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Monthly Archives: February 2012

Santorum’s Candidacy Better Suited For 19th Century America

February 27, 2012

Perfectionists who have conformed to a strict rigid code usually have a tightly wound sense of morality that sees more evil in others than really exists and who have very little tolerance for behavior that does not come close to the center of their world view

Rick Santorum’s rise to the top of the GOP presidential candidates list appears to have resulted from his appeal to the Party’s conservative christian base, much like George W. Bush did in 2000.  Viable policies and plans to deal with the critical issues our country faces have yet to materialize from the Santorum campaign.  The strategy apparently, as is usually the case, is to identify with the emotional issues of your base then draw curious supporters into the fold.  Allude to details that appear to encompass the moral high ground you are claiming but are not readily available for close scrutiny by the press and policy wonks.

What you are most likely to hear from the campaign stump is not unlike what one hears in most fundamentalist, evangelical churches on Sunday with emphasis on the “woe unto you …” forebodings.  Santorum’s narrative leans heavily towards doomsday warnings for  Americans, telling his audiences that the Obamaites  are “crushing” religious values by “marginaliz[ing] faith in America, [through the removal of] the pillar of God-given rights”. 

What follows then Santorum tells those who listen to him “is the French Revolution.  What’s left in France became the guillotine.  Ladies and gentlemen, we’re a long way from that, Santorum asserts, but if we … follow the path of President Obama and his overt hostility to faith in America, then we are headed down that road.”   SOURCE

President Obama’s “overt hostility to faith in America”?  The White House’s recent decision to mandate that birth control products be made available in insurance coverage, including those provided by religious colleges and charities, at no charge to the policy holder may indeed be viewed as an “overt” action that sensitive christians could interpret as hostile to them.  But was this part of a steady course of action by the Obama White House that can be construed as a path “we are headed down”?   Is it not hyperbole to claim that a single action of this nature constitutes an ongoing plan of action?

The clever use of the biblical-sounding term, “Obamaites”, is intended to evoke the image of some adversarial, inferior human being.  It is really nothing more than a demonization of those Americans who no longer see the “traditional definition of marriage” as the sole domain of one man and one woman.  Citizen majorities in some states who have redefined this definition have apparently found that the claim that gay marriage threatens the traditional institution of marriage, is nothing more than a bumper sticker slogan without any basis in fact.  Similar views by a national plurality on DADT also affirm that homophobic fears by religious fundamentalists hardly serves as the bellwether for moral decay.

Veiled Theocracy as Democracy

Santorum’s rigid catholicism is on display here.  According to conservative columnist Kathleen Parker, Santorum’s worldview “stems from his allegiance to the Catholic Church’s teachings that every human life has equal value and dignity.”

The church’s objection to birth control is based on concerns that sex without consequences would lead to men reducing women “to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of (their) own desires,” as well as abuse of power by public authorities and a false sense of autonomy.

Within that framework, everything Santorum says and does makes sense, even if one doesn’t agree.   SOURCE  


This argument doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny in light of the fact that many Catholics like Santorum who hold “that every human life has equal value and dignity” do not seem to extend this to the lives of those executed within our penal system.  Nor does this sentiment appear to extend to the innocent civilian elderly, women and children referred to as “collateral damage” by those who would wage war on an entire nation to punish that country’s leadership who are supposed to pose a threat to our national security and the security of our allies abroad.

And to presume as the Church apparently does “that sex without consequences” which leads men to subjugate women as mere instruments of male desires would not occur if contraception were forbidden is laughably naive.  Do such believers not understand that rape has been around long before there were legal and inexpensive means of contraception and that apart from this forced sex women have been socially pressured throughout much of human history to use sex in a male-dominated world to attain some modicum of security and respectability.

The very scripture that the Church uses to condemn all contraception views a childless widow as having much less social value than a woman who bears children.  Thus Judah insisted that after his oldest son, Er, is killed by God it fell on the second oldest, Onan, to impregnate Er’s wife.  Not so much to her own glory but so Onan “could produce offspring for his brother.”  (Gen 38: 6-10)

Despite protestations from Santorum and his more moderate supporters that he will not impose his orthodox Catholic views into presidential policy, it’s not all that clear yet that the presidential candidate from Pennsylvania won’t insist that this nation be led by his perception of biblical principles; principles that some may see are not in step with contemporary Americans, even if that comes into conflict with the Constitution.

For example, in order to condemn homosexual behavior, Santorum has tried to link it to adultery, polygamy, chid molestation, incest and bestiality, where the state has outlawed such acts.   And where the 9th amendment may allow states to do this for such specific acts, it has not been stretched to other sensitive areas that many christians feel “violates the sanctity of marriage”.

Santorum told Bob Scheefer in a recent interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation” program that his rigid moral codes reflect what most Americans think.  “I’ve repeatedly said I believe the president is a Christian.  He’s says he’s a Christian. But I am talking about his world view and the way he approaches problems in this country, and I think they’re different than how most people do in America.“  That assumption has yet to be supported however.

The Supreme Court, …,  beginning as early as 1923 and continuing through its recent decisions, has broadly read the “liberty” guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment to guarantee a fairly broad right of privacy that has come to encompass decisions about child rearing, procreation, marriage, and termination of medical treatment.  Polls show most  Americans support this broader reading of the Constitution.   SOURCE

Who Is The “Good Steward”?

But not only are Santorum’s views sometimes in conflict with the Constitution, they are sometimes in conflict with the very biblical authority he purports to guide his world view.  In that same interview on Face the Nation, Santorum tried to clear up some comments he made about a “phony theology “ he attributed to President Obama.  “I was talking about the radical environmentalists,” Santorum said. “That’s why I was talking about energy. This idea that man is here to serve the earth, as opposed to husband its resources and being good stewards of the earth, and I think that is a phony ideal.”


When Santorum attacks radical environmentalists he is expressing what is common conservative parlance to attack anyone who opposes an energy policy not approved by the American Petroleum Institute (API) and that doesn’t have drilling for new oil wells anywhere and everywhere at the top of their list.  It’s not clear how Santorum thinks that husbanding the Earth’s resources and being good stewards of those resources can be linked to an industry where extraction, transporting, production and dispensing of a toxic substance pollutes the air we breath and the water we drink.

