Walkabout Thoughts #66

My thoughts, Stream of consciousness, rough and ready, while walking off long Covid and listening to podcasts…

NOTE (from after this walk and notes below): Had curry at Yoko Yoko in Bremerton today. So tasty.

Then saw DUNE Part 2 today. Liked it better than Part 1.

But worst theater experience in years. Guy down front couldn't stop talking to his girlfriend for more than 20 seconds the entire movie (I seriously considered he was mentally challenged), and a guy behind me at one point said, "Bro, come on, be quiet." To no effect.
Then half way through we lost the video. Took them about 10 minutes to fix, then they backed it up for about 15. Sigh... I'll watch it again in my home theater.
Later...I noticed I lost my reading glasses. Usually don't take them to lunch in case I lose them, and lost them. So I won't be able to edit below after my walk. Apologies.

Shooting for 3 miles today. Had to deal with the heart beating too hard at the beginning again now, after the half mile point seems to be pretty settled down. Man, you can take this getting old stuff and shove it. They come up with a youth pill, taking it!

Weather for the day… starting out, 61° when I got home 66°

Podcast today Pod Save America, ep., Trump’s Bloodbath? (feat. Katie Porter)

It’s interesting to note that MAGA is ignorant enough to not understand when Trump uses a term like bloodbath it’s a disingenuous and MAGA are clever enough to rationalize. It’s a harmless comment, but they’re not clever enough to avoid his authoritarian use as a term affecting them exactly the way he intends.

Before I left home today I watched a C-SPAN2 show I want to share a few quotes from on China, TikTok and the CCP's efforts in America that I KNOW are extremely important. Lots of confusion about TikTok, which Katie Porter said she voted against the bill in Congress because it needs work but more so, America needs eduation to understand why our government is so concerned. If YOU'RE confused or angry about it, read this next (then I'll continue with my normal blog):

Congressional Hearing on Risks of Chinese Technology in US

Reva Price, US-China Economic & Sec. Review Commission Vice Chair: I think it's clear to most Americans how this matters on the security realm. But how would you address this so that they were concerned about what it means for their personal information? What is the impact of the Chinse Communist Party having this kind of information on them [American citizens]? Like where they shop and what kinds of things they buy, or what music they listen to or whathaveyou?

Nazak Nikakhtar, Nat'l Sec. & Int'l Trade Attorney [2 other experts on the panel declined any need to expand on her answer here]: 

So our adversaries have talked for years about what sort of "information warfare" information campaign. It stems all the way from what children are exposed to, the kind of news we get. Most fundamentally what I see is sowing a lot of discord into the United States. If we're fighting with each other and the long list of what we're fighting about keeps growing because they're infusing sort of inflammatory sentiment to our ecosystem. The more we let that happen, the more we're at each other's throats...and this is by design... that we don't form a united front against a common adversary."

Ivan Tsarynny, Feroot Cybersecurity CEO & Co-Founder: "I completely agree with that statement and what information even collected on pixels can provide and has been provided is information of teenagers or anyone else is reading or which pages they follow or which pages they visit, that creates a real powerful insight and data about creating discord or other conflicts in our societies."

Jack Corrigan, Senior Research Analyst at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET): "I don't really have anything to add, I think what they said, I would agree with."

For what's next. Congressional hearing - Nazak Nikakhtar, Nat'l Sec. & Int'l Trade Attorney, said she also worries about Chinese photo apps which gain access to your phone camera, etc., can add malicious code & can copy code to your router & "across systems like cancer. 

Nazak Nikakhtar: Where American orientation is money, CCP in China is to infiltrate, and then cripple our systems and gain the upper hand. Without question.

Ivan Tsarynny: I was born in a communist  county and there laws make no difference, it is what the leader at the top wants to have happen. Also apps like Alipay. Alibaba and Tencent...

Nazak Nikakhtar: China owns the Radisson Hotel chain. They are not interested in hotels.

Continuing on with Walkabout Thoughts:

Add in the C-SPAN congressional hearing

The podcast has a good point that this may be one of the most damaging former presidential speeches ever even if you remove the bloodbath comment from Trump speech at the rally the referring to in the podcast that everybody this week has seen on the news, one way or another

Regarding former V POTUS, not endorsing supporting Donald Trump I agree it’s a big deal. While some may say it’s not the podcast. Take a win when you get one.

The whole Paul Manafort after prison, after pardon by Trump, may be running his campaign after all his Russian connections that have been verified documented costume dearly. Denying the Russian connections with Trump at this point is just stupid.

Trump on his stacking the Scotus to destroy Roe versus Wade saying on a lot of counts there very good things done there one in the bigger picture far far more bad things came of it. I’ve been saying for decades that Congress needs to get their shit together and make this a national federal law Because what happens if Skoda shoots it down. Now that won’t happen, everybody said. OK

Republicans who are saying they want to go after contraception and after recreational sex I have to ask what happened to freedom actual freedom of the individual freedom of spirit freedom to the pursuit of happiness? I mean what’s next we’ve already had the fashion police with people getting beat up for wearing a fucking Covid mask when sometimes they had medical conditions where they could die if they caught Covid. I’m assuming everybody read your 1984 George Orwell book we’re headed into the thought police because that’s where autocrats always go. That’s one of the biggest paranoids of the Chinese communist party.

This is America I’m all for freedom of religion, freedom of thought regardless of the fact how much I’m against organized religion, and the other bullshit it leads to. But the Republican party really needs to assist itself from theocratic tendencies, because after all, regardless of how they view this country being founded Freedom as a primary tenant of America in the US Constitution

Oh yes Chuck Schuber calling out BB Netanyahu as needed to be removed because he’s leading Israel in the direction that has lost their way. When you’re attacked this thousand people are killed that you respond by killing people in the tens of thousands including mostly children the elderly and women non-combat Greatly missing the Hamas targets your after yeah you’ve kind of lost your fucking way

BB at yahoo has been leaning authoritarian like Putin like Trump as with China etc. America could be called it has been called a kleptocracy and what’s worse than that? Easy an oligarchy and a theocracy which Trump is pushing us into

Mitch McConnell called Schumer speech p grotesque this coming from Mr. grotesque himself and I don’t mean his looks but it’s political leanings and actions. He’s been a horrible person in Congress for a long time.

