Muslim Rage

Although I realize that there was more to the Muslim protests of a trashy American Film than mere humiliation over religious blasphemy, I think that commentators may have missed one important element in the violent demonstrations which have engulfed the Middle East. That element is ignorance. I believe that the vast majority of the people demonstrating out on the streets were too ignorant to understand that this film was the work of a small group of anti-Muslims living in the U.S. and that the United States Government and the American People had nothing to do with it. Moreover, they are too ignorant to understand the American dedication to free speech and the inability of our government, under the First Amendment, to punish the makers of this garbage.

I have no doubt that the people who are stoking this conflagration are not so stupid. They recognize that the majority of the people on the streets do not have the intelligence to make the fine distinctions necessary to see the film as the work of a tiny group of outsiders. They see it as an opportunity to heighten the level of anti-Americanism and anti-western hatred. The head of Hezbollah called on all Muslims to protest the film and demonstrate against America. While he may be feeding into a lot of other issues that motivate Islamic mobs to hate America, he is also feeding into profound mob ignorance.

Let’s face it. Although there is plenty of ignorance among the ordinary citizens of America and most western countries, and although any mob is almost by definition ignorant, the ignorance of western mobs is nothing to compare with the ignorance of the Muslim mobs. Centuries ago the West began to outpace the Middle East in industry, education, arts, sciences and civilization. It is one of the things that rankles the Muslims. They envy and resent that fact that in almost every field of endeavor the western countries have vastly outdone them. They see the prosperity of the western world and its adherence to Christianity and secular thinking as a rebuke to and humiliation of the Muslim religion. They feel that this superiority of western civilization is a new type of Crusade, and they call the western nations “Crusaders.”

This backwardness and lower civilization is not shared by the Middle East country of Israel. Israel is populated by people, or their descendents, who came from northern civilized countries. With the exception of a minority of ultra orthodox Jews, their religion, Judaism, does not have the same kind of anger and paranoia found with the Muslims.

Because Muslims resent the great advantages western countries have over the Middle East, they turn to their religion as a consolation. They believe not only that theirs is the true religion, but also that adherence to this religion makes them superior to western believers in other religions. Thus, their religion makes-up for their feelings of inferiority when confronting the West. Their religion gives them a special place that more than compensates for their backwardness in most other areas. Any western attack on their religion, particularly by means of comedy or satire, is an attack against their whole system of self-respect.

This is not an uncommon phenomenon. People all over the world use religion to overcome the many disadvantages that would otherwise give them feelings of inferiority. Even in the United States you will find that people of the lowest income groups and social class cling to religion as the one thing that compensates for their low status.

I do not know the whole reason why the West outpaced the Middle East in all aspects of civilization, but I have no doubt that the Muslim religion bears a large part of the blame. In its more orthodox aspects it is a highly restricting religion. As practiced by Muslims all over the world, particularly the Taliban when they controlled Afghanistan and by the people in Saudi Arabia today, it is a deadening religion that does nothing to encourage innovation and freedom of thought. It is a religion that teaches men to treat women as lesser beings, that makes women wear unattractive clothing, that forbids women to do many things allowed in the West, and that punishes them severely for infractions of these many restraints.

What is it that makes Muslim mobs so ignorant? Why are they incapable of the kind of peaceful demonstrations found in western countries? I believe that it is accounted for by the lower level of civilization found in the Middle East. I have come to believe that the critical moral element in the world is civilization. I believe that the ethical and moral content of most human actions is largely governed by the amount of civilization achieved by the actor, his group, his society, and his nation. Although most people in the world share certain moral values, the extent to which those values are practiced depends largely on the level of civilization present in the actor and his fellow actors.

To give one example: During the protests in Egypt that unseated President Mubarak, Lara Logan, an attractive newswoman for CBS, was covering the protests in Tharir Square, Cairo. Somehow she got surrounded by men. These men proceeded to attack and sexually assault her. She was saved only when a group of Moslem women came to her aid. Thus, Moslem men, whose religion is very strict about sex, had no problem with gang-rape of a female reporter in a public place.

Now try to imagine this happening during a demonstration in New York, or Washington, or London, or Paris. It couldn’t. The reason that it could happen in Egypt, and not in a western country is simply that the people of Egypt are less civilized than the people of those western nations. It is not difficult to imagine such an attack taking place in other cities of the Middle East or Africa, but it is impossible to imagine it happening in America, or Canada, or any western European country.

Why do Muslims in the Middle East resort to violence when confronted by blasphemy of their religion? Why were there no such demonstrations in the United States when an artist exhibited a piece called “Piss Christ” in which he had a crucifix standing in what he claimed to be his own urine? Why have there not been violent demonstrations against many other blasphemous works of art, literature, and film in the West? The answer is that the West is simply far more civilized than the Middle East.

To a large extent, civilization is and has always been geographical. The most religious, backward, uncivilized countries are in the southern parts of the world. Africa, the Middle East, India, Southeastern Asia, and South America are all far less civilized than Northern Europe, Japan, Canada, and the United States. Even within countries, the geographical distribution of the population helps explain different levels of civilization.

The southern states in America, where slavery prevailed until eliminated by the Civil War, are less civilized than the northern states. This kind of dichotomy is found in large countries throughout the world. One of the factors indicating lower civilization is religion. The people of the Middle East are more attached to their religion than are the people of the more secular West. When you look at the countries of Scandinavia, you notice a far higher percentage of the people are atheists. Those countries have the highest levels of civilization. People demonstrating on their streets are far less likely to be violent than the people in the Middle East. I do not know the full explanation for this difference, but I am certain that the lower civilization, the religion, and the ignorance of the people of the Middle East helps explain the stupidity of their demonstrations against a low budget, anti-Islamic movie.

Romney and Jobs

Jobs, jobs, jobs--the Republicans have made jobs the central issue in this campaign. Their claim is that President Obama has not done the things needed to improve the economy and create more jobs. In their effort to make Mitt Romney appear to be the businessman capable of bringing real expertise to the economy and creating job growth, they deliberately obscure the facts

The first obscured fact is that when President Obama took office the country was in a terrible recession and millions of jobs had been lost. That recession continued after he was inaugurated, but the recession eventually ended and the economy began to turn around. Through stimulus and bailouts the President has helped add over 4.5 million jobs to the economy. His actions have saved the American automobile industry and the millions of jobs connected to that industry. It is an industry that Romney would have allowed to expire in bankruptcy. The President’s actions have also saved many US banks from going under. Many people criticize the bank bailout, but without it we would probably have gone into a deep depression.

