Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

so I read the entry on genocide in the bible. I think there’s one particularly hilarious passage in the bible that wasn’t mentioned. I think it’s the best one: “In the cities of these people, that the Lord thy God doth giveth as thy inheritance, thall shalt save alive nothing that breatheth, but thall shalt utterly destroy them – namely the Hittites and the Jebusites, the Hivites and the Perezzites, the Amorites and the Canaanites, as the Lord thy God has commanded thee. That they not teach any such abominable sacrafices as they commit against their gods, and you thus sin against the Lord, thy God.” Deuteronomy 20:16-18.

I’ve pointed this passage out to many people. The best justification I’ve heard is that these “abominable sacrafices” refers to infanticide. So in other words, six different nationalities were all ACCUSED of practicing infanticide – I think these days that would be considered a stereotype – and God’s remedy was to kill every last member of all six groups.

Back in 2008, after the election, it seemed that Barack Obama was actually going to make things different from how they were under George W. Bush. Remember that?

Here’s what President-Elect Obama had to say on climate legislation:

“My presidency will mark a new chapter in America’s leadership on climate change that will strengthen our security and create millions of new jobs in the process… Climate change and our dependence on foreign oil, if left unaddressed, will continue to weaken our economy and threaten our national security.”

Here’s what President Obama has to say on climate legislation now:

Yesterday, congressional Democrats announced that they would stop trying to pass “comprehensive energy legislation”. That’s the new term they took on after they had removed real climate action from the bill, and added in big subsidies for oil and coal companies to encourage more fossil fuel use.

Now, the Democrats are saying they’re not even going to try to pass THAT shameful compromise. It was Barack Obama who led the way in abandoning the effort to deal with climate change. He just stood back and watched it fail.

Now, in the middle of the hottest year ever recorded, watch as climate change continues “to weaken our economy and threaten our national security.”

Vote for Barack Obama in 2012? This environmentalist says Hell no!

Living on the border between civilization and the raw power of wilderness, it lowers its head against the prevailing wind and surges forward to meet its destiny. Some may call it prickly, but it doesn’t have the luxury of being soft and cuddly. It’s an endangered species, struggling for survival in a world that has forgotten how to care. Its silent path plunges in and out of the dark side. You have just crossed paths with the Hedgehog of Peril.

It’s not just a hedgehog. It’s an edgehog.

——

Because it is no stranger to peril, this Hedgehog Of Peril t-shirt helps to fund Kiva microloans to people living on the edge in developing countries. It’s also made in the USA, free of sweatshop labor.

One of the best qualities of U.S. Representative Lynn Woolsey is that her congressional activism doesn’t follow the ebb and flow of the news cycle. When she identifies an issue that matters, she keeps paying attention to it long after the collective attention of journalists has turned to something new.

Thus, although it was weeks ago when revelations of American military contractor corruption in Afghanistan took place, Lynn Woolsey is still speaking about the matter. Why? Congress still hasn’t taken care of the problem: The American military is paying big money to private contractor corporations, who in turn are paying protection money to Afghan warlords, who then give the money to the Taliban, who the American military is supposed to be fighting in the first place.

This week, Representative Woolsey linked the corruption to a fundamentally irrational structure of our nation’s military misadventure in Afghanistan, and renewed her call for a pullout of American soldiers from central Asia:

“At a time when communities here at home are crying out for investment in schools, hospitals, and other infrastructure, it’s galling to think that American taxpayer dollars are supporting the kind of thuggery in Afghanistan that is quite possibly endangering our troops. It’s bad enough, Madam Speaker, that the American people are being asked to pay for our failed war. Now it appears that they’re being asked to pay for the wrong side.

Madam Speaker, we simply cannot sustain a counterterrorism strategy that has us doing business, however indirectly, with the terrorists themselves. It’s illogical and it’s unconscionable. This is just one more piece of evidence that this war is failing the American people, undermining instead of advancing our national security objectives. It’s time for a radical change in our policy. It’s time to bring our troops home.”

A new pro-coal piece of propaganda wonders why coal mines aren’t allowed to take the tops of mountains as easily as women can take off their shirts. Seriously.

A poster making the rounds protests against Appalachian native Ashley Judd, who opposes mountaintop removal coal mining. It asks, “Ashley Judd makes a living taking off her top. Why can’t coal miners?”

Why? For one thing, Ashley Judd knows how to put her top back on. The coal mining companies don’t put the tops back on mountains. They just blow the mountains up and dump the debris into mountain streams.

Secondly, when Ashley Judd takes her top off, she doesn’t dump huge amounts of toxic heavy metals like arsenic into the local drinking water supply. Mountaintop removal coal mining does involve such toxic dumping.

Do these big coal companies truly not understand the difference? Anyone who has flown over the Appalachians recently, and seen the great scars on our nation created by mountaintop removal coal mining gets it.

Bradford Braley, who apparently got the privilege of conducting an officially-sanctioned big government worship service in front of the House of Representatives last week just because he’s the brother of Congressman Bruce Braley, dropped the ball.

Braley had the chance to pray for an end to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, but what did he do? He prayed for a little emotional manipulation instead.

He prayed, “Inspire a sense of awe and wonder at the bountiful resources of this land, and in light of the environmental tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico, may we humbly dedicate ourselves to preserving and protecting those resources.”

Braley had the chance to stand before the most powerful legislature on Earth, and to pray to his supernatural, all powerful deity, but all he asked for was for his deity to inspire a sense of awe, and to encourage people humbly dedicate themselves? If his God is truly as all-powerful, why didn’t Bradford Braley just ask his God to make the oil spill go away?

Does Braley not really believe in the power of prayer, or was he just being stingy?

The following voice, urging a pullout from Afghanistan next year, came from the U.S. Congress this week: “We’re wearing out our military. Madam Speaker, I hope the President will keep his word and have a timetable to get our troops out of Afghanistan.”

The voice was that of Walter Jones, a North Carolina Republican.

Just a few minutes ago, the House of Representatives debated H. Res. 1446, a resolution praising the community of Tracy, California, for existing as a city for 100 years. Forty minutes of debate was ordered at 12:17, but debate ended at 12:22, 90 percent of the time for debate left unfilled.

Who in Congress could fail to have an opinion on such very, extremely important legislation? Why, if that resolution isn’t passed, just think of what that will mean for the city of Tracy! It’s not like one of those superficial issues, like the war in Afghanistan, climate change, or the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, after all.

Priorities!

In a hearing of the House Science and Technology Subcommittee on Energy and Environment yesterday, Chairman Brian Baird declared that, “Whether the moratorium on drilling activities in the Gulf is lifted in 30 days or 30 years, we must accept that the hydrocarbon reserves in these fields will be produced someday.”

Why? Why must we accept that offshore drilling for oil in the riskiest deepwater environments is going to take place?

Don’t we have the freedom to choose another course? Is our government that much in the thrall of the oil industry that our leaders will accept no possibility of an end to deepwater offshore drilling?

The United Nations World Drug Report is out, and it carries bad news for the organic movement. According to the BBC, “Drug use is moving away from cocaine and opiates and towards synthetic drugs such as amphetamines.”

Synthetics. Don’t people know that’s bad for them? They could go for something more natural, like organic heroin.