The Birth of Jesus

Now as we approach the Christmas holiday we should take a look at the true history of Jesus' birth. Scholars agree that the story of the Nativity is fictitious. This does not mean that we should not celebrate Christmas, but it does mean that there is nothing wrong with taking Christ out of Christmas. People have celebrated the winter solstice for thousands of years. Long before the birth of Jesus, people celebrated the birth of other pagan gods at the winter solstice. The winter solstice is a bleak time of year when the days are short and the nights are long. People have always needed something to pick-up their spirits at this time of year. That is the true purpose of Christmas, and the real reason why we celebrate Jesus' birth at this time of year. Here is the true story of Jesus' birth.

In the first place, the story says that Caesar ordered a census to levy taxes and that Joseph, as a descendent of David, had to travel to Bethlehem, the city of David, to register (Luke 2:1-5). This was supposed to fulfill the prophecy that the “Messiah” would be “from the house of David.” The story is inherently preposterous!

There is no evidence that Augustus Caesar ordered a worldwide census at the time of Jesus’ birth. There was a census under Quirinius, the Governor of Syria (Luke 2:2), but that occurred after the death of Caesar and years after the birth of Jesus. The late Raymond E. Brown, S.S., a Catholic priest, internationally regarded as the dean of New Testament scholars, and former Professor of Biblical Studies at Union Theological Seminary in New York, said in his magesterial "The Birth of the Messiah," “Luke’s reference to a general census of the Empire under Augustus which affected Palestine before the death of Herod the Great is almost certainly wrong.” Said Brown, “Luke begins his story with a reference to a census of the whole world ordered by Augustus, conducted by Quirinius, and affecting Joseph, a Galilean inhabitant of Nazareth, so that he had to go to his ancestral city. This supplied the occasion for the birth of of Jesus in Bethlehem....this information is dubious on every score...We have no evidence of one census under Augustus that covered the whole Empire, nor of a census requirement that people be registered in their ancestral cities.” In a census, they counted people at their place of domicile, not where they were born. They would not have required Joseph to travel to Bethlehem. The Romans cared nothing for genealogies. They would have wanted him to stay in Nazareth and be counted where he lived.

The distinguished biblical scholar, E.P. Sanders, points out that David lived 42 generations before Jesus. He asks, why would would the Romans require Joseph to register for a tax in the town (Bethlehem) of an ancestor who lived 42 generations earlier? He describes Luke’s story of the Nativity as “Fantastic!” Bart D. Ehrman asks, “Can it be possible that everyone in the empire was to return to the place their ancestors lived a thousand years earlier?”

Another mistake by the authors of the Gospels is that they place the census of Quirinius and the birth of Jesus during the Reign of Herod. Scholars know that Herod was already dead at the time of Quirinius’census. Raymond E. Brown says, “...the one and only census conducted while Quirinius was legate in Syria affected only Judea, not Galilee, and took place in A.D. 6-7, a good ten years after the death of Herod the Great.” Moreover, Caesar would not have taxed Judea while Herod was king. And, at the time of Jesus’ birth, Bethlehem would have been in an area that was exempt from taxation.

The world's most highly recognized biblical scholar, a Catholic priest named John P. Meier, notes that it would have been impossible for Mary to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem in an advanced state of pregnancy. Meier says, “Somewhere aroung 7-6 B.C. a Jew named Yeshua, a shortened form of the Hebrew Yehoshua (Joshua), was born in the hillside town of Nazareth in lower Galilee. The Infancy Narritive traditions that locate his birth in Bethlehem of Judea (traditions isolated in chap. 2 of Matthew and Luke respectively) are probably later Chriustian theological dramatizations of the belief that Jesus was the royal Davidic Messiah.”

Jesus obviously was not born in Bethlehem. He was not born on December 25 either. Nobody knows the date on which Jesus was born, but it definitely was not December 25That was the date of the birth of the Greek/Roman god Mithras. The story of Mithras is similar to the story of Jesus.

Mithras was the god of light, or the Sun, and was born of a virgin. He was identified with a bull who had to die as a sacrifice for all humanity. His worshippers believed that Mithras promised resurrection from the dead and that he ascended into heaven. The worship of Mithras included forgiveness of sin by baptism of initiates and a communion of bread and wine to commemorate Mithras’ last meal on earth.

The early fathers of the Christian Church did not know the date when Jesus had been born, so up until the fourth century AD there was no celebration of Christmas. The worship of Mithras presented a real problem for the Church fathers because of the similarities to the worship of Jesus. There were pagan festivals around the time of the winter solstice, such as the Roman feast called Saturnalia which was dedicated to the god Saturn. In around 353 AD, the church fathers decided to combat Mithraism and other pagan holidays by celebrating the birth of Jesus on Mithras’ birthday, December 25. Merry Mithramas!

Born In The Wrong Century

Sometimes I feel like I was born in the wrong century. I am an atheist who has spent his life studying religion and theology, and has written a book entitled “The Case Against God, A Lawyer Examines the Evidence” (Which is available on Kindle), and yet I do not fully understand why so many people believe in God. I realize that there are millions of atheists like me, and that there are probably millions of people who share most of my beliefs. I know that the number of atheists continues to grow around the world, but I am still puzzled by the prevalence of religion in our society. Why is this so?

I recognize that we all think that we are correct in our opinions and beliefs. People who believe in God are often quite certain that nonbelievers are terribly mistaken or downright evil. Atheists think that believers are terribly mistaken or downright stupid. How can we be sure that we are right?

I recently listened to several televangelists on T.V. On the same day I also listened to the channel that broadcasts the thinking of the Catholic Church. The Catholic channel was quite moderate and thoughtful, but it was nevertheless focused on this being whom I believe to be mythical—God. I find that most people with whom I speak believe in some kind of God, even if not in one of the organized religions. The televangelists, unlike the Catholics, speak to the ignorance of their listeners. Their silver-tongued orators appeal to their listeners’ emotions, prejudices, and hates. But their message is not substantively different from the message of the quiet thoughtful priests and laymen of the Catholic channel. It is that there is a God who created, controls, and continues life on Earth and in heaven. It is that we should love and worship that God because he is all loving and good. The thing that amazes me is not that the yokel televangelists believe in God and spread their ignorance around the world, but that moderate and intelligent priests and philosophers like the speakers on the Catholic channel hold a set of beliefs about God that is as absurd as the beliefs of the rednecks.

On the same day I also listened to the PBS science show, NOVA, and heard a discussion of the possibility of a multi-universe or “Multiverse” by the physicist and writer, Brian Greene. Green postulated that there may be an infinite number of universes out there, which would mean that statistically speaking, there would probably be a universe exactly like ours with everything the same as in this universe, including our galaxy, solar system, planet, humans, and an identical reproduction of each of us. This gives rise to the question of whether, if I were to die, I would continue to live in another universe, and therefore be immortal. I have never believed in life after death, but I recognize that the idea is not forbidden by the laws of physics. This does not, however, change my core belief that there is no life after death.

For most of the people in the world there is no philosophical postulate like the one by Brian Greene. They simply feel that after we die our soul goes to heaven and lives eternally in heaven with great glory and happiness. I know that there is no basis for such thinking, and I am absolutely certain that it is wrong. I am also quite certain that death means the end of all life, memory, thinking, feeling, everything. I am firmly convinced that even if the Multiverse concept is correct, this life of mine, this brain, this body, this mind and memory, this being, will, for all intents and purposes, cease to exist. Even if an exact reproduction of me were to exist in a different universe, and even if that being continued to exist long after I am dead, I am certain that I would not experience that life or know about it.

My perplexity about the beliefs of others is that I do not understand how they can go on believing in God or anything supernatural without having even a scintilla of evidence to support such beliefs. After I lost all belief in God, I became able to see the many absurdities that surround religion, absurdities that I had previously taken for granted, like belief in the sacredness of holy water or the usefulness of blessing the throats on the feast of St. Blaise. I took for granted that God was situated in the sanctuary of the Catholic Church, and that you had to genuflect each time you walked in front of it. I took for granted that a priest on the alter had the power to change ordinary bread and wine into the actual body and blood of Christ—and that for some reason, the most important thing you could ever do was eat Christ’s body and blood.

I recognize that I am simply one person who insists that his atheism is correct, but I also recognize that my ideas are supported by many brilliant people. Most of the world’s leading scientists do not believe in God. Most of the highly intellectual thinkers in the world are atheists. Thus, I am not alone. I’m sure that most of those scientists have the same problem I have understanding why so many people believe in and worship a non-existent being.

It is amazing to me that people pray to God for help of some kind or other. There has never been any evidence that God answers prayers. People pray to God for health, but there is not a single case that anyone’s health was ever helped by the hand of God. People point to the Bible as evidence that God has performed miracles, but study of the Bible reveals that it is simply a book of myths with practically no historical value (See my book, “The Case Against God”). There is no evidence of any kind that God or anybody else ever performed miracles.

If millions of people around the world agree with me, why do I feel that I was born in the wrong century? Perhaps it is because I am mystified by the fact that so many other people continue to believe in God and in all the accessories of religion. I would think that it is self-evident that there is no God. I would think that all of the things surrounding religion are so absurd that uneducated, simple, even stupid people would recognize the facts. But as I watch television, I see intelligent priests and laymen seriously discussing concepts like prayers for the poor souls in Purgatory, prayers to the saints, devotion to the Virgin Mary, and the healing powers of places like Fatima and Lourdes. To me, such talk is incredibly stupid, yet the people who engage in it do not seem like stupid people.