Most people fail to realize what effect the President’s stimulus and bailouts had upon the economy. The Republicans point to the fact that the stimulus did not create the millions of jobs necessary to make-up for the huge loss of jobs during the recession. That is because those programs represented a finger in the dyke that prevented a nightmare collapse of our entire economy. Matt Bai of The New York Times put it this way: “Obama’s first remedy of choice, the stimulus package worth more than $800 billion, remains unpopular. This is partly because three years later the stimulus doesn’t really seem to have stimulated much real growth. But it’s also because a lot of the short-term assistance that came to states during that time wasn’t really visible to the public; it was used to maintain existing commitments to social programs and capital projects, the kinds of things that would have been noticed only had they suddenly disappeared — which could well have happened without federal intervention. According to figures kept by the administration, Ohio received some $3.5 billion in additional Medicaid payments, and more than 860,000 residents received expanded unemployment benefits. In addition, Ohio claimed about $8.8 billion for other projects, including public school systems, roadwork and police departments. It stands to reason that Ohioans, who make up about 4 percent of the country, received about that proportion of nearly $540 billion in tax breaks and income subsidies. If the Recovery Act didn’t turn things around in Ohio, it surely kept things from getting markedly worse.”

Bai went on to describe the effect of the auto bailout: “We can’t know how many new jobs would never have existed if not for the auto bailout, but it’s beside the point. What’s more relevant, and all but impossible to calculate, is how many previously existing jobs would have disappeared in Ohio had at least two of the three major American automakers gone under. The Council of Economic Advisers under George W. Bush, who undertook the first federal intervention in the industry back in 2008, estimated (probably conservatively) that a million American jobs would be vulnerable, most of them in the Midwest. Obama’s advisers during the auto crisis privately discussed the possibility of a ‘Lehman risk’ if they stood by while the auto companies tanked — in other words, a sudden collapse of the automakers might cause a catastrophic failure of the entire industrial sector, just as the dissolution of Lehman Brothers sunk the financial markets.”

The economy has continued to grow. The fact that growth has been slower than desired can be attributed to many factors, not least of which is the opposition by congressional Republicans to any bill or program that would stimulate the economy and add jobs. In September 2011, President Obama submitted to Congress his jobs bill, the "American Jobs Act of 2011." It is a bill that economists say would create millions of jobs and stimulate the economy. You would think that the second it was introduced the Republicans in Congress would, out of love of country and concern for the lives of working Americans, have supported and enacted it even if they had doubts as to its effectiveness. But no, they blocked the bill and prevented its enactment.

Perhaps in this political world I am being too dramatic when I describe this opposition to any program for job enhancement as cold-hearted and un-American. But think of the robust hypocrisy of Republicans speaking out of one side of their mouths about the need to create jobs while preventing any progress on the jobs bill. How do the millions of unemployed people out there benefit from the obduracy of the Republicans in Congress? It seems that in their zeal to prevent President Obama from being reelected, they have decided that it is in their interest to prevent the economy from rebounding and to prevent the jobs picture from improving. This is a callous abandonment of those millions of people suffering from lack of jobs.

Mitt Romney has put-out a jobs plan which we must assume he would enact if elected president. The question is whether this plan would bring-about the huge increase in jobs necessary to overcome the current stagnation. Keep in mind that in the American Jobs Act of 2011, the President aims to create jobs now, not somewhere down the road. The Act would invest billions in infrastructure, hire more state and local workers, double the size of the payroll tax cut, and add a new set of tax cuts for small businesses and companies that hire new employees. If the Act had been passed back in September 2011, there would, by now, be many thousands of those jobs in evidence. Instead, because of Republican opposition, there is nothing.

Economists have stated that President Obama’s jobs plan is far better than Romney’s. This is because Obama aims to create jobs now. Romney aims to improve the economy so that jobs will be available somewhere in the future. Romney’s plan calls for negotiating trade agreements with Latin America, confronting China’s trade policies, rewriting a new corporate tax code, expanding domestic energy production, building the Keystone pipeline, and cutting taxes on billionaires. While some of these programs might help create jobs in the future, each would take a long time to have a serious effect on the national jobs situation.

In a recent statement  by Romney, you get a taste of his plan to delay immproving the jobs situation and try to upgrade the economy instead : "My campaign is about helping people take more responsibility and becoming employed again, particularly those who don't have work," he said. "His (Obama's) whole campaign is based on getting people jobs again, putting people back to work. This is ultimately a question about direction for the country. Do you believe in a government-centered society that provides more and more benefits or do you believe instead in a free enterprise society where people are able to pursue their dreams?"


So the real jobs candidate is not Mitt Romney. It is President Obama. All Mitt Romney and his party have to do is pass the American Jobs Act of 2011 and get people back to work. Then, once we have a jobs bill in action, the Republicans can sit down with the Democrats and work to enact some of the ideas put forward by Romney.

Romney Wants to Abolish Medicare

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan realize that the public should remain confused about Medicare because the budget put forth by Ryan in the House of Representatives, approved by Mitt Romney, and voted for by all of the Republicans (but defeated in the Senate by the Democrats) would completely demolish Medicare and substitute a system of private medical accounts to be paid to private insurance companies with limited voucher help from the government.

The television ad campaign by Romney makes many charges against President Obama, and deceitfully attacks Obama's efforts to strengthen Medicare. The truth is that Romney and Ryan would destroy Medicare. Their attacks are deliberately misleading. For example, Romney and Ryan claim that the Obama reform law has “cut” $716 billion from Medicare, with the money used to expand coverage to low-income people who are currently uninsured. The fact is that the budget produced by Paul Ryan and approved by Mitt Romney contains the exact same cuts in Medicare as are found in the so-called “Obamacare” law.

The $716 billion is not a “cut” in benefits but rather a savings in costs that the Congressional Budget Office projects over the next decade from wholly reasonable provisions in President Obama’s reform law.

A substantial part of the cut will be accomplished by reducing the hugely wasteful subsidies being paid to private insurance companies for a program called Medicare Advantage. These plans cost the government far more than regular Medicare. People with Medicare Advantage plans will not lose any benefits from the cut. They can go on paying high premiums for Medicare Advantage or they can get the same benefits by switching to regular Medicare and purchasing Medicare-plus policies to cover the additional things provided for in the Medicare Advantage plans.

There is not going to be a cut in the amounts paid to hospitals and doctors. What the Reform law does is reduce the annual increases in amounts being paid to health care providers — like hospitals, nursing homes and home health agencies — to force the notoriously inefficient system to find ways to improve productivity. These recipients of Medicare payments are not going to opt out of the system just because of this reduction of annual increases.

A further cut will come from fees or taxes imposed on drug makers, device makers, and insurers — fees that they can surely afford since expanded coverage for the uninsured will increase their markets and their revenues.

Under the Obama Reform Law there will not be any reduction in benefits to seniors. On the other hand, if Romney and Ryan are elected, they will try to repeal the Reform law. The result will be much higher costs to seniors. For one thing, the Reform law gradually eliminates the doughnut hole for prescriptions under Medicare Part D. Repeal of the law would retain the doughnut hole, and seniors would have to pay the full cost of their prescriptions after reaching approximately $2500 in drug costs. Moreover, the elimination of Medicare would mean that seniors would have to rely on vouchers to help them pay for private health insurance. The amount provided in Ryan’s budget for vouchers would not cover even half the cost of health insurance for seniors in the coming decade. The repeal of the reform law would also drive up costs for seniors who are receiving preventive services, like colonoscopies, mammograms, and immunizations, with no cost sharing.