How is the removal of finite, dirty fossil fuels from deep within the bowels of the earth using expensive and accident prone equipment more an action of husbanding our resources over using what’s easily and abundantly available in the form of wind, solar and thermal energy?  This is not a biblical stance by any stretch of the imagination.

This is clearly an attempt to play into the fossil fuel industry’s exploitation of its alliance with conservative Christians to attack Obama’s energy policy.  A policy that seeks to remove the federal tax subsidies to the highly profitable oil and coal industries and works more to develop clean, renewable energy sources that a truly “good steward” of the earth would promote.

This is a two-fer for Santorum.  He get’s to play off of the animosities many conservatives have about man-made global warming while appealing to the money-interests of Big Oil; perhaps hoping their lucrative donations will fill his campaign coffers.  Is it possible that the profits that come from a source of energy responsible for large numbers of individuals with lung diseases and threaten human and animal habitats can be sanctified through the prophets of scripture?

A Pretense of Contemporary Leadership

I see presidential leadership balanced on a three-legged stool that encompasses a broad and rich understanding of politics, science and religion.  Santorum’s apparent animus toward government and science leaves his leadership skills off balance.  And though one can’t help but admire the man’s personal convictions, this doesn’t automatically translate into political leadership skills that serves the varied interests of this nation.  No more than the feeling that George W. Bush would make a good president because he was the type of guy you could have a beer with.

In a NY Times Op-ed piece last December Eric Weiner, author of Man Seeks God: My Flirtations with the Divine wrote, “Though religion contains large public components, it is at core a personal affair. It is the relationship we have with ourselves or, as the British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead said, ‘What the individual does with his solitariness.’”  It is this personal affair that Santorum would exploit for political gain that grates at me so much with its presumption that he has an advantage over those that don’t share the social context he wraps his religious experiences around.

The former GOP Pennsylvania Senator and his Republican/TeaParty cohorts may object to what they feel is a misguided approach by the man currently occupying the Oval office but would they not be substituting their own form of one man rule by inserting someone who narrows the human scope of what it means to be American in today’s world?  Dragging us back to a time in history where only white, propertied christian men ruled may appeal to the likes of Rick Santorum but it doesn’t keep pace with the unalterable social and economic dynamics of the 21st century.

Posted by in 2012 Presidential Elections Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

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Saturday Political Humor

February 25, 2012

The Pain of Being Rick Santorum

So if you’re Rick Santorum, how do you deal with the new Jack in the Box commercial

You have a young effeminate male (gay image) who wants to marry an animal product (non-traditional marriage, bestiality) and fellatio is fixing to take place (unnatural sex) when the minister who bonds them declares, “You may now eat the bride”

Back in December Santorum warned of such things occurring when he addressed a congregation at the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Coralville, Iowa.

“Satan is attacking the great institutions of America, using those great vices of pride, vanity, and sensuality as the root to attack all of the strong plants that has so deeply rooted in the American tradition.”

What greater institution is there than one of our biggest fast food chain restaurants?

Posted by in Humor Tags: , , ,

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It’s Wishful Thinking to Believe that the Private Health Care Sector Will Get Spiraling Costs Under Control

February 22, 2012

The health care system is seriously flawed in this country and getting worse.  Many in Congress, especially those within the GOP/TeaParty, want to do more of the same that has created this quagmire.  Clearer thinking about what’s involved with a government-funded single payer program could help alleviate the concern many have about their increasing medical expenses.

The main argument being touted by those who oppose single-payer programs like the ones in most every other Western Country, including our neighbors to the north and south of us, is that it will ration care and increase our taxes.  There is no real evidence of any consequence that justifies the “rationing health care” claim but clearly taxes will increase if such programs are implemented.  Health care after all isn’t free.

This latter fact however really shouldn’t alarm people if they would only look closer at their overall out of pocket expenses they already pay for health insurance and other health care coverage not covered by insurance.

We spend almost $3 trillion nationwide on health care, about twice the average of all other wealthy nations. Our health care system has plenty of problems, but a shortage of money is not one of them. Historically, we in the U.S. have responded to problems in health care by throwing money at them. This mountain of money has led to a lot of wasteful spending.

High health care costs have raised taxes and insurance premiums, depressed wages and eroded public budgets. The more money we pump into our health care system, the worse it seems to get.

We spend so much because we have the highest prices for products and services in the world and often overuse them. Experts estimate that 30 percent of health care services provided in the U.S. offer little or no benefit to patients.   SOURCE

That we pay too much for products and services that we overuse was brought to light in a recent “60 Minutes” segment.  In Leslie Stahl’s report, Treating Depression: Is there a placebo effect?,  research has shown that anti-depressant medication like Prozac has little if any affect on many patients who are treated with this product that rakes in $11.3 billion annually.  This information was revealed in Stahl’s interview with the Harvard expert who has done the research.

Irving Kirsch is the associate director of the Placebo Studies Program at Harvard Medical School, and he says that his research challenges the very effectiveness of antidepressants.

Irving Kirsch: The difference between the effect of a placebo and the effect of an antidepressant is minimal for most people.

Lesley Stahl: So you’re saying if they took a sugar pill, they’d have the same effect?

Irving Kirsch: They’d have almost as large an effect and whatever difference there would be would be clinically insignificant.

Stahl: But people are getting better taking antidepressants. I know them.

Kirsch: Oh, yes.

Stahl: We all know them.

Kirsch: People get better when they take the drug. But it’s not the chemical ingredients of the drug that are making them better. It’s largely the placebo effect.

Irving Kirsch’s specialty has been the study of the placebo effect: the taking of a dummy pill without any medication in it that creates an expectation of healing that is so powerful, symptoms are actually alleviated.

What appeared to go unnoticed late in the 60 Minutes report was an example that demonstrated how a government-controlled single payer health care program could eliminate such needless costs and better utilize those funds to treat depression without invasive drug use.  Great Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) has changed it practices following its own review of clinical trials with anti-depressants, eliminating the use of drugs in most cases where they serve no real benefit, and redirecting those funds to create jobs by training more talk therapists to bypass the chemical dependency of anti-depressants.

