world.
  4. Even more damning, there is NOTHING in the Christian scriptures that came directly from Jesus himself. In fact about half of the Christian Scriptures came from Paul, who was depicted in the book of Acts as originally an enemy of the Christians who later converted to Christianity and helped spread the Gospel among non-Jews. In what context would this be considered credible anywhere else? Imagine if Abraham Lincoln was credited with ending slavery in the USA, but wrote nothing about slavery that we have to verify his involvement, except biographies decades after his death that do not even agree on the circumstances of his birth, and most of the work of ending slavery after him was done by General Robert E. Lee, himself once a slaveowner who fought for the Confederacy during the American Civil War and later became an abolitionist.
  5. Revelation is treated by most Christians as the last thing God ever revealed to mankind. Sure, let us ignore the Quran, the Book of Mormon, the Urantia Book, and Conversations with God, among other things. But if those are not valid, why accept the Christian scriptures……or even the Jewish ones, for that matter?

A Family of Messengers

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I’m going to post a series of short stories featuring characters I have made up. Allow me to introduce them.

“Daniel the Intellectual” – Scientist, father and strong critic of religion.
“Maria the Caretaker” – Wife of Daniel, artist and new age musician.
“Matthew the Warrior” – Son of Daniel and Maria, rock guitarist and singer for the Band of Messengers and computer gamer.
“Suzanne the Feminist” – Daughter of Daniel and Maria, rock singer and guitarist in the Band of Messengers, lesbian and a sworn enemy of the NRA and the Republican Party.
“Tommy the Comic” – Younger son of Daniel and Maria, drummer in the Band of Messengers, loves to tell jokes to make others look stupid, but also very loving to those he cares about.

“Lisa the Latina” – Romantic partner of Suzanne, joins the Band of Messengers as a bassist.
“Carla the Afro” – Matthew’s African-American girlfriend, joins the Band of Messengers as a keyboardist. Continue reading →

A Kidnapping Gone Wrong

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Once a group of criminals kidnapped the teenage daughter of a rich man and called the father a few hours later. They told him that if he did not pay them $100,000 within 24 hours, they would kill the girl. This was the father’s reply:
“So you believe in human sacrifice? The Aztecs did too! Are you descended from them? I heard that some cultures sacrificed virgins to gain favor with their gods. I know my daughter has a boyfriend, so would you like to ask him if they have had sex? As for the 100,000 dollars, did you know that the largest dollar bill ever printed by the U.S. Mint was in that amount? Sadly, no such bills are in circulation today, I would so love to have one! With all the billionaires in the world, we would find such bills extremely useful for special transactions. Anyway, I’m sure once you kill my daughter you will either find someone else to kidnap or the police will hunt you down before you can pull that off. In any case, you won’t get a cent from me! I’m a rich man for a reason and one of those reasons is my refusing to merely throw away money for trivial causes…..and giving money to someone who has not earned it is as trivial as it gets…..unless you consider kidnapping someone to be hard work, of course!”
The kidnappers were so gobsmacked by the rich father’s callous attitude that they soon released the girl.

Cleaning up Congress

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Read this story:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-congress-approval-rating-drops-to-11-percent/

By Rebecca Shabad CBS News November 11, 2015, 3:45 PM

Congress’ approval rating drops to 11 percent

Congress’s approval rating has slipped to the lowest level this year, according to a poll released Wednesday by Gallup.

The poll found 11 percent of people in the United States approve of Congress, which is its lowest job approval rating this year.

It’s also only 2 percentage points higher than the all-time low of 9 percent approval from November 2013 after the last government shutdown.

Meanwhile, 86 percent of the public said they disapprove of Congress.

Gallup began tracking congressional approval ratings 41 years ago and the ratings since 2011 have been among the worst recorded. Congress experienced a record-high 84 percent approval rating in October 2001, a month after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The new survey also found 8 percent of Republicans said they approve of Congress while 13 percent of independents and 11 percent of Democrats said the same about lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

The poll comes just weeks after Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, was elected as speaker of the House and after Congress passed a major budget deal to raise spending limits and lift the debt ceiling into March 2017. Lawmakers still must pass a spending package before the Dec. 11 deadline to fund the government and avert another shutdown.

The poll surveyed 1,021 adults between November 4 and 8 with a 4 percentage point margin of error.