I am not surprised by the hillbilly televangelists roaring out against sin in their southern drawls, but I am simply amazed to see priests of the Catholic Church draped in elaborate vestments, carrying out ancient rites in gigantic cathedrals, surrounded by golden statues, crucifixes, chalices, and other sacred items of priceless metals. It is as if God would want to be worshipped with an elaborate and dazzling display of finery.

A friend of mine said that one day there will be no churches and that places like St. Peter’s Basilica will be museums. I am sure that he is right, but I still wonder why it is not like that today.

Should We Thank God on Thanksgiving?

On Thanksgiving people often voice thanks for the many benefits of life. But whom do they thank? God? Should we really thank God for the good things in life, or should we condemn him for the horrors and terrors of life?

The primary reason for the existence of religion is to relieve people of fear. Marx called religion the “Opiate of the Masses.” This was a perfect explanation of the religious impulse. We live in a world filled with pain, sorrow, depression, and horror, but the religions tell us that there is a God out there who loves us and loves the world. This God will take care of us and, after death, will provide us with a paradise of joy and happiness.

I was speaking to someone and I proposed that if there really was a God, we should not worship or love or adore him, but rather, we should hate him. The person responded that we should worship him because “life is beautiful.” I replied that although life has moments of beauty and happiness, there is far too much sorrow and unhappiness to say that life is beautiful.

Consider the following: The great majority of people in the world live in abject poverty. Most of those people suffer from hunger, disease, famine, tsunamis, cyclones, hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes, tornadoes, floods, droughts, plagues, infestations, and war. When one looks at the continents of Africa, Asia, and South America, one wonders how there could be a loving God looking over those people. Hundreds of millions of the people on those continents are subjected to widespread diseases such as cholera, malaria, sleeping sickness, AIDS, Dengue Fever, and Yellow Fever. They have insufficient clothing, shelter ,and medical care. They are ruled-over by tyrants and dictators.

Millions of women throughout the world are treated as chattels without civil rights. They are beaten, raped, stoned, and subject to genital castration designed to eradicate their sexual pleasure. It is hard to imagine that such people are happy.

Hundreds of thousands of women, young girls, and boys are abducted each year by sex-crazed men who imprison and often torture them, using them as sexual toys for repeated rape. Many thousands of them are sold into sexual slavery, often to be bought by so-called upstanding members of the community.

What about the lucky people in America and the more affluent countries of Europe? One would think that they have many reasons to thank God. But we need to ask, are the lives of Americans so blessed and happy? Let’s start with health. Practically everybody in America has somebody in their family suffering from some serious illness. Millions of Americans have children with serious congenital diseases and infirmities such as autism, blindness, deafness, physical deformity, Down Syndrome, mental retardation, mental illnesses, muscular dystrophy, diabetes, epilepsy, cystic fibrosis, heart disease, cancer, and hundreds of other less common syndromes and disorders. The parents of such children often live lives of great sorrow.

Millions of adult Americans also suffer from terrible diseases. Heart disease, cancer, kidney disease, liver disease, Emphysema, Parkinson’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS), AIDS, Crohn’s Disease, chronic pain, and hundreds of other conditions beset the happiness of their lives. Millions of Americans suffer from mental problems, depression, anxiety, fatigue, lonliness, phobias, panic attacks, disabling shyness, and stress throughout their lives. Millions of Americans suffer from the effects of terrible automobile accidents and other injuries. They go through life as cripples with disabled or missing limbs, internal organs, and other essential parts of their bodies, or suffering from terrible pain.

As people get older, they greet a host of problems afflicting older Americans such as strokes, heart disease, arthritis, diabetes, hearing and seeing defects, prostate problems, osteoporosis, erectile dysfunction, sleep disorders, Alzheimer’s and memory loss, and hundreds of other medical and psychological problems that impair their happiness. As people age their bodies breaks-down, their skin wrinkles, their hair disappears or turns white, their energy fails, and they lose their sexual ability and attraction.

Millions of Americans are addicted to alcohol, pain medication, and illegal drugs. Almost all of them are living in terrible misery, unable to shake the imprisonment of their addictions. There are millions of homeless people living on the streets, in tents, under bridges, and in shelters. Millions of other Americans are addicted to behavior patterns such as gambling addiction, fetishism, sexual addiction, frigidity, obsessive-compulsive behavior, dependency, and other forms of addiction. There are millions of people with sexual deviations including the need to molest children or rape women. Millions of people engage in abusive behavior, physically beating or verbally berating their spouses, companions, and children. Millions of spouses, companions, and children are victims of such abuse. Such people cannot possibly be happy.

Millions of Americans live in poverty surrounded by a land of plenty. They eke-out a living in slums, tenements, housing projects, trailer parks, and rural shacks. They often go hungry in this land of plenty. Many go without decent clothing, shelter, ordinary medical care, and live in places without heat, cooling, electricity, telephone service, computers, sanitation, or even running water.

Millions of Americans are the victims of discrimination. People of all minorities suffer from bigotry. Millions of homosexuals, transvestites, transsexuals, and other trans-gender people are the objects of prejudice and condemnation by millions of other people.

Every day one reads in the paper about people who commit crimes. There are thousands of kinds of crimes committed every day by millions of people. It is difficult to guess what percent of the populace is dishonest, violent, dangerous, fraudulent, and deceitful, but judging from the constant news of crimes, schemes, scams, and corruptions, the number must run well into the tens of millions. There are millions of people engaged in serious and not-so-serious crime, including robbery, larceny, drug offenses, burglary, mugging, assault and battery, murder, and thousands of other kinds of crime. One constantly hears about violent massacres by crazed gunmen in schools, theaters, and public places. In addition to the victims of such killings, the families, friends, and communities of the victims are also victims. Millions of Americans are incarcerated in prisons and jails. There are millions of wives, children, parents, and other close relatives of prison inmates. These people must suffer having their loved ones in jail. There are millions of victims of crimes whose lives have been ruined by the crimes of others.

Throughout the world there are fanatic terrorists driven by religious hatred who make it their business to kill others who do not share their beliefs. I cannot imagine how many people are killed each year by these zealots but it must be in the thousands. It seems that every day one reads about a bomb going off in the Middle East or some other place, killing innocent people. If we consider the minds of the terrorists, they must be angry, tormented, unhappy people who have a lust for blood.

Millions of Americans are in unhappy marriages or relationships. Millions of Americans are suffering from the breakdown of their marriages or the breakup of relationships in which they were very much in love. Half of all marriages end in divorce. A majority of those who do not get divorced go on living in unhappy marriages. Millions of people are engaged in illicit sexual entanglements that cause them emotional pain and guilt. Millions of people are almost suicidal because of the infidelity of a spouse or loved one. Millions of people suffer from feelings of inferiority or lack of self-worth. Millions of people suffer from the feeling that they are too fat, too thin, or unattractive.

Millions of Americans hate their jobs or suffer under cruel, tyrannical, or sadistic bosses. There are millions of people with sour, nasty, cruel, vicious, malicious, and evil personalities who make it their business in life to damage, spoil, and injure the lives of other people. Millions of people live lives consumed with envy, jealousy, and hatred of others whom they perceive to be more fortunate than they.

Millions of families have children with serious behavior problems. Many of these children may grow up in middle class homes with respectable parents, yet such children are constantly in trouble with school, neighbors, the police, and others. Thousands of such children run away every year only to wind-up on the streets caught-up in drug addiction, prostitution, and crime.

For every Bernard Madoff carrying-out a giant stock swindle, there are thousands of businessmen, brokers, hedge fund managers, and others engaged in insider trading and other blatant violations of the rules of business law and ethics. Millions of Americans cheat others in smaller ways for smaller amounts of money. If one were able to calculate the amount of money embezzled from businesses, organizations, and charities each year it would probably be up in the billions if not trillions. I have known several embezzlers in my lifetime. I’m sure everybody has.

Although one would expect great probity from the wealthiest and most successful people, it is simply not there. Doctors routinely over-bill for services. Andy Rooney told a story about a doctor who came into his room while he was in the hospital for treatment. The doctor said hello and mentioned that he liked Rooney’s work. He then departed without examining or treating Rooney, and later billed Medicare for $240. I have heard many such stories. I have had personal experience with dishonest doctors. One doctor who came in and handed my wife a card while our son was being treated for a broken bone at the hospital, later billed for services even though he did not examine or treat my son at all. Doctors frequently bill for services never rendered. Medicare and Medicaid pay tens of billions for fraudulent claims by physicians who are wealthy by any standard.

Eventually, we die. Death is not a simple leaf dropping off a tree. Death is usually painful. Often, it is horrible. It is usually accompanied by the grief of loved ones.

Yes, life does have its moments of happiness and beauty. There are some wonderful things in life, and some people do live very happy, prosperous, safe, healthy lives. Those people can be thankful for all they have, but they probably represent a small fraction of the people on earth. If you stop and consider all of the unhappiness, pain, disease, grief, and guilt suffered by the vast majority of people in the world, it can hardly be said that life is beautiful.

While many people suffering from the terrible things listed here may not think life is bad, that is because of the human ability to cope with the things that make us unhappy. It is a wonderful thing that people going through the most extreme torments will often try to look on the bright side of life. But if we stop and look at all of the problems faced by humans and listed here, we can hardly say that life is beautiful. We can hardly find reason to thank that mythical being called God.

