Primary commandment the Hutaree group is breaking

Where to start on this Tuesday morning? How about the insane “Christian” militia group trying to jump-start Armageddon out of a Michigan base? Granted, living in Michigan’s weather might make one cross over to the dark side, but I’ve never known snow drifts to cause folks to gird up in weapons and plot to kill a police officer. Who are these weirdos and how on earth do they get “kill a cop and start a violent standoff with the law” out of anything in the Bible? Fact is, of course, they can’t, as their website demonstrates by grasping at straws. The biblical quotes the group (named Hutaree, whatever that means) posts on the site have absolutely nothing to do with killing or bringing about the end times courtesy of a sniper scope. These guys may claim to be Christian, but as JC himself said, you’ll know Christians by their love – not their insanity.

The battle for the hearts and minds of agnostics has heated up with the atheist billboard message that was hoisted in mid-February being plastered over by a “God-country-family” billboard, courtesy of Raul Robb, a Tucson financial adviser. I didn’t like the billboard from the Center for Inquiry because I think they should come up with a better message. Their billboard read, “Are you good without God? Millions are.” Well, duh.

The billboards are popping up across the nation

There are plenty of people who argue that the only way you can be good is if you have a belief in a higher power or religion in your life, and it is certainly borne out in many ways. Who, for instance, is the first on the scene of a natural disaster? Usually not Atheists Are Us. But just as many believers do good because they feel called to it by their religious upbringing, there are also nonbelievers who do good because they believe their humanist stance requires it. Point is, we should be nice to each other, God or not, and far too often, we aren’t. Which, if you’re an atheist is no big deal, but if you’re a believer whose religion preaches loving one’s neighbor and you don’t do that – well, you give your religion a bad name.

Finally, for people who are still confused by the health care overhall, particularly in the issue of federal (aka your taxes) funding for abortion, Kathleen Parker has broken down the bits and pieces to show why the health care bill probably will fund abortion. Sadly, it doesn’t explain why legislators (and the general public) who call themselves pro-life do not object (at least not strongly enough) to further funding a war that has resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent people, including children and pregnant women, and was never considered “just” in terms of the loophole allowed pro-lifers under just war doctrine.

Image courtesy of scienceblogs.com

Health care reform needs to include food industry reform. The well-off often wonder why the poor are obese. I can tell you simply: fattening “food” is cheap. I call it “food” because anything with more than four ingredients on its label can hardly be called real food – it is little more than processed poison, a poison laden, usually with high fructose corn syrup, the bane of anyone trying to stay healthy. It is put in food for one reason and one reason only- to appeal to our sweet tooth, to get us addicted to junk. I mean, really, does a fast-food burger need sugar? No, but they have them. And, as anyone knows, fast food is cheap – check out the $1 menus sometime.

This has been on my mind ever since the battle over health care reform heated up. We have an epidemic of obesity and we’re going to be paying for it either personally or through our taxes if we get universal health care. Ergo, we should care that people’s waist to hip ratio is right, we should care that the food stamp program in some areas is so backward it forbids the purchase of yogurt but allows people to buy soda, we should care that the food industry is stuffing our cows with corn instead of grass and beefing up our chickens with hormones to the point they can’t stand on their own…. and that all that poison goes into bodies that are biologically designed to eat food in its natural state and revolts (gains weight disproportionately) when we eat what our too busy (or too poor) lifestyles seem to demand: fast, cheap, processed food. (And don’t even get me started on the “leftovers” grocery stores and restaurants send to soup kitchens.)

I don’t have time to explain all this today, but luckily, the NYTimes is having a discussion about it today here, and there are links to various blogs discussing the politics of food, who gets what in our nation, and why the real health care issue is reform of the food industry here, here, here, here, here, and this video about “portion distortion” with links to more discussions on those blogs. Read them and engage your brain. Then take a walk, make your own lunch and read labels: If it’s got more than four or five ingredients, don’t eat it.

U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy; wikipedia

If you are a college graduate who needed student loans to get that degree – ever more precious in an economic downturn and a competitive work environment – you should be thanking Ted Kennedy today. If you’re a female who got to play sports in schools forced to fund women’s athletics with some semblance of equity to men’s, thank Kennedy for Title IX. If you’re a person who grew up in poverty, working your tail off at minimum-wage jobs and still had too much month at the end of the money, you can thank Kennedy for his push to raise – more than once – the minimum wage. If you or your child are disabled and you’re offered decent education and a chance at work without discrimination? Kennedy and the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Kennedy, who served in the Senate for 46 years, died last night at the age of 77 from complications of a brain tumor. He was a life-long Catholic. While he was involved in just about every piece of major legislation that brought a better life to the working poor, the issues closest to his heart were equal rights, health care and education – both improving it in general and improving access to higher education for people of little means. I often think of critics of Kennedy’s – the college-educated pro-life advocates who focus solely on his stance on abortion and stem-cell research – and wonder: Do they realize that their college educations, the brains they trained in university classrooms and now use to mount arguments against killing the unborn, are, in part, gifts from the late Senator? Women, minorities and the poor especially should recognize that without Kennedy’s passion for improving access to higher education for all, many would not have made it into those classrooms. (more…)