Dr. Tim Kendall, a practicing psychiatrist and co-director of the [NHS] commission that did the review says that like Irving Kirsch – they were surprised by what they found in the drug companies’ unpublished data.

Kendall: With the published evidence, it significantly overestimated the effectiveness of these drugs and it underestimated the side effects.

Stahl: The FDA would say that some of these unpublished studies are unpublished because there were flaws in the way the trials were conducted.

Kendall: This is a multibillion dollar industry. I doubt that they are spending $10 million per trial to come up with a poor methodology. What characterizes the unpublished is that they’re negative. Now I don’t think it’s that their method is somehow wrong; it’s that their outcome is not suitable from the company’s point of view.

Because of the review, new public health guidelines were issued. Now drugs are given only to the severely depressed as the first line of treatment. For those with mild to moderate depression, the British government is spending nearly half a billion dollars training an army of talk therapists.

Further evidence revealed by the NHS showed that physical exercise has an equal curative effect for those on anti-depressants who are classified as mildly depressed.  Imagine the costs savings to this program which gets passed on to the taxpayer because of this study and the policy change it effected.  Now imagine if there were a single-payer program in this country that severely limited this needless drug for many of the 17 million Americans currently taking some form of anti-depressants.  The argument by those who oppose government-managed health care would be significantly weakened.

In fact if you go back to the argument that government-managed health care would “ration” health care you would find that such rationing is exemplified in changes like that with England’s NHS’s decision to eliminate unnecessary products.  Much of what is increasing our health care costs in this country are physician prescribed tests and drugs that many patients ask for having been influenced by the heavy commercialization of these controlled medications and procedures.

What all this points to, like the information I shared with you in my last post concerning Merck Corporation’s bogus claims about Vioxx,  is that there is a concerted effort in this country in the health care field where private, for-profit interests take precedent over a patient’s need.  Also, those governmental agencies that are established to look out after our interests are found to be too friendly and cozy with Big Pharma and the major health care providers in this country, often looking the other way when evidence shows that services and products are being needlessly touted for the beneficial needs of consumers.

Corruption and inefficiency can occur in any effort where large sums of money are involved, public or private.  Examples like this show that unjustified expenses which impact high health care costs occuring where private sector policies and practices along with weak and negligent government oversight exist, have negative consequences for American citizens.

Private industries don’t review their practices in ways that necessarily cut consumer costs because it is the profit they seek over any savings for consumers.  Only when some outside watch-dog group has spotted this profiteering does the company then either try to justify it or take corrective action.  But by then a lot of damage has been done and huge profits have already been paid out in the form of stock holder dividends and executive bonuses.

Medicare and Medicaid have been judged too costly and inefficient in this country by those who champion privatization but research has shown that rising costs are the result of fraudulent claims in the private sector by medical suppliers, some physicians and health care institutions.  However, consumers can also be conned into adding to this cost issue.  The influences of those companies that manufacture medical devices, pharmaceuticals and provide services, through their direct appeal to consumers on TV, radio and newsprint ads, has increased a needless demand for such commodities that either insurers are expected to cover or must come out of our own pockets.  As these unwarranted procedures and medication usages increases, those costs get passed on to us directly in the form of higher premiums.

To their advantage a diligent, certified set of people within the insurance industry  can often catch needless health care recommendations, refusing to pay for them and thus help keep overall costs down.  But like the pharmaceutical companies and health care providers that they have to deal with, health insurance companies are also motivated by profits and sometimes get too zealous in their efforts to deny services for patients; services that are genuinely needed to save a life.  There are also built-in incentives at some insurance companies for employees to deny as many claims as they can through various unethical methods.

A government run health care program that’s always being transparently scrutinized by the public and their representatives is highly motivated to keep tax payer costs down by insuring that only qualified and necessary goods and services are being utilized.  What’s key in implementing such a program though is to establish criteria that makes it tough if not impossible for people who serve this government function to have any ties or allegiances to the private sector.

With better access to affordable and adequate health care for all people we become a more productive society and thus set the stage for generating greater wealth for more people.  This is something that clearly needs to be addressed as we have slowly watched a once vibrant middle class in this country disappear over the last few decades.

People now sense something new. Something fundamental is wrong, not just if we elect the next guy. That’s a big deal in history when that begins to happen and I think that’s one of the things coming out of this pattern of decay and stagnation. - Gar Alpwerovitz, author of America Beyond Capitalsism

Posted by in Health Care Reform Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

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A Poor Role Model for Voters

February 20, 2012

The image of the business model, personified in the “corporate citizen” which is fostered by the private sector and aided by their like-minded buddies in the courts, the media and the legislatures throughout our history, have masked over their significant disparities and flaws while demonizing government.  Have they succeeded in deluding the voter?

Who’ll be my role-model
Now that my role-model is
Gone Gone
He ducked back down the alley
With some roly-poly little bat-faced girl
All along along
There were incidents and accidents
There were hints and allegations – Paul Simon, You Can Call Me Al

Whenever I hear a would-be politician use business models as an acceptable way to run government I shudder at the prospect because I haven’t bought in to that false comparison and the alleged efficiency factor that businesses are more capable than their government counterparts.  I’m encouraged in this view by University of Denver political scientist Seth Masket who wrote on his blog:

Businesses exist to turn a profit. They provide goods and services to others only insofar as it is profitable to do so, and they will set prices in a way that ends up prohibiting a significant sector of the population from obtaining those goods and services. And that, of course, is fine, because they’re businesses. Governments, conversely, provide public goods and services — things that we have determined are people’s right to possess. This is inherently an unprofitable enterprise. Apple would not last long if it had to provide every American with an iPad.

I’m also always surprised to hear people tout the efficiency of the private sector. There’s a great deal of inefficiency in the private sector, of course. How many CEOs end up hiring dim, unqualified brothers-in-law or grandkids who are taking time off college? And that’s just not considered a big deal as long as it doesn’t noticeably hurt the bottom line.   SOURCE

Matt Yglesias also supports this thinking, noting that if governments were run like businesses then older workers would be laid off and health insurance benefits for workers and their families would be reduced or eliminated in order to more efficiently turn a profit for shareholders, unlike a state that “is fundamentally an ethical enterprise aimed at promoting human welfare.”   Though Yglesias’ comments refer to the expectations of our founding fathers, in today’s political environment the “ethical enterprise” notion associated with government may raise some eyebrows.

