Politics, religion and discrimination .... who cares?

(Okay, I put that title in to weed out the flakes and morons who care nothing about what actually goes on in society)

 

What if I told you that there was a segment of the population that was being discriminated against in society or looked down upon, and that this group comprised ~ 15% of the country ...

 

... and ...

 

... has been largely because of their religious beliefs?

 

Shocking, isn't it?

 

I would speculate if it were some Judeo-Christian group like Mormons of some other group like Scientologists there's be outrage, riots in the streets, a special on the Today Show or Entertainment Tonight. Or even better, some politician or entertainer or lobbyist would take to the press by storm decrying the treatment and bloviating on and on about freedom of religion.

 

Or if were Islam, some right-wing or neoconservative diatribe would launch into a tirade about how irrelevant that would be because it's all about fighting terrorism (as if those sorts of things aren't conducted by red-blooded Americans, no).

 

 

 

 

But not this group. No - not this group ...

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29585222/

More Americans say they have no religion

Study finds percentage of Christians in the nation has declined

 

Some interesting snippets -

• 
  
  "Fifteen percent of respondents said they had no religion, an increase from 14.2 percent in 2001 and 8.2 percent in 1990, according to the American Religious Identification Survey."
  
  
• 
  
  " ... study found that the numbers of Americans with no religion rose in every state. No other religious bloc has kept such a pace in every state," the study's authors said."
  
  
• 
  
  "The current survey, being released Monday, found traditional organized religion playing less of a role in many lives. Thirty percent of married couples did not have a religious wedding ceremony and 27 percent of respondents said they did not want a religious funeral."

(Yes I'm having fun with bolding.)

 

 

Apart from this news entry, there was scant little else or follow-up in the media. It was reported then quietly swept away and ignored. Why?

 

Why is it apparently bad to not subscribe to any religion or a belief in deity?

 

Some have suggested that all agnostics, atheists and the sort should just band together and form their own church. The thing is, in this country, we're talking about a right that is supposed to apply to individuals, as much as groups. If I as such a person, need to gather a bunch of people in order to exercise a right collectively, the individual right ceases to exist.

 

Why would people object to atheists? Evidently many in the US do. I would think that as not subscribing to any religion, someone who's an atheist can would make for an effective politician, as such a person could objectively enforce that freedom and ensure a strong separation of church and state.

 

Perhaps that's the issue?

 

I have this theory that many in this country see this right differently. That is, they see it as a freedom of their religion, and no one else's.

 

Obama's SOTU Address - what stands out about the reaction ...

It’s a simple way of saying the American right-wing has lost finally control of the overall national debate. 25+ years over the last 40 has finally opened up a lot of eyes and ears across the country to a central point – these conservatives and right-wingers simply cannot govern the United States effectively for its people. And as a direct result of the economic problems of the last two years - they are no longer able to control the overall message. And no amount of help from the corporate media is helping, because people now are seeing them too as fundamentally dishonest. One need only go online and simply search for the media outlet or personality to see the lack of objective journalism, integrity or honestly.

 

The 2008 elections are direct proof of this. The reaction to Obama’s economic stimulus plan is direct proof of this. Governor Jindal’s SOTU response last night is proof that apparently the Republican Party doesn’t get it. And with each type or response like this, the American right-wing are only making themselves less and less relevant in this country.

Darwin's Birthday and American's belief in evolution.

On this day 200 years ago, Charles Darwin was born. (Also, Abraham Lincoln was born on this day in 1809.)
 
On that note, here's a Gallup survey released recently on Darwin's theory of evolution - now the basis for modern biology:
 
http://www.gallup.com/poll/114544/Darwin-Birthday-Believe-Evolution.aspx
 
I find it both disburbing and troubling that only 39% of those polled actually believe in evolution. 
 
In a day and age where education in sciences, engineering, and biology will be keys to enduring in the 21th Century, this country better start working to improve those numbers. I think its economic future depends on people being properly educated with facts, not indoctrinated by religion.