To be clear Schumer is not anti-Israel he’s very pro Israel but he’s very anti-autocrat anti-Bibi Netanyahu anti-Trump anti-Putin

It’s also important to note bibi says that Schumer is delving into Israeli politics too much Netanyahu Does it like all the time historically

I’m saying we should do this and I want obviously Israelis Jewish people to be protected like everybody but one does wonder if we were to turn things around with Israel’s enemies? How would that make things better or worse? I ran as a big problem in international affairs and they’re religious. Had a State is on his last legs and there are many and I ran would like to see things turn around, since things are so problematic as they are what do you keep doing to maintain that and what do you do different to make progress?

Nazi starved in incinerated Jews in World War III. Explain to me how Israel has not done that to Palestinians since October 7.

Why is Netanyahu dealing with people like bengavir?

Here’s the thing that BB Netanyahu doesn’t get and MAGA doesn’t get about Trump and the Republican Party doesn’t understand about how they should not support Trump or MAGA bullshit… Regardless, if your guy is saying what you want here but he’s a lowlife criminal. You don’t choose him. You don’t support authoritarian theocratic nonsense in a country like America in order to protect American citizens. MAGA think that American citizens are MAGA, they are a corrupt, confused disinformed over propagandized minority

What so ironic about the MAGA claims of stolen elections is that our elections aren’t stolen that’s not the problem. They are unduly unfairly and ill liberally skewed by big and dark money, and the Republican party in the best sense of Trump who calls out what others say accurately in observing his actions About the others who are fighting against the things he’s claiming they are doing. Again when it’s doing it.

Yeah, the senator on the podcast has a good point saying she wore a red dress to a Democratic function and people said you can’t do that because it’s Donald Trump‘s color it’s Republican it’s mega and she said I’m not giving him a whole color. And that’s a damn good point same thing I said about certain words and things before. MAGA, bigoted assholes, stole the word, patriotism, and our American flag for a while, and I believe we may have taken it back. If you flew a flag just a few years ago you were a Trump supporter if you said patriot, they knew you were Extreme right wing. So I would suggest half of every buddy at Democratic events going forward where red because if that’s how it works MAGA and Republicans will see MAGA and Republicans supporting Joe Biden Democratic events and how is that a bad thing?

My still third Catholic sister invited our cousin and I over for Easter dinner. Thankfully, she’s not MAGA or conservative or Republican. In fact, my entire family was raised democratic and a union family, with my stepdad being a blue-collar worker who retired from a warehouse at Nalley’s food foods in Tacoma. But again this is America I will support to the death peoples rights to their delusions about anything. Regardless, your religious political delusions as long as you’re not working against America like MAGA and Donald Trump are. When you see your leaders lineup with your national enemies, wake the fuck up.

And for those like my older brother, who says I have TDS, when in his maggot delusion, he does I’m a veteran I have a college degree psychology, and I spent the first half of my life studying several things. Soviet espionage and religion. I gained a deep respect for the Russian people in history, but not for their autocratic socialist bullshit. No more than the Chinese socialist. Bullshit authoritarian is authoritarianism. Wasn’t until the 90s I really started paying attention to politics and applying my previous skills back. I voted for Reagan the first time I voted against him the second time I voted his VP and his president and since then I’ve not voted for a Republican because of the useless people they put up, Quail VP was a sign.

I thought George W. Bush was a war criminal I thought Gore won the election in 2000. I I warned after 911 but America was going to attack another country probably an innocent country because they needed an enemy and they wanted to punch somebody in the mouth and bush didn’t like Hussain because of his dad back in the Kuwait Iraq conflict when we took out which set us up for a lot of bad shit. Not because he took the sane out, but as usual, because of what we did in the after effects. I was a big Obama and Bernie and even Hillary supporter. I thought Hillary earned her time to run for president. I think we may have done better in some ways with Obama but I didn’t like everything he did and Hillary would’ve handled Putin better, and we may not be in the situation today, so thanks a lot fucking Trump

I’m coming up on the end of my 2nd mile and with all the jawing I’m doing and aside from my desire to get the 3 miles today I really feel I have to do a3 mile and so far I feel pretty good for it :-)

Katie, as a guest says regardless of citizens, United, or this toxic spewed conservative Scotus. There are lots of things we can do about big money, dark money, and our politics and our elections. Thank God for that.

Do you know it’s worse than “woke ism“? Anti-woke ism

Trump needs to eat that “hamburger from heaven” very very soon. Bye-bye.

Two political standards always crack me up. “I don’t want career politician, representing me“ and why can’t the guy you partied with who stood next to the keg giving you a beer be the president?“ I think the reasons are obvious. Politicians that are new have to learn and there’s a ramping up time that could be years or maybe never for some. So I’m on a career path of Ted Cruz, which is anything to enrich and empower me. Do you really want a dumb fuck next to the keg running the country when the best way is someone who’s been through Congress which Biden has been. Someone who knows the system at least the constitution which Trump doesn’t. The last thing you want is a businessman. Now there’s two kinds. The corporate thought type businessman thinks only of the shareholders and profit. More enlighten, types worry also about other things like our environment the future actual people being humane because there’s money in that too not quite as much if you’re willing to allow people to die and poison our environment and support really bad people politics to promote your efforts. And the EPA, because poison in the environment makes you a lot of money as long as you eventually moved to a clean area and start poisoning that over the next hundred years.

OK I hit the 2 1/2 mile point which means I’m guaranteed to do 3 miles if I ever want to get home again. I actually walked a little further today progress!