There is an abundant amount of information on the internet about how Romney is distorting the facts about Medicare.

Romney's Pick--Paul Ryan

Mitt Romeny has now chosen Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin as his running-mate. By doing so Romney has thumbed his nose at those people who said that he should choose a moderate to satisfy the great majority of American voters who are moderates. Paul Ryan is no moderate. As Chairman of the House Budget Committee, he is the author of a right-wing Republican budget proposal that should scare every thinking American. He is an Ayn Rand Libertarian (ignoring Rand's atheism) who would lower taxes on the wealthy, abolish programs for the poor, and destroy Medicare and Medicaid.


Mitt Romney has already approved of the Ryan budget proposal. The Republicans in both houses of Congress are now on the record as voting for the Ryan budget proposal 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 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 the legislation is enacted. 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.

The Ryan budget also calls for the repeal of President Obama's health care reform law. That would save billions in federal subsidies that will be given to lower-income people to buy insurance. Such repeal would bring-back the doughnut-hole for seniors under the Medicare Part D prescription law, would put over 40 million people back into the list of uninsured, and would, among other things, restore the right of health insurance companies to deny insurance on account of pre-existing conditions.

According to The New York Times: "As House Budget Committee chairman, Mr. Ryan has drawn a blueprint of a government that will be absent when people need it the most. It will not be there when the unemployed need job training, or when a struggling student needs help to get into college. It will not be there when a miner needs more than a hardhat for protection, or when a city is unable to replace a crumbling bridge.

And it will be silent when the elderly cannot keep up with the costs of M.R.I.’s or prescription medicines, or when the poor and uninsured become increasingly sick through lack of preventive care.

More than three-fifths of the cuts proposed by Mr. Ryan, and eagerly accepted by the Tea Party-driven House, come from programs for low-income Americans. That means billions of dollars lost for job training for the displaced, Pell grants for students and food stamps for the hungry. These cuts are so severe that the nation’s Catholic bishops raised their voices in protest at the shredding of the nation’s moral obligations."

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 and two wars. 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.

According to Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor under President Clinton: "That budget would cut $3.3 trillion from low income programs over the next decade. The biggest cuts would be in Medicaid, forcing states to drop coverage for an estimated 14 million to 28 million low income people, according to the nonpartisan Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. In all, 62 percent of the budget cuts  proposed by Ryan would come from low-income 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."

We now know that Ryan is also a liar--first class! He has repeatedly said that he did not ask for stimulus funds, but the newspapers were able to turn up several letters by Ryan to the government asking for such funds. Funds were paid to Ryan's projects in Wisconsin. He is therefore a liar. This is what we have to look forward to with Paul Ryan.

So this is who Mitt Romney wants as his running mate. This says a lot about Romney. He is in bed with the most radical right--wing of his party. He is willing to destroy Medicare, health insurance reform, the middle class, and the poor.

Mitt Romney--Flip Flopper

George Romney, father of Mitt Romney, and former governor of Michigan, was too honest. He admitted that when he visited Vietnam he was “brainwashed” by the generals. For this candor he lost his bid to be Republican nominee for president. His son Mitt learned the lesson well. He decided that the last thing you need in politics is honesty and integrity. With his abundant fortune, and vulpine character, he is now the Republican candidate in the race to get the prize that escaped his father.

In 2006, when Mitt Romney was governor of Massachusetts, he supported and signed a health care law that became the model for the federal health care law, The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) signed by President Obama. The Massachusetts health care insurance reform law mandates that nearly every resident of Massachusetts obtain a state-government-regulated minimum level of healthcare insurance coverage. It provides free health care insurance for residents earning less than 150% of the federal poverty level (FPL) who are not eligible for Medicaid. The law also subsidizes health care insurance for those earning up to 300% of the FPL.

Now that he is again running for President, Romney has condemned the federal health care law that was based on his state law. His most fervent distinction is that his was a state law and that the law signed by President Obama is an excessive exertion of federal power. This is not the first time Romney has had to explain his many flip-flops on political questions. Like all of his other flip-flops, however, the explanations he provides are little more than nit-picking and quibbling.

In 1994, when Mitt was running against Ted Kennedy for senator from Massachusetts, he said: “I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country.” During the 2002 governor's race in Massachusetts, Romney said: "The choice to have an abortion is a deeply personal one. Women should be free to choose based on their own beliefs, not the government's." Yet, when he first began campaigning for president, Romney came out in support of state laws forbidding abortion and criticized the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade. He said: “I am firmly pro-life.”

In his 1994 senate run, Romney indicated that he opposed prayer in the schools. In 2007, he called for allowing prayer in school ceremonies.

When he ran for governor in 2002, Romney strongly advocated stem-cell research and promised to lobby President Bush to provide federal funding for such research. During his presidential campaign, however, Romney renounced his 2002 position and said that he now agreed with Bush's decision to ban federal funding for stem-cell research.

In Romney's 2002 race for governor, he said: "We do have tough gun laws in Massachusetts; I support them. I won't chip away at them; I believe they protect us and provide for our safety.” But just before declaring his candidacy for the 2008 Republican nomination for president, Romney joined the National Rifle Association. He said: "I have a gun of my own. I go hunting myself. I'm a member of the NRA and believe firmly in the right to bear arms.” The Associated Press reported in April 2007 that Romney never sought a hunting license in any of the four states where he has resided.

In 2002 Romney supported the right of homosexuals to form civil unions and said he would support domestic partnership benefits. He said: "All citizens deserve equal rights, regardless of their sexual orientation." During his first campaign for president, however, Romney stated that he is opposed to such civil unions as well as same-sex marriages.

These are just a few of the issues on which Slick Mitt has changed positions since he started running for president. Romney has calculated that the base of the Republican Party is far more conservative than the electorate in Massachusetts. He simply could not get nominated with the positions which he embraced during his races for senator and governor of Massachusetts. He appears to have calculated correctly. Republican voters do not care that this man is a total fraud and liar. They like him now that he is speaking like a true conservative. What does this say about the values of the “values” Party? Is honesty not one of the Republican values?

In an editorial, The New York Times said of Mitt Romney: “It is hard to find an issue on which he has not repositioned himself to the right since he was governor of Massachusetts. It is impossible to figure out where he stands or where he would lead the country.”

Romney called himself the candidate of “change.” What did he mean? During the 2008 run for the presidency John McCain made a good point when he said that sure, Romney was the candidate of change because had changed his position so many times.

What this country needs is not the small change of an imposter like Mitt Romney. It still needs a man of integrity like Barack Obama. Romney has frequently and unapologetically reversed his position on many issues when he thought it politically convenient to do so. Perhaps I am too idealistic, but I would like our presidents to be men of strength, integrity, and honor. I feel that Mitt Romney is a spineless fraud who looks which way the wind is blowing before stating his positions.

Unafraid of Aging?

