OddBeliefs.com

Sarah Palin for vice president. Part bulldog, part soccer mom, part Hillary, part new face, but all bullshit. I’m glad they like her in Alaska, but regardless of whatever

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I’m glad Barack Obama got the nomination. I think, however, that he has his work cut out for him if he gets elected president and tries to reform the health care system.

The corruption in the American health care industry would make any third world resident blush. Current news items about the difficulty of obtaining individual health insurance policies don’t begin to cover the scope or enormity of the problem. Editors and pundits have hardly addressed the problem of the damage to the American economy done by the health insurance companies as they deny almost everyone access to affordable and reliable individual or even small group policies. Forget Walmart–the biggest killer of small businesses in the U.S. is the health insurance industry.

Back in the 1980’s I was working as a professional classical musician. My employer didn’t provide benefits, not even health insurance. I tried to buy an individual policy from a well-known insurance giant. I was required to provide a blood sample and a urine sample, which I felt was an invasion of my privacy, but I reluctantly complied. I passed those tests (I didn’t have a drug habit and wasn’t afflicted with AIDS or HIV) but I was still turned down. I found out that the insurance company, after combing through my medical history, thought that I had been to the gynecologist too many times. Frightened by minor female troubles, they deemed me uninsurable.

I have since changed careers, in part to obtain health insurance coverage. I’m way beyond bitter.

It is time for Americans to demand universal health care. The health insurance companies have lost their legitimacy and should not have any part in the next system. Although buying Congressmen and women worked splendidly for them for a long time, we can wake up and take back Congress.

The United States has 260 million people. If we were all one group, we could bargain for some pretty good deals on prescription drugs, long-term care, care for the mentally ill, and other things that many of us have come to think of as luxuries. We could even give people access to AIDS treatment and drug rehabilitation.

It’s time to stop clucking our tongues about our friends and neighbor’s unsolved medical troubles. As Pogo said, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” Apathy about government must end. Relying on the market to fix things must end. The market is fixing us into the grave.

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“I, (Bride/Groom), take you (Groom/Bride), to be my (wife/husband), to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish; from this day forward until death do us part.”

Let’s consider the “for better or for worse” part, and the implications of a prenuptial agreement at the wedding altar. With a prenup, you’re not accepting someone for better or worse because you’re not even accepting that person for what they are - rich or poor. You may be accepting everything about your spouse from now on, but you’re not accepting the betterness or worseness of their life up until the time of your marriage.

Some might argue that “from this day forward,” means starting now, but a person’s now depends solely upon surviving what has come before. If you accept a person’s now, you accept their life up until now. There is no now in this life without what has come before. It is only what has occurred in your life that brings you to now.

So, if you can’t accept your spouse as they are, even though it might imply a riskier financial future, don’t get married. Have a shack up ceremony or a big party where you declare long term intentions. Why would you even want to marry someone you can’t trust?

or

If you insist upon gettng married with a prenuptial agreement to keep your ass covered, alter the marriage vow to reflect that you can’t really trust your spouse not to be a snake in the grass. The throat clearing approach might work: “I, (Bride/Groom), take you (Groom/Bride), to be my (wife/husband), to have and to hold from this day forward, (….cough cough cough….) to love and to cherish until death do us part.”

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I don’t get it. Every morning I bathe in Preparation H, I feel like a total asshole all day.

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Telemarketing Nightmare

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With all the daily clatter about racism, you don’t hear much about the historic benefits of its innocent cousin, cultural identification. We are right to condemn racism because hatred for someone because they are from a different race is wrong, but we gain insight by considering its evolution.

Racial identification has been prerequisite of survival since the dawn of humankind. If you examine racially motivated feelings on a spectrum: at one end is racial identification, and at the other end is the devouring hatred of racism. And I say spectrum because, as much as we’d like to be able to say that racism is either-or, it is actually a question of degree.

Too often I hear people say that “either you’re a racist or you’re not”. These shortsighted individuals invariably and piously judge themselves as a complete “not”. Try this: have them rate their own degree of racism on a scale of 1 to 10. If they rate themselves as anything above a “0″, call them a racist.

In any event, few would deny that at some historical point every race was little more than a collection of tribes. If you, as I have taken a history course, we both know about tribes. In my history text the various tribes constantly warred with one another, disputing their boundaries and religious beliefs and competing for precious natural resources. They had geographical and cultural barriers that isolated them one from the other.

Tribe A and Tribe B have different cultures, and both tribes believe their own culture to be superior. Hence the other is inferior - in particular, they are wrong. Since being wrong is bad, they are bad people - nevermind the logical fallacy. Consider that you, as a member your own tribe, hadn’t subsumed that your own way was right, these differences would never have even mattered to you.

The congregating together with those who look like you and avoiding, fearing or even hating those who look differently from you, is a natural carry-over from our tribal ancestries.

