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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Jay Bee
Published Letters: 55 Editor's Choice: 5
Chrylser and GM have shut down, oil prices are collapsing, the traditional media is imploding all around us, and Mike and Joan can only talk about preacher at an inauguration? Us folks on the left have become as nuts as the ones I've railed against on the right.
Obama said over and over and over and over and over (ad nauseam) that he wanted to reach out to people from all over the sociological and political spectrum. And this is what he is doing. Not a bad thing at an inauguration, which is flash and not substance.
But the left is increasingly becoming a single-issue group. We got a black man into the White House, so it's all about payback for Prop 8. I haven't seen this much carp since I was down at the docks by the fish markets. You want to fix it? Then we talk to the damned voters in a way that appeals to them, not the endless clusterfuck that we put together for our cause. We can be pissed at the religious groups that won, but they had their shit together. We didn't.
Obama has also made other choices, such as Stephen Chu to head energy policy, possibly the most important selection he can make right now, and possibly the most brilliant one in the history of that position.
I'm still plenty happy with this guy. When he promotes Warren to head a new Faith-based science position, let me know and I'll be the first shaking my fists on Pennsylvania Avenue. Until then, this is a tempest in a teapot. Because guess what, liberal left? Not everyone in the good ol' US of A agrees with us. And unless we do a better job of advancing our cause, it'll continue to be this way. Stop blaming everyone else and look in the mirror. Sucks, doesn't it?
Your post made me snort coffee. Thanks for that bit of snark. Just awesome.
I knew I was coming rapidly to a time where I would have to replace my old Mac with a new one, and I had always planned to get a laptop next. Why? I wanted a good way to catch up on the internet, check my email, listen to music, etc. on the go. But then I got an iPhone, and it frankly does 80 to 90 percent of what I wanted a laptop to do. Instead I got a closeout on an iMac on Black Friday and haven't regretted it - or the significant savings I gleaned as a result.
(I should also add that I depend on Firewire peripherals, and the MacBook's lack of any FW connection officially sealed the deal for me.)
In 25 years, will the Tesla be a curiosity tinged with nostalgia much like the DMC-12 is now? I continuously hope for the next great American car innovator, but perhaps we have simply run out of the next great car ideas. And in the end, are we truly in love with our cars and driving like we once were? Or perhaps is our relationship maturing as we fully acknowledge that a car is merely a tool, a means from Point A to Point B?
If this religion were a political power it would be part of our "axis of evil." Anti-democratic, misogynistic, and apparently anti-Semitic, it bilks its misguided followers along a path of repression dating to the Nicene Creed, failed to respond to the changes during the Protestant Reformation, and now lives in a world of delusion, its stock of priests deteriorating due to age or removal after sex scandal after sex scandal. Its obsession with sexual behavior borders on the pathological. I've seen many a loved one spend their spiritual and financial energy on this bloated throwback, trying desperately to justify their programming from the earliest days of CCC with their everyday experiences and lives. It's a painful thing to watch.
Of course, Vatican City IS a country, so perhaps sanctions ARE in order.
...it looks to me like there's still bipartisanship! But crusty old Yankees never quite warmed to this new breed of angry reactionary Republican. Don't get me wrong - our local newspaper comments section look like something cobbled together from AM talk radio, but in the end, our national representatives, Democrat or Republican, don't tend to fly off into the deep end in either direction.
I suspect this is a well thought-out book, really I do. But this concept of Jesus as the man-prophet has been an integral part of the American landscape since its inception. Thomas Jefferson frequently attended Joseph Priestly's church, the first Unitarian church in the US. And at the heart of Unitarianism is the non-divinity of Jesus.
If anyone thinks that it was an accident that the nation was founded on very non-Trinitarian and only vaguely religious documents and ideals, it most certainly was not.
I won't even bother to talk about the subject of evil and eternal damnation, because that was the purview of the Universalists, who felt is was a lot of rot. (A religion, by the way, that takes us back to the very earliest days of the United States.)
Ultimately, the real problem here is that the average American is so poorly educated about religious history of any kind that we are doomed to repeat these "revelations" forever.
It is true that they are only about ten percent of the market, but that's far more than the share of five years ago. And as every customer satisfaction survey continues to show, Mac users like their computer experience the most. Windows machines (and Unix machines, for that matter) have come a long way, but there is still something uniquely Apple about Macs.
This sounds like a lovely combination, and perhaps the sort of thing I'll do when I replace my iMac.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
