Quid pro quo

The Supreme Court has declared that the display of the Ten commandments at courthouses is unconstitutional.

What an enormous, monumental victory for all us radicallly NonChristianfundamentalists! What We have succeeded in censoring is the broadcast of moral imperatives that those of us with a modicum of intelligence (not to mention good will) would find compelling, regardless of our religious convictions. But after all, isn't it our duty as non-thinking mean spirited Americans to prevent the encroachment of religious doctrine at any cost.

I'm reminded of the proscription against public displays of Christian symbols at Santa Claus time which has, as a matter of fact, represented something of a tragedy for countless Jewish and Moslem children (including a couple of my own), much to the dismay also of their thoughtful parents.

Nobody is Perfect!

The author of this is unknown to me; I didn't write it. But it certainly expresses my feelings:

"Nobody is perfect. Each of us is a mixture of good qualities and some perhaps not-so-good qualities. In considering our fellow man beings we should remember his good qualities and realize that his faults only prove that he is, after all, a human being. We should keep from making harsh judgement of a person just because he happens to be a dirty, rotten, no good son-of-a- bitch."

Indeed.

Calling All Republicans

Please consider the last defense budget. At #692B, 20% of the domestic total and 47% of the world's total (it's proposed to be over $700B this year). Now, consider the top 20 nations in the world in terms of military spending. The next 19 after us (including China and Russia as numbers 2 & 3 at $100B and $56B) total $615B in all; far short of America's expenditure alone.

Hey jackasses, stop the insanity! You want no tax increases? Then kill the monster.

Lindsay's At It Again

She's been called back into court. The news, predictably, provoked a rash of vitriolic pronouncements in the public comments section of online CNN.

My take: I'm sorry for her weakness, but also for MY OWN, and for YOURS, whatever it may be. I love her and want her to be well.

Dogs

My fantasy of one of the better possible worlds would be a place where pet shops and backyard breeders did not sell dogs or cats, and where shelters were the only place to get one (neutered, microchipped, and vaccinated), at least until the terrible overpopulation problem is solved. Too many of us are insensitive to how precious these innocent helpless lives are, every single one of them!

I believe that behavioral problems are correctable with time and patience. We adopted a pit bull when she was 3.5 years old, a terror who was apparently brutalized in someone's attempt to raise a watchdog. Five years later, we have the sweetest, gentlest, lover of all living things. She knows that she is loved, and exactly like any of us, responds in kind.

I read an article about how to acclimate one's pet to the vet's office. This is not my concern. At the vet's office my coonhound Tess is the very picture of calm, placid serenity. I, on the other hand, am a screaming wreck, yapping, snapping, and pooping all over the floor.

I tell my Tess that I love her (absolute truth!), that she's pretty and sweet, and that she's my puppy (she's 7). She has no idea of what I'm talking about, but the effect is the same as if she did, for both of us.

How about this: In the best of all possible worlds would anyone own any living thing? I'm companion/brother/father/lover to three special needs senior dogs and a 12 year old cat. They are not my pets, because I refuse to objectify them. They are not chattels; I take no rights of ownership. I feed and shelter them, take care of their medical needs, and love on them. I need to. But of course, I'm not your role model.

Make what you will of it.

Collateral Damage

I just read an encouraging update on Gabby Giffords's condition. It caused me to revisit my experience when the story first broke. This from my archive:

Tucson, AZ (CNN) - She was born on September 11, 2001 and died in Saturday's shootings in Arizona. Christina Green's father says the nine years in between were special. "It does say something about our society that our daughter was born on a tragic day and taken out on a tragic day," John Green told CNN's Casey Wian Sunday. Christina attended the event hosted by Rep. Gabrielle Giffords because she had recently been chosen for the student council at Mesa Verde Elementary School, where families left flowers and a note that read, in part, "We are deeply saddened by the loss of this precious child."

She didn't belong here, and if you weep as I do, you don't belong here either. Don't you dare forget her.

Slumdog Millionaire

Finally, to relieve the tedium of idleness at my daughters' home, I found and loaded a DVD of the subject film. I did not discover what all the shouting was about. My boredom was unremitted and, as a matter of fact, overburdened by absolute disgust.

