Tolerance Centers

“Anything that helps people get over their ignorance about other people's cultures and religions is a good thing. If Islamic Centers of tolerance even in New York with its many cultures and religions will create more understanding which will help keep the peace, but other Islamic centers of tolerance are need throughout our nation maybe that would prevent another 9/11 and get us out of these wars on Islam (if our war machine will let that happen)”
The fact that Americans need more tolerance and understanding does not mean others do not need it as well. The seeds of 9/11 go back to the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War I when the British and Americans split up the Middle East into countries they can control. (They thought so anyway). It may not seem like it but the human race has improved over time and will continue to do so. There are around 600,000 Muslims in the New York area with one of their leaders or Imam is Abdul Rauf who according the a New York Times article in the Sunday August 22nd 2010 paper has been trying his whole life to make a peaceful bridge between Americans and Islam. Abdul has been speaking around the Middle east to Muslims on how they should responded to American and European attacks on Islam like the Swiss ban on minarets saying “Why not have a mosque that looks Swiss?” Islam in America must take into account American values, but so must American take into account Islamic Values. True Islamic law or Sharing Law is not unlike Christian or Jewish Law all of which have been radicalized its fundamentalist groups like the Taliban, right wing Christian or Jewish Groups. Maybe it is wishful thinking that Tolerance Centers will make people take another look at the teachings of their own faith.

Tea party thinking Obama is a Marxist

No Barack Obama is not a Marxist in fact Marx himself said that he was no Marxist and did not believe in revolutionary change, but that someday Capitalism will give way to Socialism. Capitalism failed in 1873, 1929, 1987, 2008 and will fail again it is not the government that failed, but the business community. The Chinese workers started way behind the American workers, but are catching up. Presidents or governments don’t matter as much as Tea Partiers think it is which people are interested to investing in the future.
What do the more serious Tea partiers (actually Fiscal Conservatives) never mind the racists and anti-government kool aid drinkers, lower Taxes and cut spending, Ok sounds good, but what spending do we cut your Police, Fireman, Hospitals, they would say Hell NO! How about cutting food stamps programs for the poor then it would be OK. The fact is everyone like socialist programs that benefit them or their families, but not someone else.
Fiscal Conservatives do have a point that we must live within a budget and all programs have to be within that budget. Just like your household budget nations must set priorities with necessaries coming first like health, Education, infrastructure (electrical Grid, high speed railroads, roadways and bridges) and if the is any money left the War Department. The American Taxpayer can no longer afford to police the world a international force paid for by the taxpayers of all nations is what is needed.

Military-adventurism

Military-adventurism just leads to more Military-adventurism, besides if they cut all the waste out of the Military they could cut the Military budget in half without touching it’s effectiveness. If you look at Governments that who thought Military-adventurism would make them safer from Alexander the great on have failed to make them safe and lead to more Wars. The United States more any nation have fought War after War to solve problems that could have been solved and should have been solved peaceably for example in 1775 the biggest debate was that freedom for all also meant the slaves. If they had ended slavery there and then there would not have had to fight a bloody Civil War ninety years later. We can’t change the past, we can only change the future, and we can only hope we get wise enough to solve problems peaceably.

Why Legalize Pot?

WWhen something doesn’t work, why continue to waste time and Taxpayer dollars on the “War on Drugs”. If you legalize marijuana you will at least cut into the profits of the Drug Lords which will bring down the border fighting along the US and Mexican border. If you legalize marijuana you will empty the prisons of the pot heads making more room for real criminals. If you legalize Marijuana you can tax it there by saving taxpayers money both on law enforcement end and the if you use it you pay for it end. We can fight Marijuana use the same way that we fight cigarette smoking and alcohol use both of which are more successfully than the “War on Drugs”

Conservatives Apology to BP

Conservatives want the American Taxpayers to apologize to BP and big oil in General for making them pay at least some of the money needed to fix their mess in the Gulf. 

The American over dependence  on oil started about a hundred years ago when the oil barons like John D Rockefeller decided for us that we go with the internal combustion engine instead of the developing the electric engine and destroying one of the best Mass transit systems in the world. So they could see better profits and it worked for them. The American people were kept happy with artificial low Gas prices After World War one and the Collapse of the Ottoman empire when the British and American installed puppet dictators in the oil rich middle east.

Well we are now paying the price in more ways than one.     