The New York Times recently did a profile of Dr. Linda P. Fried, Dean of the Medical School at Columbia University and an expert on aging. The article, titled “Unafraid of Aging,” described how Dr. Fried’s work had opened all the wonderful possibilities of aging. I wrote the following letter to Dr. Fried:

“ Dear Dr. Fried:

I read the Times article about you today, and I wonder if you have ever considered aging for what it really is. Aging is an incurable disease. It is a terrible, horrible, wasting-away of what was once a healthy and beautiful body. I am 73 and I know. They talk about the "Golden Years," and that sounds to me like Disney nonsense. I think that aging should be looked upon by intelligent people as a tragic fact of life, one of the things that makes life miserable. While some people may be able to deal with aging through our genetic tendency to optimism, a realistic look at aging would necessarily cause deep depression.

If it were not for aging at least half, maybe more, of the medical profession would not exist. In most specialties the job is to diagnose and treat the illnesses of aging. The older you get, the more medical problems you face. You lose your ability to do many things. You lose your sexual ability. Your skin sags, your eyes, ears, and teeth go bad. Your hair turns white and falls out. You lose all energy. I'm not just talking about myself. I am talking about everybody.

The older you get, the more medications you must take. After a while you have to keep your medications in special boxes for each day. Your body gets more and more feeble. You face a multitude of problems and you keep the doctors busy. You may even lose control of your mind through one of the horrible diseases and syndromes that cause dementia. There is no cure for this. It is part of life. Eventually, you develop some problem that leads to death. By the time you die, it is almost a relief for you and your family.

I'm sorry to have to say this, but there is no good side of aging. It is a human tragedy.”

What explains our ability to go on living, even happily, while our bodies deteriorate year-after-year? Why does this disintegration of our bodies not cause every one of us terrible disgust, anger, and discouragement? The answer probably lies in our genes. 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.

I do not suggest that we should all become terribly depressed by our aging, but I would prefer not to hear the absurd claims that old age is the best part of life, the “Golden Years,” the last of life for which the first was made. Old age sucks.

Pope Benedict in Wonderland

If you sit and watch a ceremony in the Vatican with Pope Benedict XVI sitting high on a platform surrounded by his red-robed battalions of eminent clowns, you have to consider how this group looks more and more like characters out of Alice in Wonderland. In the past month they and their American league of Red-Hat bumblers have issued one stupid proclamation after another.

Perhaps their stupidest pronouncement to date is that they have appointed an American bishop to rein-in the largest and most influential group of Catholic nuns in the United States, saying that an investigation found that the group had “serious doctrinal problems.” They said that members of the group, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, had challenged church teaching on homosexuality and the male-only priesthood, and promoted “radical feminist themes.

The verdict on the nuns’ group was issued by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is now led by an American, Cardinal William Levada, formerly the archbishop of San Francisco. He appointed Archbishop J. Peter Sartain of Seattle to lead the process of reforming the sisters’ conference, with assistance from Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki and Bishop Leonard Blair, who was in charge of the investigation of the group. They have been given up to five years to revise the group’s statutes, approve of every speaker at the group’s public programs, and replace a handbook the group used to facilitate dialogue on matters that the Vatican said should be settled doctrine.

It should be obvious that the nuns are not going to sit tight for the ministrations of the three blind mice. The Vatican is wasting its time. What is the Vatican going to do when the nuns tell the three bishops to go take a hike? Is it going to excommunicate all of the nuns? The nuns should appoint someone to reform the bishops and the Vatican. The bishops are a bunch of dunderheads. The nuns should all resign from the Church and see how it does without them.

The Vatican also recently denounced a book by a distinguished theologian, Sr. Margaret Farley of Yale Divinity School, entitled, “Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics.” Needless to say, the Vatican’s criticism has resulted in the book becoming a New York Times best seller.

The American Conference of dim-witted bishops has also criticized the Obama Administration for requiring health insurance companies to cover birth control. The bumbling bishops do this because they are brain-dead to the fact that over 90% of Catholics use birth control despite the Church’s bizarre ban on such practices.

As someone who grew-up in a devout Catholic family, it took me many years to recognize the utter absurdity if the Church’s teachings, practices, pageantry, and hypocrisy. While the Church has been anathematizing groups that show sympathy and understanding for the downtrodden, it has been protecting and defending the abominations of a disgusting group of child-molesters.

Aimee Copeland and Flesh-Eating Disease

Aimee Copeland is a beautiful college co-ed who has developed a rare condition called necrotizing fasciitis, a flesh-eating disease in which the bacteria emit toxins that destroy muscle, fat, and skin tissue. She got it as a result of falling off a zip-line into a small river in Georgia and suffering a gash in her leg. The disease has ravaged her body. She has been battling kidney failure and other organ damage. So far, the doctors have had to amputate one leg and both hands. If the disease continues to spread, she could die. She has shown great bravery while faced with this horrible affliction.

Today her father reported that Aimee is able to breathe without the aid of a ventilator. He said, “I believe God is going to take care of the future." He went on to say, "I just thank God my daughter is alive." When he went to the bank he wound-up hugging everybody at the bank. He said, "Aimee has always been a hugging person, and in a really odd way, I believe that God is sharing Aimee's spirit through me. That's one of the things that has really kept me going."

There is still the possibility the Aimee will die of this unspeakably terrible disease. I wonder whether her father will be able to maintain his optimistic attitude if she does. She is now terribly disabled, missing one leg and two hands, but things could get worse. I hope she gets better.

I suppose that it is natural to thank God for any improvements in Aimee’s condition and to pray to God for to let her live. Belief in God provides a great amount of comfort for people like Mr. Copeland facing catastrophic tragedy. Yet, to me, it is sad that someone like Mr. Copeland goes on worshipping this mythical being called God even though God has allowed this heartbreaking misfortune to destroy the body, and perhaps the life of his daughter Aimee. Does God get credit for every good thing that happens to Aimee, but no blame for the bad things?

If there was a God, an omnipotent creator of the universe, he could not be good. The God worshipped by western religions is supposed to be infinitely good and loving. But any God that would permit a young, innocent girl to suffer with the horrors of necrotizing fasciitis disease, or one of the many other horrible afflictions, would have to be a monster of infinite sadism.

God cannot have it both ways. If he created all things, and if we are to thank him for every improvement in Aimee’s condition, we must condemn him for the horror she has already undergone. If we are to thank God for saving us from fires and tornadoes, we must condemn him for allowing human lives to be destroyed in such catastrophes. If we are to thank him for our daily bread, we must condemn him for world hunger and starvation. If God gets the credit, he also deserves the blame.

What if God does not do bad things? What if they are done by the Devil? It makes no difference. If God is the creator of Heaven, Hell, and all things, he is the creator of Satan. If he is omnipotent and omniscient, but lets the Devil have free reign (See the Book of Job), he is as guilty as Satan. If God can answer Mr. Copeland’s prayer and let Aimee live, he can also prevent Aimee’s disease from happening. If there was a God, and he stood by and let this sweet innocent young woman suffer this torture, he would be unworthy of our worship. He would be a cruel monster.

God does not exist. He is a psychological crutch we use to help us in times of great sorrow. We never think rationally when we rely on God in times of trouble. If he really existed, and if he actually became involved in human life, we would never have the kind of tragedy being suffered by Aimee.