Why the Republican Party is losing the debate on the economic stimlus.

Here's a really bright statement from a Republican Congressman from Ohio (h/t to Steve Benen).

 

""When Roosevelt did this, he put our country into a Great Depression.... He tried to borrow and spend, he tried to use the Keynesian approach, and our country ended up in a Great Depression. That's just history." "

 

Wow.

 

I wonder how his constituents feel about him getting basic history wrong? To have elected someone who would say something completely at odds with history, reality and fact.

 

I believe recent polls taken show the majority of Americans support the Obama stimlus package.

 

The Republicans have no choice but to act this way and fight Obama on every point.

 

If they agree, they will be seen as 'moderate' or 'centrist', almost Democrats to the right-wing, and will probably be villified. Voters who have a choice between a pretend-Democrat and a real one in the next election will likely choose the real thing. This is because they know that if it passes, it will likely be successful, and voters will reward him and the Democrats, not them.

 

(On a side note, it's quite a turn around from 6-7 years ago, when it seemed as though voters had a choice between Democrats who acted like pretend-Republicans and the real thing. Voters saw it as a sham and voted for the latter, despite all the obvious evidence that it was contrary to their interests).

 

To fight as they are is playing right into (what I suspect is) Obama's real motivation behind his 'bipartisan approach'. That is, to make voters in Republican congressional districts see just how incompetant and useless they really are.

 

Either way, it's a win for Obama, and eventually voters.

An open letter to Charles Gibson of ABC ...

Mr. Gibson,

 

During the 2008 US Presidential Election Campaign, I along with many in the United States tuned into your employer's network to view one of the Presidential Candidate debates.

 

Like many, I was appalled and dismayed by the quality of questions being asked.  Indeed, I wasn't the only one who thought so. Evidently some of your peers in the media drew the same conclusion.

 

With the country in the midst of several gripping financial issues, voters in the election chose to reject the policies of the last 8 years that got us into these messes. They elected someone to come up with plans to clean up these messes.

 

Now, no one is asking you to give the new President preferential treatment. After all, the opposite seems to be the pattern when Democratic Presidential Candidates assume office now, isn't it?

 

And of course, you work for ABC, where it's clear, two of your colleagues, cannot even get the most basic information correct - here and here.

 

 

But after watching how the media has handled coverage of the proposed economic stimulus package - and how the media have largely allowed the Republican Party to dominate the airwaves with their diatribes I've come to one specific conclusion -

 

I've had enough of your broadcasts.

 

So, please do everyone a favor and stop.

 

Retire. Quit. Or just walk off the set and don't come back. Take your pick.

 

 

Someone on your Wikipedia entry claimed you to be 'very affable', but frankly I have never bought into that. Indeed, you never ever seem to be happy at all.

 

I'm sick of your smug arrogance, and your inability to get over the fact that the Republican Party lost the 2008 elections, and that for whatever reason, ABC won't let you leave.

 

Watching you and your network allow yourself and corporate media outlets to get even the most basic issues about the proposed Obama economic stimulus wrong is bad enough. But even after being repeatedly corrected, you still spout falsehoods on your broadcast.

 

No, it goes beyond that, as it this irresponsible behavior on the part of the corporate media is business as usual.

 

I have found you to be completely insufferable - you and your program are neither informative, or entertaining.

 

Honestly the only good thing about your broadcasts, is the pleasure in turning the television off knowing -

 

• it's time to eat dinner
  
• that you are able once again unable to hide your absolute contempt for the new Obama Government or promote honest, objective journalism
  
• that anyone who decides to continue to tune into you will continue to be misinformed about the events that shape our lives
  
• and that I can get more reliable, objective news elsewhere.

The attempt at historical revision and the Bush Administration

As the nation finally looks to January 20th, 2009 as not only the first day of Barack Obama taking office, and a sense of relief from the rest of the nation, one thing that I've been finding quite disturbing over the past few weeks was people in various media outlets attempting to find some positive aspect of the George W. Bush years.