Surely, if there was a God, and he was a good and loving God like the one worshipped by most religions, life would not be filled with such misery. There would not be millions of starving, diseased, oppressed people in Africa and other parts of the world. There would not be so much tragedy, horror, injury, illness, poverty, hunger, anger, war, and death. We would not have to wait for some mythical afterlife to experience a better life. Life on earth would really be beautiful for everyone.

Republican War Against Healthcare for Seniors

I suspect that most senior citizens who call themselves Republicans are unaware of the plans that the Republican candidates for President and the Republicans in Congress have for Medicare and health care. I suggest that they find out now so that when the time comes to vote they will know who wants to abolish their right to health care in old age.

The Republicans in both houses of Congress are now on record as having voted for a budget prepared Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Chairman of the House Budget Committee, which would abolish Medicare as we know it. Ryan’s plan would save the government billions of dollars by shifting the burden of paying for medical care from the government to the senior citizens who would otherwise be covered by the current program.

The way Medicare works today, the government pays for all approved medical care of senior citizens. Let’s say that you need to have heart-bypass surgery. The surgeon will bill Medicare for the cost of the surgery, which might be in the tens of thousands. Medicare will approve a percentage of that bill and pay the surgeon. Most surgeons will accept as full payment the amount paid by Medicare, but if there is a deductable or amount in excess of the Medicare amount, most seniors are able to pay it by taking-out Medicare-Plus insurance.

Under the Republican plan put forth by Representative Ryan, the government would no longer make Medicare payments for people who are 55 years old and under at the time of the legislation. When those people become eligible for Medicare, there would be no Medicare for them. They would have to purchase private health insurance. Under the Ryan plan the government would assist people earning less than $80 thousand per year by giving them a voucher to help pay for health insurance. For people earning over $80 thousand, the voucher would be half the amount, and even less for people earning over $200 thousand per year. The voucher amount would be pegged to the cost of living.

The basic problem with the Ryan plan is that the cost of health insurance is rising at a rate far higher than the cost of living. The leading economists have asserted that in ten years, when the 55-year-old generation reaches eligibility for Medicare, the cost of health insurance will be more than double the amount provided for in the Ryan budget. That means that those seniors would have to pay an amount equal to, if not more than, the amount they would have to pay for health insurance today if there were no Medicare. Sure, this would save the government billions of dollars, but it would deprive millions of seniors of health care during that period of their lives when they are most in need.

Senior Citizens should also realize that the Republicans want to repeal the healthcare reform law, more properly known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA). The Republicans in the House of Representatives have already voted overwhelmingly to repeal PPACA (which they derisively call “Obamacare”). Fortunately, that effort could not succeed because of Democratic control of the Senate. But who knows? Perhaps at some later date Republicans will gain the strength to carry out their plan to totally repeal all of the provisions of the law. What would happen then?

Senior citizens who are beneficiaries of the Medicare Part D drug program should be aware that the PPACA provides for the eventual elimination of the “doughnut hole” and has already begun to close it. The “doughnut hole” is the period during which seniors have had to pay the full cost of their prescriptions after they amassed $2,700 in drug costs. After $2,700, Medicare did not resume paying for drug expenses until seniors reached $4,350 in out-of-pocket payments, a figure most seniors never reach in one year. The PPACA has already cut the doughnut hole by $500 and has instituted a 50 percent discount in brand-name drugs. For many seniors who simply cannot afford to buy their essential medications during the doughnut hole, that will be life saving. If the law is repealed, the doughnut hole will remain. Of course, many Republican leaders want also to repeal the whole Medicare Part D drug program and make seniors pay the full cost of all medications.

The PPACA also provides many provisions that will benefit seniors as well as everybody else. Included are provisions that forbid insurance companies from denying coverage on account of preexisting conditions, from placing lifetime or annual caps on coverage, and from rescinding coverage after a patient files a claim. The law creates a long-term-care insurance program, financed by voluntary payroll deductions, to provide benefits to adults who become functionally disable. It eliminates co-payments for preventative services and exempts preventative services from deductibles under the Medicare program. There are many other provisions, too numerous to set forth here, benefiting seniors.

Seniors should be aware of the position of the current Republican candidates on health care. All of the candidates have shown support for the Ryan budget plan that abolishes Medicare. All of the Republican candidates, including Mitt Romney, would repeal PPACA. For example, Michele Bachman, who has called for repealing PPACA, has also called for the phasing-out of Social Security and Medicare. Governor Rick Perry has plainly stated that he considers Medicare and Social Security to be unconstitutional. He calls Social Security a “Ponzi scheme.” Ron Paul has long held that Medicare and Social Security are unconstitutional. Herman Cain wants to totally eliminate Medicare and Social Security. Newt Gingrich has argued that Medicare, Social Security, and other entitlement programs are fiscally unsustainable. He would replace Medicare and Social Security with private accounts so that seniors could save their money and pay for private health insurance. For low income seniors, he would offer vouchers similar to those offered in the Ryan budget plan.

If you are a senior citizen, or somebody who is on the brink of qualifying for Medicare, you have to ask yourself: Do you want to have Medicare abolished as the Republicans have already tried to do? Do you want to go on paying the full cost of medications after reaching the doughnut hole? Do you want the Medicare Part D program abolished? Do you want to restore the practices by insurance companies of denying coverage on account of pre-existing conditions, lifetime or annual caps, and other factors?

I would think that regardless of whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, you would strongly oppose the Republican efforts to eliminate your health benefits. You should remember this when the time comes to vote for the next president and U.S. Congress.

Harold Camping Again

Once again Harold Camping's prediction that the world would end on a given day has proved false. Anybody with half a brain could have told you that nothing would happen. Camping first predicted that the world would end and the "Rapture" would occur in 1994. Of course, it didn't. Nevertheless, undaunted, Camping then predicted that it would occur on May 21, 2011. He made it clear that he was quite certain of the date. The stupid people who believed him sold homes and businesses and moved to California to be with him when the Rapture occurred. Naturally, nothing happened. He then predicted that it would occur on October 21, 2011. That day passed like any other day.

Now I don't blame Camping. He makes millions off of this scam, even if he truly believes in his preposterous claims. But people who still believe in him have got to have brain damage. You've all heard the phrase, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." Well, now the morons have been fooled three times at least. Do they still believe in Camping? Do they still believe in any of the jokers who continue to say that the world is about to end? Do they still believe that the Bible is the word of God? Do they still believe in God?

In May I offered to bet Camping $10 million that there would be no end of the world or rapture or anything else on October 21. I said that I would be willing to bet Harold that October 21 will go by like any other Fall day, like May 21, like September 1994, and that there would be no Rapture, no end of the world, no apocalypse. He probably never heard of my offer, but if he had agreed to the bet I would be rich today.

There is only one reason why Harold Camping is a false prophet. The reason is that there is no such thing as God, and any prediction based on the Book of Revelations in the Bible is pure nonsense. There is a large number of phony prophets out there claiming that the world is about to come to an end. I have heard Hal Lindsey, Jack Van Impe, Tim LaHaye and others who claim to believe that we are approaching the apocalypse. They base their whole argument on the wording of the Book of Revelations. None of them seems able to pierce the veil of idiocy surrounding that book and the absurdity surrounding all predictions based on the Bible.

The Judeo-Christian Bible is not a book of history. It is not a book of fact. Virtually nothing in it is true. It is a fairy-tale, a book of myths, which, in many cases, is based on more ancient myths of other ancient religions. Millions of dimwitted people base their lives on this book of myths, just as millions of Moslems base their lives on the Quran. In the absence of a real god, or of any real evidence for the existence of God, these people latch onto the one thing that they believe gives them access to the teaching of God. It is pitiful.

I wish people would read my book: "The Case Against God: A Lawyer Examines the Evidence." It is available on Kindle and can be brought-up on any device that has Kindle applications. In it I demonstrate that the Bible is merely a kind of mythological sacred scripture. I show that Moses was nothing more than a mythical figure, that the Exodus never happened, and that Jesus of Nazareth was nothing more than a Jewish holy man who wanted to share certain ideas about Judaism based on the teachings of the Pharisees. In no way did he want to start a new religion naming himself as the Son of God. The poor misguided millions of sheep who went on to create and follow a church based on this misinterpretation of his teaching are always prey to the seduction of cults, sects, televangelists, rogues, and phonies of every kind.

The world is not about to end. We are not about to face the apocalypse or experience the Rapture. During the Cuban Missle Crisis I thought we might face a thermonuclear holocaust, but I no longer worry about that. Perhaps terrorists will get hold of a nuclear bomb and bomb a big city in America, or Israel and Iran will exchange nuclear bombs, but I doubt that these things will mean the end of the world. No, the world will carry on for a long time to come and there is no God to change that. Stupid, or dishonest, or clever men have always predicted the imminent end of the world. It is nothing new. I just hope that the obvious falsity of Harold Camping's predictions will make people use their heads a little more and stop believeing in these absurd myths.

Defending President Obama

At this stage of the political game it is not surprising that Republicans exhibit scathing hatred for President Obama. They have dedicated themselves to opposing him on every front, even to the point of helping to ruin the economy so that he would not be reelected. Before he was elected, right-wingers like Rush Limbaugh asserted that they hoped he would fail. Since then Republicans have acted as if improvement in the economy was the last thing they want. A good economy with reasonable levels of employment might help the President get reelected. A lousy economy might help a Republican get into office.

