No it is Not Reasonable

A House of Representatives stenographer was dragged off the floor last week when she took the dais to deliver an unscheduled religious rant. "Praise be to God Jesus Christ… Thus spoke the Lord… This is not the Lord's work,” she proclaimed, along with other similar statements.

"I hammered to get control and hush her up. She said something about the devil. It was sudden, confusing and heartbreaking. She is normally a gentle soul," explained Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., the presiding officer, who banged the gavel to restore order several times. 

The disruption stunned members of Congress and U.S. Capitol Police took the woman to a local hospital for a mental health evaluation.

I guess they thought she was crazy and suffering a mental breakdown, but I really can’t understand exactly why as these same members of Congress employ a paid professional religious chaplain to get up in front of them in the same spot every single day to babble on about exactly the same kind of nonsense.  

How is it that they can sincerely believe that this woman is crazy, or at least unreasonable, while on the other hand they believe that their Christian chaplain is perfectly reasonable and of sound mind?

This question brings me to comment here on the article by Kevin Vallier referenced in RRND last week entitled: “Christian Belief is Reasonable, So Respect It.” He makes an argument as best he can that theism, revealed religion, the Gospel stories, the Holy Trinity, and thus the whole body of Christianity are all reasonable, sound and rational beliefs which deserve far more respect from intellectuals than they presently enjoy.

As a libertarian, let me acknowledge that I respect the rights of all people to believe anything they like, including any religion, as long as they don’t employ their beliefs to interfere with the rights of others. I think that perfectly reasonable people can often entertain perfectly unreasonable beliefs, that is to say: beliefs which do not rest upon a firm intellectual foundation of reason.

So while most Christians are indeed reasonable people, the truth about Christianity and all other theistic religions is this:

No, it is not reasonable.

It is not reasonable because it specifically rejects reason and the realities of existence again and again as the foundation for human existence, morality and behavior. Theistic religions, including Christianity, are culturally premeditated assaults upon reason. The relentless calls for self denial and sacrifice are wholly irrational, grounded entirely upon an imaginary conceptualized abstraction, and conceived by cunning men for the benefit of their own parasitical human Authority!

The first moral lesson in the Old Testament book of Genesis has God warning Adam and Eve against eating the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. The use of individual consciousness, i.e., reason to discern morality is considered evil and sinful in the Bible – the original sin – against God’s Authority!

From that point on the Bible stories relentlessly assault the concept of human reason and logic as the means by which we should live our lives. Christianity especially demands that men and women live by faith alone. To accomplish that an otherwise reasonable human must be willing to deliberately suspend reason, ignore reality and even sacrifice themselves if called upon to do so by the Authority!

“A scorner seeks wisdom, and finds it not, but knowledge is easy to him that understands; Ways which seem right to man are the ways of death.” Prov. 14:6

“And immediately when Jesus perceived in his spirit that they so reasoned within themselves, [as to why it seemed to them that he was committing blasphemies for claiming the ability to forgive sins] he said unto them, Why reason ye these things in your hearts?” Mark 2:8

“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God,” preached the Apostle Paul “that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.” Romans 12:1-2

“This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart:” Paul: Ephesians 4:17-18

“Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the concision; for we are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.” Paul: Philippians 3:2-3

Vallier maintains that a reasonable, rational and well-informed person can believe in a revealed religion, which includes belief in a divinely inspired set of social practices and sacred texts such as the above, and I agree with him, because reasonable people can often be found to believe in unreasonable ideas and concepts.

So yes, a reasonable person can be a theist, believe in the Gospels and the Holy Trinity, but it does not follow logically that Christian theism, a concept which is entirely imaginary, is based upon reason.

No, it is not reasonable.

Parasite Party Pork Platter Passes

As expected at the 11^th hour, a bipartisan majority of parasites in Congress, led by  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, passed legislation in a deal to end the phony government shutdown, raise the debt ceiling one more time, and keep the spending and borrowing party rolling along as usual until the next hysterical “crisis” pops up in about 3 months time.  

And just like almost every other piece of congressional legislation this “clean” bill passed with plenty of pork heaped upon the parasite party platter.