Representative Katie Porter has a good point and that she voted against the TikTok bill in Congress because she thought the American people needed to be better educated and understand why and it wasn’t a great bill. So she hopes the Senate corrects that or votes it down. She said it’s kind of screwed up that we don’t want to talk about American companies and their data collection. We should probably very closely adopt the EU law because they seem to be ahead of us on all of that stuff to protect their citizens. Our toxic capitalism is such that we don’t care so much about protecting citizens and if MAGA Trump gets in he wants to dissolve the EPA. So enjoy your filthy air and filthy water.

We need to really look at things and not just technologies and protections but but we should already have high-speed rail all over the country if we’re so great. We should have cellular service that you can get from just about anywhere like you can in Europe and Asia. we should have a population that’s more savvy about using the technology when so many of us don’t know what the hell they’re doing or how to do it

I wish you all great success and health! Until next time!

Cheers! Sláinte!

2nd Amendment, Delusion Revisited

I certainly prefer art over politics for all the obvious reasons. It seems pretty apparent today, especially looking at our current disaster of a POTUS, his thoroughly misled and confused conservative base and his GOP leaders that there are far more geniuses and visionaries in art than politics and government.

That being said, it occurs to me just now that the 2nd Amendment clearly and prejudicially states, it points out ... "well-regulation", "militia" and "keeping/bearing arms". No kidding, right?

That means using correct and appropriate gun control/ regulations. Well regulated. So, background checks, obviously. Sane gun laws, not stupid anti protection knee jerk conservative disinformation supported by Russian and profiteering groups like NRA and gun manufacturers.

Just because the Russians took the Czech's guns in 1967 really has no bearing on our Constitution. And I have heard that as the reason the 2nd Amendment has to be and mean what some want it to, again and again. Thus we can't have ... gun laws? Seriously? That cannot be an adult's position. Because that would be delusional.

But then, we are Americans and we do have our delusions. Just look at who's president now. And what it takes on a personal psychological basis to still support him. Donald Trump is not a serious consideration for the White House. Never was, isn't now. Never will be.

As such:

“A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Skipping we did not have a standing army or national guard then and we do now for some time, precluding the need for citizens to keep or bear arms...

That Amendment clearly states one important element that is not ever in this form, considered in arguments for or against.

That if citizens outright have that right (which is not clear, honestly), they need regulation and the "orientation" of militia. I am not saying int hat they need to belong TO a militia but that they need by requirement the training and education of a militia. And considering the advancement, since the Amendment was written, it's now a matter of higher education between the various types and powers of today's weaponry.

How that translates today would be, not that any citizens could go out and buy and own a gun, and/or carry one either in plain sight or concealed, it is to be sure first a requirement by the Amendment they be trained or well regulated, or part of a militia and therefore well regulated and trained.

More guns aren't an answer, they are a desire. As with most things, sanity,
intelligence and acting appropriately are the answer.

I am not even seeing a question about that as a requirement for the right to keep and bear arms.

Therefore to acquire, own and bear arms, one should be trained by a priori requirement and justification... and to be sure, we need that all citizens with arms are competent in their use for the situations and environments the citizens would traverse in any potential and reasonable situation.

As of today, that is not the case.

To whit, citizens with arms and no APPROPRIATE training, AND THAT INCLUDES EX or ACTIVE MILITARY who do not just get to own a gun in civilian life as civilian environments are not military to be sure.. as IN A CIVILIAN ENVIRONMENT ... therefore we are at this time for those unregulated citizens, unconstitutional and illegal and those arms should be confiscated, until such time that citizens have acquired the appropriate training, indoctrination and education in each of the firearms they are to own or carry.

There is our right and reason to confiscate all firearms from all citizens who do not have the required training on each and every gun they own.

That alone would end so many mass shootings.

Who should pay for this training?

Well, if it's a Right, the nation, not individuals. That means taxes.

How much would this cost? A lot.

What would it do? Slow down and decrease gun ownership and increase the alignment of owning and using weaponry to an acceptable degree.

Why? Because many gun owners don't want education, just blind allowances to own devices to kill, without responsibility, without knowledge, education, or a cohesive knowledge about them to a degree they required and demand.


And what is demanded in the place of what is needed?

Entertainment. Guns fulfill one major component of gun owners and it's not safety.

It's entertainment and false sense of security against all the wrong things in all the wrong ways.

Our best protection against crime is support and empowerment of all citizens.

Our best protection against a tyrannical government? Education, Health Care, Sanity. Vision. All the things the GOP does nto support.

Face it. Voting Republicans out is our quickest way to a strong America.

And never again allow this kind of crazy into control of Congress and our Courts or the office of the President of the United States.

Have a gun. Just know what you have and how to care for it, use it and store it.

As previously stated, I certainly prefer art over politics for all the obvious reasons. It seems pretty apparent today, especially looking at our current disaster of a POTUS, his thoroughly misled and confused conservative base and his GOP leaders that there are far more geniuses and visionaries in art than politics and government.

Now, back to the people I know and work with who are so much more cohesively sane and informed...

Writing Yourself Back Into Sanity

Gun control. Hang on, hang on! Give this just a moment. Let's use that as an example, as well as address it, just for the moment.

I'm a writer. I write myself into impossible situations in fiction, or my characters anyway. Then I write my (their) way out of it so at first, my reader thinks my character is lost. Then, not lost, but in a fun way. Hopefully.

When I build into those situations both as the author and character God, I try to write cleverly. Whenever I can't, when I'm just as lost as my character (happens all the time, that's the fun of it!), I first have to realize, I'm lost. I consider all the rational, logical, even illogical ways out of the situation or scene, or picadillo. Once I find I have no solution, it's like there's a click, and I realize where I am. Stuck.

That's when it occurs to me to look 180 degrees about in order to see where to go. It's jarring at times. It's counter-intuitive. It's at times humorous. Or feels insane. But then, I ruminate about how to make whatever it is that rises to the surface, to work. Not forcing it, but jostling it about in my mind as mental attachments are formed and then, solutions begin to spark into life. Exercise at times aides that along. Also, removing oneself from the problem. Rest, entertainment (but be careful, that can also be a trap).