But it seems incongruous that loud criticism of the President has also come from Democrats and those of the left who feel that he has not fulfilled his promises and has too easily capitulated to Republicans. Many African Americans, who somehow thought that a biracial president would be able to change their whole history overnight and bring about the kind of equality called for in “I have a dream,” are discouraged that life seems to go on as usual.

In an opinion piece in Newsweek Magazine, William Broyles compared President Obama to Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister who has gone down in history as the man who appeased Hitler and failed to take action to stop the aggression of Germany before World War II. Broyles accused President Obama of appeasing the right-wing factions in Congress when negotiating budgets and the debt limit. I believe that Broyles’ commentary is more than simply unfair. It is incorrect and terribly harmful. It reveals that Broyles and many others on the left are acting like spoiled children, whining because they have not been able to get everything they want in Washington. For some reason they thought that Obama was a miracle worker who would turn America into a Garden of Eden.

People like Broyles fail to face reality and fail to understand what President Obama has been up against. They ignore the fact that even when Democrats were in charge of both houses of Congress, Obama was faced with fanatic opposition from filibuster-minded Republicans and Blue-Dog Democrats. Like FDR, Jack Kennedy, and Bill Clinton before him, Obama has been a pragmatist who understands the need to compromise in a nation equally divided between Democrats and Republicans.

They also ignore the tremendous accomplishments of President Obama in the face of such fierce opposition. These include a historic reform of the health-care system; increased regulation of the financial services industry; a large stimulus package that saved millions of jobs, kept us out of a depression, and saved the auto industry from going down the drain; reversal of the Bush era regulations forbidding federal support for abortions; reversal of the Bush era regulations weakening environmental controls; elimination of the “Don’t ask don’t tell” policy on gays in the military; signing of the Lilly Ledbetter Bill on equal pay for women; reversal of the Bush ban on stem-cell research; ordering the reduction of forces in Iraq and Afghanistan; repeated extension of unemployment benefits for those out-of-work; signing of a nuclear limitation treaty with Russia; improvement in American prestige throughout the world (which won him a Nobel Prize); and the signing of laws to help veterans, school children, college students, minorities, immigrants and many others. It was on President Obama’s watch that the Navy Seals finally brought Osama bin Laden to his final justice. President Obama’s accomplishments in less than one term are far too many to list here. They can be found on a website called “The 244 accomplishments of President Obama.”

Left-wing critics of President Obama also seem to ignore the elements of character that infuse his presidency. He is a decent, compassionate, steady, and considerate man. Perhaps they would like a more aggressive person, but I feel that he is an ideal role model for young people today. When you look at the list of potential Republican candidates today, you realize that they are either right-wing fanatics like Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann who haven’t got the intelligence to believe in evolution or global warming, or slippery phonies like Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich who frame their ideas according to which way the political winds are blowing.

President Obama is going to be the Democratic candidate for president in 2012, and Democrats need to close ranks and support him now. The petty sniping by discontented liberals will do nothing to help him get reelected. Lets not aid the right-wing forces of reaction and bigotry.

Are Members of the Tea Party Intelligent?

Tea Party people are very conservative. They also claim to be very religious. The question I have is whether they are very intelligent. Several of the Republican candidates for president, including Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann, reject the Darwinian theory of evolution. They do this primarily on religious grounds. They tend toward the creationist theory that God created all living things just as they are. Also, despite the overwehlming weight of scientific evidence, they reject the current theory of global warming. It is kind of scary to think that one of these ignoramuses could become president of the United States.

The distinguished British biologist and author, Richard Dawkins, wrote about the ignorance of Rick Perry as follows:

"There is nothing unusual about Governor Rick Perry. Uneducated fools can be found in every country and every period of history, and they are not unknown
in high office. What is unusual about today’s Republican party (I disavow
the ridiculous ‘GOP’ nickname, because the party of Lincoln and Theodore
Roosevelt has lately forfeited all claim to be considered ‘grand’) is this:
In any other party and in any other country, an individual may occasionally
rise to the top in spite of being an uneducated ignoramus. In today’s
Republican Party ‘in spite of’ is not the phrase we need. Ignorance and lack
of education are positive qualifications, bordering on obligatory.
Intellect, knowledge and linguistic mastery are mistrusted by Republican
voters, who, when choosing a president, would apparently prefer someone like
themselves over someone actually qualified for the job."

The advent of "Uneducated fools" in the ranks of the Republican Party is explained by the general level of ignorance to be found in its Tea Party base. The people who make up the Tea Party fanatics are, for the most part, a highly uneducated group who resent the high education of President Obama and those around him. The fact is that Liberals and athiests are better educated and brighter than conservatives and religious believers.


It seems from all the studies done of the relative intelligence of conservatives and liberals, and of religious believers and atheists, that on the average liberals are more intelligent than conservatives, (George Will may or may not be an exception to the rule), and atheists are more intelligent than religious believers. Aside from the overwhelming weight of intelligence studies, the difference in intelligence between these groups is encountered on a daily basis. Have you ever noticed that the most educated people you know and meet are usually liberal and non-religious? The corollary of this is that the most conservative and religious people you know and meet are usually less well educated. One need only look at the high percentage of liberals and atheists among scientists, collage professors, and members of other educated professions.

I will not waste a lot of time defining the terms liberal, conservative, and atheist. But when I speak of somebody being “religious,” I am not talking about being spiritual, holy, or pious. By the term “religious” I mean the Tea Party type of people such as “Born-Again” Christians, Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and outspoken bible-thumping members of the so-called Religious Right who claim to be religious.

There have been a number of studies looking at whether liberals and atheists are more intelligent than conservatives and religious types. One is the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (or Add Health). The other is the General Social Survey (GSS). Both studies demonstrated that liberals are more intelligent than conservatives. The Add Health study shows that the mean IQ of adolescents who identify themselves as "very liberal" is 106, compared with a mean IQ of 95 for those calling themselves "very conservative." The Add Health study also found that there was a correlation between religion and intelligence. Non-religious people tended to be more intelligent than religious believers. The Add Health study is statistically significant because more than 20,000 young people were surveyed.

Researcher, Satoshi Kanazawa, of the London School of Economics and Political Science, has written a paper in which he quotes from the Add Health Survey along with other sources. He finds that more-intelligent people are more likely to describe themselves as liberal and non-religious. In another study, a British team found that young people with higher intelligence scores were more likely to grow into adults who vote for Liberal Democrats.

In 2008, intelligence researcher Helmuth Nyborg examined whether IQ relates to religion, using representative data from the Add Health and other studies. His results, published in the scientific journal "Intelligence," demonstrated that on average, Atheists scored 5.89 IQ points higher than religious types. These findings are supported by many other studies including the study by Lazar Stankova of the National Institute of Education in Singapore, the 1975 study by Norman Poythress, using SAT scores as a measure of intelligence, and others.

You need only look at the levels of education for media conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity, and compare them with those for liberals like Anderson Cooper, Keith Olberman, Bill Maher, and Rachel Maddow. Whereas Limbaugh, Beck, and Hannity never graduated from college (Limbaugh flunked-out), Anderson Cooper graduated from Yale, Keith Olberman and Bill Maher both graduated from Cornell, and Rachel Maddow obtained a doctoral degree from Oxford University in England.

The question is: Does this make any difference? I say yes. We obviously want our political leaders to be highly intelligent and well-educated. We have a president who graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. He is surrounded by some of the most brilliant and highly educated people ever to work in the White House. Some of his Republican Tea Party opponents, however, seem to occupy the opposite end of the educational spectrum. Rick Perry of Texas, who graduated from Texas A&M with a 2.22 GPA in Animal Science, has been described as “intellectually challenged.” One Republican strategist says that Perry “benefits from an uncluttered mind.” Look at the educational credentials of Sarah Palin, the Right-Wing’s poster girl for dimwittedness. Michele Bachmann, who graduated from that distinguished center of learning, Winona State University, and got a Law degree at Oral Roberts University, displays her lack of knowledge with repeated and sometimes hilarious gaffs.

Liberals tend to be far more accepting of the findings of science than Tea Party types. Liberals accept the firmly established Darwinian theory of evolution, the science of global warming, and the burgeoning developments of stem cell research. Tea Party people embrace the pseudo-science of Creationism, deny the overwhelming evidence of global warming, and would stop stem-cell research in its tracks.

But even if liberals and atheists are smarter, are they any better people than Tea Party conservatives and religious believers? I say yes. Despite their claim for patriotism, piety, and purity, Tea Party types are often narrow, bigoted, hypocritical, and mean-spirited. They tend to despise minorities, poor people, gays, immigrants, non-Christians, and others. Liberals and Atheists tend to be more open-minded about the differences between people, and more accepting.

Theoretically, religion is supposed to make people better, kinder toward their fellow man, full of love and generosity. This is just not the case with Tea Party types. They tend to be small-minded, envious, and angry. While Christ spoke of charity toward the poor, Tea Party people deeply resent the aid that government gives poor and minority people. They are very judgmental toward poor people, asserting that such people are lazy parasites on the state. Instead of Christian charity, they seem to have a coldness if not repugnance toward the less fortunate.