The irony is that civilization marches toward commonality regardless of our beliefs, fueled by any contact at all among us. Any interaction foments commonality. Even warring parties gradually grow to understand one another and form alliances. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. So hatred can be and has doubtless been a starting point for civilization. As people interact, the world becomes a smaller place. Tribes gradually move closer together.

But take heart. We are certainly not without hope of overcoming racism. Time, itself, seems imbued with the solution. The world’s races are merging. Someday the races will converge, making racism moot. Racism is destined to become a historical footnote.

My advice is to hasten the demise of racism is to be civil to people of other races. You don’t have to go overboard, just be civil. Treat people from other races the the same as you treat people of your own kind: no advantages for your own kind; no disadvantages for the different kind.

Know too, that any time you give your kind an advantage or bring disadvantage upon another kind, you are the tribal throwback, the barbarian from a distant past. Every act of civility diminishes your negativism. Also being civil makes you feel better at the end of the day. Let’s face it, it’s not just a cure for racism, when you’re civil, you’re civilized; when you’re not civil, …

Posted in Race, Social Commentary | Add A Comment »

The last few days, television news has been rife with discussion of Rev. Wright, Barak Obama’s former pastor and the effect Rev. Wright has brought to bear on the Democratic primaries. First the focus was on Rev. Wright’s cursing the nation from his pulpit, but now it has shifted to Rev. Wright’s capitalizing from his greatly increased public exposure, especially at the increasing peril of Sen. Obama’s election hopes. What a buddy, huh? A family friend. An esteemed religious leader. The reverend slapped Obama with the religion card and the race card in one lucky hand. I say “lucky” because Rev. Wright is rapidly cashing in his self-produced chips. The question is: should Sen. Obama fold?

Until I discovered that he went to a racist church, It had never crossed my mind that Barack Obama might secretly be “bird of a feather” with Rev. Wright. (BTW, sure there’s a racist reverend whose church isn’t racist, but I ain’t buying it. Here’s the FOX perspective.)

I don’t know what black America is thinking about Wright’s television coverage, but I have some idea about the majority of white America. Especially, the rev’s counterparts, the pastors of mainstream white Christian churches. They condemn taking God’s name in vain from the pulpit. But more importantly, even non-churching-going America resonates with the underlying racism of Rev. Wright’s message.

What a shock about the rev’s message, too. Mainstream white Christian America never suspected that black churches might be preaching Rev. Wright’s message of racial division. It begs the question, how can Sen. Obama be trusted if he listens (or ever listened) to Rev. Wright?

I have no doubt that Obama didn’t squirm uncomfortably in his pew during the infamous televised snippets; but squirming wasn’t enough. Barak should have immediately left the church in protest, preferably raising quite a bit of hell in process. Mainstream white Christianity sees no excuse for Obama’s even tacitly accepting racism or foul language coming from the pulpit of his home church. Many previous Obama supporters now believe he is a fraud. God was called upon to damn our nation from his home church’s pulpit.

Obama is defenseless. He has attended Wright’s church for 20 years; he admits that Wright has been a large influence on his life; his marriage was even performed by this insincere showboater. “Distancing” himself from Wright after their 20-year journey through Christendom and family friendship is like trying to distance yourself from your mother. The bond can’t break. Until a couple of weeks ago, these two were close friends. Wright likely had the ear of the next president.

Not now. The nation is not ready for a black president if he’s a racist. And if he’s not racist, why does he attend the one black church that preaches hatred - there is just this one, right? Aside: If the racial negativism of Rev. Wright’s message is de riguer for largely black churches, they should know that largely white churches don’t typically engage in this.

In a related note, Sen. Obama will find himself doubly condemned by Christians (of all stripes) if he actually believes that people turn to religion from frustration as he stated in his infamous campaign speech gaffe. That is to say lots of Christians now think that this guy could be a closet atheist, too.

At the beginning of his campaign, I thought that Sen. Obama represented the first chance for true reform since Kennedy. Now I find myself hoping he’s not just a really smart racist.

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About 10:00 this morning I heard Cathie Lee Gifford talking about the sudden rationing of rice by supermarkets. She stated that fuel costs and low harvest were likely the culprits.

Well, who believes that… and who’s behind the mechanism of this new assault on our wallets?

Obviously rice is scarce in a large part of the world, but since the impoverished regions haven’t expanded exorbitantly in the last 24 hours, please don’t claim that the worldwide food shortage actually caused the current US rice shortage. It just ain’t so.

It is far more likely that commodities speculators, encouraged by the recent discovery of their superpower: the “Ability To Arbitrarily Raise the Price” (ATARP). ATARP worked great on oil, so the vulnerability of other commodities is being tested. Another possibility: A cadre of commodities players may have conspired to precipitate this event. Or possibly: ConAgra is taking one last big dip into the pot while G-dub stands by grinning.

Regardless of the underlying causes, we must not stand idly by while vast numbers of people starve worldwide because what is likely to be no more than a financial shenanigan perpetrated by very wealthy Americans.

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