Obama, Religious Knuckleheads and Trump

Well, so much has been happening that the time has come for our first synopsis blog …

My first question is whether out president was speaking in governing mode or in campaign mode when he made his speech regarding the federal budget.   He spoke passionately about the kind of society we are supposed to be: one that cares about the least of us.  The ongoing and, with the advent of the Tea Party, ever escalating battle in Washington continues to center around who shall benefit from the blessings and bounty of this society; everyone or just the wealthy.  The Republicans continue to push their agenda of empowering the already empowered while further disenfranchising the already disenfranchised. 

As much as I love President Obama, I, like most progressives, have been dismayed and alarmed at times at his willingness to compromise with the uncompromising Republicans whose goals are his destruction and the total demolition of any and all social programs for the middle class and poor of this country.  To put this as delicately as I possibly can, the Republicans are a bunch of liars.  They say they want small government, but only when it comes to helping the poor.  They have no problem with government involvement in a woman’s right to continue an unwanted pregnancy or in determining who has the right to marry whom.   They absolutely abhor budget deficits, except for the one they created with tax cuts for the wealthy while fighting unfunded wars.  Their contempt and disrespect for this president began with his inauguration ( remember Dick Cheney required a wheelchair for one day only, and could not stand during the ceremony)   on up to  Congressman Joe Wilson calling the President a liar, through to today.   As an African American man, I have personally felt emasculated at the disrespect heaped upon our first African American president, and at his response of turning an apparently never ending supply of other cheeks.

Yet on April 13, 2011, the president appeared to stand up to the right wing bullies when he said of their proposals,  “They want to give people like me a two hundred thousand dollar tax cut that’s paid for by asking thirty three seniors to each pay six thousand dollars more in health costs?   That’s not right, and it’s not going to happen as long as I’m President.”

Good for you, Mr. President!!!!!!!

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Of all the forces at work on this planet, none is more powerful, for good or evil, than religion.  We’ve seen the power of faith at work in the lives of leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X.  We’ve also seen religion used as a justification and motivation for genocide, slavery, oppression and virtually every conceivable form of mayhem.    How can the same force produce such diametrically opposed results?   The presence or absence of spirituality determines the direction religion-any religion will take.  The spiritual religionist is humble, empathetic, and childlike in his or her approach to God.  The non-spiritual represents the opposite qualities, but rather than childlike they are childish. While the spiritual seek God within and compete against their own potential, the non-spiritual seek God without, and His approval by showing themselves more worthy than everyone else.

We saw a non-spiritual religionist at work when the moronic Florida pastor, who’s name I will not spread, just could not resist burning a Koran. (He kind of reminds me of the spectacularly non-spiritual Pat Robertson who gleefully attributed the earthquake in Haiti to divine retribution.) What he did was stupid, childish, and represented the worst in religion.  He knew his actions could lead to the loss of innocent lives and he just did not care.

Of course, if the Florida pastor is moronic in the name of religion, the Islamic lunatics who responded by killing at least twelve people  are absolutely insane!  They represent just another chapter in the long history of religion- minus spirituality-as the most dangerous force on the planet, and they  really need to grow up.   FAST! 

I’ll be speaking on the relationship between religion and spirituality at some length in the future, for right now, I just wanted to introduce that idea as a tool for understanding some of the insanity that continues to ravage our planet.

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The ridiculous gas price increases have sprung up, almost as overkill for providing proof that pure capitalism is as evil as communism is ineffective and naïve.  We’ve all been taught that free markets dictate the price of any commodity based on the simple concept of supply and demand: the greater the demand, the higher the price, the greater the supply, the lower the price.  Now we learn that that’s all another Big Lie.  Gas prices are soaring, threatening to wreck an already morose economy, despite a world wide oil glut.  Why? According to an ABC news story, the price is being driven up by Wall Street speculators (yeah, the same avaricious Wall Street folks who brought the economy down in the first place with bogus financial instruments) who are betting that oil prices will continue to soar.  This is a self fulfilling prophecy at its very worst:  they send the prices up by speculating that the price will go up!

The story on Wall Street’s culpability was followed up with an interview with Donald Trump.  His solution to the oil price crisis is to take over oil fields in the Middle East!  We all know that Trump is more interested in self promotion than he is in running for president.  But it’s troubling to know that people like Trump, Mike Huckabee, and the original slime master himself, Newt Gingrich, can gain traction in American politics by exploiting the ugliest tendencies in this country; tendencies that have made America hated around the world.

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