The following by Paul Krugman is also very pertinent to this issue:

"Within the G.O.P., willful ignorance has become a litmus test for candidates...So it’s now highly likely that the presidential candidate of one of our two major political parties will either be a man who believes what he wants to believe, even in the teeth of scientific evidence, or a man who pretends to believe whatever he thinks the party’s base wants him to believe. And the deepening anti-intellectualism of the political right, both within and beyond the G.O.P., extends far beyond the issue of climate change."

I believe that when all things are added up, liberals and atheists are not only smarter than Tea Party types, but also better, more decent people. In many ways, they follow the teachings of Jesus better than the Tea Partiers.

TEA PARTY PEOPLE ARE NOT TERRORISTS

Tea Party people are not terrorists, they are something else. The terrorist charge has been leveled at them because so many were willing to vote against raising the debt limit. While it is true that failure to raise the debt limit would have caused a default on our national obligations, the Tea Party people didn’t fully realize the catastrophe that would ensue. No, their motivation was not to bring-on another giant recession. It was simply to cut future spending.

In a recent poll, three-quarters of Tea Party supporters said that they opposed any rise in the debt limit because they were more concerned that raising the debt ceiling would “lead to higher government spending and make the national debt bigger.” It didn’t matter to them that in return for a rise in the debt limit the Republican leadership would be able to get trillions of dollars of spending cuts.

What those Tea Party supporters didn’t seem to know was that a rise in the debt limit was needed not to pay for future spending, but to pay for obligations already incurred by the United States government. Those Tea Partiers were not worried about a default on our nation’s debt, or the economic catastrophe predicted by leading economists, because they thought that failure to raise the debt limit would simply make the President cut-back on future spending. They had no understanding how the economics of government works, and they didn’t want to hear the facts.

The problem with the Tea Party is not terrorism. It is ignorance. Those people in the Tea Party who opposed any rise in the debt limit, even if it was matched by spending cuts, were acting out of ignorance. They didn’t understand why it was necessary to raise the debt ceiling.

In addition, I believe that they were acting out of bigotry toward a president who presents a combination that they hate—he is biracial and highly educated. In an interview on Fox News, Bill O’Reilly asked the President why so many people hated him. Obama politely answered that people don’t know him, and that if they did they would not necessarily feel so much hostility. I think that we should face the real truth. Right-wing people hate President Obama because he is an educated black man and he makes them feel inferior. Most of the white Tea Party supporters have spent their lives holding strong feelings of bigotry toward African Americans and other people of color. Even though they may themselves have been poorly educated, they have always assumed that Blacks are mentally inferior to whites. While most of them would not admit to such bigotry, and would not only deny their racial hate but point to all the nice Black people who are their friends, underneath it all they are repelled by Blacks.

To Tea Party bigots, President Obama is the worst possible kind of president. He is not only a liberal, but he is black. He graduated from Harvard Law School magna cum laude. He taught constitutional law in Chicago. He speaks with the assurance of a highly intelligent and cultivated person. The Tea Party whites look at him on television and realize that this Black man is far more educated, far more sophisticated, far more articulate then they are. They assume that he will want not only to help poor people, but also that he will do everything he can to spend tax dollars helping Black people.

I believe that a major motivation of Tea Partiers is anger, resentment, and jealousy at liberals who are more educated than they are. One Tea Party congressman who had never been to collage made that clear when he complained that a rise in the debt limit would simply mean more money for Pell Grants so that people like the Barack Obama could go to college and get educated by liberals. Tea Party types hate white liberals because they believe that liberals want to spend governmental money to help improve the status of poor people, particularly African Americans. They look upon Blacks as inferior people who are lazy and dishonest. They resent the idea of spending their tax money to support African Americans. They hate paying taxes, and the use of tax money to support people they despise is intolerable.

When Tea Party people look at liberal spokesmen on television, they realize that those liberals are almost always better educated and better informed than they are. They also realize that those liberals are better educated and informed than the conservative spokesmen found on radio talk shows and Fox News. They call the liberal media the “elite” media because of the greater level of education of liberal media journalists. I once wrote a column for the newspaper in which I pointed out the difference in education between conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity, and liberals like Anderson Cooper, Keith Olberman, Bill Maher, and Rachel Maddow. Whereas Limbaugh, Beck, and Hannity never graduated from college, Anderson Cooper graduated from Yale, Keith Olberman and Bill Maher both graduated from Cornell, and Rachel Maddow obtained a doctoral degree from Oxford University in England. When one compares the educational accomplishments of Tea Party Congressmen with those of liberal Democrats in Congress, the difference is astounding. Liberals, on average, are far more educated than Tea Partiers.

I am convinced that much of the evil in American politics is due to the ignorance of far-right-wing Tea Party types. A good example was presented in a recent newspaper article in Dayton, Ohio, where a local school board member, who is also the head of the local Tea Party cell, called for the teaching of creationism in schools. It is frightening that someone in a position to influence the teaching of children is so fundamentally stupid. This woman demonstrated ignorance on several levels. First, she showed that she was unaware of the law in America. Creationism (and its ugly sister “Intelligent Design”) has been declared by the courts to be a religious and not scientific theory and has been banned in every case. In Edwards v. Aguillard (1987), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a Louisiana law requiring that creationism be taught in public schools, along with evolution, was unconstitutional because the law was specifically intended to advance a particular religion.

In addition, the board member demonstrated the kind of ignorance about science common among Tea Party people. Evolution is an established scientific fact, not just a theory. It has been proven in thousands of scientific studies published in thousands of scientific papers in hundreds of prestigious scientific publications. Creationism is a wacky non-scientific theory that has religion as its base and no legitimate science to support it. The simple-minded people who believe in it are religious zealots who have no real understanding of science.

So the main characteristic of people in the Tea Party is not terrorism. They do not want to blow-up federal buildings. They want only to stop all social programs that give tax money to poor and minority people. Their main characteristic is not terror, it is ignorance combined with bigotry.

Warren Jeffs Rapist

A court in Texas has convicted Warren Jeffs of sexual molestation of two young girls. One was age 12 when she was married to Jeffs. The other was 14. Apparently the evidence against Jeffs included a tape recording of Jeffs talking to the young girl during the rape. I am told that the jury cried when it heard the slender tiny voice of this girl. When Jeffs asked during the sex act her how she was, she said she was okay. Jeffs said the pain would mean that she was going to heaven. The jury will now have the option of sending this miserable scoundrel to Hell. Now the law enforcement officials in Texas should prosecute every man and woman in that cult who had anything to do with the rape of young girls.

If the many witnesses who have spoken about the cult are to be believed, these child-brides become part of harems for church elders who eject young men from the sect so that they will not have any competition for the young girls’ attention. The wives and children of these men are raised and brainwashed to believe that it is God’s commandment that they surrender their virginity and freedom to older men in order to propagate the sect.

But it is not God’s commandment. It has nothing to do with God. It has nothing to do with religion. It is the raw exercise of power and lust by dirty old men who want to enjoy sex with young virgins. It is rape. History shows that people have always used religion to cloak their nefarious designs. Just as Moslem fanatics use religion to justify their insane attacks against innocent people, men have always used religion to justify the rape of young girls.

I have nothing against these rapists practicing polygamy with adult women if that is what they want to do. My problem is with elders and parents compelling their children to take part in such a sick culture. Most states in the union forbid sex between adults and children under the age of consent. In Texas the age of consent is 17. In most states it is 16. There is a good reason for treating children under 16 or 17 as being unable to consent. Most children under 16 or 17 do not have the fortitude to resist the impositions of adults and do not have sufficient understanding to assent to such impositions. The twisted individuals who prey upon young girls on the internet deserve to have the book simultaneously thrown at them and shoved down their throats.

It does not matter that this form of child-abuse is institutionalized as a religion. They can call it anything they want, but it is nothing more than child molestation. It has been going on for ages and has always been common in primitive societies. In parts of Africa and Asia it has proceeded hand-in-glove with the genital mutilation of young girls. The freedom of women from mistreatment and exploitation is an important part of the story of civilization. We in America may have a long way to go to be thoroughly civilized, but we do not have to tolerate this kind of beastly behavior.

You need only look at the women from this cult to see what damage can be done by brainwashing. They come on television in their grotesque hairdos and pioneer dresses and speak in robotic voices. You could say that they should not be punished because they have obviously been hammered by the abuses of the men of the cult, but they are adults, and however brain-damaged they may be, they are answerable to the law for their transgressions. Any adult that would let her 12-year-old daughter marry a 55-year-old man is a pimp and deserves no sympathy.

It seems apparent that despite denials, the practice of forcing underage girls into polygamous marriages is widespread in the cult. For this reason, the proper thing to do is not only to prosecute all of the men and women in the cult, but also to permanently take all of the children in the sect away from their biological parents. These people look upon the cult as one large “family.” They live communally. The children call all of the women their “mothers” and all of the men their “uncles.” As in any abusive family, when some of the children are being abused the government must take all of the children out of the household.

Republican Leaders vs. Republican Voters

Many Republican middle-income voters do not fully realize that their representatives in Washington are actually working against their best interests. They imagine that their congressmen are fighting to reduce the size and cost of government and to keep taxes down. What they don’t seem to know is that their representatives are actually fighting for big businesses and very wealthy people.