So often, that realignment to 180 degrees, becomes the actual and best solution. At times, the only solution.

I first discovered that in my life. With heavy contrast comes obvious elements previously unseen in the situation. Counter-intuitive, like I said. It's not always intuitive. So you have to break out of that mindset you are locked into.

That's what I've meant about conservatives and Republicans of late. They seem to have difficulty with situations that require counter-intuitive solutions or, ways of viewing things. They can'/t see the forest for the trees you might say, so much of the time.

I've shared this 180-degree concept with people over my lifetime and they've been surprised at first how often it works to their benefit in giving them insights or perhaps, outsights. It's a technique for thinking out of the box. Or realizing there was never a box to begin with. Now that's thinking outside of the box.

When I look at guns, the gun situation in this country, gun control, mass shootings, where we are at now...the obvious solution, for a child...is arming everything and everyone. It is an ill-informed, juvenile consideration,.

It is where the, "Only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun" solution comes from. But it sounds like the solution of a five-year-old. Or, the NRA, or the Republican party. Of conservative gun owners and those who cannot see clearly any other solution. Because it's not obvious. It's lost among all the other chatter in the situation.

It's low contrast, obscured because of a reverent almost religious attachment to the US Constitution. Which is not a God. And once you consider the destructive dynamics of a God consideration, outside the blanket goodness attributed by theists to deity worship, one begins to see what is truly there.

Welcome to my world!

Remember a long time ago? Further up the page here when I mentioned getting out of tough creative solutions to fictional problems? Yes, those were the good old times, weren't they? The good old days of a moment ago. Before all this insanity in the world was boxing us about the head and brain, mind and morality. Yet, we really must continue on....

So, to summarize, IF you turn about 180 degrees you can frequently clearly see potential solutions.

And in this case, that is...the reform of gun control laws. Or going further in turning up the contrast levels, a rethinking of the 2nd Amendment of the US Constitution. I know, I know, all that and the rest.

If you cannot see that, well...that's how the NRA and the extreme conservative Republican party and how so disingenuously they ard the travesty in the oval office, Donald Trump, have all continued to trick and con us all. To subvert reality to their own ends and not ours.

The solution isn't usually all that hard. It's just hard for some to see. But once it's been seen, you really cannot unsee it. That's the problem with atheists, you see. I went through that myself. I was raised strict Catholic. Old school, old country, old Slovak Catholic. Then I came to understand I was only half that. The other half was Irish by way of my father's family. I realized I was more Irish Catholic. That broke with the old strict traditional Slovak Catholic I had been all my young life. This was about the beginning of high school for me.

There were some other issues that helped me along, which aren't relevant here today about this. But you get the picture. I started looking around. In reading science fiction all my life, brilliants thinkers had given me a methodology to see when you are blinded by your reality and not THE reality. After a decade or so of theistic and philosophical, then college and studies in anthropology, sociology, and a degree in psychology, it all became clear.

Then I had to shake off the remaining vestiges of a lifetime of fear invoked by religious dogma and finally one day, after being a devoted theist, an adamant agnostic, a staunch atheist, I found the reality that wasn't in that box built by humanity and found one that was always there in form, a part, and parcel of the universe itself.

That is when one has to act.

That has been nearly impossible.

But times are now a changing yet again and those who are conning us are on the way out. Demographics are changing starting to fit a reality we have lived for some time now. We just have to open our eyes, our minds, and take in what is there and where we are headed. We can get in front of that train and get run over, or we can help it along and gain the love and respect of all those feeling abused because we refuse to see them or...to respect them. In ways they know, they deserve.

We will all one day, our descendants will one day, all look back at now and marvel at how really damned stupid we were and for so very long.

Really, it just takes courage.

And being honest about what is and what isn't, If only or even for a moment as we study it, we can see what is there without us in the picture. Then put us back in and see how we truly fit into what is and what has been. And what we haven't been able to see. For whatever reason.

Whatever it takes. And if that is looking about oneself 180 degrees, or counter-intuitively, so be it. Or if you have another way, one THAT WORKS, great! Use it. But do...use it!

Because we have to stop not seeing what is there and start seeing what others can clearly see while we refuse or simply cannot see it. Or see it all.

Especially when the solutions were there, staring us all right in the face.

God, Humanity, Religion, America

You must please forgive me, for I cannot help myself to not consider things and openly share them.

For it occurs to me that the ridiculous strictures upon Humanity by such things as religion, or the ten commandments, by conservatives, by the Republican party of late in blending so much religion with politics in a country that has forbidden that, have been so much a bane to our Humanity.

Having over-focused on so many of the wrong things, these and such things have led us to misunderstand our Humanity.Much as religion does from time to time. Think ISIS. Think GOP.

Remember that the ten commandments ignored slavery, domestic violence, child abuse, abuse against women, and why?

Anti Roy Moore poster

I don't see where blacks should be offended by that flyer going out (above). How very true is it first of all? Let's face it, this wouldn't even be an issue to dump Roy Moore if he were black.

So called Good Christians are actually going to vote for Moore. Confusing. Stupid. Some say because Trump, a man who has crass and base views in life, whose sense of class and style is brutish at best, was also accused repeatedly and more so of sexual harassment which he admits to, and yet HE became and is somehow still, president. Although his acceptance rating is at 32%, the lowest for any president ever in American history. Now there's a precedent, right?

Let's face it, none of what this says is a stretch

These are religious people? "Good" Christians? Racists? And let's face it, if Moore were white as he is but had been chasing after young black girls, he would lose his race hands down, not because they were young black girls per se, but because he was after girls who weren't white.

What can one say but... The South. And... Republicans. Conservatives. Silly people. Better a seat in the Senate than a Democrat, even if an old geezer was a young girl chasing child molester who had been blocked by the local shopping mall and YWCA because of those behaviors. But hey, better a pervert than a Democrat or someone liberal. Good grief.