Same-Sex Marriage

Now that President Obama has followed the lead of Vice President Biden and stated that he supports the right to same-sex marriage, the subject has become a campaign issue. Since I originally published this article, several states, including New York, have legalized same-sex marriage. Others, such as North Carolina, have banned it through constitutional amendments. One can easily discern the red-state bias in such opposition to same-sex marriage. The states that have allowed same-sex marriage are the more northern, liberal, educated, sophisticated, tolerant states. The states that have banned it are the same states that oppressed African Americans for decades even after their emancipation from slavery. The Republican Party is appealing to the lowest and most ignorant types of Americans in its use of this issue.

What is at the base of the debate over same-sex marriage? In the June 19, 2005, issue of The New York Times Magazine, Russell Shorto described a period of time he spent with a group of anti-gay-marriage activists in Maryland. He came away with the conviction that the activists were motivated by their belief that homosexuality is evil rather than by any adverse effects such marriages could have upon society. The activists were convinced that homosexuality is a disease and that it is spreading.

Despite the opposition to same-sex marriage, there seems to be a growing trend around the world to recognize the right of gay people to enter into marriage. Canada now has a law allowing same-sex marriages. Such unions are also permitted in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Spain. Denmark Norway, Sweden, and Iceland give marital rights to gay couples under laws providing for “registered partnerships.” In the case of "Goodridge v. Department of Public Health," the Massachusetts Supreme Court declared that laws forbidding same-sex marriage were contrary to the state’s constitution. Since then, gay couples have been getting married in Massachusetts. New York and other states have moved to allow such marriages, and some states are passing laws allowing “civil unions” for same-sex couples.

Same-sex marriages do not in any way harm or affect heterosexual marriage. Many homosexuals form long-term loving unions just like married straight couples. The problem is that in a state that does not recognize same-sex marriage, a gay couple who have lived together for an extended period of time has acquired very few of the legal rights afforded to heterosexual married couples. Those rights include inheritance, real property, joint income tax returns, social security benefits, medical benefits, homestead protection, support, alimony, and many others. Gay partners seek not only the property benefits of marriage but also the symbolic recognition of their relationship.

Although anti-gay-marriage activists are motivated by a bigotry arising out of religious convictions, they assert that marriage is the bedrock of a sound society and claim that same-sex marriage will make heterosexual marriage collapse. In the case of "Goodridge v. Department of Public Health," the Massachusetts Supreme Court found that there was no evidence to support such an argument. Anti-gay-marriage activists point to a study done by conservative pundit Stanley Kurtz in which he claimed that the laws permitting “registered partnerships” had brought about the collapse of marriage in Scandinavia. In fact, Kurtz was mistaken. In Denmark, the marriage rate had been declining for a half-century, but it turned around after the “registered partnership” law was passed in 1989. Then the marriage rate continued to climb. Danish heterosexual marriage rates are now the highest they’ve been since the early 1970s. The marriage rates for Sweden, Norway, and Iceland are all higher than the rates for the years before the “registered partnership” laws were passed.

Opponents of gay marriage claim that such marriages cause harm to children. In the case of "Baehr v. Miike," the Circuit Court of Hawaii found that there was no such harm and invalidated a law forbidding gay marriage. (The Baehr decision later became moot when the Hawaii legislature passed a constitutional amendment forbidding same-sex marriage, but the findings of the case are worth consideration.) Curiously, the experts for both sides testified that children raised in gay homes suffered no problems different from children of heterosexual parents. Moreover, the children raised by gay couples did not become gay as a result of their parents’ sexual identity. The psychological wellbeing of the children was far more dependent on the love, stability, protection, and support of their families than on the sex of the parents. Many studies have supported the findings of the Hawaii Court.

So we come to the real argument of the anti-gay-marriage activists. They say that homosexuality is a “perversion” and that it is forbidden by the Bible. They argue that homosexuality is a “choice” and that it is sinful. They maintain that homosexuality is a disease that can be passed on to others and that it is infecting our society. They oppose gay marriage because they oppose gays. It would be insulting to gay people to get into a long discussion about the causes of sexual preference. Regardless of the causes, gays are American citizens entitled to all the rights and privileges of citizenship. Homosexuality is not evil and is not a disease. If we were to follow Biblical injunctions, it would appear to be okay for the state to execute gays on account of their homosexuality. We live in a more civilized world than that. Homosexuality does not harm heterosexuals. Many of our leading Americans are gay. Gays do not choose their sexual preference any more than heterosexuals choose theirs. Intelligent people know, and many studies have confirmed, that sexual preference is something you are born with, not a choice.

EASTER AND THE HOLY EUCHARIST

It is Christian doctrine that Jesus died as a sacrifice for man. The idea is that “Original Sin” was committed by Adam and Eve, and that the stain of that sin was upon every human being born thereafter. Thus, even though subsequent humans did not commit the original sin, they were guilty of it as well as other sins. Christ came to save man from original sin and all other sin, and to provide a means for man to achieve everlasting life in heaven. In order to save man, Christ had to perform a sacrifice. Jesus was God, so he performed a sacrifice to himself. The sacrifice was a human sacrifice of the most bestial and agonizing kind, a painfully slow death by suffocation on a cross.

One has to wonder why this omnipotent, all-loving, almighty God couldn’t have simply forgiven all men of sin without this orgy of torment? Why did he have to be the scapegoat for all human beings and go through this horrendous nightmare of torture in order to provide salvation? The answer is that the writers of the Bible lived in a benighted and barbaric time when this was thought to be the right way for the gods to behave.

The resurrection of Jesus from the dead has been called the basis for all Christianity. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:13-14: “But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.” The celebration of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead is the most important date on the Catholics’ liturgical calendar. It is also the concoction of Paul and other writers who came long after Jesus died.

Scholars use various methods of textual criticism, including language and style, to determine if text is authentic or was added to the original gospel at a later time. There are many things on which they agree. Scholars agree that Jesus did not predict his own resurrection from the dead or his second coming. The quotations in the Bible in which he makes such a prediction (e.g. Mark 8:31) are considered to be later additions.

Moreover, the accounts of Jesus’ resurrection are so contradictory and improbable that the whole story has to be dismissed as fiction. Matthew says that the day following Jesus crucifixion Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to the tomb (Matt 28:2), but Mark says that the two Marys and Salome went (Mark 16:1). Luke writes that Mary Magdalene went with Mary the mother of James, Joanna, and other women (Luke 24:10). Matthew says that the stone was removed by an angel at the time the women arrived at Jesus’ tomb (Matt. 28:2), but Mark and Luke say it had already been removed (Mark 16:2-4, Luke 24:1-2). Matthew says that when the women arrived, the angel was outside the tomb (Matt 28:2), but Mark says the angel was inside the tomb (Mark 16:5) and Luke says there were two men inside the tomb (Luke 24:4).

