DYLAN RATIGANS BOOK ON THE GREEDY ONES

It is not often I want to read a whole book when I believe I can get most of the information piecemeal on the 'net.  However, I'm happy to have made this book as an exception.  Ratigan writes a book that easily could have been titled Greedy Bastards for Dummies.  He discusses all the issues of the day in the least boring writing I have read in a long time.  He makes everything, economics, politics, foreign trade, health care, and all the rest with which all Americans should find necessary to better understand before the decide for whom they should vote, what they should stop complaining about, what they should start complaining about.

While I have read a great deal about sub-primes, swaps, and all that stuff for the past three or so years, I can say that I finally understand it from a different perspective....that of just how greedy the greedy bastards really were and are.  A few years back I read a study of CEOs and found that the majority (not all!) are sociopaths.  That should surprise no one.  History bears that out by their behavior and phenomenal drain of corporate profits. It is apparent whose team they are on and it is not that of the American citizen.  It also makes me wonder about the characters in some of those 'think tanks' as well.  Since medicine has cures leprosy, is there not a free island where lobbyists can be sent?

At any rate, if you want to read a fast 227 pages of words the equivalent of a gourmet meal of your favorite food, read this book.

AMERICAN MILITIAS

You do not have to read my thoughts if you have already read them on our militias.  So far, none have called a 'civil war' as they declare they will do if the government fails to liver up to its mandate for the people.  One might say that we are dangerously close though, again, that action is not what I would advocate as a first option.  However, I am not a young woman so it is not my thing.  I do not own a gun nor plan to at the moment.

You should watch the following video and see this site.  The speaker says:  "Remember that freedom is never free."    I would also have you read this article.  It is not something that we would have been familiar with on the daily news or obsessively verbal over nothing in the talk shows.  A CBS news report from Detroit writes:  It looks like the government got a little ahead of itself.  Keep in mind, this is only one of the militia units.  There are many of them and I am told they are well-armed.  You may note from this article that the biggest problem for the father and son were that they had an illegal machine gun.  The NRA has seen to it that guns are not a problem for people to get who wish to be well armed.  At this point in time, there are so many serious figurative fires that our government has to put out, this is only one of them and probably, after this judgment, not now of the highest priority.

It is easy for us to feel the enemy is not one of us but corruption in the government and politics suggests it is not wise to drop all caution.  I would not like to see us in a Civil or Revolutionary War.  I believe that, given the right to vote, which is at this time severely threatened as well, we should be able to settle the country down. With continued freedom to speak out, which has also been threatened, we could change much that needs changing.  Our greatest tool today is the communication that is taking place on Social networks and through communications like twitter, blogs, and other ways to get ideas heard.

Click on the flag at the left on the state you wish to get information on.

THE REPUBLICAN BRAIN

There was a time we would never have presumed to label a brain 'the Democrat Brain' or the Republican Brain'.  However, since, as evidenced by their voting in lockstep, one might be persuaded that there really is a Republican rigidity of mind that makes them such clones in their zeal  Since I tend to analyze details as to how they fit to make a complete picture, I find it somewhat difficult to believe that Republicans of all ages have suddenly all come together to pre4vent contraception when it is likely all of them are either using or have used contraception  or their wives or partners have.  If not, it would seem the number of children would more equal Santorum's large family.

A recent AlterNet article by Chris Mooney caught my attention by its provocative title:The Strange Conservative Brain: 3 Reasons Republicans Refuse to Accept Reality About Global Warming./.  This author has written a new book called The Republican Mind which I have on order and will comment when I have read it.   However, this article as a preview is catching my attention. It is not that all people have to believe in global warming, or climate change as the preference for the label has become.  The interest is in that  a whole group of people with a political label seem to think similarly.  What is it about their brains that make some of us rigid and the rest looser (or liberals, as the pejorative label is which has been attached).

Mooney writes:  "There's now a staggering amount of research on the psychological and even the physiological traits of people who opt for conservative ideologies. And on average, you see people who are more wedded to certainty, and to having fixed beliefs. You also see people who are more sensitive to fear and threat -- in a way that can be measured in their bodily responses to certain types of stimuli."  He goes on , later, with "And here, Fox News is undeniably at the top of the list. There are now a host of studies (video here) showing that Fox News viewers are more misinformed about various aspects of reality, including two such studies about global warming.".