Let’s start with the current fight over raising the debt limit. Although the Republicans in Congress are demanding deep cuts in spending in return for a rise in the debt limit, they refuse to allow any increase in taxes. The problem is, the only increase in taxes demanded by the Democrats is a restoration of the tax rates for very wealthy people that existed under the Clinton Administration. Ordinary middle-income Republicans would not be hurt by restoring the old tax rates on billionaires. The Bush tax cuts for the wealthy were one of the main causes of our current deficits. Surely the restoration of the previous tax rates will not impoverish wealthy people. But Republican legislators are loathe to restore the old tax rates because it is the billionaires who contribute so much to their coffers.

Consider the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) created under the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The purpose of the Bureau is to protect ordinary American consumers from dubious and deceptive financial behavior by banks, credit card companies, stockbrokers, and other financial powers. The Act will protect against abuses by predatory mortgage lenders, credit card companies, credit rating services, and payday loan companies. The Republicans fought mightily against creation of the CFPB, and are now fighting to prevent it from exercising any jurisdiction over the Republicans’ beloved multi-billion dollar financial titans. They have refused to approve the appointment of Elizabeth Warren, a strong consumer advocate, to head the CFPB, and have signaled that they will oppose the appointment of former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray, an honest and effective administrator, for the post. In other words, they want to prevent any regulation of those in the financial industry who would happily defraud ordinary Americans of their money.

Many Republicans expressed anger at the enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), (derisively called “Obamacare”). What few seem to realize is that that law will help not only working poor people who have gone without health insurance, but also millions of ordinary middle-income Americans. The law will create insurance exchanges that will make the cost of health insurance significantly lower for ordinary people. It will prevent insurers from refusing coverage on account of prior existing conditions. It will eliminate the “doughnut hole” which all seniors must endure after they reach a certain cap in payments. It will allow the coverage of children up until age 26 on parents’ policies. It will eliminate the annual caps on coverage provided in most health insurance policies. These and many other provisions benefit all middle-income people, not just the wealthy, or Democrats, or the government. The main opposition to such provisions comes from the insurance industry which sees those provisions cutting into its profits.

Somehow, the Republicans in Congress have gotten ordinary Republican voters worked-up against climate change legislation, particularly the “Cap-and-Trade” bills proposed by the Democrats. It is as if such laws would somehow harm the welfare of ordinary people. Even many top Republicans now admit that global warming is an established fact and that the human emission of greenhouse gasses is one of the major causes of this phenomenon. There is now almost unanimous agreement among climate scientists that continuation of this process will have disastrous effects on the Earth in the coming years if nothing is done to curb greenhouse gas emissions. These effects will include, among many other things, melting icecaps with massive flooding of coastline cities and islands, and dramatic changes in weather patterns with adverse effect on agriculture and ordinary living conditions. These catastrophes will have a terrible impact on ordinary Americans. So why are the Republicans so adverse to climate change legislation?

The answer is not that such legislation will cause higher taxes, higher fuel bills, or more discomfort to middle-income Americans. The reason for Republican opposition to climate change legislation is that it will cost more for giant utilities, coal and oil companies, and manufacturers. These fabulously wealthy businesses are run by the fat cats who pour-out the money for Republican politicians. Those politicians are not thinking about ordinary Republican voters. They are thinking about the billionaires who supply them with the money to run election campaigns.

If you look at many of the main financial issues between Democrats and Republicans you will realize that Republicans furiously oppose the enactment of laws that will protect consumers against the abuses of big business. If ordinary Republicans and Independents really care about their own welfare and their pocketbooks, they should look closely at the actions of their representatives in Congress and question whether those actions are really for the benefit of the middle class.

Debt Limit and the Republicans

It seems almost unbelievable, but there is a chance that the Congress will refuse to raise the debt limit of the United States and the nation will go into default. The reason for this could be that the Republicans are simply unwilling to restore the tax rates previously placed on extremely wealthy people. In addition, there are many of the Tea Party Republicans who simply want the default to occur. Even though we have been warned that default could destroy the economy, these people believe that it would also destroy the Administration of President Obama. They are filled with hate for our biracial president, and are willing to bring on an economic catastrophe in order to unseat him.

The Republicans are playing a dangerous game of Chicken. The debt limit is basically the maximum amount of money that the U.S. can borrow at any one time. Because of the deficit spending during the Administration of George W. Bush, the nation has already spent more than the amount of the debt limit. Thus, it is not a question of more spending. It is a question of paying for things that have already been bought. Among the things causing this problem are the costs of two wars, the Medicare Part D Drug Program, and the huge tax cuts for the wealthy granted by Bush and the Republicans.

Few People realize that we have already gone past the date when the debt limit should have been raised, and that the U.S. Treasury has been able to function only by juggling the books and using certain pension and other funds in order to keep the government running. It will no longer be able to do that after August 2. If the Congress does not raise the debt limit by that date we are in for economic catastrophe. But we should not wait until then. Each day that the Congress delays in approving a rise in the debt limit, the crisis becomes more severe and the damage to America’s credit grows.

Back in January, Treasury Secretary Geithner warned lawmakers that the national debt could hit the legal limit on borrowing as soon as March 31, 2011, and he urged quick action to avoid a government default that would spark "catastrophic economic consequences that would last for decades." He said that unless Congress acts to raise the limit, the United States will default on its debt, an unprecedented event that could destroy "millions of American jobs," cause interest rates to spike, damage the dollar, and halt payments to millions of Social Security recipients, veterans, and active U.S. troops.

It is sad to think that partisan politics in America has arrived at the point where members of one major party are so filled with hatred for the government that they are willing to destroy the economy of the nation rather than allow the government to run smoothly. The Congress has never failed to raise the debt limit when needed. During the last Bush Administration, Congress raised the debt limit four times. It is simply unthinkable that it would fail to do so this time.

Nobel Prize laureate Paul Krugman advises that “If we hit the debt ceiling, the government will be forced to stop paying roughly a third of its bills, because that’s the share of spending currently financed by borrowing. So will it stop sending out Social Security checks? Will it stop paying doctors and hospitals that treat Medicare patients? Will it stop paying the contractors supplying fuel and munitions to our military? Or will it stop paying interest on the debt?... At least one, and probably several, of these components will face payment stoppages if federal borrowing is cut off.”

According to Matthew E. Zames, a managing director at JPMorgan Chase and the chairman of the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee, any delay in making an interest or principal payment by Treasury even for a very short period of time could trigger another catastrophic financial crisis. Mr. Zames notes that a default by the U.S. Treasury, or even an extended delay in raising the debt ceiling, could lead to a downgrade of the U.S. sovereign credit rating. The resulting financial crisis could trigger a run on money market funds and economic collapse.

The Republicans have a right to demand that there be spending cuts to counterbalance any rise in the debt limit. But their demands are outragous and amount to blackmail and extortion. Now they are demanding that the President reduce the deficit by repealing much of our social legislation. Many of them want the Democrats to agree to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. They want to eliminate certain departments of government. They want the government to adopt the Ryan budget which eliminates Medicare. They are obsessed with reducing the deficit, but for some reason, they are violently opposed to restoring the tax rates for wealthy taxpayers that existed at the time of the Clinton Administration.

It seems clear that the Republicans feel beholden to the fabulously wealthy fat cats who finance their campaigns. Meanwhile, the ordinary Republican voters seem oblivious to the fact that many of the Republicans in Congress are willing to sacrifice the economy of this country by letting it go into default. And they are willing to sacrifice the senior citizens of this country by allowing the stoppage of payments of social security and Medicare.

Jesus and Atheism

While atheists universally deny that Jesus was God or the Son of God, I think that there is room for acknowledging that he must have been a very good man and that his teachings represent the highest moral and ethical aspirations of man. In my book, "The Case Against God; A Lawyer Examines the Evidence," I discuss the fact that Jesus was nothing more than a Jewish holy man who taught traditional Jewish teachings and who had no intention of describing himself as a God or Son of God. He did not intend to form a new church or to go contrary to the laws of Judaism. He was most likely a Pharisee who conveyed the teaching of Hillel, the Pharisee sage. We cannot accept the apotheosis and sanctifying of Jesus by later writers and churchmen.

Nevertheless, the picture of Jesus presented to us is a beautiful one. This cannot be explained solely by the embellishment of his image by churches and clerics. Much of it must stem from the man who actually lived in Israel over 2000 years ago. Scholars believe that many of the quotes of Jesus set forth in the New Testament were actually spoken by the real Jesus. Prior to the writing of the New Testament there apparently were a set of sayings called the “Q source” which were picked-up by the evangelists who wrote the canonical Bible.

Even if we consider that some of the stories about Jesus may have been added by later writers, we must admit that the picture painted of Jesus reflects the highest form of human ethics. Ludwig Feuerbach said that our ideas of God are merely a reflection of the highest human ideals. To a certain extent this is obviously true of our picture of Jesus. But it says something good about man. With all of our evil, cruelty, greed, and selfishness, we were able to imagine a Man/God who flowed with the goodness, kindness, love, charity, and sense of sacrifice that all humans admire. One writer described Jesus as a “sweet soul.”

It is helpful to think about things he probably said to his followers. He probably emphasized the idea of loving your neighbor. This was an ancient Jewish teaching. It is one of the hardest things anybody can do, but it is a lofty goal. It humanizes us more than almost any other thing. He probably told his followers to turn the other cheek, to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, to bless the poor and the meek and the peacemakers, to avoid self righteousness, and to show mercy. He probably gave the Sermon on the Mount. He probably told a crowd that he who is without sin should throw the first stone at the woman caught in adultery.