In Matthew the two women rush from the tomb to tell the disciples (Matt 28:8-9), but Mark says that they said nothing to anyone (Mark 16:8). Luke says that they reported the story to the disciples (Luke 24:9-11). John tells a very different story from the others (John 20:1-18). Later post-resurrection stories are also in conflict (compare Matt 28:16-20 with Luke 24:13-53, and John 20:19).

The first Gospel written was the Gospel of Mark. Scholars can tell that the whole story of the resurrection of Jesus in Mark was added to the Gospel by somebody else long after the original version was written. Originally, the Gospel of Mark ended at Chapter 16:8. That is the part where the women find the empty tomb and are told by a “young man” that Jesus has risen. The part of the Gospel after that, in which Jesus appears to various people, was added by later writers who wanted to supply authenticity to the myth of Jesus’ resurrection. As Professor Bart D. Ehrman of the University of North Carolina says: “These verses [Mark 16:9-20] are absent from our two oldest and best manuscripts of Mark’s Gospel, along with other important witnesses; the transition between this passage and the one preceding it is hard to understand….and there are a large number of words and phrases in the passage that are not found elsewhere in Mark.”

If you consider the fact that the Gospels of Mathew and Luke were based on the gospel of Mark, then it becomes clear that the Gospels’ story of Jesus’ resurrection is pure myth that was made-up long after the Gospels were written. The earliest Christian scriptures were the Epistles of Paul, yet Paul does not give any details about Jesus’ resurrection other than referring to it (See Rom. 6:5, 1 Cor. 15:13).

The idea of resurrection by a god did not begin with Jesus. Lots of gods arose from the dead in ancient times. Among them are Mithra, Attis, Dionysus, Osiris, Tammuz, Ishtar, Adonis, Persephone, Semele, Heracles (or Herakles), and Melqart. Some claim Buddah was resurrected from the dead.

Roman Catholics around the world celebrate Easter by partaking of the Holy Eucharist. It is a wafer of unleavened bread and liturgical wine. The wafer is placed in the recipient’s hand or mouth, and the wine is usually sipped out of a common chalice ( a somewhat unsanitary practice). According to Church dogma, the bread and wine are not just symbolic commemoration of the body and blood of Jesus. They are the actual body and blood of Jesus. It is believed that by consuming the body and blood of Jesus you take into your body part of his divine grace.

It seems that for thousands of years nobody has ever stepped back and examined this holy practice. A little thinking about it should, however, make us wonder where it came from and why we do it. Why eat a human body and drink human blood. Isn’t that a little cannibalistic? How did the Catholic Church ever decide to ordain this as the most profound way of worshipping Jesus. Obviously, it is taken from an ancient time when men performed human sacrifice. It is well known that following a human sacrifice, ancient men frequently ate the body and drank the blood of the sacrificial victim. The sacrificial victim was often an enemy defeated in battle. It was believed that by doing so the eater took into himself the courage and strength of the victim. Even in more modern times headhunters would eat the bodies of their victims in the belief that the valor and fighting ability of the victim would come into the victor. Thus, as the practice of human sacrifice and cannibalism decreased, religions continued the practice by substituting bread, wine, and other food for the bodies of sacrificial victims.

The rite of the Last Supper, which the early Christian Church adopted as its Holy Eucharist, clearly was borrowed from the ritual meal practiced by more ancient religions. In The Roman Cult of Mithras, Manfred Clauss says: “The offering of bread and wine is known in virtually all ancient cultures, and the meal as a means of binding the faithful together and uniting them to the deity was a feature common to many religions. It represented one of the oldest means of manifesting unification with the spiritual, and the appropriation of spiritual qualities.” Claus describes how the worshippers of the god Mithra engaged in a ritual meal similar to the Christian Eucharist.

In the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), the Last Supper is a Passover meal. In the Gospel of John, it takes place the day before Passover. It is possible that Jesus asked his followers to eat bread and drink wine in his memory. It is highly unlikely that he horrified his disciples by recommending anything so cannibalistic as having bread and wine represent his body and blood. Such ideas were abhorrent to the Jews. Even the blood of an animal was forbidden at a Jewish meal by biblical law (Leviticus 7:26). Geza Vermes, Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies at Oxford University, in The Religion of Jesus the Jew, says, “...the imagery of eating a man’s body, and especially drinking his blood...even after allowance is made for metaphorical language, strikes a totally foreign note in a Palestinian Jewish cultural setting...With their profoundly rooted blood taboo, Jesus’ listeners would have been overcome with nausea at hearing such words.” The idea that the eating of bread and wine was a consumption of the body and blood of Jesus is a later Greek development, taken from the Mystery Religions such as the cult of Mithra. The biblical version of the Last Supper was obviously added long after the original gospels were written.

In the Mystery Religions, the cult “agapes” were “love feasts” in which the communicants achieved “mystical identification with the divinity.” The cults of Mithra and Attis had sacramental use of bread and wine as a means of communing with the gods. The early Eucharistic feasts of the Christians came to be called “agapes” by the Greeks. It was the Greeks who substituted bread and wine for the body and blood of sacrificial victims. If one goes back far enough, one can see the history of human sacrifice in Greece and how it affected the liturgy of the modern Church.

Good Friday, Celebrating a Human Sacrifice

Today is Good Friday, 2012. On this day Christians around the world commemorate the "sacrifice" of a man named Jesus. It is said that the Romans tortured him with whips, made him carry a heavy cross to the hill of Golgotha, and then nailed him to the cross and let him hang there until he died.

The central belief of Christianity is that Jesus was a human sacrifice for mankind. Somehow, Christians have accepted this teaching from an ancient, barbaric time, and still believe it today. They believe that Man committed something called “Original Sin” and that the only way he could achieve salvation from original and other sins was by means of a human sacrifice. They believe that the almighty and eternal God, who is a merciful, loving, and forgiving God, could be appeased only by this hideous bloody and grisly torture and lynching of a human being. Because an ordinary human sacrifice would not be sufficient, the Son of God had to come down to Earth to be the sacrificial victim. He had to be scourged, driven to Golgatha under the weight of the cross, nailed to the cross, pierced with a spear, and slowly suffocated until he bled to death. Crucifixion was one of the most horrible forms of execution ever devised. Yet Christians believe that it must have been pleasing to God.

Human sacrifice was an integral part of much early worship of the gods. Today many religions still use an altar, but the first altars were used to sacrifice human and animal victims. References in literature to the sacrifice of human individuals harks back to the days when this was a routine and deeply reverent practice. In the story of the Trojan War, Agamemnon tells his wife to prepare his daughter for her marriage. He then takes her to the shore and sacrifices her to the gods in order to obtain favorable winds for his trip to Troy. You can be sure that the story is not pure whimsy. Human sacrifice was well known in ancient Greece, as it was in Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, Canaan, and Israel. At the time of Jesus, human sacrifice was a recent memory.