These are the best of times, not the worst of times

While doing Genealogy I have come to realize that my generation must be the luckiest ever born for my family suffered on the low end of Society for at least the last three hundred years. There were many branches of the Family Tree that go back to Ireland were they were probably Tenant Farmers living at the whim of their lord. Some moved on to Scotland to work in the factories and mills. There is plenty of evidence that until the latter part of the ninth century many of them couldn’t read or write signing their marriage certificates with an X. at least on my father’s side I think my grandparents were the first one to go to school for it wasn’t considered necessary for poor laborers to be educated until factory owners need them to be more skilled. Even after they were sent to school most only went to school until they were fourteen reporting the next day to the factories, mills or mines. My Mother told me that she left school at nine years old first working in the fields picking strawberries then in the wool mills of Alva Scotland. When she was about twenty years old her mother arranged for her and two of her cousins go to New York. The year was 1929 so they left one depression for another. They worked as Maids in Brooklyn, her two cousins getting home sick went back to Scotland. My mother stayed only because she met my father who had just arrived in New York himself. My Dad left Scotland because he was an Irish Catholic in a country that hated both and let my father know it. My brother, sister and me have had it easy compared to the generations just before us and I am sure the whole family hopes for a even better future.
I think most work class people have similar stories one generation trying to improve the lot of the next and our generation. Certainly we lived through best economic times due to the “cold war” and the industrial complex built up since just before World War Two. Now since the beginning of our nation the wealthier class has tried to keep the lower classes in check feeding them just enough to keep them quiet. We have been feed well enough in my life time to make a lot of people think they are middle class, but that was by exploiting working class people in other nations. The improvement in commutations first with Radio, then with Television and now with the Internet it is getting hard for the upper classes to control the information flow between the working people of the world. It is always hard to forecast the future, but if history teaches us anything it is that the lot of common people is very slowly getting better. It may not seem like at any one moment in time, but the working people of the world are more aware today than they ever were, they only have to listen to all points

Futile Gestures

A Texas man flies his plane into a Office building where the US Government’s IRS has offices, Senator bails out because the US Senate is a “Dysfunctional System”, Obama talking to Republicans all these have one thing in common they are all Futile Gestures and I know something about Futile Gestures I like hundreds of millions of people around the world in 2002-2003 protested going to war and killing even more people, you can see where that got us. It is hard to feel sorry for a Texas man with Tax troubles the fact he own a plane means he was better off than most people in this world. Lucky he did kill anybody except himself, as for the IRS he might have made the one office’s work a little harder and he got his 15 minutes of fame too bad he can’t enjoy it. Then there was Evan Bayh Quit the senate instead of staying to try to make it work better, from what I read he seems not to have a very good record in the Senate anyway, not everyone is cut out to be a Legislator so Evan don’t let the door hit you on your way out. It hasn’t matter how much Obama gives in to the Republicans they will stonewall him every time. We need to change our system of government from a Republic to the parliamentary System it is not perfect, but it might work better than what we got.
+

Rambling on about Religion and Politics and so on

The views expressed in this blog are mine, which are contently under review, subject to change if some buddy has a better idea I listen. When you read the Bible did you ever wonder why Jesus didn’t write a Gospel? We have to read Mark, Matthew, Luke and John all written with a little different version of the same story about his message. Maybe Jesus wanted us to search out and learn how God created the world rather than telling him. If we read the Bible horizontally rather than vertically we see the differences and must use our own reasoning to understand Jesus’ message. Jesus’ message is or should the heart of the Christian religion. (not the Old Testament or Saint Paul) Jesus’ message to me is that we should all work to make sure that everyone in our society is provided with their basic needs, that everyone in society is equal. Just saying his name no matter how many times is not enough, reading his words, but not thinking about what they mean is not enough. I hope when people say they are living with Jesus that is what they mean. When the communist took over Russia I wonder why they turned against religion Carl Marx’s message is very much in sync with the message of Jesus, but a guess it was more about power and who has the ears of the Russian people mattered more. What I hear and read about Carl Marx is that he wanted to build on capitalism not replace it and some countries have done that successfully. It shouldn’t take a tragedy Like New Orleans or Haiti for us to realize the need of others, but we can’t change the past and we can only hope for a better tomorrow, but we can change the present which is not always easy. If we do away with sweatshops we will have to pay more at Wal-Mart. Now are we willing to do that and lower a own standard of living to raise another person’s standard so can feed and educate their children. I heard a story of a woman in Bangladesh that formed a union to raise the workers pay at the Shirt factory (Sweatshop) where she worked from a penny a shirt to two pennies a shirt so that they could give their children meat with their rice, but Wal-Mart who was the one buying the shirts said no and in fact would cut their pay to penny for two shirts or they would find another country willing to make the shirts for less. The people at Wal-Mart are not bad people to them it is just business “the bottom Line” they are doing what their customers want. So praying, going to church every Sunday is the easy part, living as a Christian is the hard part. Politicians don’t make that easy either they tell the people what they want to hear which is changed by the Media just to make it even more confusing.
I know some people will get offended by this blog so I am not going to put it on Facebook , just on my blog page and ancestry.com for in doing Genealogy I came to realize that I don’t know how these people thought and maybe if anyone in the future wondered that about me well here it is.

Money Talks, People Work

The latest ruling by the Supreme Court 5 to 4, that Corporations have the right to overshadow middle/working class Americans access to their government. This is misusing the First Amendment as they have even before the ink was dry on the First Amendment to the Constitution. The Framers our Government were all rich land owners who wanted to make sure that they always held the power over the working class Americans. They even kept the vote to themselves for to vote you had to be a Rich, White, a man and a land owner. Over the last 234 years the class warfare between middle/working class activist and Rich land owners/corporations, the activist have little by little gained the rights for different groups among the American people. The battles are between the weak and the powerful so the progress is slow taking generations and sometimes it may seem hopeless like after the big losses we just took, but if you look at history you see that we are gaining ground. We can gain more ground if we don’t stop for Tea Parties.