 

Many can find lots of reasons for the opposite -

 

• An unnecessary war being fought in Iraq that has cost billions of dollars, and thousands of lives and hasn't done a thing to actually keep anyone safe
  
• Another war in Afghanistan
  
• A major city being completely flooded in 2005, while both Bush and FEMA did not a whole lot
  
• Several financial crisies in the mortgage, housing, lending industries, plus countless business failures, loan defaults, bankruptices
  
• The politicization of whole government departments like Justice

 

Of course there are so many other things. And likely so many things we don't even know about. But one thing always strikes me as something people forget - 09/11/2001.

 

That will live in my memories for the rest of my days.

 

I was awake at 5 AM PST that day. I had to run some performance tests for our group at work. Fortunately I was able to connect to the network via my home Internet connection. Normally I kicked the test off, monitored it, and occasionally check online to see what was happening in the news.

 

But for some reason that day, it was very hard to get online at all. I kept seeing references to the 'attack'.

 

Turning on the TV, I saw - the first World Trade Center tower had been struck by a jet airliner.

 

Like most people, I was in extreme shock. Never in my life or imagination had I ever thought something like that would ever happen. And yet, there it was live. Then to hear that a second plane had hit the second tower. Needless to say, I was in struck beyond belief.

 

And then to watch as the fires raged, the towers crumbled, the smoke and debris in the air, people running for their lives. It was a nightmare coming true. Truly the most horrific thing I have ever seen in my life.

 

Then to find out later that other planes had been hijacked, and that the Pentegon had been attacked.

 

I think I was like most people that day and afterwards. How could something like this happen? The worst security failure in the history of the nation, more than 3000 people killed, many lives damaged beyond repair, many more shattered. Where was the government, the state, the city, the FBI, the CIA, ...

 

Where the fuck was Donald Rumseld - he certainly failed that day as Secretary of Defense?

 

Only to find out as the days, months and years passed that Bush's actions that day demonstrated that he was unable to function as Chief Executive. This after all that time spent stealing the election that Al Gore won. Then to learn about the rather close relationship between the Bush and Bin Laden families, W's insistance that he'd catch Osama 'dead or alive' (spoken like a true faux cowboy).

 

And then ... to find out that various agencies knew something was coming, the August 6th 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing that warned that Bin Laden was threatening to attack the US, that the man in charge of terrorism's cabinet position was reduced to next-to-nothing, and that he could not even get time with Bush or Rice or anyone else.

 

Bush's supporters tried to blame the previous Clinton Adminstration (ignoring that this event happened on Bush's watch). Of course it came out they had in fact warned Bush about the threats and Al Qaeda, but somehow these facts seem to always been ignored

 

Why do I bring this up? Why is this relevant today? Shouldn't we be celebrating that America seems to finally have come to its senses and elected not only a Democrat, but a very smart and shrewd one, and that we along with the rest of the world can finally begin to see some hope?

 

Yes this country has lots of problems. And I think the country has a real chance to let go of it's past and really move forward into the 21th Century.

 

Well ... it's because there are some in this country would prefer to forget, to remember things differently. They would have me and others think that Bush's term really started on 9/12/2001, that he and his government have kept the nation safe since (conveniently forgetting the anthrax attacks that occured shortly afterwards). That it doesn't matter that Bin Laden hasn't been captured, that we invaded two sovereign nations and haven't accomplished anything useful.

 

Well my memory of the event of September 11th, 2001 will not let me forget.

 

And I will never forget that it was Bush and his cronies that were in charge of the federal government on that day. 

 

BUSH AND HIS GOVERNMENT FAILED TO PROTECT US ON 09/11/2001.

BUSH AND HIS ADMINSTRATION FAILED TO BRING THOSE RESPONSIBLE WHO ATTACKED US TO JUSTICE.

 

People who try to whitewash history must be corrected.

 

Those of us who remember must never forget. People who survived must continue to tell their story. People who lost loved ones or had their lives shattered must continue to insist on finding out the truth about the Bush Government's failures.

