The latest skirmish is the one aledgedly waged by evil secular humanists  – or future candidates for hell as some would say – over compelling Christian hospitals to offer abortion services against their beliefs.

In this particular war, however, Christians have a point. It’s obvious that if a religion were compelled to offer the offending services it would violate the freedom of religion clause whether the majority of followers – for instance, Catholics – follow church teachings or not. But, that’s a narrow view. It excludes the beliefs of others to benefit to narrow, but powerful, Christian beliefs. The First Amendment applies to them too.

But, there is a compromise.

Many secular people don’t argue so much about religion as they do imposing religious beliefs on others. They object to the government giving religious enterprises special rights by exempting them from taxes and providing funding for some of their enterprises.

The compromise here is easily evident. If religions want to offer services to the public, but not offend their own beliefs, forsaking government funding for religion-owned businesses should be on the table. If a religion wants to operate secular businesses – like schools or hospitals – they have two choices. Stop asking the rest of the nation to pay your businesses in support of your specific religious teachings. Or,  stop providing services to those who do not share your beliefs.

There are positives in this compromise. Religions would no longer be required to provide services against their beliefs. They could provide any service they want to any person they want. The secular community would get relief for their complaints about government policies that are against their beliefs. Both sides get a sturdier wall between church and state to resist the evils of theocracy, which isn’t good for anyone, even the Christians.

However, there are some problems too. People living in areas where religion-affiliated health care is the only practical choice will have to find their care in between different church decisions that conflict with their ability to get dogmatically unfettered care or travel far to find it. However, there are ways to mitigate that issue.

There might also be some degradation of education and charitable services through reduced government funding, but again, there are mitigation solutions for this as well.

Given the religious and political trench warfare of our times, these solutions will never be mentioned, much less adopted. Both sides will agitate for solutions that require total capitulation from their ideological foes. These ideas may make things fairer, but neither side will buy into them.

After all, compromises are “one size fits all” and so, by definition, fit no one perfectly.

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New revelations about the two people involved in the tragedy arrive almost by the minute. Depending mostly on your political bent, Trayvon is the bad guy with a hoodie-full of malice aforethought and ready to spring into deadly action against poor George Zimmerman. But no, George is a hapless Neighborhood Watch volunteer in the wrong place at the wrong time just doing his undeputized act of public service.

Everyone from slap-silly Congressmen (and their opponents) to pundits to run-of-the mill citizens feel perfectly justified in  ripping their opposing side a new one based on uninvestigated and unverified statements from a bunch of people who know nothing in dead-solid certainty about who is guilty or innocent.

OJ Part Deux

This is OJ Part Deux. Everyone has an opinion. Everyone feels they “know” what happened and everyone will howl like hot air siroccos bloviating like an Oklahoma dust bowl about unfairness after the investigations and sentencing are done. There is no way this case can now be fair. The concept of innocent until proven guilty has been well and truly trampled.

Part of the public’s visceral reaction is a deep belief that our justice system can’t do anything except tyrannically rob everyone of their Constitutional rights, even though the public’s constant screeds are already doing that far more effectively.

Part of it is also a hyper-sensitivity to anything remotely racial. Had this been one of the dozens of white-on-white, black-on-black, or Insert Ethnicity Here-on- Insert Ethnicity Here crimes that happen every day, we’d all be listening to Rick Santorum being the world’s biggest nutcase (well, next to Michele Bachmann) instead.

Asking Americans to calm down and let the facts surface as they should is a lost cause. The facts of this whole disgraceful crime will come eventually come from both sides. That is the nature of criminal cases. Never is one side or the other totally wrong or totally right. Almost no one stands up, claims responsibility, and then provides air-tight facts to prove their confession. Ain’t gonna happen, regardless of what the public thinks.

Blathering Everyone Into a Lather

Did OJ do it? I think so given what I saw of the trial. Had I been in the jury room where some information never appeared, I might have felt differently. Did Zimmerman do it? Was Trayvon simply a good boy shot by a rabidly racist Rent-a-Cop? As with the Juice’s trial I don’t know and neither does anyone else, despite their self-ordained “expert” status.