The lawmakers, for example, made sure that each one of the 800,000 federal workers who were “furloughed” over the last 16 days will receive full back pay “as soon as practicable.” Thus, all received a two week plus fully paid vacation at the expense of U.S. taxpayers.

Dubbed by some conservatives as the "Kentucky Kickback," $2.2 billion in additional funding, a sum which more than triples the original $775 million originally allocated for a dam project on the Ohio River was gratuitously inserted into the bill.

That river, of course, just happens to run through Sen. McConnell's home state of Kentucky.

You have to hand it to a Congress that finds no bill is off limits for pork.

The parasite political swine just can’t help themselves when it comes to pure pork spending with other people’s money. "These people are like alcoholics. They can't resist taking a drink. It's ridiculous. It's absolutely ridiculous," says Arizona Sen. John McCain. "It shows that there are people in this body who are willing to use any occasion to get an outrageous pork-barrel project done at the cost of millions and millions of dollars. It's disgusting."

Residents of the State of Colorado will be happy to learn that the bill allocates $450 million in pork on top of the $100 million from the Department of Transportation Disaster Relief Appropriations Act, for rebuilding projects on the Colorado River affected by recent flooding.

A similar bill died last month after the House declined to vote on it, according to Colorado Sen. Mark Udall. So U.S. taxpayers will now be footing the bill for pure pork projects, not originally intended by Congress, benefiting the citizens of Colorado.

A generous slice of pure pork prize in the sum of $174,000 will go to the widow of the late New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg, one of the richest members of Congress, who died last June. This guy was worth more than $59 million as of 2011, and his parasite pals are giving away a tidy sum to augment his widow’s vast fortune at the taxpayer’s expense.

There’s lots more pork on the platter too, hundreds of $millions more, but you get the picture. It’s disgusting; obscene; parasitical; and irresponsible.

Add to it all the fact that a provision to deny the lawmaker’s and their staff’s generous healthcare insurance subsidies which allow them all to escape the consequences of ObamaCare was scuttled in the final hour, and you have even more congressional unjust enrichment at the expense of the commoners.

By the way, First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign, which was halted because of the shutdown, will be back, along with her famous White House kitchen garden, which went untended during the last two weeks and is now an overgrown mess.

That’s the same garden that she employs with the help of her White House army of servants to harp endlessly on the American people about what they ought to eat and what they ought not to eat.

Well now her garden has gone to seed; the tomatoes are rotting on the vines; and the squirrels ruining the beds. No one is available to tend it. Plans for the annual autumn harvest party -- during which school kids help the First Lady pick everything from okra, sweet potatoes and squash to turnips, garlic and chili peppers – will have to be cancelled.

But if it was so damned important to her and her nanny message to the American people, why didn’t she take her own fat ass out there and tend to it herself? Why didn’t she bring her able bodied teenage daughters out there with her to give them a taste of some honest work for a change? She might have brought along a large group of her elite socialist friends to help out as well.

She surely didn’t have to sit around and wait for it to deteriorate.

That’s part of the trouble with parasites. They don’t like to do honest work.

They simply wait around with their hands out for the parasite party pork platter to pass.  

Bill of Rights Cancelled at Public Schools

Statist State laws in every single jurisdiction within the United States compel young American citizens to attend public or equivalent schools during as many as 13 of their most formative years and require them as well to surrender their most precious Constitutional rights in the process.

The government thinks that it owns people; it treats them that way, particularly young people; and can therefore dictate to them all aspects of their thoughts, speech, and behavior even when they are not physically present in the classroom.

Examples of this government trampling upon the Bill of Rights with respect to school-aged minors are happening every day all across the nation.

Kaitlin Nootbaar, the 2012 valedictorian at Prague High School in Oklahoma was denied her diploma for innocuously using the word "hell" instead of "heck" during her commencement speech. The statist school officials forced her to issue a formal written apology in return for her right to graduate with the rest of her class.

The government believes that straight-‘A’ high-school valedictorian graduating students enjoy no First Amendment rights.