How is it possible for the general public to so despise Congress when they have two year and six year intervals to replace its members? Because, quite simply, they almost never do! Most Americans only pay attention to the Presidential races and usually the Governors’ races in their respective states and do not take much notice of the Congressional  and state representative races. And yet it is Congress that makes the laws and decides the federal budgets for the United States, while state legislatures do the same at the state level. The President and the Governors have very little power, so merely electing them means almost nothing.

This is why the American people elected Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, then watched in amazement when Republicans took control of Congress in 2010 and 2014, causing incredible amounts of gridlock later. If you do not vote in ALL elections and for ALL positions in government, you end up with a government that you do not approve of! It is the extremists that take advantage of the mid-term elections to get their  stooges into Congress….and there are FAR more right-wing extremists in America than left-wing ones. You can blame dogmatic Christian denominations for that as well as the media being controlled largely by corporations with their own economic and political agendas!

Also, most Americans tend to support their own Representatives or Senators and assume that the “other ones” are the problem. That is not true! You can only replace the members of Congress that are supposed to  represent you, so if you do not vote them out, you are to blame for the failures of Congress. Not other people in different states and districts.

And of course, there is gerrymandering too.

How to disable the Republican Party

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Read this article:

http://www.thestranger.com/slog/2016/07/19/24362128/dan-savage-on-jill-stein-just-no

Dan Savage said:

Yeah, let’s talk about the Green Party for just a moment, or third parties, getting a third party movement off the ground here in this country. Because we are sick of the two party system!

Here’s how you fucking do that: you run people not just for fucking president every four fucking years.

I have a problem with the Greens, I have a problem with the Libertarians. I have a problem with these fake, attention seeking, grandstanding Green/Libertarian party candidates who pop up every four years, like mushrooms in shit, saying that they’re building a third party. And those of us who don’t have a home in the Republican Party, don’t have a home in the Democratic Party, can’t get behind every Democratic position or Republican position, should gravitate toward these third parties. And help build a third party movement by every four fucking years voting for one of these assholes like Jill fucking Stein, who I’m sure is a lovely person, she’s only an asshole in this aspect.

If you’re interested in building a third party, a viable third party, you don’t start with president. You don’t start by running someone for fucking president.

Where are the Green Party candidates for city councils? For county councils? For state legislatures? For state assessor? For state insurance commissioner? For governor? For fucking dogcatcher? I would be SO willing to vote for Green Party candidates who are starting at the bottom, grassroots, bottom up, building a third party, a viable third party.

You don’t do that by trotting out the reanimated corpse of Ralph fucking Nader every four fucking years. Or his doppelgänger, whoever it is now, Jill Stein and some asshole-to-be-named four years from now. You start by running grassroots, local campaigns. And there’ve been — and I’m sure we’re going hear from lots of people out there listening — there have been a couple of Green Party candidates who’ve run in other races here and there across the country. But no sustained effort to build a Green Party nationally. Just this griping, bullshitty, grandstanding, fault-finding, purity-testing, holier than thou-ing, that we are all subjected to every four fucking years by the Green Party candidate.

Bernie Sanders tried to challenge the Democratic Party directly by running for President as a Democrat despite serving in the U S Senate as an “Independent”. But he ultimately went nowhere. So the same advice applies to him as to the Greens or other so-called third parties in the USA.

We need progressives among Democrats running for city council and for mayors, and after capturing many of those offices, some of those progressives can run for state legislative positions and then for governor of various states. After that, progressives can run for Congress. Only when many of them are in Congress can one run for the Presidency. Over time, the progressives could be so successful that they can afford to split themselves off from the other Democrats, while the progressives and the (conservative) Democrats together erode the popularity of the Republican Party to the point that Republicans can no longer function as a national political party.

Those who say they are for “Bernie or Bust” have no idea the damage that attitude can lead to. If they really believe in what Bernie Sanders favored,. they should stand up and run for public offices themselves. Otherwise, they will fail and they are useless.

I will back Hillary Clinton this year, not because I agree with everything she has done, but because the consequences of Donald Trump winning are simply unthinkable to me. He is not fit to be President, and Ms. Clinton is!

