jimrigby.org

1. After 9-11 everything is different. The people who wrote the Constitution and Bill of Rights never experienced the kind of danger we have.
2. Terrorists are people who irrationally want to hurt us. And, because their actions are wrong, there is no reason to investigate allegations by whistleblowers that we did something to them first.
3. Terrorist really hate us for our freedoms, which is why we need a police state to protect us from them.
4. If we are to protect our democracy, some of our elected leaders must be kept in the dark about what our government is really doing or else they might leak it to the people.
5. Current examples of domestic spying aren’t really that bad. It is better not to worry about the surveillance state until it is too big to do anything about.

There is nothing that proves evolution more than creation science. Fantastical arguments for intelligent design, insistence that we live in a boundaried hierarchical universe under the protection of a large male God would best be invented in the mind of a frightened ape struggling to rationalize away the randomness it sees all around it. Creation science is nothing so much as our primate instincts crying for our lost environment.

We began the “Christian Catfish Award” last week to award the pettiest word said or cruelest deed done in the name of Christ. A fish is one symbol of the Christian faith, and a catfish is bottom feeding scum sucker. Together they make up the name of the coveted “Christian Catfish” award given to the person or group who brings the most shame to the Christian faith.

Our first award went to Ferry Falwell’s Liberty University for their addition of a new program to train Christian students to work on killer drones. But other nominees have been pouring in.

David Rackley has nominated prophet Cindy Jacobs for saying that native Americans need to repent of their ancestor’s pagan ways:

“If you have in your bloodline any animus, any Native American blood, for instance — not all Native Americans worshiped the serpent or crocodile, many did — but you might want to renounce that and repent for the generational iniquity,” Jacobs says. “If you are — perhaps you’re Mexican and you might have indigenous blood in you or Mayan blood — those who have Aztec blood in any way, you need to repent for the sin of animism before you begin to deal with this spirit.”

To read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/05/cindy-jacobs-native-americans-repent_n_3390601.html

Another fine candidate is Republican Rep. Mike Conaway of Texas who said that atheists should not be allowed to serve as chaplains in the military. As Brother Mike said:

“You can’t use the word “chaplain” with atheists because they don’t believe  anything. They don’t believe in a faith[…] I can’t imagine an atheist  accompanying a notification team as they go into some family’s home to let them  have the worst news of their life, and this guy say ‘You know, you’re it– that’s  it, your son’s ju — worms, I mean, worm food.”

Read more: http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/06/07/atheists-in-the-military-continue-to-face-discrimination-as-effort-to-allow-atheist-chaplains-is-blocked-by-house-republicans-video/#ixzz2VoaK4ztb

Finally, David Barton has gone on record that one cannot be a Christian and drink Starbucks coffee since that company supports gay rights.

“There’s no way a Christian can help support what is attacking God. I’m sorry, you’ve got to find some other coffee to drink. You can’t drink Starbucks and be Biblically correct on this thing. It’s just a real simple principle.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/03/christians-starbucks-gay-marriage-attacks-god_n_3379537.html?utm_hp_ref=religion

Well you call the shot. Which of these fine candidate’s is most deserving of the prestigious “Christian Catfish Award?”

a. Native Americans need to repent for their ancestor’s religion.

b. Atheist chaplains would bring nihilistic despair to the grieving.

c. Starbucks is the steamed latte of Sodom, the gingerbread mocha of Gomorrah.

I will tally your votes and announce our winner later in the week.

Just because Obama has not been the answer does not mean he has been the problem.

Shortly after the election I was asked by a liberal magazine to write my predictions for the new administration. The editor was apparently not happy when I responded that Obama had very little chance of making the changes was proposing. Whether or not Obama is a good person wasn’t the issue. I was trying to say that no one can save us who believes in the system that has caused our problems.

Much more knowledgeable people than I were saying the same thing. Noam Chomsky was, I believe, the first to point out that the entire campaign had been a top down media concocted simulation of a grassroots people’s movements. I saw Chomsky’s point played out almost immediately.

We were doing a protest to shut down the T. Don Hutto detention center for immigrant families some years back. Outside organizers showed up to help. They wanted the crowd to do a chant. I believe the chant was something like, “Who can make a change?” The crowd of immigrant rights groups instinctively shouted, “We can!” One organizer put down the bullhorn and corrected us. “No, say ‘Obama can!’” it was exactly like Chomsky had said.

In my own article I said that Bush had betrayed America by appealing to our basest instincts, and that Obama would betray us by appealing to our highest principles and then giving us politics as usual. Looking back I do not believe I was being pessimistic. It was clear that in spite of his good intentions, Obama was a part of the system that had produced the crisis. He trusted the big banks, he trusted Wall Street, he trusted the war machine and he trusted the intelligence community. From the start President Obama loaded his cabinet with industry insiders and with war hawks. His tool belt should have told us everything we needed to know about what he was going to do.

