Results Are In: Greed Class Might be Lying

 We needed a scientific study to prove this?

In seven separate studies conducted on the UC Berkeley campus, in the San Francisco Bay Area and nationwide, UC Berkeley researchers consistently found that upper-class participants were more likely to lie and cheat when gambling or negotiating; cut people off when driving, and endorse unethical behavior in the workplace.

Remember that every time you hear anyone say those big bad government regulations are hurting the economy, that what they're really saying is they want the referees off the field so they can cheat. So that brings us to the Quote of the Day:

If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.

PJ O'Rourke

This is a Very Brave Young Lady

Previous post is here.

Christians would be better served to follow Jesus instead of the church in respecting religious matters that are different from their own. I tend to think that people who get irate over differing religious views do so because their own justification is rather weak. This young lady sees the ever present promotion of faith within her school as an oppressive thing and a violation of American principles.

The Christian faith cannot rule the United States. It is unconstitutional. Religion and government are supposed to be separate. If we let this slide, what other amendments to the Constitution will be ignored? I leave you to decide what you will or will not do, but just remember that nonbelievers are not what you originally thought we were. We are human beings — just like you...Krystal Myers, Editor Lenoir City High School student newspaper

See also Jack McElroy's piece, "If we shrink from controversy, we might as well not have a First Amendment." Jack also openly admits that his bosses tell him what he can publish in his newspaper.

Last Night

Jay Clark at Market Street in Ladd Landing in Kingston, TN

In Case You Missed It...

Not All Christians Are Like That

The student editor of the Lenoir City High School newspaper has been denied her request to publish an essay entitled, "No Rights, The Life of an Atheist". The Knox News Sentinel article is here. The school's position is beneath contempt. They claim they aren't denying publication on religious grounds but because it would be disruptive. This is like saying they can't allow an anti bigotry essay to be published because they have too many racists there and it would upset them, and yes, I'm comparing a particular brand of self labelled Christianity to bigotry. The  young student readily notes that she isn't worried about what her fellow students think, they don't have any problem with her opinions. It's the teachers and administrators she's worried about.

What are these particular Christians so afraid of? They support allowing government employees to post Christian religious tracts on school property but are afraid of an essay written by a very smart and thoughtful student that espouses no religion? Why not face those fears and be proud of this young person as a product of her education? Is their religion so weak that it must replace the love and tolerance that Jesus called for with hate, fear, and oppression?

Unless she's right in her claims and they really are discriminating against her and the ideas she presents. How weak this particular brand of Christianity must be if it can't tolerate opposing ideas.


Not all Christians are like that.



The ACLU has a very good publication that guides teachers and administrators in what is legal, constitutional, and right when considering actions regarding religious activities at school. 

My Elevator Speech

You might want to read this first. 

My speech is a work in progress and at present uses only a minute and a half of the allotted three minutes:

I propose the creation of a new religion. The ones we have now have and are failing horribly with the grotesque message that heavenly rewards await only those who die with the proper attitude. Rather than serving the Creator of the Universe, this seems to serve the ends and purposes of men and is highly suspect to the thoughtful. For instance, why is it considered blasphemous to burn a copy of, say, the Torah, Quran, or the King James Bible, all of which contain a finite and contradictory body of ill defined so-called truths, and yet at the same time be completely permissible to erase a species from this planet for all eternity?

Every single species contains within it's DNA more information than all the so called religious texts ever thumped by man. Every adherent of any one of those texts will argue that the other texts are false and are not the true works of the Creator (Personally, I find myself in the position of agreeing with all of them in this particular instance), and yet, ignored by these adherents and with which neither they nor anyone else will disagree, is that the Earth and its inhabitants are ALL true works of the Creator. This is unarguable to the sane!

To allow the destruction of any of the Creator's works and purposefully erasing all the messages that would be conveyed to mankind as science teaches us to read in the language of the Universe is the true blasphemy. To claim that the Creator wants this is evil.