And for those who insist on equating federal and state budgets with household budgets, L.Randall Wray at the Roosevelt Institute will debunk that notion for you.

But there is another reason we need to be concerned about politicians like Mitt Romney who want to run government like a business.  The reason, recently illustrated in an article by data scientist Cathy O’Neil, is that they have no soul and no heart.  In her article entitled How Big Pharma Cooks Data –The Case of Vioxx and Heart Disease we see the type of profit motive-thinking of CEOs and their top executives that literally put more energy into making money for investors than seriously benefitting the public they claim to serve.

You can read the details in Ms. O’Neil’s account for yourself, and I encourage you to do so, but the bottom line here is that deceptive practices and out-right lies were perpetrated at Merck to conceal the flaws with Vioxx, a big seller for the company, in order to boost their bottom line to the fatal detriment of many of Merck’s customers.

Vioxx was a non-steroidal, anti-inflammatory drug aimed at alleviating acute or chronic conditions where pain and inflammation are present from such things as rheumatoid arthritis, Osteoarthritis and metastatic bone pain, to name just a few.  Though there are over-the-counter medications like Aleve, Ibuprofin and even aspirin that work equally well (and are much lower in costs), Vioxx was not supposed to have the unfortunate side effects of gastro-intestinal problems that the over-the-counter aids were diagnosed to have.

What it turns out that Vioxx did contribute to however were cardiac, vascular and thoracic events (CVT) that led to death for many users.  Merck, who rushed their product through the clinical trials required by the FDA in record time, was aware before it went on the market that there were problems associated with CVT issues but went out of their way to conceal this.  O’Neil also addresses the FDA’s failure to adequately oversee the process that allowed Vioxx to enter and stay on the market for 5 years.

In a practice familiar to many Americans who saw the Ford Pinto back in the 1960‘s and 70‘s use a cost benefit/analysis method to determine it was cheaper to keep their flawed design than it was to pay out lawsuit awards to the families of victims who were killed by this design flaw, Merck apparently took the same approach and weighed profits over punitive fees.  O’Neil’s article points out that even though Merck lost “one of the largest [lawsuits] resulting in a $5 billion settlement … [it] was essentially a victory for Merck, considering they made a profit of $10 billion on the drug while it was being sold.”

It is this kind of practice that gives corporations its bad reputation.  It is also this kind of practice that gives greater credence for some kind of oversight by state and federal governments to protect a naive, trusting public.  However, it must be an oversight that is not run by crony capitalists in government who are later hired by the industries they regulated and where many later re-enter government to once again effect policy and legislation that is beneficial to their former employers.  This is what is known as Washington’s K Street revolving door. 

I believe free markets are basically a sound approach to addressing our economic needs.  But like any system in the wrong hands there are actions that can be taken merely for the sake of personal gain while having serious consequences for innocent people.  It’s the nature of the business beast as political scientist Masket points out since “businesses exist to turn a profit.”

Let’s hope that enough voters get wise to the specious arguments made by politicians who demonize government while ignoring the deadly flaws in business practices and their government connections that seem to becoming more the rule than the exception.

“Aristotle would say America no longer serves the public good, its government being held hostage by an oligarchy on the verge of becoming a tyranny, by far the worst form of organization or constitution or government.”  - Evaggelos Vallianatos, from his essay, Delusions of the Corporate State

RELATED ARTICLE:

Everything You Need to Know About Wall Street, in One Brief Tale (Matt Taibbi, Common Dreams blog)

Is Modern Capitalism Sustainable?

Posted by in Corporate Influence Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

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(Risque)Sunday Humor

February 19, 2012

Rick Santorum’s Sexually Repressed Mind

What kind of thoughts were going on through Rick Santorum over-imaginative brain when he argued that contraception is “a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”

I know he worries a lot about such things as man-on-dog sex but might the picture below reflect a wet dream he has of himself symbolically defeating President Obama this November?

How hard must that be to keep such imagery suppressed while also feeling erotically stimulated.

A lot of Catholics have developed as sexually repressed adults.  I too was raised as a Catholic and I recall the stare downs and being damned to hell by feisty old nuns and sanctimonious priests for even raising the question of sexual urges.

Does the presidential candidate struggle with his awful thoughts when he takes the kids to the “petting” zoo?  Are his kids deprived of this fond childhood memory because Santorum has these delirious thoughts?

For Santorum to expose his concern about doing “things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be”,  must surely elicit some awful images from him time to time that would require a visit to the confessional frequently for such impure thoughts

I wonder if the priest who hears his confessions has ever considered a penance to seek psychiatric help to address what thoughts often crowd the space between his hears?

Posted by in 2012 Presidential Elections, Humor Tags: , , , , , , ,

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“Hey! I Worked Hard For This Look”: No Shame In Growing Old

February 16, 2012

Time is a gift to us all and the condition we find our bodies in at the end of our time is not to be disdained but displayed proudly.

The aging transition

I find it somewhat sad and disconcerting that after acquiring abundant wisdom and a sense of well-being as we age how some want to conceal or ignore the physical markings on their bodies it has taken all those years to acquire. Sure, I’d love to always have well-toned muscle tissue, smooth skin and thick hair, but humans are not figures in a wax museum.   We needn’t be ashamed of the more rough and wrinkled countenance that comes with aging.  The wear and tear that frequently starts showing up extensively as we hit our 60’s and beyond are signs that we have weathered what life has thrown at us.

It’s odd how our society values the experience that comes with time but not necessarily the package it comes in.  It isn’t easy for most of us to accept the slow deterioration of our once strong and youthful bodies and even in death some of us it seems are still unwilling to be portrayed as an elder person.

Take for example the photos of those I found here on the obituary pages of my local newspapers.  This seems to be the norm nowadays.  We are seeing fewer pictures of the deceased as they were just a few short years before their death at 60, 70, 80 and older, replaced instead by those taken at a time in their life when they were just married, out of college or beginning their first jobs decades ago.  Do the children of the deceased do this, wanting to view their parents forever young and submitting these photos for everyone else to share in?  Or is this a final request by the people themselves before passing on?   Wanting to be remembered in their youth as if to say the rest of their life has no value.