"Forty years ago in Alabama, people could get married at 13 and 14 years old. My grandmother at 13 was married, at 15 had two children and a husband. If Roy Moore was guilty, if he was at the mall hitting on this 14 year old, forty years ago in Alabama,there's a lot of momas and daddies who'd be thrilled that their 14 year old was hit on by a district attorney." Southern focus group male member this week on Vice News.

OMG, seriously? That's the American South? And they admit it? In public? On national TV?

Okay, so Alabama admitting to its perversions. Things that it has recently been ruled on the world stage in other countries is child abuse and sexual molestation and needs to stop.

But in our American South, oooorah! Go get em Roy! Perve away on our young daughters. Woohooo! You old rascal! Just like our President! Nail that girl to the bedpost old sir!

#GOP is being pretty slimy....Republicans are still supporting perverts and openly and no one's gonna stop them! Remember decency? Yeah, it's fading.

Red is a good color for Republicans at this point as the blood of our morals leaks out as they are dying, all across America's Congressional floors.

In limiting our behavior and with due consideration to Humanity's sense of innate OCD, or of extremizing things, we have consistently misunderstood and denied ourselves of just who we are. Better of who we should be and what is best to try to achieve to be.

And so ridiculous strictures have sorely damaged us again and again as in our misunderstandings against such things as sexuality in just who we are. We have consistently misinterpreted these as denying any aspect of us.

Rather than our reveling in it all. Instead of merely having mature and controlled attitudes about it. Instead we have forced archaic and immature attitudes about it and shied away from more mature reasonings about it.

For instance rather than has self discipline and practicing not raping or abusing women, some cover women up hiding their appearance so men won't what? Really men, you can't act like mature adults? Grow up. We're not letting ourselves practice maturity. So how do we get people like Islamic terrorists? Huh, I wonder. It's been built in.We did it to ourselves.

Which was why I created The Church of the Pure Purple or Purpleism back some years ago as a reaction against not only the ridiculous in religion but also against the ridiculous and ignorant things forced upon us in our lives, by ourselves (as a species). The smartest (absurdist) religion in the world says:

First rule of Pulpleism is, no killing over religious issues! 

That, if there really were an all knowing all seeing God, should be the FIRST Commandment OF ANY and EVERY religion. But then again, a God did not set up any of these religions and so we see what we have seen for millennia. Ludicrous behaviors supported by those in power and abused all the way down the line to the most common and ignorant and then back up agains from the bottom.

Yes, yes good things have been done by religions throughout history too. But serial killers have also done good things. What's your point? If not for religions, more rational types would have done these things. So that's not even an argument. If not for religion, we'd already be out into the solar system and yet, we're barely now off this planet. You don't see that? Read history. Learn about all the science that was put down, destroyed, scientists through history murdered, all by religion. Yes, religion supported some science, but more so, it tried too many times to destroy it.

We have found because of established religions a need, no, a desire...to be interpreting things in the most ridiculous of ways. Such as in Islam covering its women up completely merely to protect men from themselves rather than teaching and requiring of them to have a mature sense of discipline about it. We have stoned non heterosexuals because they deviated from the norm. A norm to this day many religions deny. Then we have male religious leaders sexually abusing male boys. And hiding it in a systemic way.

In reality the norm is exactly what we have in their existing. Yet we deny reality for the status quo of defending and perpetuating the belief system.

We have ignored our inhumanity to one another over the worship of what we cannot see, over entities who have demanded of us even in their having been fully created by men, demanding of us our full and undiluted attention all while fully against reality and... one another.

What then is the true crime against Humanity? If not merely that of the considerations of our crimes against worshipped idols, regardless what it may deemed to be?

All we need to do for now is simply to drop religion form politics and vote sanity.

Vote Humanity.

Vote compassion and humane treatment of our fellow human beings. Vote, American. Vote our most basic of ideals in separation of church and State, in order to allow freedom of each citizen and that of their choice to suffer worshiping the ethereal in the sky.

Look. Enjoy your personal delusions. It's America. Just allow the rest of us, ours.

It's not rocket science people. 

We Were America and... We Will Be Once Again

It is sad that a vocal minority of Americans through fear and ignorance, through believing they are not fearful OR ignorant, how they got there having been supported by a major political party in the Republican Party, are shredding our political process.

I lay the blame for this squarely on the shoulders of Republicans who have lied over the years. Who have spun issues for their own agenda, against reality, against science and facts, in choosing what they wish to use to support their ill conceived and mortal policies, simply in order to tighten their grip on America and rise higher in the ranks without any care or fear themselves about the state of the Nation, and its place as The world leader.


Should that they will feel the wrath one day of all Americans, especially those they have deluded into this tipping point of thinking the current national consciousness is accurate, and the wrath of a world now watching in horror and suffering from it themselves, as it has all now culminated in the figurehead of a very base, reality TV show star as the leading figure of a mindset, a nearly insane constituency. all to the point that this will take, even if sanity rules and a true leader is chosen in November, years and decades to bring America back to being the sane and intelligent leader that it once was.

As we are seeing this insanity has also opened us up for attacks from without as well as from within.

We will need to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, kick the chaff and filth from those boots, and kick ourselves out of the muck and mire of our present conditions in order to again be what we once were.

We don't so much need to make America great again, as we need to make it great once again from those who claim they wish to make America great...again.

Julian Birkinshaw of the London Business School has written a very enlightening article titled:

Beyond the Information Age

Julian's article points out four issues of our current situation that truly explain what we are seeing in many areas, including...the rise of the Trump supporter and the Trump itself; conservative mentalities and mindsets confused by, something; and Republican efforts able to skew, trip up, mis and dis inform the public for their own benefit and not the American people or the world.

We are being damaged through:

1. Paralysis through Analysis
2. Easy access to data makes us intellectually lazy.
3. Impulsive and Flighty Consumers. 
4. A little learning is a dangerous thing. "

Consequences

"So what are the consequences of a business world with “too much information”? At an individual level, we face two contrasting risks. One is that we become obsessed with getting to the bottom of a problem, and we keep on digging, desperate to find the truth but taking forever to do so. The other risk is that we become overwhelmed with the amount of information out there and we give up: we realise we cannot actually master the issue at hand, and we end up falling back on a pre-existing belief."