It would behoove everyone to settle down and let the justice system run its course without all the blather. At the end of the day, you can fault the jury and judge as much as you like. At least we will have more of the facts than we do today.

Justice is an imperfect thing, regardless of who metes it out and fairness is a subjective thing – especially when someone may end up with a needle in their arm based on that subjectivity.

When all is said and done, you don’t get to make the decision, the jury does whether you like it or not.

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ADRIAN! - "In this corner...Rockin' Rick 'Rocky' Santorum"

I don’t know if Rick Santorum is a racist. I know he says many stupid things, so he might be an idiot, or maybe a racist idiot. It is hard to tell when a person has a brain the size of an empty, withered walnut.

But, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. Let’s assume he’s an earnest man without a trace of racism and that he really believes, “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them other people’s money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn their money and provide for themselves and their families. The best way to do that is to get the manufacturing sector of the economy rolling.”

Minorities are as Rare as Untipped Iowan Cows
Let’s forget that most welfare payments go to white people and let’s forget that 91% of Iowans are white. Minorities in Iowa are as rare as untipped cows.

Getting manufacturing going is important. If it was working everyone in the economy would be better off, even the rich. However, many American manufacturers are so far gone they can’t come back. Plus, there are fewer people who can afford products, regardless of where they’re made. The golden goose has been fed rat poison by over-consumption and under-manufacturing.

Santorum rightly makes the point that while minorities aren’t the bulk of the welfare population, they are disproportionately represented. You know, sort of like the 1 Percenters. So, programs to help them get out and, “give them the opportunity to go out and earn their money and provide for themselves and their families,” is a tough, withered walnut shell to crack.

Santorum and others of his ilk want to put the poor back to work without funding schools, job training, medical care, affordable housing, or anything else that jacks up Bill Gates’ tax rate. In fact, some Republicans want the poor to pay more in taxes. What sort of math allows you to raise the poor’s taxes by 50% without understanding that 50% of nothing is, urm, NOTHING?!!

Welfare programs are hugely expensive, though not as expensive as other expenditures being stalked by ravenous budget-wolves. But assuming welfare will magically go away if we simply stop paying is wishful thinking – like absorbing millions of illegal aliens and then assuming they’ll disappear if we throw up some chain link halfway between Arizona and New Mexico.

Yes Rick, there is a problem. But no, busying yourself with the sex lives of other people doesn’t solve it. And further, this isn’t a new problem. It is the result of kicking a very large can down a very long road.

Many welfare programs were born of LBJ’s Great Society. The Great Society was an admirable effort to lift poor sharecroppers above poverty by trying to balance the economic and racial inequities of American society. In the end, all it did was move people to housing projects were there is no sharing or crops and minorities are contained so they wouldn’t be so noticeable.

The great failing was assuming you could start by giving kids something to eat, a place to live, and a school to go to while ignoring the generations of people who were already past the point of lifting up.

Mommy the Crackhead and Daddy the Pimp
You can teach a kid how to read and count, but Mommy being a crackhead and Daddy being a drug-dealing pimp isn’t exactly world-class role modeling. Too many people are simply warehoused in crumbling housing, ducking gang raids, and learning that dealing drugs makes way more money than flipping burgers. All the while listening to nitwits preach that fixing the problem is as simple as stopping payments for the crumbling housing and decrpit schools.

Santorum probably thinks that being poor trumps being a minority. He may not want black folk in his neighborhood, but that wouldn’t be as bad as a white family of project transfers moving in next door. He just doesn’t like one, the other actually drives down his property values.

Being poor or a minority is a problem in this country. Sometimes they’re inextricably linked, other times you can tease economics from bigotry. But either way simply stopping funds and pretending that all the downtrodden need is some paternal advice to get a job won’t make it go away. No matter how hard he might try, Rick can’t make these people and their problems invisible. He can’t pretend their problems aren’t the nation’s problem.