If a fair grade is a C, then Fox viewers are average intelligence?  OK, I know I was pushing that one.  However, what does it say when people only want to hear that which tells them only that to which they already agree?  What does it say about willingness and ability to learn new things?

ONLY IN AMERICA DOES TIME MARCH BACKWARDS

There was a time when we could all be proud that America had innovative people, all who were able worked hard, and the future looked promising.  Then in the last few decades we neared the 'twilight zone'.  Today nothing is predictable.  We have people screaming on the streets of Washington DC for the government to get out of our lives while the states keep passing bills for the government to crawl into women's vaginas.  Politicians have gone so far into hypocrisy we may never see reality again.

For a country that used to excel in so many things, we have been dumbed down by those who would ruin our complete educational system.  One has to wonder at the clash of good and evil in running our fifty states.

But, be patient, my friends, all will soon be explained.  A new documentary is about to be released for all of us to better understand why we feel abandoned by justice, liberty and equal opportunity.  Just click here to see the first installment.

ON THE ROAD TO ATHEISM

Adam Lee has written an article in which he states:  "The most fervent advocates of religion in the modern world are also the most deeply inculcated with the mindset of command and obedience, which has dangerous consequences."  He goes on to describe how this demand for obedience keeps us in the Dark Ages.  To read this article, click here.

However, some of us (even those of us not born in Missouri) need to understand and see for ourselves.  The more we look, the more we see the man behind the curtain as in Oz.  In order to be faithful to most religions, we need to ignore medical advances, refuse to accept the obvious evolutionary changes in our world, and, if we believe Catholicism, go forth and be fruitful whether we can afford to feed our children or help them grow up to deal with the demands of our current world in the 21st C.  Churches ignore asthmatic congregants and pollute the environment with incense smoke.  While the average person with curiosity grows and develops to adapt to this ever changing and challenging world, The celibate men who wear fancy dresses and silly costumes, hats and other presumably impressive and costly symbols of their station,  surround themselves with myths which we are all supposed to believe.
 Fortunately, not everyone believes we can abandon all out life responsibilities and just leave it all up to God. In 2009,Wikipedia  reports the following on North American Atheism.

North America

The percentage of people in North America by sub-national divisions (except Mexico) who identify with a religion, as opposed to having "no religion" (1991, 1998, 2000, 2001)

A 2004 BBC poll showed the number of people in the US who don't believe in a god to be about 9%.^[11] A 2008 Gallup poll showed that a smaller 6% of the US population believed that no god or universal spirit exists.^[32] The most recent ARIS report, released March 9, 2009, found in 2008, 34.2 million Americans (15.0%) claim no religion, of which 1.6% explicitly describes itself as atheist (0.7%) or agnostic (0.9%), nearly double the previous 2001 ARIS survey figure of 0.9%.^[33] The highest occurrence of "nones", according to the 2008 ARIS report, reside in Vermont, with 34% surveyed.^[34]
The latest statistics show that a lack of religious identity increased in every US state between 1990 and 2008.^[35] However less than 2% of the U.S. population describes itself as atheist.^[36]
The exact number of atheists in Canada is disputed. (See the section "Statistical problems" above) The Canadian Ipsos Reid poll released September 12, 2011 entitled "Canadians Split On Whether Religion Does More Harm in the World than Good," sampled 1,129 Canadian adults and came up 43% who do not believe in a god.
An older poll shows 19–30% of the population holding an atheistic or agnostic viewpoint.^[37] The 2001 Canadian Census states that 16.2% of the population holds no religious affiliation, though exact statistics on atheism are not recorded.^[38] In urban centers this figure can be substantially higher; the 2001 census indicated that 42.2% of residents in Vancouver hold "no religious affiliation."^[39] A recent survey in 2008 found that 23% of Canadians said they did not believe in a god.^[40] The numbers do seem to suggest that the numbers of people in Canada who believe in a deity are dropping at a significant rate.
Separation of church and state is guaranteed by Article 130 of the Mexican Constitution, which also designates religious leaders as ineligible for public office, while the majority of the population identifies as Roman Catholic (89%).^[41]
Although the demographics of atheism and irreligion in Mexico is hard to measure because many atheists are officially counted as Catholic, almost three million people in the 2000 National Census reported having no religion.^[42] Recent surveys have shown that only around 3% of Catholics attend church daily^[43] and, according to INEGI, the number of atheists grows annually by 5.2%, while the number of Catholics grows by 1.7%.^[44][45]