I'll leave you with this. Just as we passed through the industrial age into the information age, we will make it through this transition to the next age. Perhaps the age of Big Data where we will learn to deal with those four elements Julian points out above.

The current issue is with the present and how we make it to that next age. 

Honesty, transparency, effort and putting out in the cold that which subverts reality.

Otherwise, we are doomed.

Special Edition: No one calls Mohammed an ahole. Why not, his Jihadists are?

No one calls Mohammed an Asshole, or any other ancient religious leader for that matter.

But why not? Fear of offending him? Fear of offending others? Why? Because they will try to kill us, possibly? There is no need to fear non believers. There is no need to fear the death of Faith. Faith is not dying. Religions are.

The reason we are seeing radical Islam is because religion doesn't work.

Frustration in politics and religion for many Muslims have brought simpletons like the members of groups like Al Qaeda and ISIL to fruition, to membership and action. Sad, disaffected people who join, or as in San Bernardino, who randomly strike out on their own, do so because they find their lives unsatisfactory. Their religion doesn't do enough or anything, for them.

They lash out at non Muslims and Muslims alike. But they also kill other Muslims in their complete and utter discare of killing their own because they know very well, although they are too stupid to recognize it, too blinded by their dysfunctional ideology, that Islam, that Allah, that their silly man made religion, is false and quite useless for their purposes as radical murderers and previously as inactive Muslims.

So they act.

Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Sikh, you name the religion, it boils down to a silly group of people congregating to worship and ideology of disaffected people. When they begin to realize what a load of crap it all is, they act. But rather than act against their beliefs, which acknowledges they have been duped, that they have been stupid, they lash out from that point into the world.

We all suffer for religion still existing.

Long after it has served any purpose it may have once had we all  continue to suffer for it. It's high time religion finally just bury itself, pull he dirt over its own head, so that finally once and for all, Humanity can move on into a brave new world where we depend upon ourselves, to move off planet into the stars above, where religion has no reason to exist.

Whatever purpose religion once had there are now (actually always have been) other, better forms to take its place.

Regarding Islam, just where did it come from?

Christianity was an attempt by Emperor Constantine to control his flailing empire through the Nicene Council in creating the bible to get a handle on things that were out of control because of a splintered form of religion, Christianity. What about Islam?

Haven't you ever wondered why, thought it rather odd that the three major desert religions or the Middle East, all have similar holy places, so close upon one another? Coincidence? If so, what a very odd one. Try this on for size (video):

How the Vatican created Islam

Think that's all nonsense? I agree, it IS all nonsense.

Now can we move on? And if not, isn't it because of people stuck in their beliefs, infected by this insanity, as benign as it can at times be. Yet we'd be really so much better off without it.

Regardless, we are witnessing the beginning of the end of religions. And high time it is, indeed.

Here is a video of a debate between one of my favorite people, the late Christopher Hitchens vs Islam via Prof. Tariq Ramadan. Here is also to be fair, a video of Chris vs Christianity via William Lane Craig (another with Cardinal George Pell), and lastly a video of Chris vs Judaism via Rabbi David Wolpe.

Mr. Ramadan is very erudite but it's still a matter of fact that people have to pick and choose what they believe in, for what their religion states in it's religious books. Which itself, makes it dangerous and allows for things like the Christian Crusades, and Islamic Jihad.

Is it odd Hitchens doesn't really oppose Buddhism? I don't think so, although Buddhism does have foolish humans trying to turn it into a religion. Because that is what we do, by way of our defects in our make up.

Also another video with some of his comments on religion in general beginning with a joke about Buddhism. Finally a video with Chris Hitchens 2004: Genocide, Bamiyan, Buddha, Taliban, Al Queda, Rwanda

Chris takes a harder line on religion than I do. I'm not anti Islam, Christianity, or any religion in particular. I just think religion is overall a childish past time that has caused us a lot of grief and as we become more evolved, ever more problematic. Especially when there are other, better ways to live your life that are far more productive. Without religion, would we have landed on the moon in the year 1500?

I wish no harm against Muslims who are decent people. Or theists who are decent. But there seem to be so much religious scum floating on top of the social pool anymore that we have to act to stop it.

Just to make it painfully clear... I have nothing against Muhammad, Jesus, or any of those types of people. Just those types of people that slimy people worship. THOSE are the Muhammad's I find despicable. The Jesus who sucks. And so on.

We are actually experiencing the evolution of Faith as it evolves beyond the stupidity we've placed upon it for thousands of years. The banal foolishness of ancient old men, their housewives and scared children. That of religion, of useless rituals, of imagination counter to being fundamentally productive in any real or even if you prefer, spiritual way.

Some people certainly deserve for us to offend their religion, from how those people act. Islamic terrorists show us all, even other Muslims how their Allah, how Muhammad are mere people put into or manipulated to be in extraordinary circumstances, not deserving of the excessive respect they are afforded, little or none of the attention they get, or all the vain shoutings of "Allah be praised" by the foolish, the delusional and certainly the murderous.

Whenever you mention anything too much, you must know that it becomes diluted. That it begins to lose its meaning. All the shoutings we constantly hear of Allahu Akbar! Just how much meaning does that really have in it for those people beyond an affectation? Beyond mind washing?

You might say as Arthur C. Clarke did in Childhood's End:

"You deceived us." But no. I didn't and those few others who can also see clearly, haven't.
"You have deceived yourselves."

Look. I have nothing against any religion or religious people. Yes, ritual and religions are pretty silly and run through all young races. I have in fact, high respect for people who are monks, priests, nuns or similar types in any religion, including Islam.

If they are good leaders, and not recruiting murderers, not spewing pure crap to their followers, but are finding the truth, giving their people something in life to make their lives more than it is with what little they may have in their lives.