His kindness and goodness seems to have been abandoned by a Church that burned heretics in the Inquisition and waged crusades and wars against those who did not share the Church’s teaching. It is certainly lost on those today who practice the theology of anger, resentment, bigotry, sanctimoniousness, and self-righteousness. The New Testament describes a man who was kind and loving. He obviously loved children. He ate with sinners and forgave their sins. He obviously enjoyed a party and drank wine. He seems like somebody who laughed and enjoyed a joke. He even got angry and cursed a barren fig tree. He obviously rejected hypocrisy and false piety. I have no doubt that he would have been appalled by the strict Puritanism of many of the Protestant sects. I have no doubt that he would have been appalled at the great wealth and pomp of the Catholic Church. I have no doubt that he would have been appalled by monasticism in all its forms. I believe that he would have been devastated by and wept at the molestation of little children by members of the clergy.

I also have no doubt that Jesus would have glowed with pleasure at the kindness of many people today. He would have loved the people who dedicate their lives to helping others, who are kind and merciful, who stand for peace, who are filled with love for their fellow man. In the novel "Let the Great World Spin," by Colum McCann, the main character is a man from Ireland who becomes a brother and goes to live among the pimps and prostitutes of the lower Bronx in New York. He does not judge these poor sad women or preach to them. He helps them. What would Jesus think of this saint? One reads every day about saints like the character described by McCann. Their aim is to make life better for others, and to live in the image of Jesus.

As an atheist, I cannot believe in Jesus as some divine Son of God who created the universe and fills the air around us with his presence. But I do believe that the Jesus who actually lived and the Jesus we have created is a great man, an ideal human, someone to be imitated.

Michele Bachmann Extremist

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R. Minn.), the two-term representative for Minnesota's 6th Congressional District, has now announced that she is running for president. Perhaps what she really wants is to be chosen as a Republican vice-presidential candidate. Her candidacy is being treated like any other candidacy even though she is a representative of extreme right-wing politics. She should not be looked upon as a traditional conservative. Her views are in line with the views of ultra right-wing militias and hate groups. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that exposes and fights hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and far-right-wing militias, she is one of the chief political “enablers” of hate groups and “has used her office as a megaphone for outrageous claims and conspiracy theories that in the past wouldn't spread far beyond the firing ranges and obstacle courses where militiamen and other antigovernment ‘Patriots’ gather.”

In 2009, Bachmann became a critic of what she characterized as proposals for mandatory public service. Speaking in reference to the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, an expansion to AmeriCorps (a federal community service organization), she said: “The real concerns is that there are provisions for what I would call re-education camps for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward and then they have to go to work in some of these politically correct forums.” Nevertheless, her son, Harrison, joined “Teach for America,” which is a member of the AmeriCorps program.

You can get an idea of how extreme her views are from statements such as “I am very concerned that he [Barack Obama] may have anti-American views." When asked during the Meet the Press interview if she would take back her previous comments that Obama held "anti-American views" and was running a "gangster government", Bachmann backed her statements, saying "I do believe that actions that have been taken by this White House -- I don't take back my statements on gangster government. I think that there have been actions taken by the government that are corrupt...I said I have very serious concerns about the president's views, and I think the president's actions in the last two years speak for themselves.

Bachmann would be happy to see a return to McCarthyism because she believes that there are a lot of “Anti-Americans” in Congress. She found the Capitol teeming with so much anti-Americanism that she called on the media to ferret-out the unpatriotic politicians. "I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America?" she said during an interview with MSNBC's Chris Matthews in 2008.

Bachmann has embraced the culture of conspiracy advocated by ultra right-wing militias with their fear of concentration camps and U.N. black helicopters. When it comes to the Census, Bachmann sees a sinister plot hearkening back to World War II. "They used the U.S. Census information to round up the Japanese and put them in the internment camps," she said during an interview with Fox News' Glenn Beck. "I know for my family the only question we will be answering is how many people are in our home, we won't be answering any information beyond that, because the Constitution doesn't require any information beyond that." However, she failed to realize that the Constitution does not require citizens to complete the census.

Bachmann does not just oppose the proposed cap-and-trade legislation to fight global warming. She claims that global warming is a hoax, and says that she wants Minnesotans "armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back."

Like many far-right zealots, Bachman believes that almost every form of government program to help the poor, disabled, youth, and the aged is socialistic or communistic. She has called for phasing-out of Social Security and Medicare. I wonder how many senior citizens know that and will vote for her in the primaries. She wrote that education laws passed by Congress in 2001, including "School To Work" and "Goals 2000", created a new national school curriculum that embraced "a socialist, globalist worldview; loyalty to all government and not America."

Bachmann has voted against continuing resolutions enacted to prevent the government from closing while the budget is being debated. She has made it clear that she would rather see the government shut down than see a continuation of current governmental programs. She said: "I am vowing to vote 'no' on future Continuing Resolutions to fund the government unless there is specific language included to defund Obamacare and rescind the funding that has already been appropriated. Defunding Obamacare, along with defunding Planned Parenthood, must be non-negotiable planks in our budget negotiations.”

Bachmann has made it clear that she will vote against extending the debt limit of the United States and would rather see the collapse of the American economy and credit. She has posted a petition on the Web site of her political action committee, encouraging voters to tell Congress that the "spending frenzy cannot continue. It's time to force our elected officials to stop spending cold turkey, and we can start by making sure they do not raise the debt ceiling."


Among her other positions, Bachmann supports the teaching of “Intelligent Design” in public school science classes. Intelligent Design is a purely religious concept that says that there was no Darwinian evolution of the species by natural selection, but rather, that God designed everything. The theory has been scorned by most legitimate scientists and has been banned from the classroom by the courts. During a 2003 interview on the KKMS Christian radio program Talk The Walk, Bachmann said that evolution is a theory that has never been proven one way or the other.

Bachmann explained in a 2010 speech that if the United States turns its back on Israel, "a curse" will be placed on the land. As proof, she cited Genesis 12:3, in which God says to Abraham, "The one who curses you I will curse." It was an uncommonly explicit blurring of policy and theology from a prominent politician

Bachmann supports both federal and state constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage and any legal equivalents.

Michele Bachmann is an attractive woman. She is a good speaker and a tireless campaigner. People seeing her might be lulled into thinking that she is just another conservative trying to stop the growth of taxes and government. But she is much more than that. She is an ultra right-wing ideologue. If she was president, she would abolish Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare, the Obama Medical Reform Act, and most other social legislation. She would abolish most restrictions on business and most laws governing fraud in the securities markets. She would inject prayer into the schools, prosecute people seeking or carrying-out abortions, cancel all laws protecting the rights of gay people, and withdraw America from the United Nations. She would cancel most of our First Amendment rights and prosecute people with left-wing views. She is not just an extremist. She is dangerous.



















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The Paul Ryan Budget Plan

The Republicans in both houses of Congress are now on the record as voting for a budget prepared Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), chairman of the House Budget Committee, which abolishes Medicare as we know it. The Ryan plan attacks the deficit by lowering taxes paid by the wealthy and makes the Bush tax cuts permanent.
Ryan’s plan to demolish Medicare would save the government billions of dollars by shifting the burden of paying for medical care from the government to the senior citizens who would have been covered by the current program.

The way Medicare works today, the government pays for all approved medical care for senior citizens. Let’s say that you need to have heart bypass surgery. The surgeon will bill Medicare for the cost of the surgery, which might be in the tens of thousands. Medicare will approve a percentage of that bill and pay the surgeon. Most surgeons will accept as full payment the amount paid by Medicare, but if there is a deductable or amount in excess of the Medicare amount, many seniors are able to pay it by taking-out Medicare-Plus insurance. That insurance is low in cost and affordable for most senior citizens.

Under the Republican plan put forth by Representative Ryan, the government will no longer make Medicare payments for people 55 years old and under at the time of the legislation. When those people become eligible for Medicare, there will be no Medicare for them. They will have to purchase private health insurance. The government will assist people earning less that $80 thousand per year by giving them a voucher to help pay for health insurance. For people earning over $80 thousand, the voucher will be half the amount, and even less for people earning over $200 thousand per year. The voucher amount will be pegged to the cost of living.

There is one basic problem with the Ryan plan. The cost of health insurance is rising at a rate far higher than the cost of living. In ten years, when the 55-year-old generation reaches eligibility for Medicare, the cost of health insurance will be more than double the amount provided in the Ryan budget. Sure, this will save the government billions of dollars, but it will deprive millions of seniors of health care during that period of their lives when they are most in need.

According a new survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, health insurance premium are going up much faster than overall inflation and workers’ wages. By the survey’s calculation, increases over the next decade would translate to the average policy for a family costing in the neighborhood of $24,000 a year.

While Medicare may be an expensive program, the solution is not to eliminate it. There are ways to lower the cost of Medicare without the drastic kind of demolition envisioned by the Republican budget. President Obama has offered a proposal which would lower the cost of Medicare by lowering the cost of the terribly wasteful (private insurance) Medicare Advantage program. There are many other steps that can be taken without lowering the benefits to seniors.