This isn’t an angry old man’s diatribe against today’s youth.  If I could gain it all back through some concoction or time machine I wouldn’t hesitate to do so.  But we haven’t been dealt such a hand, nor or we likely too.

The journey towards our “senior years” has left us with the effects our efforts have had on our bodies.  Our wrinkled skin, bulging midline, slightly stooped demeanor and thinning gray hair are emblematic of our ability to survive a life where many of our friends, relatives and acquaintances haven’t; either dying from childhood diseases, crime, wars, domestic abuses, highway accidents or some catastrophic event like floods, tornadoes and fire.

We have also survived our own foolish choices that often had physical consequences detrimental to long term health or squandering our time and resources with little consideration for the future.  Somehow we always thought we had time to overcome these misguided actions.

But it is time itself that teaches us if we allow it and with time comes the slow erosion of physical attributes.  Our culture is so obsessed with avoiding this inevitability that we throw good money at commercial products that promise us youthful appearances.  For those who can afford it (and many who really can’t) there are now thousands of cosmetic products and numerous surgical procedures available to postpone the effects of time.  The waste of resources for this vanity too often forgets that diet and exercise, not creams, tummy tucks and face lifts, will ease us into an older age where we can still be active and useful.

Life's experiences are etched into our faces

There’s no denying that I would like to remain forever young but that is an age old fantasy that we all share and one that snake oil salesmen keep exploiting to relieve us of our hard-earned income.   I’m not ashamed of how time has changed my physical appearance.  Looking “hot” and stylish no longer consumes my time and money and I am better for it.  I worry less and my self-esteem is at an all-time high.

Longevity is not something to fear.  It is an award I have earned for successfully reaching an age that often eludes many other people.  On other days, those same obituary pages will also have death notices for people who died long before their time.

I may not be able to read the street sign less than 50 feet away without prescription lenses anymore but I can see the future much clearer than someone who has few life experiences and no sense of history.  Many my age can’t compete with today’s youth on the athletic fields, pools and courts but we can coach and advise them to help them find their strengths in order to be the best they can.

Still an honest mug, even at 63

The package may have withered over time but the contents are still viable and can benefit those who have yet to live life as fully as I have.  The superficiality of a youthful appearance has its time and place in our lives and on occasion I find myself reflecting back on those times.  But when I die I want people to see me for what I have become, and that entails a veneer that exemplifies the journey of a long, experiential life that cannot be completely duplicated by any other human being

Posted by in seniors/aging Tags: , , , , ,

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For Valentine’s – A Few Words in Support of “Love”

February 14, 2012

It’s hard to get  pumped up about a holiday that is bogusly named after a christian martyr and who had nothing to do with romance.  For Valentine’s Day, love is most often valued in terms of gifts given.  Not any meaningful sense of the word.

Crass commercialism will exploit this day as it does all of our holidays and to some degree the deepest expression of love will get lost in the objects we purchase and share as they are handed out in ritualistic style by many to insure the recipient that they are still thought of, at least to some degree and on this special day.

The apostle Paul called love the greatest of human traits.  Without love he said we are essentially an empty shell.  We can have great wealth, wisdom and generosity but without love they gain nothing for us.   Do you suppose the free markets who capitalize on this holiday really reflect upon Paul’s ambitious sentiments of love?

During my college days as a student of the social sciences I once took an analytical approach to this emotion after having been both the hurt victim as well as the elated recipient of “love”, and asked my yet-to-be-wife, who had expressed her love for me during our brief courtship, what she thought that consisted of.  What I was really looking for by asking such a question is what would it take for her to see me differently down the road where she might no longer feel so enamored.  She of course fumbled with it and I realized, feeling foolish for asking it, that there is no succinct answer to such a question.

“To love someone deeply gives you strength. Being loved by someone deeply gives you courage.” – Lao-Tzu

Neurological reactions where chemicals develop in the brain effect our amorous behavior.  It’s a powerful reaction too that makes us feel invulnerable to anything the rest of the world can throw at us.  It’s hard to believe that the high we experience being connected to an individual in ways that lift us past the mundane concerns of everyday existence is simply the result of increased levels of testosterone, dopamine and oxytocin triggering physiological responses that foster passionate love and long-term attachment.  It’s possible that if this knowledge had been available to the poets and romantics of a bygone era that the great epics and lyrics we’ve come to know might never have ben penned, but I doubt it

The sensation of real love that creates that emotional attachment we develop with another gives us a powerful reason to live and lifts us at times when others in the world would abandon us or tear us down.  And though this emotion is perhaps its strongest in our youth, its memory can carry some couples through for years, long after that emotional high wanes, which it will over time.

Even though, by the time we are twenty-something, we have usually been in and out of enough relationships to realize that we can be hurt if we give ourselves over to unrequited love or even love that is equally reciprocated, love’s pull on us never really fades.  The drive to recoup love’s grandeur is never completely lost and in each succeeding relationship we hope we accomplish that something we felt in our first love.

The emotion of love comes from that wiring we are born with that drives us toward another individual.  There is no guarantee that it can be sustained.  Our survival depends on us linking up with others so we can prosper and grow.  How we prosper and grow derives from our environment but it is the internal workings of humans that connects us.

In the final analysis, though I believe love is but a mere mechanism to perpetuate the species, it doesn’t mean it has to be viewed from a laboratory mentality.  We should celebrate love in ways poetic and place it in the realm of something outside a defined biological equation.  But romantic love by itself is really not enough “to make the world go ‘round”.  There has to be more expression of plutonic love, what Paul called agape, that is part of our existence.  Unless we extend our self-serving feelings of love beyond two people we will fail to develop an enriched atmosphere where it can truly prosper and grow

Without this wider concept, love will always be relegated to a level that can be exploited by those who have none themselves and seek to divide us for some personal agenda.  Divisiveness begins when self-interests take hold of every other instinct we possess.  A love that is understood and shared with other humans is an antidote to this susceptibility.

The believe in love, no matter who or what we see it derived from, is the glue that holds most of us together as it drives humans to accomplish extraordinary things that the other species don’t seem to be able to.  This may not always be seen as a good thing.  Our inability at times to see the development of some of our creations which can ultimately threaten our very existence may sadly prove to win out in the long run.  But such a force is also capable of doing great and enduring things that can improve our world and allow future generations to celebrate love in the traditional way that has inspired great verse and music.