Mohammed couldn't read. Ignorant as he was, the so called unschooled Prophet, he surrounded himself at some point with people smarter than himself. Which I'll grant you, is not stupid, building a religion of hero worship upon something as silly as the Jewish religion and so even more so. At least Christianity was a call to more sanity at the time, but there too it went seriously wrong along the way beyond its initial inclusions of Buddhists elements.

Early Christians and Muslims didn't have enough education or historical insight to start their own religions. So they ripped off Judaism. But they were up against worse issues and what they did in creating a new religion probably made sense at the time.

There once again you have yet another man made God or Allah and religion. If these were such great religions how come their sacred tomes (Bible and Quran) have allowed for things such as the Crusades, and Jihads? If they are the literal Word of Allah, of God, well...we won't even go into the Christian Inquisitions, the Dark Ages, recent Jihads, and so on.

No one wants to speak out against religions because people get upset if you call into question what they believe, what they have believed since they were born, what their parents and ancestors have mistakenly believed...and unbelievably, even for thousands of years. At least Mormons, as silly a religion as that is, or Scientology, are young, and can be excused in some ways.

But no, no they cannot and they should know better.

And we shouldn't call into question their silliness? Really.

Let's talk about Abraham nearly killing his son because, "God told him to."

Uh, right.

We know now that it was a test, at least according to the old texts. God just wanted to see if Abraham was loyal and followed orders. But maybe later, God in a weak moment was just being kind. What IF what God wanted to hear from Abraham, a rational rebuke?

In using this situation as a metaphor for so many other religious situations through time, for Abraham to have just listened to what God requested of him (albeit as a voice in his head I might add, it doesn't sound crazy at all in reviewing it through more modern filters, right?), and then, sanely, for Abraham to have a pair of balls and simply to have said:

"God, judgement is yours. Therefore even if it is you requesting it of me, I cannot take it on myself to kill one of your creations, and my son."

Now that, would be a test! To deny God's orders to not do what he commanded? Utter Awesomeness. Now that sounds more like a God testing someone, doesn't it?

But no. Abraham pussied out. Just like Mohammed and his modern Jihadist followers.

The biggest pussies in the universe are Jihadists because they do not have the balls to refuse their own stupid mistaken beliefs. Or to realize they are stupid. Or that they are stupid, petty people.

They just like killing. Face it. After all, it's easy. It's satisfying and yet it's stupid. Just as Mohammed was an ancient anachronism having little or no meaning and less value today as does Christianity or Judaism.

Okay to be fair, Mohammed may have had good reason to say some of the physically based things he said way back when. Though the spiritual stuff certainly as it plays out over time, was just pretty silly and useless. Like flicking a Bic lighter a thousand years ago. You get ooos and awwws but really, what is it? Butane in a plastic container with a spark.

Not to mention, spending that much time devoted to a spiritual consideration, praying that many times a day when you could be doing something useful? It's a huge waste of time and energy for normal citizens and should be partitioned to special religious individuals.

Not to mention, having a callous on your forehead makes you look pretty damn silly. But then, it let's the rest of us know your somewhat scary orientation in life and the real world.

Spend that time actually DOING something, affecting change maybe, dildo.

Now I'm not saying that meditation isn't good, it is. Sure.

To mistake meditation for prayer is ignorant and an utter waste of time. Not to mention when you tie it to idiots like Daesh, or the fools and criminals in Boko Haram well, you've earned the biggest "Chump in the World" award. Or the Jihadist Favored Idiot of Mohammed Award. May your 72 virgins have syphilis when you get to your heaven and all be ancient old virgin crones only as you deserve. Grow up.

Look. #Daesh, #ISIS, #ISIL, #BokoHaram, you're all assholes. Deal with it. Get a real job. Work to affect change for your people through the systems that exist. Or make better systems, but don't tear down the world because you're unhappy.

I know. It's too had for your tiny minds to do that.

Killing is so much more fun, rewarding, satiating, empowering, and easy. Right? It's not hard after all to use an AK47 on a woman, a child, or an unarmed old man.

Try to start acting like adults and realize that no one wants or needs your silly fascist styled, ridiculous fundamentalist juvenile religious beliefs.

Humans have a reason for their inherent, built in pattern recognition skills and OCD style behaviors that make religion seems so satisfying. We need as adults to rise above those base, childish instincts.

Humans like masturbation, be it in stroking their genitals or in stroking their beliefs.

Religious ecstasy is very similar to sexual orgasm, just slower, less immediate most of the time. Face the facts. You're not good theists, you're religiously addicted Onanists.

Some people like to have such an intense orgasm they pass out (some even dying through auto-erotic asphyxiation). But you choose to blow yourselves up or die in religious fervor in "battle". Blowing up women and children in a city square or on a bus or a plane is not battle asshole, it's murdering innocents. You even murder your own Muslim people, moron and rationalize it is good. Like you're so important that you can be a judge.

How very romantic you are. What a child you are. The Bible says you must see through the eyes of a child. I bet the Quran says that too, cuz, you know... derivative.

Religion says you must ignore reality for your religion. Don't you get it? Don't you see what foolishness you have bought into? What has been perpetrated upon you for hundreds, thousands of years and your entire civilization has bought into it? Out of fear and feeling good?

No. Obviously. You cannot see how much of a fool you have been made by those you have followed. That is the bane of the theist. Allow me to help you.

Rule number one. Humans do not kill humans.

No, it's not worshiping God. That was just something some guy had told you God had told to him. Come on. Seriously? You really believe that?

Start "worshiping" your God, through taking care of his creations not destroying them. By the way worshiping a Prophet is after all idolatry, and in its crassest sense.

And again, stop being such an asshole.

Fear. Fundamentalists. Conservatives. We have them here.