Supposedly, the impetus for the Ryan/Republican budget comes from the huge deficit which was initially incurred during the Bush Administration due to tax cuts for the wealthy, two wars, and the Medicare Part D Drug program. Because of Republicans’ refusal to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire, the deficit has continued to rise during the Obama Administration. Ryan’s solution to the deficit is to—cut taxes! Yes, Ryan and the Republicans want to cut the tax rate on the wealthy and on corporations from 35% to 25%. They also want to make the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy permanent! Needless to say, Ryan intends to reduce the deficit and support this reduction in revenue by cutting programs for the poor, disabled, and aged. His proposed cuts include $2.17 trillion in reductions from Medicaid and related health care; $350 billion in cuts in mandatory programs serving low-income Americans (other than Medicaid); and $400 billion in cuts in low-income discretionary programs.

The Nobel Prize laureate and economist, Paul Krugman, says the Congressional Budget Office, “finds that a large part of the supposed savings from spending cuts would go, not to reduce the deficit, but to pay for tax cuts. In fact, the budget office finds that over the next decade, the (Ryan) plan would lead to bigger deficits and more debt than current law."

The United States is now approaching the most dangerous financial catastrophe in its history. If Congress does not approve an increase in the debt limit by August 1, the country will go into default and the economy will be shattered. It appears that the Republican Party, driven by Tea Party fervor, will demand spending cuts as outlined by the Ryan budget. One can only hope that the American people will let their representatives know that that plan cannot form the basis of any reasonable budget compromise.

Depression

I have long suspected that depression might be the most realistic way of feeling. I have written about the many sorrows, tragedies, and horrors of life, and have often wondered why depression is classified as a mental illness. Illness is something that is not normal. Depression should be considered a normal way of feeling, thinking, and behaving. Anybody who takes a hard look at life realizes that as we age, if we don’t die young, we go through a long period of physical, and often mental, disintegration. In old age we become more and more reliant upon doctors, surgeries, treatments, therapies, medications, and hospitals. In the end, we die, often in great pain and agony. Some of us may think that there is life after death, but that is most unlikely.

Even if we are especially blessed with a life full of riches, good health, respect from the community, and fine children, we still have to go through the degeneration of old age and the ultimate insult of death.

When we look around us we see a world overflowing with misery. I have written about the massive amount of tragedy in the world resulting from poverty, disease, starvation, war, accidents, natural disasters, lack of clothing and shelter, mental illness, pain, addiction, sexual abuse, crime, envy, cruelty, sadism, dishonesty, deceit, disloyalty, treachery, infidelity, political tyranny, bigotry, ignorance, and many other causes of sorrow. Nobody goes through life without experiencing some of these evils. Yet most of us find that life is sweet, and we have a desire to go on living and not to die. One would think that it would be quite natural to want to commit suicide, but that is looked upon as a horrible thing. Why?

In an article by Tali Sharot in the June 6, 2011, issue of Time Magazine entitled: “The Optimism Bias,” the author, a cognitive scientist, finds that we are all genetically programmed with optimism. She says that without a neural mechanism generating optimism, all humans would be mildly depressed. In other words, even though the events of life should make us depressed, we tend to look for a silver lining because of an evolutionary adaptation of our brain which makes us optimistic even in the face of horror and tragedy. This is a tremendously important finding about human nature. It is actually this genetic tendency toward optimism that keeps the human species alive. Without it we might all commit suicide.

Tali Sharot’s finding helps explain the existence of religion in our world. A number of cognitive scientists, including Scott Atran, Pascal Boyer, and David Sloan Wilson, claim that religion is an evolutionary adaptation. Humans go on believing in gods, heavens, paradises, and life after death, despite the complete absence of evidence for their existence. I assume that such beliefs help to relieve us of the crushing grief surrounding the death of a loved one. They help us to deal with the dismal prospect of our own death. In the usual religious funeral services, the pastor will assure the relatives that the deceased “is in a better place.” Most people are unable to deal with the likelihood that such beliefs are overly optimistic and unwarranted.

One of the most terrible tragedies that can occur to a family is the death of a young child. While such a death destroys the life of some parents and siblings, others are somehow able to deal with it. They may be comforted by the belief that the child went to heaven and is living a life of wonder and beauty in the presence of God. If such people were able to critically examine such beliefs I think they would wind-up in deep despair. They would realize that there is no rational basis for such beliefs. The genetically built-in predisposition toward optimism enables such persons to get around the enormous grief of death and to go on living.

Despite this neural predilection for optimism, millions of people in America and around the world are depressed. The use of antidepressant medicine is widespread. Some critics claim that we use far too many antidepressants. I don’t agree. If the sorrows of the world are as prevalent as I think, it is surprising that there are not more people on such medications. Even depressed people want to go on living and do try to find happiness. The genetic predisposition toward optimism makes them eager to find some good even in bad situations. Nobody wants to be unhappy.

Our gene for optimism might help explain many of the ways we seek to find pleasure. Today I was listening to some beautiful music. It made me feel wonderful--as have so many beautiful pieces of music. Perhaps music is one of our ways of coping with the sadness of life. During times of depression and sorrow I have often turned to music. One piece that has soothed me is the slow movement of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto. While I do not believe in God, I remember the line in the movie Amadeus where Salieri looks at the scores of Mozart and complains that somehow this must be the voice of God. There are times in great music when it almost seems that the beauty comes from something supernatural.

It is a good thing that we are blessed with a gene that veils the sorrows of life. It enables us to go on living, and sometimes to feel great bliss in the midst of all the bad things of life. It is wonderful to enjoy the pleasure of love and sex, to feel the beauty of a lovely spring day, to appreciate great art, literature, film, and theater, to take joy in the play of young children, to take pleasure in food and drink, to dance, to sing, to laugh, and sometimes, even to cry. Bart Ehrman tells us that we should confront the evil in the world by enjoying life, and that part of that enjoyment should be the helping of other people. Perhaps that is the answer to depression.

Newt the Salamander

In a recent editorial, The New York Times described Newt Gingrich’s many inflammatory rants against Democrats. Newt called President Obama and his party: “left-wing radicals” who lead a “secular socialist machine.” He accused them of producing “the greatest political corruption ever seen in modern America.” And then averred that: “The secular-socialist machine represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did.” Then, stooping to abject racism, he charged that President Obama displayed “Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior.”

Gingrich has claimed that advocates for gay rights are imposing a “gay and secular fascism” using violence and harassment. He stated that Justice Sonia Sotomayor of the Supreme Court is a “Latina woman racist.”

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about Newt is his blatant hypocrisy. Newt repeatedly denounced President Clinton for immoral behavior during his efforts to impeach Clinton for the affair with Monica Lewinsky. Nevertheless, Gingrich was, at the same time, while married, having a sexual affair with a female staffer. Newt’s history of marital infidelity is epic, especially when seen against the background of his moralizing criticism of Bill Clinton.

Gingrich has been married three times. In 1962, when he was 19 years old and she was 26, he married Jackie Battley, his former high school geometry teacher. In the spring of 1980, Gingrich left Battley after having an affair with Marianne Ginther. Battley said that Gingrich visited her while she was in the hospital following cancer surgery to discuss the details of their divorce. Six months after the divorce from Battley, Gingrich wed Marianne Ginther.

In the mid-1990s, Gingrich began an affair with House of Representatives staffer Callista Bisek, who is 23 years his junior. They continued their affair during the period in which Gingrich was a leader of the Republican investigation of President Clinton’s Lewinsky scandal. In 2000, Gingrich divorced his second wife, Ginther, and married Callista Bisek.

In a 2011 interview with David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network, Gingrich addressed his past infidelities by saying: "There's no question at times in my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate.” This is Newt’s excuse for infidelity and hypocrisy! He loved America and worked too hard! If anybody swallows that line of crap, they deserve to have Newt as their president.

While Slick Mitt Romney may be the leading flip-flopper among the Republican presidential hopefuls, Newt is not far behind. In 2004, Gingrich repeatedly bashed then Democratic nominee for President John Kerry, saying his flip-flop on the Iraq war funding disqualified him from being president. Gingrich said on Fox News: "You can't flip-flop and be commander-in-chief." Nevertheless, Gingrich has repeatedly flip-flopped on the issues.

On May 15,2011, on Meet The Press, Gingrich said: “I’ve said consistently we ought to have some requirement that you either have health insurance or you post a bond.” When David Gregory asked him: “But that is the individual mandate, is it not?” Gingrich replied: “It’s a variation on it.” Nevertheless, the following day Newt issued a statement saying that he opposes an individual mandate.

On April 20, Newt Gingrich said he would have voted for Paul Ryan's Medicare reform and praised it as just a "first step” toward fixing our health care system. On May 15Gingrich ripped Ryan's plan as "radical change."

As of March 7, President Obama had not yet announced that the United States would be involved in a military action to institute a no-fly zone over Libya. When asked by Greta Van Susteren on March 7: “What would you do about Libya?” Gingrich replied: “Exercise a no-fly zone this evening, communicate to the Libyan military that Gadhafi was gone and that the sooner they switch sides, the more likely they were to survive ... This is a moment to get rid of him. Do it. Get it over with.” On March 23, after President Obama ordered U.S. forces to be actively involved in instituting a no-fly zone over Libya, Gingrich said: “I think that two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is a lot ... I would not have intervened. I think there were a lot of other ways to affect Qaddafi. I think there are a lot of allies in the region we could have worked with. I would not have used American and European forces.”

In 2007, Gingrich favored "mandatory carbon caps combined with a trading system.” In 2008, he even produced a video with Nancy Pelosi on the urgent need to stop global warming. In April of 2009, he testified before the House against cap and trade.

Do the Republicans really want this clown to be President of the United States?