Just this week, Erin Cox, a 17-year-old Massachusetts honor student attending North Andover High School was demoted as captain of her school’s volleyball team and suspended for five games for engaging in a perfectly legal activity on her own time having nothing whatsoever to do with school.

Her “crime” was acting as a designated driver for a friend who contacted her at home asking for help driving home from a party because she was too intoxicated to drive herself. So Cox went to the party site to pick up her friend just as police showed up and started arresting and handing out summonses to several suspected underage drinkers, including Cox, who had not been drinking and was not in possession of alcohol at any time.

Even though she was cleared by the police of any violation the school punished Cox anyway on the dubious grounds that she has violated its zero tolerance alcohol and drug use policies. “The school is really trying to take a very serious and principled stand regarding alcohol,” explained Geoffrey Bok, an attorney who represents the school.

Someone should explain to this pseudo attorney that high-school students are supposed to enjoy Fifth Amendment Constitutional rights just like everyone else in America, and that government public school officials have no legal right to punish them without due process of law for lawful activities they engage in on their own time while not at school.

School district officials in suburban Los Angeles have hired a private firm to monitor and report to them on the Internet social media activities of students, activities they engage in while on their own time away from school.

Glendale, California, is paying $40,500 to the firm to monitor and report on 14,000 middle and high school students' posts on Twitter, Facebook and other social media for one year.

The statist compulsorily education goons are poking their noses into the public postings on social media by middle and high school students – stalking, snooping and spying on them -- ostensibly for the purpose of searching for possible violence, drug use, bullying, truancy and suicidal threats, any “inappropriate behavior” which they will use as a basis for intervention and punishment.

The private spy agency sends a daily report to school authorities upon which students' comments could be causes for concern, explained an official. They monitor whether students are talking about drug use, cutting class or violence or using their Smartphone during class time.

But it is not the function of government operated compulsory education systems to involve themselves with the lives of students while they are not at school. That is true even if there might be a good faith possibility of preventing bad behavior. In a free society, that’s the job of parents, friends and extended family.

"This is the government essentially hiring a contractor to stalk the social media of the kids," explains an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit that defends privacy, free speech and consumer rights. "When the government -- and public schools are part of the government -- engages in any kind of line-crossing and to actually go and gather information about people away from school, that crosses a line," he explains.

Yes, the American government in the 21^st century believes it can cross the line because it thinks that its sheep enjoy no privacy rights. We know for a fact from NSA whistle blower, Edward Snowden, that the government is not limiting its spying activities on children. Big brother is spying on all of us all the time.

And now we know that the Bill of Rights has been cancelled at public schools. 

Let Them Eat Dog Food

“Let them eat cake.”

That’s the infamous phrase commonly attributed to Queen Marie Antoinette, wife of the fabulously wealthy French King Louie XVI, that got their royal heads chopped off during the French Revolution while the common people were starving because the ruling class had all the money. It represents perfectly the utter arrogance of the monarchy and obliviousness of the ruling class to the suffering of the common people.

Two centuries have passed since then yet it appears that little has changed in the attitudes of governments and the ruling class toward their sheep.

Today, figuratively speaking, Jacob Lew, Treasury Secretary of the United States under the feckless Obama administration is saying the very same kind of thing to the nation’s vulnerable sick and old people living on Social Security, Medicare, as well as other low level commoners with respect to the looming government shutdown:

“Let them eat dog food.”

This top cabinet level government parasite delivered a stern warning to Congress last week about the consequences of not raising the debt ceiling, saying that Medicare, Social Security, and military veteran’s checks will likely be first on the government chopping block if the debt ceiling deadline is missed.

His remarks are meant to scare the daylights out of old and sick people so that they will prevail upon their congressmen and senators to cave in to the president’s heavy handed demand to raise the debt ceiling without cutting more and more spending.

He’s deliberately and cynically targeting vulnerable defenseless elderly people who have worked hard all their lives; folks who were forced by government laws into the Social Security and Medicare schemes whether they liked it or not; people who deserve every dime of those retirement benefits, and now are stuck with it as the only means with which to fund their meager health, living and financial needs as they approach the end of their lives.