So, as crass and corny as it is, Valentine’s Day can still serve as a reminder to us all that without love, life just doesn’t have that much to offer.

“Loving can cost a lot but not loving always costs more, and those who fear to love often find that want of love is an emptiness that robs the joy from life.”  - Merle Shan

Posted by in National Holiday, Social Discourse Tags: , , , ,

11 comments

Contraception, Spilling One’s “Seed” and the Obama Health Care Ruling

February 10, 2012

My Catholic upbringing instilled in me that masturbation was a sin.  I thought it had something to do with impure thoughts but according to the Church’s strange twisting of scriptural text it’s condemnation is tied more to a negative view of contraception.  Seems we were never supposed to refrain from God’s command to Adam and Noah about being fruitful and overpopulating filling the earth

Ahh Catholicism.  What fond memories I have about my first Communion, Confirmation, serving my first Mass as an alter boy and best of all, my awareness of sin.  Without sin in our lives there is chaos.  There can be no understanding for our purpose on earth and what lies in store for us afterwards without a sense of our sinful life.  Sin tells us what we are doing wrong and by default what we need to change in order for all to be right in the universe.  Thus saith the clergy who formed my early childhood views of the world.

We learned all about sin in our weekly catechism classes under the tutelage of Father Vogel.  You might not make it into heaven if you die with mere venial sins on your soul.  There’s a place called Purgatory reserved for such tainted people.  But if your sins were “mortal” in nature as you lay dying then hell was your only destiny, unless there was a priest handy who could administer the last rites of atonement and the eucharist.

We were expected not to eat anything before receiving communion and confessional with the parish priest was requisite beforehand in order that your soul was pure enough to accept the body and blood of Jesus.  My typical confessions, which began with “Bless me father for I have sinned …” usually consisted of impure thoughts about the red-head, Alice Henderson, giving the finger to the protestant kid because he called me a papist and lying to my mom when she asked what was taking me so long in the bathroom.

We were told masturbation was a sin though my recollection for the reasons aren’t clear.  However, in light of the controversy that is surrounding the President’s decision to require full coverage for contraception by certain religious entities, I have done a little research to find out why “sinful” masturbation was a part of my religious upbringing.  In the eyes of the Church, wasting your seed, as it is biblically referred to, is a form of contraception.  No.  Really!  Bare with me here and I’ll explain.

First let me get on my soap box.  Such incomprehensible positions were responsible for my drifting away from catholicism in my late teens.  The Church, in its over-reach into every day life, seem to diminish the larger value of the faith that spoke to our humanity while providing a spiritual relationship intended to connect us to an unseen source of strength and wisdom.  I didn’t fully understand the latter part of this relationship until I totally abandoned the church years later.  How ironic, but that’s another story.

I understand the need for restraints and consequences for socially destructive behavior but there has to be a point where attempts to dominate every aspect of our lives has to have more adverse effects than positive outcomes for our personal sanity.  Keep in mind that most of the Church’s rulings on many things they govern their flock by were evaluated by people who isolated themselves centuries ago in monasteries and convents; avoiding the realities of the human experience in this world in the hope that they would be drawn closer to God

Soul searching under such conditions has its merits, but the long term effect of such isolation can seriously disconnect people from the real world.  Even Jesus limited himself to 40 days in the dessert before returning and intermingling with sinful man, only to be put to death apparently by the religious authorities of his day for challenging the status quo while showing concern for those outcasts not welcome in the house of God.

The practice by religious orthodoxy to have a ruling for every thought and act we engage in may provide security for those people who have been beaten down by life and just can’t muster the courage to step out on their own, but for the rest of us, a few basics like charity to all and doing unto others … etc. etc., is sufficient  Contraception was too intricate for our young minds to ingest back then so very little was discussed about it.  But the reality is that it is such a far fetched concept in light of our natural urges that any thinking priest or nun could not defend it I’m sure and merely left the issue standing with the proviso that violators would be condemned.

The Obama administration’s ruling has called for all organizations, public and private, to provide free contraception coverage with their health insurance programs they provide their employees.  Churches and religious schools were excluded from this but hospitals and charities that don’t necessarily employ people who share specific faith values were not.  This has become a tempest in a tea pot and a cause célèbre for those on the right who are trying to foster a “socialist” image of the President and any liberal politician.

The Catholic church and their lay operatives are asserting that their constitutional rights are being violated because they’re being “forced” to participate in an act they view as a sin against God.  To prevent the birth of a child is a sin, even if their is no conception, as the “holy mother church” sees it.

It is this amazing stretch of the imagination that has people like me questioning the true will of an Almighty Creator who no longer tends to his creation since he shut down Paradise almost as soon as he initiated it.  We now have, according to the Church dogma, free will to choose such things as limiting the number of children we want but only if we do it according to what  “the Church teaches … is morally permissible [by taking] into account the natural rhythms of human fertility and to have coitus only during the infertile times in order to regulate conception”.  

Many American Catholics are also seeing this as somewhat absurd and are inclined to take the Obama administration’s take on this issue.  58 percent of Catholics agree that employers should be required to offer health plans that cover contraception at no cost and 53 percent of Catholic voters agree “that women employed by Catholic hospitals and universities should have the same rights to contraceptive coverage as other women.”

Let’s be clear however.  Sin, as the Church declares, is not always a specific violation one can pinpoint in the so-called “inerrant word 0f God” – the Holy Bible.  Too often it is an interpretation by old men who base it on doctrine and perceptions of those aforementioned church fathers who isolated themselves from human civilization.

Much of what passes for “God’s word” in catholicism today comes from the Vatican within the last 50 years in two very lengthy documents – Gaudium et Spes, latin for Joy and Hope (a rather Orwellian label) and an encyclical written by Pope Paul VI called Human Vitae which is latin for Of Human life.  It was the Church’s attempt to bring their thinking up to 20th century realities but their hearts were still back in medieval times.  It’s tedious reading and as precise as it is, one get’s the distinct impression that the church has taken quite a leap to take specific versus from scripture and translate them them into absolutes like contraception.