But blaming Obama is missing the point. Just because he wasn’t the answer does not mean that he was the problem. Blaming him and ignoring our own role in the same bad system will only lead to more heartache. How capitalism which is a greed based economy, or nationalism which needs empire as its expression lead anywhere but the very disasters we face now? How long will we blame the failure of this system on the frailties of our leaders? A dog eat dog economic system will eventually produce a nation where only those with fangs can aspire to leadership. Why can we not see this?

Obama failed not because he is evil, but because he believes in the very parts of the system that are producing the problem.  Capitalism is not a meaningful form of governance. We will not save the Republic by shrinking government and letting businesses run wild. What America needs is not less government, but more democracy. But so long as we the people believe in the God of capitalism, and so long as we believe in the American empire, and so long as we refuse to curb our level of consumption: no politician on earth can survive without giving us the poisons we demand.

Instead of looking to replace one failed hero with another, it is time to ask a new question. “How do we need to change to become the kind of citizenship in which good leadership is even possible?”

Let me be perfectly clear. When I criticize President Obama, I am in no way advocating for the Republican Party. Until we have other more viable political parties, I am criticizing President Obama because I want the Democrats to do something better, not because I want for the Republicans to be able to do something worse.

So much of our despair comes from cooperating with a system we know to be evil. When we know the right thing to do, but don’t do it, our heart closes even if we are successful. When we know the right thing to do, and do it, our heart opens even if we are defeated.

If you had a choice between betraying humanity so you could make more money, or emptying your life into a hopeless cause that would forever enrich humankind which path would you take? If walking the noble path gave us a great heart, would any betrayal of our cause be worth what we exchanged our heart for?

It is a paradox, but when we live for ourselves alone we lose our own human hearts. When we numb ourselves to the world’s pain we are like flowers that have closed themselves to the sun. It’s very much as if the people on a sinking ship decided to waterproof their own cabins instead of working together to face their common danger.

What we reap we will sow. There is no invisible hand of the market, there is no political pendulum that will swing us back to sanity if we do not take responsibility for our world.  If we keep going in the direction we are headed, that’s where we will end up. Is that good news or bad news? It depends on what we do, doesn’t it? Can we come together as a species knowing it may be too late? Can we scream from the rooftops and work and meditate on behalf of humankind, knowing that it may be useless?

Sometimes ant mounds get invaded. Sometimes the queen is killed or removed. There is quite a bit of turmoil when this happens. Sometimes the mound is able to gain a new queen, but often the mound dies. What happens in either case is that the ant soldiers still soldier, the ant farmers still farm, the ant workers still work. If they all die, they die in their roles. They die in harness. They die doing their duty.

Our species faces many grave perils. It is possible we will be able to pull out of them, but we don’t need to know that in order to do our duty to humankind. Just because we look and see what appears to be an apocalypse coming does not mean we have to endure one second of despair in terms of our own duty. There is a power and a joy and a sense of value that comes from committing to do our duty no matter what. It’s our best shot to get out of the crisis, but even if that doesn’t happen, it’s is the only way we can earn life’s greatest treasure- a living human heart.

“Only by reading the voluminous lawsuits filed against the state can one  appreciate just how creative Texas Republicans had to be to so successfully  dilute and suppress the state’s minority vote. According to a lawsuit filed by a  host of civil rights groups, “even though Whites’ share of the population  declined from 52 percent to 45 percent, they remain the majority in 70 percent  of Congressional Districts.” To cite just one of many examples: in the  Dallas-Fort Worth area, the Hispanic population increased by 440,898, the  African-American population grew by 152,825 and the white population fell by  156,742. Yet white Republicans, a minority in the metropolis, control four of  five Congressional seats. Despite declining in population, white Republicans  managed to pick up two Congressional seats in the Dallas and Houston areas. In  fact, whites are the minority in the state’s five largest counties but control  twelve of nineteen Congressional districts.” -Ari Berman, The Nation

Read more: http://www.thenation.com/blog/174652/texas-redistricting-fight-shows-why-voting-rights-act-still-needed#ixzz2VckBdLmg

Naomi Klein is a world class thinker and writer. When she came to our church to speak, three things were clear. She is very humble, very smart and very driven to improve the human condition.

Klein spoke recently at a Greek worker run factory. The owners had abandoned the business and workers stepped in to reorganize the business using democratic co-operative principles instead of the feudal hierarchies assumed in most business models. Klein used that setting to speak of successful resistance movements and the need for what she called “critical hope.”

“We really are in the midst of what I’ve come to think of as a final colonial pillage for the hardest to reach natural resources in some of the most beautiful protected parts of the world using some of the most dangerous and damaging extractive practices.”