"Under any scenario, we will be defaulting on obligations," Lew said.

But Lew and the rest of the top government parasites won’t have to worry about their paychecks. The bond holders who hold the massive government debt instruments won’t have to worry about their interest payments. All the grasping foreign nations and their parasite rulers who gobble up $billions in American foreign aid every year, year after year, won’t have to worry about their loot.

Virtually every fat-assed freeloader who currently feeds at the government trough will continue to feed there as usual.  It is only the old, the sick and the vulnerable Americans who will suffer.

"We believe the government would continue to pay interest and principal on its debt, even in the event that the debt limit is not raised, leaving its creditworthiness intact," says Credit-rating agency Moody's in a recent report. Moody's explained that the Treasury Department would find a way to pay interest on its debt above all else. "The debt limit restricts government expenditures to the amount of its incoming revenues; it does not prohibit the government from servicing its debt. There is no direct connection between the debt limit (actually the exhaustion of the Treasury's extraordinary measures to raise funds) and a default."

"The United States should not be put in a position of making such perilous choices for our economy and our citizens," Lew whined. But he conveniently omits the fact that the United States would not be in this position had it not been for the parasite political class spending and borrowing and then spending and borrowing more and more as if the money supply were endless and no extravagance were too much.

The United States government credit card has been maxed out for decades now. But instead of reducing the outrageous spending, balancing the budget and otherwise acting responsibly to get the financial situation under control, it just keeps demanding over and over again that the credit limit be raised, and Congress has caved in every time because Congress is addicted to the drug of recklessly spending money.

The old folks on Social Security and Medicare didn’t get our country into this mess. Far from it.; they are the responsible trusting citizens who paid taxes all their lives, obeyed the government’s laws and lived frugally within their means.

So now Treasury Secretary Lew is saying that their government is going to fuck them over like a bunch of dupes:

“Let them eat dog food.”

GOP lawmakers fight to nullify Establishment Clause

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a unanimous decision in 2011, after many years of contentions litigation, declaring a 29 foot tall Christian cross erected on public land is unconstitutional because it conveys a message of government endorsement of religion in clear violation of the First Amendment Establish Clause.

In 2012, the Supreme Court refused to take the case. Thus the decision of the federal Circuit Court of Appeals is final and constitutes the settled law of the case, right?

Wrong, several Republican U.S. Congressmen are insisting today. That’s because when it comes to their own privately held Christian religion they have no problem whatsoever with violating their solemn oaths to uphold the Constitution, including the First Amendment.

They’re Christians and they want to nullify the Establishment Clause.  

The Court of Appeals noted that this same huge Christian cross was dedicated on Easter Sunday in La Jolla, CA, and used for religious gatherings on public government property for nearly three decades before it became part of a memorial dedicated in 1954 in honor of Korean War veterans. It also acknowledged that the community of La Jolla has a "well-documented history" of anti-Semitism from the 1920s to around 1970.

Never-the-less, instead of simply removing the cross from public property as the court has ordered; instead of perhaps erecting it elsewhere in a private setting where no one would object to it, the American Center for Law and Justice filed a brief in U.S. District Court on behalf of 18 GOP members of Congress in yet another legal effort to have the court ignore the Establishment Clause.

ACLJ Chief Counsel Jay Sekulow said putting the memorial in the hands of a private nonprofit group, the Mount Soledad Memorial Association, would be an appropriate alternative to removing the memorial's cross. "We're urging the court to permit a private organization to obtain and operate the war memorial – a remedy that would remove any constitutional questions and protect this longstanding tribute to our men and women in uniform," says Sekulow.

City officials maintain that this Christian cross is part of a secular war memorial embraced by San Diego area residents who in 2005 overwhelmingly approved a measure to preserve it by donating it to the federal government.

They actually believe that a Christian cross sends a secular message and that the religious display is OK if they’ve donated it to the federal government. So they donated just that part of the land under the cross to the federal government, but simply can’t understand now why the courts have said that ruse doesn’t render the display constitutional.