That puzzled me. Could my aesthetics be so unevolved as to not "get it" as Roger Ebert so empathically did? Or am I in error for looking for art in film, intead of some other abstraction (a lesson, an allegory, a demonstration) meant somehow to edify? It only bothered me for an instant, until I remembered that I am (or try to be) my own person. and that particular person watches movies for one reason; an emotional experience that has, in the main, positive elements. I'm not talking about happy endings, but stories that exalt the beauty and passion of  another's struggle, or (and) offer me such.

Specifically, this does not include the gratuitous tableau of a little boy falling over his head into a full latrine hole and, for goodness's sake, emerging from it.

I'm proud to be a...I don't know. A nose picker, maybe?

Mabel (an alias) is a lay reporter for CNN. She's proud to be a Muslim, having been weaned away from her previous fantasy because her boyfriend was Muslim, and she found him to be "more at peace" (when he zonked out on cocaine he demonstrated the same result, but the Muslim alternative was much cheaper).

But I digress, because what I really want to observe is her pride, and everyone else's. Like:
I'm proud to be gay.
I'm proud to be a Republican.
I'm proud to be (fill in the color).

I'm proud to be a left handed Aries with Aquarius rising, and I"m going to organize a LeftHandedAriesWithAquariusRisng Pride Parade.

Well Richie, what's your problem?

My problem is that I fail completely to understand how you fall in love with your own excellence for something that you are, through no volition of your own, or/and for something that you have become to which no unique virtue attaches (like tolerance, patience, courage, empathy...).

You suppose we'll ever see a "Gay Humility Parade"?

Yeah, bet me!

Got this from one of my correspondents the other day. I hasten to state, an individual for whom I feel affection, in spite of his not infrequent inclination to (virtually) froth at the mouth and bleed from the eyeballs with hysterical pronouncements, reeking with sanctimony, like what follows here. I have not reproduced the flying American eagle graphic nor the soaring inspirational red/white/blue font, but I have left the capitalization intact. Here we go:

<START RANT>
BET YOU'LL SEND IT!!
88% will send this on...
Should be a 100% by 10/1/10
Nov 2010
"Change is a comin'"
Borders: CLOSED
Language: ENGLISH
Culture: CONSTITUTION, BILL OF RIGHTS,
and the BIBLE
NOVEMBER 2010
"CHANGE" IS A COMIN'"
We the people are coming!
I PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE TO THE FLAG,
OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ,
AND TO THE REPUBLIC FOR WHICH IT STANDS,
ONE NATION UNDER GOD,
INDIVISIBLE, WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL!
IN GOD WE TRUST
<END RANT>

I have my own theory, that if a referendum were to be held today about the propriety of references in this context to the bible, god, and such, that a substantial number of us, maybe even a majority, would reject such notions. Actually, it's more like a forlorn hope. I invite your consideration.

But right now I'm here to pose a question (a real question, for which I earnestly solicit an answer). Why is it that such pronouncements, loaded with reactionary righteousness (and quite frequently with falsehoods posing as fact), come invariably  from the (pretty far to the) right, the Christian religious, and those of us who wear "patriotism" like a badge? That is to say, from those uncomfortable with the humanistic persuasion of the rest of us.

I'm waiting....

Please, Sarah, shut up already!

Just found out what it takes to get Sarah Palin to speak at your event. How about A luxury hotel suite, a private Learjet, "framed" audience questions, and $75,000. This information courtesy of a California judge who denied Cal State Stanislaus' attempt at secrecy, and ordered disclosure.

That's what it takes to get her to speak.

Begs another question, doesn't it?

Mind who's own business?

So, a bunch of (mostly) young people demonstrated on Venice Beach for gender equality, the girls by going topless, the guys wearing bikini tops. So far, so good.

Did the cops come? No (the kids had permission). What about a rabbi, imam, or maybe a pujari or a kannushi? No, none of those guys. But never fear; those vaunted defenders of our eternal salvation, the Jesus people, were right there, demonstrating to defend us from blasphemeous indecency. Are we grateful? No again. Because we know something about them...that they are too busily occupied elsewhere to discover for themselves.

I admit to a prejudice, but well founded, and based mostly on my own personal brand of "faith", arrived at over many years of observing how such people function. Hey everybody, Eureka! Getting into your shit is a very good way to avoid dealing with one's own! And why, pray, is this so uniquely characteristic of the activist Christian faithful?

