December 16, 2008
Ed Tubbs
Palm Springs, CA
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It’s all tied together.
The preface: While an atheist, I suspect I’ve more of an abiding love and admiration for Jesus of Nazareth than many, perhaps more than an overriding majority, of those who call themselves Christian.
This and the next paragraph are to be construed as parenthetical. All I know of the fellow derives from the reports in the gospels, Matthew through John. (Acts and the train of letters that follow are at best opinions that mirror the hopes — not some recitation of evidence — of the authors.) Regardless they are likely no more one hundred percent accurate than say, the tales of Robin Hood. After all, Mark, the gospel most proximate to the life of the narrative’s subject wasn’t composed until 50 AD, and modern forensic science is conclusive: accuracy of a witness’s account diminishes in direct correlation with the passage of time. Furthermore, of the four authors, only John was a member of the inner circle of disciples and a probable witness to much of what is reported, thus rendering the accuracy of the other three highly suspect.
I especially adore how Jesus’ humanness and humaneness, as depicted in the Parable of the Good Samaritan and the story of the accused adulteress, are as sabers to the hearts of doctrinaire ideologues everywhere, no matter their religion or lack of same, or where they’re located in time or place. Essentially they ask the most pertinent questions — questions that strike terror in the very souls of ideologues — that are just as relevant today as they ever might have been: 1.) Just how the hell can you be so sure you’re right about what you assert? and 2.) This really is about how you genuinely regard and treat others; not what you profess, but what your “works” testify to.
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It’s all tied together.
Now it’s about federal assistance to the US auto companies; GM, Chrysler, and Ford. The GOP in general and in particular Senators Shelby of Alabama and Corker of Tennessee torpedoed the deal. They were unalterably against it. While excoriating corporate and union leadership, they pontificated on the potential folly of extending any sums to America’s only remaining industrial premise, along the lines that it would eventuate being a case of “good money after bad” and an act absolutely contrary to the tenets of free enterprise capitalism. That was immediately after they supported, with neither strings attached, nor a demand for the first hint of oversight, nor without even asking the most rudimentary questions of a financial industry upon which they blest with TWENTY TIMES the chump-change, in comparison, funds sought by the three auto makers!
(NOTICE: Overlook the fact that both senators are from states with non-union, foreign automaker assembly plants.)
The argument has been that any extension of assistance will only extend for a short period the inevitable bankruptcies, and that the auto companies, as was the case with the airlines, will be able to secure greater financial health under the aegis of BK than continuing under the current paradigm. Either those issuing such inanities are at best fools, at next-to-worst they are duplicitous hypocrites, or, at the very worst, both. Folks purchase plane tickets for X-hours of transportation. With cars, it’s for X-YEARS!
Their true, and terribly sinister, subsurface motive is what has ever been a Republican uberrima fides über alles: on behalf of their corporate base, it is the unfettered utter demolition of organized labor. (Disclosure: Since July of 1968 — the last, and only, time I was in a union — until 2006, I was a business-for-self, highly capitalistic entrepreneur.) Prior to organized labor and the bloody hard won victories of the 20th century there was no middle class in America; no paid vacations, no limit to the hazards and hours of toil necessary to earn a paycheck, no minimum wage, no paid sick leave, no health insurance, no pensions, no anti-discrimination hiring and wage legislation; nothing whatsoever that today’s middle class uses to define itself.
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