The reason for conservatives being so out of control regarding their fears, just occurred to me.
If you hear a tiger in the grass and you react appropriately but find it's nothing, you're fine.
If you hear that noise and you think it's nothing, but it IS a hungry tiger, then you're dead.
Using that built in human dynamic inbred though hundreds of thousands of years, and not tempering it through appropriate personal experience, trial and error of your own, then you will come out just as how paranoid conservatives react to everything.
And so you see why we have the situation we have.
An entire stratum of society is paranoid because they haven't live appropriate lives.
We are all living in a very superficial and synthetic social construct.
Those who haven't challenged themselves in the right ways, or not at all, will find a terror behind every bush, building and door.
How can scary immigrants NOT be terrifying to these poor people?
They don't deserve our admonitions. They deserve our care and compassion.
And they as well deserve our not allowing them to be in control of the most powerful nation in the history of the entire human race and this planet.

Let me give you a parable.

Let's say there are three men. One prays, one meditates, both doing all the right stuff and yet (like you) are still lowlifes. They do all the right stuff and yet, they are still not good people. Religion doesn't necessarily stop any of that from happening, in fact research is showing it props bad behavior up. It's wishful thinking much of the time.

Leaders of ISIS, Boko Haram, Al Qaeda 

There are many loser religious types. Again, just look at Daesh, Boko Haram, Al Qaeda....

There is this third guy. Remember? I said three guys. He seemingly does all the wrong things. He doesn't believe in God, doesn't pray or meditate. Maybe he parties too much. Doesn't take good care of himself. He doesn't prey on the weak though either. Why? Because he thinks it's just wrong. In essence therefore he ends up doing all the right things, just because he doesn't want to hurt anyone.

He believes if you are just a good and ethical person people will recognize you are trustworthy. Because of that he acquires people around him who support him, who also are attracted to the Golden Rule, or Karma if you wish. Which roughly speaking is:

"Do onto others as you would have others do onto you."

The answer is here:

Be a good person.

It's not that hard. There is no reward in some fantasy "heaven". How capitalistic middle eastern desert religions are. Pay into this life for rewards in the next. Really.

Here on earth is your heaven, or your (our) hell. They are the heaven or hell you make of your life and others.

And you jihadists, you have made hell on earth all because of your silly make believe deities in the sky.

Grow up or die. Soon. Either way we, the people of the Earth do not need you or your ridiculous religious nonsense.

You are spawning right wing, fascist nationalism around the world and that is good for no one but some idiots who believe in a religion that they think teaches human beings to be death rather than life oriented.

Stop associating with those who hate human beings. Stop the self hatred. Stop worshiping a concept inn a god that also seems to hate us and disingenuously attempts to teach us that life is after death and not now when it actually exists.

What kind of person believes in mental tripe, in mind worm beliefs?

Surely no thinking rational person. Surely no "God" would ever think up such crap, only a human being could, or would. Only those who are lost or seeking to control their tribe. And then in as destructive a way as possible in attempting to control others' tribes too. And if they cannot, then they feel chartered to send their believers to kill them because they do not believe the same.

Can you really not hear how demented that is?

It's the old "you're different than me, I kill you!", mentality. How unevolved you are still. You make other Muslims look very bad.

Think, people! Try to think! Use your mind! What little mind you have left after religion has rotted most of it away.

I just saw an extremely moving Fareed Zakaria​ GPS show (12/13/2015) where they interviewed a woman who escaped from Iraq to Syria and then when the civil war started, to Turkey.

All her family had hoped for was to immigrate to the US. They thought they had it sussed at one point and then they were denied through a letter, snail mail. Yes, the US sucks sometimes. You can see how she feels this to her core and we were the ones who turned her down. Her and her family, after the horror she's been through, that ISIS and others have put her through. Over what? Religion? Allah, Muhammad, a piece of land?

The photographer and author who was responsible for her being on the show was also on the air and he nearly broke down in tears in explaining her story and that of others like her. He had interviewed twelve families previously who were accepted into America. A PhD and family, cream of the crop types. But this girl and her family, though they are people we'd be proud to have as citizens, were denied.

We worry (well some do), about our letting in a terrorist who will attack us. Are we really worried about letting in a killer. Or more so about being seen as fools, a seemingly far more pronounced idiocy in some people's minds?

We also have to consider the flip side of thinking that way. Let's shift my ranting at ourselves now, at my people.

What about those we turn down who DO become radicalized, who do end up hating us. BECAUSE in their hour (year, decade) of need, we DID turn them down. When they knew themselves that they were highly worthy of our acceptance and yet, we shat upon them and their family, their love of our ideals, upon their dreams and their needs?

Who then is responsible? More stupid humans.

I reject anyone's comeback in saying to me that they'd have become radicalized anyway since after all, that can be true. But just because it's possible doesn't mean it is how it is or always will be for everyone. It is just as true that we can be our own worst enemies. As we have been in many ways in spawning much of what is transpiring now in the world against us.

Some of those reasons Jihadists have used against us are real, accurate, even reasonable. Where we were at fault for the slights those people are feeling against us surely not all are true. And no we cannot in the twisted situation we've placed ourselves in, allow anyone to attack us either, regardless.

Therein part lay the conundrum. At some point someone has to stop the killing, the madness.

Surely it won't be Jihadists as that term defines madness. Stupidity supported by religion, false and fake gods.

We also have a responsibility not to do those things that reasonably give people reasons to attack us. Surely we should not sow those seeds, almost begging for people to attack us someday because of our own actions of greed and national desires and at all costs to others.

We must all stop the madness, on all sides. But your Islamic tribes have been doing this to one another for thousands of years. And yet there was a time long ago when you were at peace. But not the uncivilized among you. And that is what this is, you are who we are against. The uncivilized. The barbarians. Ask yourselves, how did you allow yourselves to devolve in such a way and who can stop it?

Only you. Only you....

These are the things I've seen in the news in recent years. Had another country done to us what we did to others, WE surely would have fought back. If we didn't have a military to use, we'd surely have done as we could with guerrilla warfare, with terrorist actions. One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist, right? To fight back in anyway available?

Bullshit. One's murderer is yet another's murderer.

So be careful in hating.

Because as some like to say,

"There but for the grace of Allah, go I."

Or in this case, we.

So. Think.
Act, responsibly.
Do, the right thing. Stop killing.
Or at least, try to.....try something.