The Reagan Lie "Welfare Cadillac" Has Changed But It's Still a Lie

Today's big GOP Boogieman is those able bodied freeloaders who actually dare to draw unemployment just because their factory was closed and the jobs sent to Asia by the likes of Mitt Romney and his cronies. Turns out it's a lie. I have a friend who runs a doctor's office who was telling me about all the freeloaders who come in with no job and insurance who just live off the system. I asked for some names and three were all they could come up with. So out of ten thousand patients we get THREE freeloaders? The Boogieman has more cred. Here are the actual numbers.

Quote of the Day, Judge Fred Biery

Any American can pray, silently or verbally, seven days a week, twenty four hours a day, in private as Jesus taught or in large public events as Mohammed instructed.

And that's from the good Judge's published legal opinion which you can get to by Reading what Juanita said.

Vampire Bats...More Caring Than Republicans?

Really!

"Because Unions Created the Middle Class in This Country"

I think we need to raise the wage floor. We absolutely have to get back to a place of embracing unions in this country. And we have-- BILL MOYERS: Why? HEATHER McGHEE: Because unions created the middle class in this country.

The Interview

Quote of the Day...Uh, Quotes

Is  David Frum, conservative idealogue and speechwriter for Georege W Bush, now fearful of what he hath wrought:

"...conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics". The result is a "shift to ever more extreme, ever more fantasy-based ideology" which has "ominous real-world consequences for American society".

 If that isn't interesting enough, try this one:

 "...the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital centre today". The Republican party, with its "prevailing anti-intellectualism and hostility to science" is appealing to what he calls the "low-information voter", or the "misinformation voter". While most office holders probably don't believe the "reactionary and paranoid claptrap" they peddle, "they cynically feed the worst instincts of their fearful and angry low-information political base".

That's from Mike Lofgren, a right wing operative who "left the cult".

 The stupidity of the right puts America and the whole world in jeopardy.

Go read.

Update: "Them Overalls"

Quote of the Day: Climate Has Shifted

In isolation, the strange winter weather of 2011 - 2012 could be a natural rare occurrence, but there have been way too many strange atmospheric events in the past two years for them all to be simply an unusually long run of natural extremes. Something is definitely up with the weather, and it is clear to me that over the past two years, the climate has shifted to a new state capable of delivering rare and unprecedented weather events. Human emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide are the most likely cause of such a shift in the climate...

Watch an Ad to Watch This AD

This is an amazing ad from the Super Bowl Halftime. It doesn't say it we should all know who saved Detroit and who wanted (still wants) to see it die. You have to ask why the GOP would sacrifice American jobs just to strike at workers and their collective voices? Why does the GOP hate America? Listen to Clint lay it between the lines:

The real Problem With the "Cure"

I am maddest about Komen's lobbying efforts to deflect research dollars away from prevention and toward "cures". While we have increased life expectancy we have not, in 40 years, increased the cure rate whatsoever. If we focused on the cause of breast cancer even to the point of bringing us in line with, say Ecuador, we would actually be able to "cure" 75% of all breast cancers because they would never occur in the first place. That, however, would take all the "cure" money out of the health care system and would violate all those free market principles Komen supports. [The Real Graphic We should ask Komen about]

Kharma for the Ribbon

Ground Hog Day All Over Again

America's Democracy is being taken over at every level by the puppet masters who drive the Tea Party, the NRA, and now, even those non profit entities we thought were working for the greater good, such as the Susan G. Komen Foundation. Komen lobbied to eliminate the research that would look into the environmental connection to breast cancer, lobbied against the public option for health care, and against public funding of diagnostic and treatment programs for under priviledged women. The fund raising juggernaut turns out to be nothing more than a funnel for money flowing to its own connected people and organizations. Since the big money is not in prevention of breast cancer those programs are opposed, and since the big money IS in treatment, Komen's funding flows to programs that push women into for profit venues.

More of this will pop up in the next week but here's an advance on what is to come from an activist who has seen it first hand...

It's time to stand up and fight!

Update: Is Komen a big fraud in the first place?