At the heart of contraception’s sinful nature is the passage in Genesis 38 that tells how God was dissatisfied with Onan, the son of Judah for refusing to impregnate his dead brother’s wife in order for her to bear children.  Judah so instructed Onan as was part of their custom but Onan “knew that the offspring would not be his; so whenever he lay with his brother’s wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from producing offspring for his brother.  What he did was wicked in the LORD’s sight; so he put him to death also.” (Gen 38:9-10)

The advantage of being an excommunicant of the Church allows us not to buy into such narrow, rigid references so easily.  Was God mad about the spilled semen or was he mad that Onan refused to obey his father and follow a custom that was part of “an ancient Eastern brotherhood law called the law of the Levirate” described in Deuteronomy 25:5?  Orthodox Catholics lean towards the “spilled semen” scenario where an outsider might view it as an incomprehensible response from a vengeful God.

There is a third possibility that has Judah killing Onan and blaming it on God, falling back on the belief that a parent would be justified in killing a willful child as allowed in Deuteronomy 21: 18-21.  But that’s speculation and conspiratorial in nature and we know all good christians never engage in such practices.

In the thinking of many devoutly orthodox Catholics and other Christian sects it is not considered unreasonable to draw such specific conclusions from dubious text within scriptures.  When one author on this topic posed the hypothetical question – “WOULDN’T IT BE HELPFUL IF THE BIBLE CONTAINED CONDEMNATIONS OF CONTRACEPTION THAT WERE MORE EXPLICIT AND MORE FREQUENT?”, the glib, superior response was  “Not really. The lack of multiple references doesn’t disturb the person who has a sense of theological realism.”

And who are these people who have a sense of theological realism?  Old men who isolated themselves from civilization centuries ago and whose successors in the Vatican are not that far removed from them.  Or so it seems.

Bless me father if I have sinned for questioning the authority of the church who has been out of step with their followers for quite some time now.

 

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Posted by in Religion/Science Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

39 comments

Can “Boobies” Ever Be Lewd?

February 8, 2012

When is the word “boobies” NOT profane, indecent, lewd, and vulgar?  Seldom, if at all, but surely not when they are a part of an effort to raise awareness for a serious women’s health issue.

If you had a thirteen year old son and you heard him say the word “boobies”, would you be shocked?  Would you scold him and wash his mouth out with soap?  Would you pray each night that God purge him of this language or would you go further and seek out an exorcist to remove the demons that surely must possess him?  Or would you be like most parents and chuckle, either out loud or underneath your breath?

There are some words I would forbid a thirteen your old boy to say publicly and even discipline him if he deliberately continued to do so, but “boobies” is not one of them.  The word connotes an adolescent description of a female’s breast but then so do other terms like jugs, gazongas, honkers, rack, airbags and balloons.  They use these descriptive terms because they’ve probably been raised in a culture that forbids the more earthy usage of “tits”, not to mention they elicit a immature chuckle each time you say the words.

More polite and formal terms like “breasts” and “mammary glands” might be acceptable in society but what normal boy would employ adult, academic terms describing something that holds a certain titillating mystique for them.  Besides, these two terms have other usages.  Breast is that part of the chicken with white meat and mammary glands are on female mammals, not young nubile girls and busty women.

And herein perhaps lies the objection that some adults might have with any 13-year old boy making any kind of reference to that part of the female anatomy.  Unlike the other species, human female breasts, outside their natural utilitarian function, are one of the seven female erogenous zones that Monica Geller describes here to Chandler in an  episode of Friends.

By the way, here’s a humorous link that illustrates the difference between male and female erogenous zones.

But the use of the word “boobies” by a teen boy doesn’t have to conjure up the worst possible case for some adults and it sure as hell shouldn’t be restricted when it’s use is aimed at raising breast cancer awareness.  And yet, such is the case with a young Indiana boy who uses this word to bring attention to this serious topic.

An Indiana eighth grader sued his school district in federal court Monday for the right to wear a bracelet promoting breast cancer awareness with the message “I (heart) Boobies.”

The lawsuit says the boy’s mother bought the bracelet for him in support of the Carol M. Baldwin Cancer Research Fund, named after actor Alec Baldwin’s mother, a cancer survivor. He wore the bracelet to Roosevelt Middle School for two days without causing a disruption. On Jan. 6, the vice principal spotted it and ordered the boy to turn it inside out because it was violating the school’s dress code.

ACLU attorney Ken Falk said the boy has not worn the bracelet to school since being warned he could face discipline if he did. The lawsuit contends the bracelet does not violate the school’s dress code, which specifies that “Students should not engage in speech or conduct, including clothing, jewelry, or hairstyle, which is profane, indecent, lewd, vulgar, or offensive to school purposes.”

“It is designed to assist in the fight against breast cancer,” the lawsuit says.

A federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled last year that the bracelets were not lewd or vulgar and couldn’t be banned by public school officials who found them offensive. That decision is being appealed.     SOURCE

What is this school code’s sense of morality that would view this slightly unorthodox approach to raising awareness for breast cancer as profane, indecent, lewd, vulgar, or offensive to school purposes?

What is it about the puritanical mindset that is squeamish about the human anatomy?  Judeo-christian legend has it that when God created man and woman,  “they were both naked, … and were not ashamed?” (Gen 2:25)  Has the church  over the centuries taken the imagery of Paul’s exhortation in Roman’s 12:1 to present our bodies as “holy, acceptable to God” in ways that vulgarize a woman’s nurturing breast?    Attorney General Ashcroft under president Bush apparently thought so and had a set of $8000 drapes conceal the Spirit of Justice statue he routinely gave press interviews in front of at the Department of Justice.

Is this type of reaction by some men a weakness of some sort where extreme examples  are played out in some fundamentalist Muslim cultures, insisting women be fully covered from head to toe in order to “avoid the lustful gaze of men”?

I am simply amazed to what lengths some adults will take an issue to with the thought of protecting the youth of this country from sexual impropriety based on a perception that appears grounded in rigid religious dogma.  No one really expects a 13 year old boy to automatically go from a conscientious breast cancer advocate to a life of debauchery and pornography by wearing a bracelet with the sophomoric term of “boobies” on it.  Its harmless use may attract the attention of people who might think it shameful but once the person whose wearing it explains what’s it’s for, the shame is likely to shift to the adult some and even earn the holder of the bracelet a little esteem for taking a moral stand on a sensitive topic.