It is clear that back in the early history of the Israelites, human sacrifice was customary. Consider the stories of Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22:1-19, Japhthah and his daughter in Judges 11:30-31, King Ahaz and his son in 2 Chronicles 28:3, and King Manasseh and his son in 2 Chronicles 33:6. Later in their history, the Israelites turned away from human sacrifice and declared it an abomination.
Nevertheless, the New Testament repeatedly refers to the idea that Jesus was a sacrifice for Mankind. For example, John 1:29, “Behold the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the World;” John 2:2, “He is propitiation for the sins of the world;” Matthew 20, “Á ransom for many;” Matthew 26:28, “This is my blood of the New Testament which is shed for many for the remission of sins;” Hebrews 9:23-28,“Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many;” (See also Philippians 2:17, 4:18; Romans 12:1, 15:16; 1Peter 1:18-19, 2:5; Ephesians 1:7; and Titus 2:14).

The dogma that Jesus was crucified as a form of atonement for Man’s sins did not become established as a doctrine of the very early Church until the fourth century AD. Saint Augustine (354-430), who laid down many of the Church's doctrines, including the doctrine of atonement, said that man was doomed to Hell until Jesus redeemed him. He regarded Jesus’ sacrifice “Not as payment of a debt due to God, but as an act of justice to the Devil in discharge of his fair and lawful claims.”

Like many other aspects of Christianity, the idea of propitiating god with a human sacrifice, and even having the god himself be the sacrificial victim, was not new when the Church dreamed up this explanation of Jesus’ crucifixion. It was borrowed from old pagan myths. I have mentioned the human sacrifices carried out by early Israelites. The Canaanites sacrificed to the gods, and the prophets inveighed against the sacrificing of Canaanite children to Moloch (See Samuel 17:17; Jeremiah 7:31; Ezekiel 16:20, 20:26).

In Egypt, the priests performed human sacrifice when the Pharaoh died. The Pharaoh was believed to be a god. His family and servants were buried alive with him. Eventually the priests started substituting animals, dolls and other forms of art for living victims. In ancient Mesopotamia archeologists have found the tombs of kings with entire households that were buried alive when the king was interred.

In India, it was the custom to perform human sacrifice in order to guarantee a good harvest and appease the gods. The victim was believed to be the god sacrificing himself, in the form of a man, to himself as a god. The ancient Khonds of India believed that their sacrificial victim died for all mankind and became a god.

The ancient Greeks sacrificed a criminal at Rhodes after putting him in royal robes. They did this in memory of the sacrifice by Kronos of his “Only begotten Son.” Themistocles sacrificed Persian youths to Dionysus.

Now here we are in the 21st Century, still believing in gods and still believing that this almighty being we call God could be appeased only by this inhuman sacrifice of Jesus. We are supposed to worship this God because by this sacrifice he enabled us to be saved from the punishment we are due on account of a sin committed--not by us--but by our earliest ancestors. We are supposed to believe in this God because he performed the circus trick of rising from the dead. We are supposed to love this god because he cured a few sick people while letting the great mass of men go on suffering throughout history. We are supposed to adore this god even though he allowed the unimaginable holocaust of World War II, even though he allows millions of humans to die each year of horrible diseases, even though he allows millions of people each year to suffer and die in tornados, floods, earthquakes, and hurricanes. Well, thanks God. Thanks for nothing.

Is Obamacare Constitutional?

The constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACT) (derogatorily called “Obamacare” by Republicans) is now before the U.S. Supreme Court. It is likely that the conservative justices will try to decide this case on the basis of politics rather than a strict adherence to the law. Justices like Scalia and Thomas would have the world believe that they are strict constructionists who follow only the law, but the truth is that they are highly political and they will decide this case on the basis of their political opposition to liberals and Democrats and in the hopes that their decision will hurt the chances of President Obama being reelected.

If Scalia and his political cronies were to decide this case solely on the law, they would be compelled to uphold the constitutionality of the law. In a long list of decisions, the Supreme Court has overwhelmingly upheld the broad power of the federal government to regulate commerce even if it meant regulating private activity which might have some affect on interstate commerce.

The chief question currently before the Supreme Court is whether Congress has the power under the Commerce Clause to mandate that people buy a minimum amount of health insurance under the PPACT. The Commerce Clause of the Constitution, U.S. Const. Art.1, Sec. 8, cl. 3, grants Congress power “to regulate commerce….among the several states.” In the case of Thomas More Law Center v. Obama, the Sixth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals upheld the constitutionality of the PPACT by recognizing that Supreme Court precedents give the federal government great power to legislate individual activity under the Commerce Clause.

The Sixth Circuit started-out by saying that “The minimum coverage provision, like all congressional enactments, is entitled to a ‘presumption of constitutionality.’" The court went on to say that “the presumption that the minimum coverage provision is valid is ‘not a mere polite gesture. It is deference due to deliberate judgment by constitutional majorities of the two Houses of Congress that an act is within their delegated power.’ ”

The Appeals Court then went on to find that under the Supreme Court decisions, enactment of the minimum coverage provision was definitely within the power of Congress. The Court noted that in several cases, including Gonzales v. Reich, the Supreme Court has held that Congress may regulate economic activity, even if wholly intrastate, if it substantially affects interstate commerce. For example, in Wickard v. Filburn, the Supreme Court upheld regulations limiting the amount of wheat a farmer could grow, even for non-commercial purposes.

The Sixth Circuit found that the minimum coverage provision is constitutional because Congress had a rational basis for believing that the provision has substantial effects on interstate commerce. The Court also found that Congress had a rational basis for believing that the provision was essential to its larger economic scheme of reforming the interstate markets of health care and health insurance.

The court recognized that 18% of the non-elderly population was uninsured and that most states required hospitals to treat people’s illness regardless of their ability to pay. Such uninsured people consume over $100 billion in health care services every year. Congress found that the cost of providing care to uninsured people was passed-on from providers to private insurers which pass it on to the families they insure. This raises the cost of health insurance and drives more people out of the private health insurance market. It becomes a vicious circle, and has a profound effect on the interstate commerce in healthcare and health insurance.

The Appeals Court held that the minimum care provision is an “essential part of a broader economic regulatory scheme.” Without the individual mandate, the PPACT would result in a terrible spiral: only relatively sick Americans would choose to get insurance, leading premium prices to rise and causing the healthier of even those sick people to drop their insurance, sending prices higher and higher.

Massachusetts, under Governor Mitt Romney, recognized that it could not successfully reform its healthcare system without enacting an individual mandate. The individual mandate has worked just fine in Massachusetts. It has actually lowered the cost of health insurance for consumers, and no court has held that it is beyond the power of the legislature.

It cannot be argued that the government cannot order people to purchase a private produce. They forget that most states require their citizens to purchase automobile insurance. It is considered an important part of the laws controlling the purchase and use of automobiles. Such legislative compulsion has never been struck-down by any court.

As one who practiced law for 37 years, and who took a special interest in Constitutional law, I can say with assurance that if there were no politics involved the upholding of the PPACT would be a slam dunk. I believe that those justices who question the constitutionality of the Act do so out of their political feelings and not out of any concern with the law. I hope that they will come to their senses and uphold this Act. But if they strike it down, I hope that the American People, in their righteous anger, will not only reelect President Obama, but also give strong control of both houses of Congress to liberal Democrats.