Tim LaHaye is no more

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Read this news story:

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/left-behind-co-author-tim-lahaye-leading-voice-evangelicalism-dies-n616481

‘Left Behind’ Co-Author Tim LaHaye, Leading Voice of Evangelicalism, Dies

by Alex Johnson

Tim LaHaye, an intellectual and popular leader of the evangelical movement whose 16 “Left Behind” novels sold tens of millions of copies, died Monday at age 90 in San Diego following a stroke last week, his ministry and his family said.

The “Left Behind” novels, co-written with Jerry B. Jenkins, were enormously popular, crashing mainstream best-seller lists in the 1990s and the 2000s, which until then had been all but unheard of for Christian-themed fiction.

The books, which were based heavily on the Book of Revelation, chronicled the struggles of the unfortunate people “left behind” on Earth after the Second Coming of Jesus and the “Rapture” of believers into Heaven, introducing the frankly apocalyptic theology to a much wider audience.

“Thrilled as I am that he is where he has always wanted to be, his departure leaves a void in my soul that I don’t expect to be filled until I see him again,” Jenkins said in a statement Monday.

But the books were only part of the reason the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals at Wheaton College named LaHaye the most influential leader in evangelical Christianity in 2001 — ahead of Billy Graham, James Dobson and Jerry Falwell.

Falwell, who died in 2007, credited LaHaye with having inspired him to found the Moral Majority in 1979. And in a 2005 interview with Time magazine, Falwell called LaHaye and Jenkins’ “Left Behind” books the most influential Christian body of literature of the 20th century — behind only the Bible itself.

LaHaye also founded San Diego Christian College, 12 Christian secondary schools and the Tim LaHaye School of Prophecy at Falwell’s Liberty University in Virginia.

Among the first departments at San Diego Christian College was the Institute for Creation Research, which branched out as an influential young-Earth creationist research organization in 1972.

In 2005, Time enshrined LaHaye and his wife of almost 70 years, Beverly LaHaye — an evangelical leader in her own right as founder and chairwoman of the powerful conservative political group Concerned Women of America — as “The Christian Power Couple.”

Combined, their books and their radio and TV shows reached hundreds of millions of conservative Christians around the world for more than a quarter-century — and drew sharp criticism from liberal organizations and fellow pastors on the more progressive side of the Christian spectrum.

In 2009, LaHaye famously called President Barack Obama a socialist whose rise to power was possibly a signal of the approach of the End Times.

In an essay Monday in Christianity Today, Jenkins acknowledged that LaHaye was often called “opinionated, polemic, a right-wing conservative fundamentalist — and some will even accuse him of homophobia.”

But “the Tim LaHaye I got to know had a pastor’s heart and lived to share his faith,” Jenkins wrote. “He listened to and cared about everyone, regardless of age, gender, or social standing.

“If Tim was missing from the table at a book signing or the green room of a network television show, he could usually be found in a corner praying with someone he’d just met — from a reader to a bookstore clerk to a TV network anchorman.”

LaHaye’s ministry said that in addition to his wife, he is survived by four children, nine grandchildren, 16 great-grandchildren, a brother and a sister.

I first heard about Tim LaHaye when I was still a thoroughly brainwashed Southern Baptist and I had the misfortune to pick up and read his book “The Battle for the Mind”, a right-wing extremist diatribe that demonized secular Humanism as a corrupter of  American society. I wasn’t until I attended college and deconverted from Christianity that I realized the truth. I came to see that Humanists were to LaHaye what Jews were to Adolph Hitler and his Nazis; they were scapegoats that Christian bigots could focus their hatred on instead of the spiritual love that Jesus actually taught about.

As for that series of “Left Behind” novels LaHaye co-wrote with Mr. Jenkins, the entire premise behind those books was an outright lie, as I already showed in this blog entry:

Why the Rapture is a bogus concept

And that is why I prefer to call that fraud Tim LaHELL. He was just like Hal Lindsey, another self-styled expert on Bible prophecy no one should take seriously!

 

We must REFORM America’s democracy!