It is this supercilious reaction by some adults that undermines an open and honest dialogue about a subject matter that many parents feel overly-sensitive about and reluctant to maturely discuss with their own children — S-E-X.  We take an issue so vital to our survival and whose natural urges are equal to that of hunger and thirst and only talk about it in ways that wound up inhibiting healthy relationships and conjure up fears by some of eternal damnation for violating the strict parameters we have inherited from ancient paternalistic cultures.

There are many words that we should avoid and prevent our children from using, especially those that demoralize an individual and can incite them to violence, (“nigger”), lower their self-esteem, (“idiot” or “retard”) and even drive some of them to commit suicide (“faggot”, “whore”, “lesbian”).  These ugly, hurtful expressions, when expressed with the intent to hurt, should be dealt with by punishing the user of them in ways that let’s them know it won’t be tolerated.  But there are other words that are simply silly, adolescent depictions of something that their users have yet come to grips with in a mature way.

I’m pretty sure “boobies” is one of those terms.  It is definitely one word we need to worry a lot less about than those that are used to dehumanize one another.  If adults really want to role model appropriate language for their kids they might start by condemning that which we are hearing all too often in our political discourse with one another.

Posted by in Education, People Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

17 comments

GOP Casts a Pall Over Positive Job Growth News

February 6, 2012

On it’s way back down, the jobless rate hit a number last week that it hasn’t seen since Obama took office in January 2009.  This is a further indication that  the economic recovery, albeit slow, is gaining momentum.  So naturally the GOP is finding every cause it can to downplay something that has celebratory significance.


I received my routine e-mail from my Congressman the other day, Republican Michael Burgess of the Texas 26th district.  It came on the heals of great economic news about the better-than-expected job growth in January.  But you got the clear impression that Mr. Burgess wasn’t hopeful about this and in fact started blaming Obama for failing to revive the economy at a much faster pace.  This of course is understandable in light of the fact that the Republican/TeaParty has worked so hard to portray all of Obama’s efforts as a failure.  For the reality to expose their misrepresentation of the current administration’s economic policies, it makes it difficult for them to speak at all with feet placed firmly in their mouths.

Why is congressman Burgess dejected over the lowered jobless rate?

The inference here by Congressman Burgess, and by default the GOP, is that there is a magic bullet “out there” that only they possess which can restore our economy to an earlier time before it started plummeting in late 2007.  By his count there has been some 20 bills passed by the GOP-controlled House to effect this silver bullet solution but oddly this magically powerful projectile has been unable to penetrate the Democrat-controlled Senate.  Not so oddly however if you scratch the surface of these Orwellian named pieces of legislation where you’ll find that the ammo that Burgess and his Party are shooting rounds with are the same old blanks of trickle down economics, eliminating critical government oversight and tax cuts for the wealthy 1%.

Why these people insist that what didn’t work previously will somehow miraculously work now is Einstein’s definition of insanity that assert’s “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”  To suggest also that it is easy to reverse the mess that got us where we are today after decades of mismanagement is both naive and disingenuous of Burgess and his crony capitalist partners.

It’s true that we have not recovered at a faster pace than we could have but this as much a factor of an obstructionist Party who is more focused on “making Obama a one-term president” than finding real, proven solutions to our unemployment issues.  Continuing to vote for legislation that sends jobs overseas and subsidizes highly profitable agriculture and fossil fuel businesses while balking on those that help start-up 21st century green technology is not conducive to rapid economic growth.  It doesn’t help either to kill millions of public sector jobs and negatively impact spending by opposing an increase for the minimum wage, unemployment benefits and objecting to a continuance of the payroll tax cut.

Likewise, the continued fantasy that pure capitalism is the holy grail and capable of lifting all boats on a rising tide has seen evidence that only the wealthy truly benefit from a system that is supported more and more by a government that carries water for corporate America.  The income disparity in this country has accelerated over the last 30 years since the Reagan administration began stripping every federal safeguard to prevent abuses by the private sector.

With unfettered ability, so-called “free-markets” have manipulated the resources of working class people around the world where the wealthiest income earners gained almost exponentially over other income groups.

[T]he Congressional Budget Office found that, from 1979 to 2007, the average real after-tax household income for the 1 percent of the population with the highest incomes rose 275 percent. For the rest of the top 20 percent of earners, it rose 65 percent. But it rose just 18 percent for the bottom 20 percent.  SOURCE 

Financiers who run those institutions that are “too big to fail”, which conservatives helped create with lax regulations and exploiting policies that were aimed at making homeownership a reality for more people, have shown us what really matters to them.  As they loaded the housing market with predatory loans and credit default swaps sold to unsuspecting investors using the pension funds set aside by retiring working class people, the markets crashed under the limited regulation policies supported by all Republicans today.  Millions of American wage earners joined the ranks of the unemployed not seen since Reagan was President while millions more were left underwater on their home loans.

Speaking of the patron saint of many contemporary Republicans, their no-compromise, tax-cuts-for-the-rich stances are not only counter productive but not reflective of a Reagan presidency that had to raise taxes four times and who once chastised members of his own Party who thought “Compromise’ was a dirty word”.  He became impatient with congressional Republicans who “couldn’t face the fact that they couldn’t get [everything they] wanted … all at once.”

It’s both predictable and lamentable that the messages from our Congressional representatives in the GOP offer nothing new while spending far too much time berating the efforts of the opposition Party who are taking action not favored by the status quo in an attempt to get this economy up and running again.  What we get instead from   people like Michael Burgess are discouraging and ineffectual cultural war messages that seethe against gays, abortion, prayer in school and so-called traditional marriage.

Both Parties employ their own negative issues about each other to jockey for control but come on Congressman Burgess – give us break.  243,000 new jobs last month is something to be upbeat about.  Forget about Party politics, in this case at least.  If you can’t hold your criticism until you see this trend not holding then at least how about an “atta boy” for this bit of good news right now that says Good for you America!

Posted by in 2012 Presidential Elections, Budget Crisis, Business/Jobs Tags: , , , , , , ,

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