Tell me; I'm all ears.

Justice, just for fun.

Just read Bob Greene's article for CNN, putting forward the (tongue in cheek) possibility that Jury deliberations might be televised for the entertainment of the viewing public.

I can see it now, nullification of the evidence by a gang of cretins, complete with laugh track, and interspersed with earnest emtreaties to buy one piece or another of Detroit manufactured crap.

TV network justice. Wow, what fun!

Gound Zero Mosque?

I'll jump right in here with a comment on CNN's report about the contemplated ground zero mosque. I fully understand President Obama's position as I interpret it. I accept the Moslem community's legal right to proceed, and like Obama, I question the wisdom of doing so. And having said that...

...I refrain from blasphemy in the presence of believers, out of empathy for their feelings. I have no emotional investment in this issue, but It's obvious that many people do. With their understanding of that, the developers of this project are displaying insensitivity bordering on arrogance. Yes, apparently they have the legal right to proceed with their plans.

And damn them if they do.

A peeve

I know a bright person, 140 score on the WAIS IQ index, a SAT score of 2342, who passed the the test for MENSA with flying colors, but declined membership because she doesn't feel sufficiently elite for that organization. She will not be further identified here.

She's fond of posting to various internet "venues" where others also anonymously contribute all kinds of thoughts on the nature and/or condition of almost anything. She is by nature, and by most accounts, a gentle,  tolerant, and of course thoughtful individual, and so her discourse is worthy of consideration. As it happens, her opinions are frequently at odds with those of others that I choose to identify (arguably) as her intellectual inferiors. I do not complain of this. But when invective like  "idiot", "moron", "stupid", and such are hurled at her (a frequent phenomenon) by others who don't share her opinion, I am disgusted. Why? Not just because these appellations are inappropriate, but because in intellectual intercourse nothing is uglier to me than the arrogant and toxic pronouncements of the proud, intemperate, and demonstrably ignorant. And especially those of that ilk who hide behind a screen name.

Government, of the person, by the person, for the person...

Today I saw someone else's post somewhere, blaming the Kyrgyz government's improper handling of the ethnic violence there on the "nomadic and uneducated" nature of the governing officials' backgrounds. He's got it all wrong.

The historical dysfunction of several FSU governments has nothing to do with the mode of living nor the education of their satraps, and everything to do with them being old enough to remember, and to maybe even have experienced the benefits accruing from their status in the old communist regime. And now, having donned the fashionable mantle of "democracy", they find themselves in a position to accept largess from the West (read Uncle Sam) in the form of money thrown indiscriminately at every problem. Money that, in the main, adds to their personal wealth and so exacerbates the problem. When this generation of dinosaurs dies out and the younger Kyrgyz people are no longer willing to accept the corruption it will disappear, regardless of America's intervention.

BTW, I spent years in Kyrgyzstan, finally obliged to escape across the Kazahk border to avoid being the victim of government sanctioned extortion. I know wherefrom I speak.

Let me introduce myself (in part)

Call me Rich. The URL I've chosen contains the transliterated Russian word for enough (simply because everything appropriate I could think of in English has already been taken). "Enough" seems appropriate to my purpose; to rise in my offerings to the ideal of "sufficient" without descending into "superfluous". Call me on it if I fail.

You may note my habit of frequent parenthesizing. I'm aware of it, it suits my mode of expression, and I intend to continue the usage. Call it a (sort of) transcribed speech impediment if you wish.

I'm 81, a small, skinny, bright, pacific, and curious man living alone but for my dearest Tess, a 5.5 year old Bluetick Coonhound who came to me from the local animal shelter to adopt me, and has on occasion kept me alive. I tend toward the liberal, both politically and socially. I am not religious in the conventional sense, that is to say I reject the fantasy of a benevolent god, in who's image I am supposedly formed. Which is also to say I'm a humanist, and an existentialist. I am a pensioner, formerly involved in manufacturing engineering, quality assurance, and management to feed my body, and in volunteering in service to others to feed my soul.

It's my intention here to relate vignettes of my own odyssey, my take on the issues of the day, and personal experiences as they may occur. I value good faith interchange, and I earnestly solicit honest questions or comments about my offerings. That is, please no comments disguised as questions. Those of you who are products of human evolution will take my meaning.