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And here’s how I would do it:

  1. Abolish the Electoral College. Presidential candidates should be elected only by direct popular vote.
  2. Abolish primaries. Let all candidates of all parties go directly to the general election, provided they get a certain number of petition signatures in every state.
  3. Eliminate the Senate and thus make the U.S. Congress a unicameral body. The term length in the U. S. Congress should be four years, rather than two. The membership of Congress should be 1000.
  4. Forbid state legislatures from drawing and approving Congressional and state legislative districts. Only federal courts should do that.
  5. Allow voters to cast a vote for as many candidates as they wish in the general election at all levels and positions, instead of being forced to choose only one.
  6. Require that the Presidential candidate that gets the second most votes become Vice-President.
  7. Make Presidential terms four years long and make Presidential elections at the same years as Congressional elections.
  8. Impose term limits on Congressmen; they should be allowed to serve no longer than 16 years (four terms).
  9. Make electronic ballots illegal; only paper ballots should be counted in all elections.

Greens have limited credibility

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So now it is official: Not only has Hillary Clinton secured the Democratic nomination at last, but even her fierce rival Bernie Sanders has publicly endorsed her. The fighting among Democrats is over.

However, some diehard Bernie supporters refuse to vote for Clinton and may instead vote for the Green Party, which is indeed more progressive than most Democrats are.

I like most of what the Greens stand for, but there is one point that I strongly disagree with them on.

http://www.gp.org/social_justice/#sjHealthCare

Greens support a wide range of health care services, not just traditional medicine, which too often emphasizes “a medical arms race” that relies upon high-tech intervention, surgical techniques and costly pharmaceuticals. Chronic conditions are often best cured by alternative medicine. We support the teaching, funding and practice of holistic health approaches and, as appropriate, the use of complementary and alternative therapies such as herbal medicines, homeopathy, naturopathy, traditional Chinese medicine and other healing approaches.

Unfortunately, most forms of “alternative” medicine are called that precisely because they have not been fully tested and confirmed to work via scientific methods. To illustrate the danger of being willing to uncritically trust such things, read this:

An Explanation About Science

One of the things people need to understand about science is that it is not like a buffet restaurant where you can pick and choose what scientific ideas and products you can accept or reject. You either accept it all or you are not thinking scientifically.

Here’s another questionable part of the Greens’ platform:

http://www.gp.org/ecological_sustainability/#esAgriculture

We urge the banning of sewage sludge or hazardous wastes as fertilizer, and of irradiation and the use of genetic engineering in all food production. (Emphasis mine)

Genetic engineering itself is neither good nor bad, so banning the procedure completely is nonsense. We need to judge all such issues on a case by case basis.

The Greens need to modify their platform by removing these controversial and inappropriate statements if they expect to keep my support. Otherwise, I will just return to voting a straight Democratic ticket this November.

My own spiritual experience

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In the early 2000s, back when I was devoted to the Baha’i Faith, I was at North East Mall (near Fort Worth, Texas) and was just sitting down to eat lunch at the food court when suddenly I felt this urge to leave the mall! I couldn’t understand why, but I picked up my food (a Chick-Fil-A sandwich) and drink and I left the mall as if I was following a direct order. I got in my car and started for home. As I was passing this mostly deserted shopping complex, I saw a family stranded on the side of the road begging people for help. It was a couple and their two sons and they were suffering in the summer heat! I decided to offer them a lift in my car, so the father sat in the front passenger seat while the mom and boys sat in the back. We traveled together for several miles, me following the father’s directions while the music of an Ottmar Liebert CD played in my car. Finally, I stopped in their neighborhood and dropped the family off. Then I went back home and ate my lunch there.

To this day, I cannot explain what happened. It could have been a coincidence, but I also think I could have been under some outside control, which foresaw the need of that family and sent me to be their “angel” that day.

That is my story….take it or leave it.

Spiritual Orientation

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I have come up with the concept of “spiritual orientation” to explain something about human nature that seems to be a puzzle to atheists . Despite the dogmas of major religions like Christianity and Islam being debunked by reality itself, there are still nearly two billion Christians in the world, as well as over one billion Muslims and millions of followers of other religions around the world; there are relatively few atheists and agnostics in the world, and most of them are found in countries like China and North Korea where atheism is forced on the people by Communist governments. The experiences of the 20th Century proved that Communism as an ideology was just as dogmatic, arrogant, and embarrassing as Christianity, so it was eventually discredited. Good riddance!

When there is a conflict between one’s sexual orientation and one’s spiritual orientation, the result is something that can be life destroying. Continue reading →