 

Because, if we fail to tell, if we fail to fight, if we fail to insist on finding out, we fail to learn. We become prone having this repeat itself. We become ignorant. We become paranoid and delusional. We become distrustful of one another. We surrender our will to live.

 

And doing so will let those who terrorize us rule. And that includes those who wish to not shed light on the Bush government failures on that day, and every day afterwards.

 

We must learn from our past, if we are to live today, and plan for tomorrow.

 

 

Wanna fly AirTran?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28467263

 

I'm not inclined to believe a word the airline's spokesperson says ...

 

"At the end of the day, people got on and made comments they shouldn't have made on the airplane, and other people heard them," (AirTran spokesman Tad) Hutcheson said. "Other people heard them, misconstrued them."

 

I like this -

 

"It escalated, it got out of hand and everyone took precautions."

 

I like the tacit assumption in the statement - 'comments they shouldn't have made on the airplane'. Was Tad even there? I wonder why this person takes the word of two passengers over this group?

 

Or perhaps this is the reason ...

 

" (Kashif) Irfan said he and the others think they were profiled because of their appearance. He said five of the six adults in the party are of South Asian descent, and all six are traditionally Muslim in appearance, with the men wearing beards and the women in headscarves. Irfan, 34, is an anesthesiologist. His brother, 29, is a lawyer. Both live in Alexandria with their families, and both were born in Detroit. They were traveling with their wives, Kashif Irfan's sister-in-law, a friend and Kashif Irfan's three sons, ages 7, 4 and 2. "

... ?

 

I bet the airline spokeman believes there really were WMDs in Iraq just before the US invasion in 2003, or that Iraq had something to do with 9/11.

 

"WASHINGTON - Officials ordered nine Muslim passengers, including three young children, off an AirTran flight headed to Orlando from Reagan National Airport yesterday afternoon after two other passengers overheard what they thought was a suspicious remark. "

 

(emphasis in bold mine) ...

 

To be fair, it's not just the airline. Airport security officials make the ultimate call.

 

But keep in mind, it's usually at the behest of the airline.

 

And ultimately, I look at the airline as just another player in a game visible minorities have to play at American airports all the time. And often things are stacked up against us.

 

As someone who's been pulled aside to be 'checked' (and by remarkable coincidence, I was the only brown-skinned person in line) while waiting to board a commercial airflight, I know that feeling of being singled out, under the guise of 'safety'.

 

Often times people in authority abuse it to remind those of us who are visible minorities that we must be on guard at all times, and that we can be pulled aside, violated, embarrassed, kicked off of flights, or have our lives thoroughly screwed up and over just for looking at someone or something in a way others may deem unacceptable. I see many similarities between this and racial profiling that local police departments do on city streets. Of course, the safety of all is usually cited, or 'we're just doing our jobs', or something to that effect. Other times, I think it's just to humiliate, or bring people like us down a notch.

 

But in almost all cases, such things always happen because those in authority know they can get away with it.

 

And it's never funny that it's always those who do not appear like everyone else are always left with the short-end of the stick in such situations. It's not funny how we find ourselves to always be the ones left having to pick up our belongings that have been randomly tossed aside by security officials, only to sprint to catch a flight because we are now late. It's not funny or amusing to have to pay to rebook another flight, or miss a connecting flight, disrupt our schedules, our lives, miss important events, just because someone thought they heard something suspicious.

 

But what really gets me, is that there is never any accountability for these actions. Those pesky visible minorities - it's okay for their rights and liberties to be violated or disrupted?

 

 

UPDATE -

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/02/nine-muslim-passengers-ki_n_154750.html

 

It appears the airline has made an about-face regarding the tickets on the other airline Mr. Ifran and party had to make -

"In a statement Friday, Orlando-based AirTran says it refunded the air fare for the nine passengers and planned to reimburse them for replacement tickets they bought on another airline."

One has to wonder if their shoddy treatment of these individuals in this day and age will continue, given how quickly this has become a very bad amount of publicity for them.