This kind of system is so violent, Klein said, “it needs the repression of the state to back it up.” In contrast, the other model in Halkidiki looks inward, at wealth that is not created, but is already there—in soil, water, even people’s hands. This is truly “the wealth of life,” she said.

She said that the people will only rise to hope “when the alternatives look tangible, look real, look credible and inspiring.” She said when the media plays its roll in a capitalist culture of convincing people that their only choice is between submitting to the rich or some imaginary apocalypse, we must not only criticize the deception, but also show a positive alternative:

“We must say no, but also show the yes.”

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/06/06-4

President Obama won America’s heart with a warm smile and wonderful slogans. He made wonderful references to Martin Luther King, and had entire crowds chanting the slogans of worker’s right’s groups, “Yes, we can!”

Candidate Obama criticized George Bush for sacrificing our personal privacy in the name of security. He promised he would grant unprecedented transparency to the inner workings of government. As you no doubt know by now, it has been discovered that the Obama administration has given the FBI and the NSA unparalleled access to do domestic spying. And it is now clear that President Obama has taken President Bush’s domestic spying programs to unprecedented levels. Not since Wilson has a president made such a U-turn between candidate and office holder.

Glenn Greenwald reported Wednesday in the Guardian:

 National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian.

 The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called PRISM, which allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats, the document says.

 The Guardian has verified the authenticity of the document, a 41-slide PowerPoint presentation – classified as top secret with no distribution to foreign allies – which was apparently used to train intelligence operatives on the capabilities of the program. The document claims “collection directly from the servers” of major US service providers.

Andrew Leonard, of Alternet also laments:

The Obama administration has presided over the most thorough expansion of the domestic surveillance state of any U.S. presidency. Even as the nation was still absorbing the news, broken by Glenn Greenwald at the Guardian on Wednesday night, that the National Security Agency has been routinely collecting phone call records for millions of Americans, the Washington Post and the Guardian published articles revealing even broader government snooping powers: Since 2007, the NSA and the FBI have had the power to watch nearly every aspect of our online life as well.

What will be the President’s next step? Will he apologize for what happened and return to his pre-election promises of transparency in government? If the past is any indication, his focus will not be on correcting government abuses, but on finding out who leaked this information and punishing them severely. And until this nation starts voting for policies instead of personalities, and holding office holders accountable, we will replay this tragedy endlessly into the future.

“We can’t pick and choose with scripture. It’s either all true or none of it is true.” Rev. Clovis Jones concluded his sermon with an unintentional glance at Texas Buddha to see whether he was listening. He was.

After church the two met at a diner for lunch. “Well? What did you think of my sermon?”

“It was good.” TB replied, obviously being polite.

Rev. Jones tried to focus on his chicken fried steak, but eventually laid his fork down and blurted, “Okay, I know you think scripture isn’t really true. So why do you read it so much? You know scripture better than I do. “

Not wanting to be unpleasant, TB responded, “For me the question isn’t whether a symbol is true, but how it’s true. And also how it isn’t true. We need to know both of those realities because every religious symbol reveals something and hides something.”

“Explain.” Rev. Jones implored, biting into the corner of his Texas toast and staring at the teeth marks.

“A good map isn’t true or false. It is symbolic.” TB continued.  “The map is smaller, flattened and simplified. A map exaggerates the roads to make them visible. It flattens the mountains to get them out of the way. A map that really looked like the world, with the same size and detail, would be useless. And that’s the problem with literalism in my opinion. That approach turns the map into an alternative reality rather than an actual guide for life’s journey.”

“If the Bible is just a bunch of symbols, then I’m not interested.” Rev. Jones frowned,  “If that were the case, we would have to rewrite the Bible every time science made a new discovery. I believe God’s word is the same today, yesterday and tomorrow.”

TB asked for the ketchup and then said, “Fortunately, the topography of soul doesn’t change so quickly. Religion is more about our subjective journey than our objective world. If we took your approach to a map we would be disillusioned when we discovered the roads aren’t really blue or red, and that capital cities don’t really have a giant star in them. If we know the map is a symbol, we can adapt when something unexpected happen like traffic jams or when a road is under construction. If we think the map is an actual picture of the world, we have to plow into whatever lies ahead.”

“I still say the word of God is either true or it is false.” Clovis said with finality, signaling that he wanted to talk about something else.

“I understand that Clovis. I was just answering the question you asked me. That is how we see scripture differently. You say scripture is an accurate description of the outer world, and I say it is a map of the human psyche that only becomes true as we make our journey. Almost any objective claim religion makes about the world will eventually be disproven by science and by experience. But human beings have been singing the song of life since we emerged from the primoridal mists. It is only in symbols of our deepest human subjectivity that we hear a word that is the same today, yesterday and tomorrow.”