Healthcare and 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.

Newt the Salamander

Newt Gingrich, former Loudmouth of the House, won a plurality of the votes in the South Carolina Republican Presidential Primary because the ignorant rednecks of that benighted state liked his aggressive way of attacking liberals. Despite their claims to “Family Values,” the right-wingers of that state were able to overlook Newt’s many moral failures because their belief system is ultimately built on the same kind of hypocrisy that underlies the career of Newt the Salamander.

Why is it that so many ultra-conservative Republicans like this slimy reptile? I suspect that they recognize in him the same set of rotten moral values that they hold. Most of them claim to have “Family Values,” but in reality, most of them live morally hypocritical lives just like Newt. He appeals to their darker natures, their resentment of the more educated and intelligent liberal Democrats, and their hatred of blacks and immigrants.

In one editorial, The New York Times described some of Gingrich’s many inflammatory rants against Democrats including the claim that President Obama and his party are “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.”

Recognizing that he was in South Carolina, the bigotry capital of America, Newt stooped to abject racism in his fight for the nomination. This is not new from the former Georgia congressman. He had previously charged that President Obama displayed “Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior.” In the South Carolina fight, he repeatedly called Mr. Obama “the greatest food-stamp president in American history,” and lectured a black questioner at a debate about the amount of federal handouts to blacks, suggesting their work ethic was doubtful. Once again, the South Carolina right-wingers (who no-doubt drip with nostalgia for the good-old days of racial segregation) approved of Newt’s appeal to their hatred of blacks.

Gingrich appeals not only to racism but also to every form of bigotry available. He 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.”

The most disturbing thing about Newt is not his long history of marital infidelity. It is his blatant hypocrisy. Newt repeatedly denounced President Clinton for immoral behavior when the House tried 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, while still married to Marianne, 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. Marianne claims that after Newt took-up with Callista, he told her that he wanted her to agree to an “open marriage” which would allow him to continue his affair with Callista while still married to Marianne. In 2000, Gingrich divorced Marianne and married Callista.
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 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 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, in May 2011, Newt issued a statement saying: "I am against any effort to impose a federal mandate on anyone because it is fundamentally wrong and I believe unconstitutional."

As of March 7, 2011, 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. Later in 2008 he said: "A carbon cap and trade system ... would lead to corruption, political favoritism, and would have a huge impact on the economy."

In a recent editorial, The New York Times pointed-out that: “Newt Gingrich’s victory in South Carolina turned on an almost comically broad deception, an inversion of the truth in which the insider whose personal wealth and political experience are entirely creations of Washington becomes the anti-establishment candidate. That it worked speaks poorly of voters who let themselves be manipulated by the lowest form of campaigning, appealing to their anger and prejudices.” The editorial goes on to point out that: “For years, he was a lobbyist for Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored mortgage company, making more than $1.6 million over eight years. He also cashed in on his influence by selling access to health-care companies and insurers, bringing in $37 million over eight years.”

Former Republican Leader of the Senate and Presidential Candidate Bob Dole recently said that Newt Gingrich did not listen to others or take advice. Said Dole: “It was his way or the highway.” This, no doubt, partially explains why, earlier in the current campaign, most of Gingrich’s campaign staff quit on him. It is hard to imagine him as President of the United States. He is a deceiving, manipulative, flip-flopping, egotistical, hypocritical salamander, and the people who are enthused by his appeals to anger and prejudice are no better than him.

Slick Mitt

George Romney, father of Mitt Romney, and former governor of Michigan, was too honest. He admitted that when he visited Vietnam he was “brainwashed” by the generals. For this candor he lost his bid to be Republican nominee for president. His son Mitt learned the lesson well. He decided that the last thing you need in politics is honesty and integrity. With his abundant fortune, and vulpine character, he is now the frontrunner in the race to get the prize that escaped his father.

In 2006, when Mitt Romney was governor of Massachusetts, he supported and signed a health care law that became the model for the federal health care law, The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) signed by President Obama. The Massachusetts health care insurance reform law mandates that nearly every resident of Massachusetts obtain a state-government-regulated minimum level of healthcare insurance coverage. It provides free health care insurance for residents earning less than 150% of the federal poverty level (FPL) who are not eligible for Medicaid. The law also subsidizes health care insurance for those earning up to 300% of the FPL.

Now that he is again running for President, Romney has condemned the federal health care law that was based on his state law. His most fervent distinction is that his was a state law and that the law signed by President Obama is an excessive exertion of federal power. This is not the first time Romney has had to explain his many flip-flops on political questions. Like all of his other flip-flops, however, the explanations he provides are little more than nit-picking and quibbling.

In 1994, when Mitt was running against Ted Kennedy for senator from Massachusetts, he said: “I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country.” During the 2002 governor's race in Massachusetts, Romney said: "The choice to have an abortion is a deeply personal one. Women should be free to choose based on their own beliefs, not the government's." Yet, when he first began campaigning for president, Romney came out in support of state laws forbidding abortion and criticized the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade. He said: “I am firmly pro-life.”

In his 1994 senate run, Romney indicated that he opposed prayer in the schools. In 2007, he called for allowing prayer in school ceremonies.

When he ran for governor in 2002, Romney strongly advocated stem-cell research and promised to lobby President Bush to provide federal funding for such research. During his presidential campaign, however, Romney renounced his 2002 position and said that he now agreed with Bush's decision to ban federal funding for stem-cell research.

In Romney's 2002 race for governor, he said: "We do have tough gun laws in Massachusetts; I support them. I won't chip away at them; I believe they protect us and provide for our safety.” But just before declaring his candidacy for the 2008 Republican nomination for president, Romney joined the National Rifle Association. He said: "I have a gun of my own. I go hunting myself. I'm a member of the NRA and believe firmly in the right to bear arms.” The Associated Press reported in April 2007 that Romney never sought a hunting license in any of the four states where he has resided.

In 2002 Romney supported the right of homosexuals to form civil unions and said he would support domestic partnership benefits. He said: "All citizens deserve equal rights, regardless of their sexual orientation." During his first campaign for president, however, Romney stated that he is opposed to such civil unions as well as same-sex marriages.

These are just a few of the issues on which Slick Mitt has changed positions since he started running for president. Romney has calculated that the base of the Republican Party is far more conservative than the electorate in Massachusetts. He simply could not get nominated with the positions which he embraced during his races for senator and governor of Massachusetts. He appears to have calculated correctly. Republican voters do not care that this man is a total fraud and liar. They like him now that he is speaking like a true conservative. What does this say about the values of the “values” Party? Is honesty not one of the Republican values?

In an editorial, The New York Times said of Mitt Romney: “It is hard to find an issue on which he has not repositioned himself to the right since he was governor of Massachusetts. It is impossible to figure out where he stands or where he would lead the country.”

Romney called himself the candidate of “change.” What did he mean? During the 2008 run for the presidency John McCain made a good point when he said that sure, Romney was the candidate of change because had changed his position so many times.

What this country needs is not the small change of an imposter like Mitt Romney. It still needs a man of integrity like Barack Obama.