[edit] Population attributes of atheists in the US

Overall, U.S. Americans who profess no religion or self-identify as atheist or agnostic are more likely to be white, non-Hispanic, or Asian and less likely to be African American or Hispanic, as compared to the general adult population in U.S.^[46]
In the U.S., 55 percent of atheists are under age 35, while 30 percent are 50 and over (compared to 37 percent of the total population). As a group agnostics are older than atheists, though still younger than the general population.^[46] Comparing this 2001 data with the 1990 National Survey of Religious Identification (NSRI) provides evidence of a trend towards secularization among the younger American population.^[46][47]
In the US men are more likely to be atheists than women, and also rate lower on various other measures of religiosity such as frequency of prayer.^[48]
"The analyses of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Study 1) and the General Social Surveys (Study 2) show that adolescent and adult intelligence significantly increases adult liberalism, atheism, and men's (but not women's) value on sexual exclusivity."^[49]

LIES. DISTORTIONS, CONSPIRACY THEORIES, AND PARANOIA

It is rare that I refer my readers to read a single op-ed article.  I do so now because I am in such agreement with the writer that I am unable to improve or add to what has been written..  Paul Krugman writes so explicitly and always in a style that most anyone can understand.  He builds his thesis empirically with a proper perspective historically, offers statistics and other facts as needed.

The article to which I refer you is by Paul Krugman, in the NYTimes, March 22, 2012.  In it he speaks of the lies and paranoia and the conspiracy theories in the past and some that whirl around today.

To read this article if you have not seen it, click here.  The article is titled Paranoia Strikes Deeper/

C-SPAN REPORTS ON A TEAPARTY RALLY

Convinced of my own masochism, I forced myself to listen to a Teaparty rally.  The sounds like rebellious teenagers.  They were shouting and asking for getting government to get out of their lives and let them make their own decisions.  As someone who raised 6 offspring through teen age and worked for 20 years with teenagers, I cringed as I heard the familiar bad logic.

click on Dr, John Whitley to your left to see this video

One young, very pretty black woman, vainly started her shouting with an apology for the appearance of her hair as she had been caught in the rain.  She went on to bellow that we must repeal ObamaCare, making me wonder what made her think she had really known a thing about the bill.  A NC, conservative republican doctor, Dr. John Whitley, running for election to the House of Representatives was clearly frightened that he wouldn't be able to set his own rates and get richer.  He kept talking about how with ObamaCare no doctor would be working in a private practice; they all would be working for the government insurance policies.  He argued for letting free enterprise determine costs.  I do not know what his medical specialty is but he spoke as though he would continue his practice if her were elected to the House.  He wrote: "Government doesn’t know best – we the people know best. As your representative in Congress, I’ll lead the fight to return us to fiscally sound, limited government; for it is our Constitution that recognizes that the strength of America comes from our people, not our government.".  Listen to his brief video.  He is naive enough to believe that, if he is elected to Congress, he will see that Obabacare is repealed and he will put the fiscal house in order.

The dead-beat Dad, Joe Walsh, did his usual schtick and started off saying that he had typed out a speech then proceeded to tear up several pages and compare himself to Obama but without the use of the prompter.  One can readily say why he doesn't need a prompter.  He has been giving the same message since her first gone into the house a couple of years ago.  He can rev up fire and brimstone just like any good evangelical TV minister can do.  If one didn't know better, one might honestly err in assuming the man knows whereof he speaks.

The moral to this story:  "Never smile at a crocodile.  Don't be taken in by his silly grin   He's imagining how well you'd fit within his skin.  (song from Peter Pan movie by Disney)"