Religionists will do anything to try to get around the Establishment Clause.

Officials for the city of DeLand, Fla., for example, are also fighting to keep a Christian cross displayed prominently on their city seal despite the fact that the religious symbol constitutes a clear endorsement of religion by the city in violation of the Establishment Clause.  

"This is an intrusion of religion into the world of government," explained Rabbi Merrill Shapiro, president of the Flagler County chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. "And the world of government and the world of religion should be separate as called for in the First Amendment of the United States constitution.”When the government establishes a Christian cross as part of its official seal, it tends to make non-Christians feel "like second-class citizens."

Not surprisingly, the City is taking the position that a Christian cross is not religious. "Nothing in the history of the city's seal suggests that it was adopted to promote any particular religion or even religion in general," declared DeLand City Attorney Darren Elkind.

Christian crosses are not religious symbols.

Christian crosses are secular symbols.

That’s the type of excuses we get when religiously oriented lawmakers fight perpetually to nullify the Establishment Clause. 

Happy Shutdown Vacation Holiday

I want to take this opportunity to wish all you federal government parasites out there a very merry and happy shutdown vacation holiday as you enjoy your time off from work secure in the knowledge that none of you will lose so much as a penny in your generous pay and benefits.

Yes, as is always the case, the very last of the people who lose out in this ludicrous government shutdown fiasco will be the folks who reside within the bloated ranks of government agents, employees and officials.

That’s right. The republican majority in the House of Representatives together with all the congressional democrats, the Senate, as well as the President of the United States – that’s 100% of our nation’s pinnacle parasite political class -- are going to fast track legislation this week which will guarantee each of the 800,000 furloughed federal workers affected by the shutdown, now it it’s eighth day, all of their back pay and benefits as soon as it ends as of course it surely will.

It is not a question of whether but only of when. In the meantime 800,000 government leaches are living it up while enjoying a fully paid vacation holiday at the expense of the taxpayers; you know, the only people who are actually going to be affected adversely by the shutdown charade.

So the two opposing factions in this meaningless fiscal debate can bicker and quarrel as long as they like and it won’t make the slightest bit of difference to anyone feeding at the government trough. Why should they worry? They’ll all get paid in full while the rest of the country suffers the inconvenience of it all.   

"This isn't some damn game," House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said, referring to a quote in The Wall Street Journal from an anonymous White House official that "we are winning ... It doesn't really matter to us" how long the shutdown lasts, as the White House and Democrats held to their position of agreeing to negotiate only after the government is reopened and the $16.7 trillion debt limit raised.

But it is indeed a game. The shutdown will end, the debt ceiling will be raised, all the parasites will be paid, and the lumbering leviathan of government will just keep rolling along, spending more and more money, increasing the debt, and taking the United States of America and its people further down the path to eventual bankruptcy and financial ruin.

More than 100 stopgap continuing resolutions have passed without much difficulty since the last shutdown in 1996. This time the issue is just another temporary funding measure to keep the government fully open through mid-November or mid-December, at which time we will face yet another financial crisis in this dance of fiscal death.

"Republicans are eager to end the shutdown and move ahead with the fiscal and economic reforms that our country so urgently needs," said Texas Sen. John Cornyn in the GOP's weekly address. "I was disappointed when certain parts of the federal government were forced to shut down because Senate Democrats refused to make any changes whatsoever to the deeply flawed health care law known as Obamacare."

Democrats and the President say they are eager to end the shutdown too; they just won’t compromise unless they first get "clean" stopgap spending bills and debt-limit increases. "The American people don't get to demand ransom in exchange for doing their job," Obama said in his address. "Neither does Congress."

And on and on; surely there will be many more shutdowns to come.

In the meantime its government business as usual as the Pentagon is sending several new $50 million cargo planes straight from the assembly line to mothballs because it has no use for them, yet it still hasn’t stopped ordering the aircraft, according to a report.

A dozen nearly new Italian-built C-27J Spartans have already been shipped to an Air Force facility in Arizona dubbed “the boneyard,” and five more currently under construction are likely headed for the same fate. The boneyard is located at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, where some 4,400 aircraft and 13 aerospace vehicles, worth more than $35 billion, sit unused and deteriorating in the hot sun.