In the end Rick’s solution is no solution at all, it’s merely another kick of the can. If we want to lessen the need for welfare, we’ll need to reform what we spend on, not how much we spend. Throwing cash at ill-advised, half-assed, ineffective programs is just as bad as doing nothing.

And nothing is exactly the change Rick’s plan will make.

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As America rearms for the annual War on Christmas™, a new study from the University of British Columbia provides some fresh ammunition to fuel the Yule Logs of War™. The study of 350 American adults and 420 Canadian university students shows that many theists believe atheists are about as trustworthy as rapists and would outright discriminate against them in several ways. However, atheists don’t seem to harbor a corresponding distrust of theists.

The extent to which you believe the study likely hinges on the larger battle at the center of the schism – God or science.

Can't we all just get along?

I suspect a rather large group holding  Santoran or Bachmannite (BTW, note the change on Michele’s mug change when she hears the question on the video) views of gay rights or sex might not cotton to the study’s less-than-charitable view or them.

On the other hand, atheists will likely trumpet the scientific view of this and other studies – probably doomed to failure when dealing with people who believe the Earth is 4,000 years old. Let’s face it, there are zealots on both sides of the argument and other than the certitude of each camp’s beliefs that’s unlikely to change.

Come on, it’s Christmas or the holidays, Kwanzaa or Eid al-Adha, Chanukkah or any one of dozens of secular and non-secular holidays. How about we all just leave the choice of what we want to call it and whether others invoke God often enough? Let’s call a Christmas truce and stop saying “they” are evil.

With all the other ills we face, we could really use some peace on Earth for a change.

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The Tea Party loves liberty and freedom and well they should. No one likes to be mashed under the jackboot, drink tea under totalitarianism, or otherwise be ruthlessly held under duress by a tyrant. After all, that’s what the Constitution is all about. Sic semper tyrannis and all that.

But, tea totalitarianists have a curious sense of how to prioritize the liberties they’ll save. In May, Rand Paul (R-Kentucklhead Corners) took on the tough battle to protect the liberties of those squashed under the jackboot of light bulb efficiency rules and low-flow toilet regulations. He spoke passionately of how his low-flow toilet robbed him of his God-given right to crap in a bowl of his own choice and required him to sometimes flush twice, thrice, or quadrice. What a horrible injustice!

Ritch Workman Ain’t No Braveheart
The latest quest for freedom comes by way of FL Rep. Ritch Workman (R-Anita Bryant County). His excellency is worried about unemployment so is calling for the repeal of a 1989 statute outlawing the traditional values sport of dwarf-tossing. Rep. Workman sees the repeal of the safety regulation as a way of solving Florida’s unemployment problems by harnessing the free-market to put the state’s millions of Little People back to work at their chosen profession.

“To me it’s an archaic kind of Big Brother law that says, ‘We don’t like that activity,’ ” Workman said. “Well, there is nothing immoral or illegal about that activity. All we really did by passing that law was take away some employment from some little people.”

Now that’s true enough I suppose. Little People should be allowed to eschew demeaning carnival jobs in favor of opening for far more dignified Wet T-shirt contests. After all, they can’t all work on reality TV shows like a gaggle of excessively large repo men.

I’ll agree the law infringes the liberties of Little People. However, I can think of many things that abridge freedoms and liberties worse than bad plumbing and flinging Little People. Yet, the Tea Party either ignores those liberties or supports them without seeing it irony.

All Hail the No Dwarf Left Behind Bill
For example, why are so many Tea Partiers intent on passing a Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) that crushes the freedom of gays to marry whom they like? Aren’t no-warrant phone tapping and the ability to board a jet without a cavity search liberties to be enjoyed by all – even Little People? Stacked against a recalcitrant toilet, someone listening to my phone calls seems a larger infringement on my freedom.

About the only bipartisan thing in America today is a fear of government. That’s a healthy thing. It is what keeps a democracy a democracy. Hand too much power to the government, corporations, or any other large institution insinuated into American life and you have a prescription for unrest and rebellion.

So, let’s extinguish the light bulb of freedom and the flush heard round the world and get to work on issues that actually mean something.

A little less tea drinking and a little more action please.

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