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Americans, the intelligent folks who built the Golden Gate bridge and the TVA and sent the first human visitors to the moon and back, have now raced to the back of the class when it comes to any reference to or need for intelligence. The "gut" that George Bush claimed was the primal and primary source of his decisions has become the source a majority of Americans now also take their direction from. But I've got to tell you, a million years of evolution, slowly reorienting from that primal locus to a location centered between the ears, as opposed to the bowels, wasn't so we could go back to where food is transformed into fecal matter and foul smelling methane. Nonetheless, that sure as hell is what we've done.
Look around. Scan the landscape. Then tell me we haven't all gone stupid is as stupid does. Nor is it just Americans. Wrapped in outdated, evidence-free nearly 2,000-year old theologies built on mysticism and mythology, Muslims and Christians have gotten themselves all bent out of shape over what would be to folks saturated with intelligence completely and unthinkably silly: the building of an Islamic cultural center in what at best can be called a slum and the burning by an irrelevant knucklehead of what is, once you come down to it, nothing but sheets of paper. Hey! It's not as if the building site for the cultural center had any significance prior to the brouhaha. There's a strip club there, amidst other boarded-up, decaying buildings. And as to the Koran; probably printed, for a profit, by some New York publishing house, or one in the middle-East. It's not as if Mohamed himself wrote the edition(s) intended for immolation.
A very simple question: How many copies of the US Constitution and of the Bible (both testaments) and of the Koran do you suppose quite unceremoniously find their way every year to land fill and recycling centers? Ten thousand? A hundred thousand? More? Less? If one really wants to keep the documents sacred, the various faiths' adherents would be better advised to keep the messages in their heart, and try to live them. That's not what's going on, though, is it?
What is going on is extraordinary distraction and a scythe-like defiling of the essence of the messages. Republicans would do away with the "equal protection" and 'citizenship" clauses of the 14th Amendment. So-called Christians, not a jot differentiated from their Muslim counterparts, want to elevate hate to a trans-national rallying cry. All the while the GOP is getting a free Ride on the Reading Chance card, poising itself to loot and eviscerate the national treasury; extend the tax cuts on the wealthiest of the wealthy that will $700 - 900 BILLION further crash the economy to the point they will at long last achieve their objective: eliminate Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as federal safety-net programs; transforming them to private, for profit profit centers for who can count the financial institutions bellying to that bar.
Read the passage from Krugman's column, below. Then, once your relative's or so-called friends' or associates' votes have worked their evil, and once the ravaging of the national weal has borne the sour fruit you cannot digest, just tune in to the fall's new season of can't miss programs . . . and be happy; like cattle in the slaughter line. -- Ed Tubbs
"It's hard to overstate how destructive the economic ideas offered
earlier this week by John Boehner, the House minority leader, would be
if put into practice. Basically, he proposes two things: large tax cuts
for the wealthy that would increase the budget deficit while doing
little to support the economy, and sharp spending cuts that would
depress the economy while doing little to improve budget prospects.
Fewer jobs and bigger deficits -- the perfect combination.
"More broadly, if Republicans regain power, they will surely do what they did during the Bush years: they won't seriously try to address the economy's troubles; they'll just use those troubles as an excuse to push the usual agenda, including Social Security privatization."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/10/opinion/10krugman.html?emc=eta1"More broadly, if Republicans regain power, they will surely do what they did during the Bush years: they won't seriously try to address the economy's troubles; they'll just use those troubles as an excuse to push the usual agenda, including Social Security privatization."