What’s a mere $35 billion to these American military parasites? It amounts to just a miniscule fraction of the almost $17 trillion of our ever increasing national debt. It’s pocket change to them.

So until the next financial crisis and government shutdown, I say: Happy shutdown vacation holiday to all, and to all a good night.

Unrepentant Parasites

“My sister just totally didn't deserve this,” lamented Amy Carey-Jones sorrowfully when she heard the news that her sister, Miriam Carey, was gunned down by government goons, i.e., Washington D.C. police and secret service agents, on the streets of the nation’s Capitol yesterday.

"I just saw the same clip over and over," she acknowledged, but refused to believe it. "I did recognize the car. It just didn't seem real… We are still trying to put the pieces together… We will never know what Mariam was thinking in those last hours before she died, and we can only speculate. Our real concern is why (this happened) and were things done properly? Was there some other way she could have been helped so that it didn't end tragically?"

Why indeed!

Yes, of course there were other ways which would have insured that the situation didn’t end tragically. The goons are the ones who escalated the situation and initiated the massive high-speed car chase. No one’s life was in danger until they recklessly started that. There was no particular need or compelling necessity to hurry at all costs to capture a suspect who had not attacked anyone but was merely trying to elude them.

Likewise, there was no need for any gun fire at all against a suspect who was clearly not confronting them, (except that they might properly have used their guns to shoot out her tires.) 

She was shot dead after her car was stopped and after she had exited the vehicle unarmed. Obviously, when she got out of the car she was no longer in a position to use it as a weapon, and there is no evidence that she had used it as a weapon beforehand; she was only trying to get away.

This was just another example of murder by cop. The shooting was not justified by any reasonable objective standard of proper police conduct. The woman was not the aggressor here. The government goons were the aggressors.

But don’t expect any agreement from Washington Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy Lanier, who insisted that officers of the U.S. Capitol Police and Secret Service acted within commonly accepted use-of-force policies and practices as they riddled the young woman’s body with bullets.

And don’t expect any repentance from the political parasite members of Congress, who cowered pathetically within their plush Capitol Hill offices the whole time, and later, upon learning that they were safe, gave the murderous government goons a standing ovation for assassinating the poor unarmed woman in front of her little 1-year-old infant.

That’s right. Today, now that these same political class parasites, the ones who panicked in mortal fear like lemmings only yesterday; after they know for certain that this incident had nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism; that their own miserable lives were not threatened by her conduct for one second; that she was totally unarmed and not attacking anyone; that she was confused and suffering from mental illness which lead her to try eluding the goon squad of government agents pursuing her; there is not one single peep of regret or expression of remorse from the lot of them for what happened to her and for their sickening response of elation in support of her murderers when they learned of her death.

Instead, the parasitical worms of Capitol Hill are carrying on their incompetent business as usual without looking back and without a care in the world. As long as their worthless hides have been preserved they could care less about the poor innocuous sick soul who was mercilessly slaughtered Rambo-style on their behalf.

A few months after her baby daughter was born, Miriam Carey was diagnosed with postpartum depression with psychosis, the sisters said. Postpartum psychosis can cause delusions and paranoia, according to medical experts.

"There wasn't a pattern. It was something that occurred suddenly," Carey-Jones said. "She seemed overwhelmed. There was a lot of stress.” Otherwise, she was a "vibrant" woman who had everything to live for -- especially her 1-year-old daughter, the sisters explained.

"She always talked about teaching. Her field was dental hygienist, and she wanted to go further and give back in the field," Carey-Jones said.

"My sister just totally didn't deserve this," said Valarie Carey, who was a New York police officer. "There are going to be a lot of different stories being told by people that claim they may know her. They don't. She was a law-abiding citizen. She had no political agenda."

Idella Carey, the victim’s mother, said her daughter had "no history of violence."

Today the Capitol Hill parasites know all of this but remain unrepentant. They no-doubt still believe that she deserved it.