Christian Blindspot

I’m reading, and I must say it’s mainly on Facebook, posts that claim Christians have not acted as badly against Muslims as Muslims are acting against Christians.

And that is total hogwash.

This whole topic brings to mind the loathsome activities of born-again Christian Erik Prince and his Blackwater mercenaries in Iraq. The Blackwater thugs routinely killed innocent Muslim women and children for the fun of it.

But now that we’ve opened this can of worms, let’s see what Blackwater has been up to in the past two years.

You all remember Blackwater, right?

The Blackwater training camp in North Carolina was started by Erik Prince in 1998. Millionaire born-again Christian Erik Prince and “Focus on the Family” founder born-again Christian James Dobson believed that a war between Christians and non-believers was inevitably going to come about in the United States. Prince's family had bankrolled Dobson’s “Focus on the Family”. Prince felt a deep kinship with Dobson’s beliefs.

Prince bought 100,000 acres of land in Camden County, North Carolina, which coincidentally is a half-hour ride from the largest naval base in the world—Norfolk Naval Base. He named it “Blackwater, USA” and said it was a “two-billion dollar shooting range”. But in fact, he trained militias to fight the Armageddon battles he and Dobson envisioned were fated to be on the horizon. The name Blackwater is a reference to the black waters of “The Great Dismal Swamp” peat bog in Northeastern North Carolina near the Blackwater compound.

In 2004, the United States Defense Department started using Blackwater mercenaries in Iraq. It wasn’t long before the Blackwater soldiers getting $1000-per-day (120,000 of them) were nearly as numerous as the soldiers on regular USA army pay (160,000 of them). And it also was not long before the Blackwater soldiers began taking on the self-proclaimed role of chief-executioner of Muslims in Iraq. The unauthorized killings received widespread attention in 2007 when the Blackwater mercenaries came under indictment for their crimes. 

In 2010, Erik Prince liquidated all his holdings in the USA and moved to the United Arab Emirates to avoid being tried on obstruction of justice charges in the USA. The UAE does not have an extradition treaty with the USA.

Prince sold Blackwater to USTC Holdings LLC in 2010 which rechristened itself “Xe Services LLC”. At which point, the United States started using Xe mercenaries in Afghanistan. In December 2011, Blackwater-cum-Xe reinvented itself again with the name “Academi”. At which point, the United States began using Academi mercenaries in Afghanistan. Ted Wright is the new Blackwater-cum-Xe-cum-Academi owner and CEO.

Recently, Ted Wright said he is interested in bringing his Academi mercenaries back to Iraq now that the USA forces have decamped. Presumably, the Academi mercenaries will teach the Muslim Iraqis how to be a democracy full of bipartisan governing acumen and Christian love like the United States, seeing that the Blackwater army failed to do so.

In case that does not work out for Academi, Ted Wright’s forces can always be hired by the Republicans to teach Americans how to be a democracy full of Christian love…at gunpoint.

At Some Point It May Happen

That moment when you are confronted with the ne plus ultra of your fears. We all have an antidiluvean anxiety of the worst possible thing happening. Whatever the worst is…whoever the worst is…god forbid it should happen. Is it a monster of some sort? Is it having to deal with the ultimate in perversions? The worst possible nightmare of depravity…the Dorian Grey portrait in the closet come to terrible and fearsome life.

And whether we actually come face to face with this horror or not, the fear that we may have to do so, the anticipatory dread that we may have to have real and actual intercourse of any kind with our ultimate fear is enough to plunge the most hearty and psychically strongest among us into a terrible existential anxiety.

I have such a fear.

In the dead of night, sometimes I am startled awake to the horrible terror that someday I may have to confront my fear of fear. Someday I may be in the throes of ministrations from a do-gooder.

I barely can say the words…but I will tell you, the thought that I may have to be attended to by a smiling helpful asshole (the actual talking asshole depicted in Cronenberg’s movie “Naked Lunch” comes to mind)…who is in the ultimate glee of his pride fills me with holy dread and angst. A mother-fucker or child molester is surely someone to be loathed, but a do-gooder who cannot wait to minister to the destitute and needy in order to feel he has fulfilled his duty to Christ is surely the lowest of the low.

Oh good and kind Lord, please…Deliver Me from a do-gooder

The Armstrong Duo

I am not sure who irritated me more—Lance Armstrong or his mother Linda. A bunch of us Philadelphians used to gather at Monika Koval’s house in Roxborough every June for a bike race party. We could watch the bikers on TV and then, just as they approached Ridge Avenue. we would run out to the bend in the road and cheer them on.

In 1993 when Lance Armstrong won the CoreStates USPRO national championship in Philadelphia, Armstrong sat up on his bicycle on the last lap, took out a comb, smugly combed his hair, and then smiled his victory smile for the cameras. Lord, I hated him then. But it was his blond, hovering, over-weaning stage-mother Linda who was really annoying. And she was always there…preening, smiling, cheering, fawning…she was the most saccharine-sweet, self-promoting, cloying, over-protective mom the small screen had ever seen because in those years Dance Moms had not been invented yet.

When Lance developed testicular cancer in 1996, a tumor metastasized to his brain and lungs and things looked bad for him. But he beat it and went on to win the Tour de France every year from 1999 to 2005.

While everyone canonized Lance Armstrong after he beat cancer, I became convinced he was using the fact he had to ingest doctor-prescribed drugs to hide the fact he was doping. Yes, he did a lot of charity work but at core he was always a spoiled brat coddled by a sycophantic mom.

Today, Lance Armstrong was stripped of all his titles and perks because the biking world had become convinced he had been doping during his whole career. And in the face of his cohorts, friends and trainers attesting that Armstrong has been a liar and a doping fake his whole life, Lance Armstrong at age 41 is still a self-righteous momma’s boy who says his accusers are tainted and corrupt while he is the only one in the biking world who is pure.

Abortion Credos

Being a supporter of the Pro-Life stance on abortion means you have the same unequivocal belief in your credo that I have as a believer in Pro-Choice.

I am Pro-Choice. By definition, that means I believe all women have the right to decide for themselves if they want to carry a fetus to term.

Being Pro-Life carries the credo that conception creates a sacred life and that life must never be terminated except by God. Pro-Life by definition means zero tolerance for abortion.

These two stances on abortion DO NOT come with Cringe-factor Clauses, such as:

a) I believe my belief until my daughter needs an abortion

b) I believe my belief until a fetus looks like a baby

c) I believe my belief until the woman may die because of the pregnancy

d) I believe my belief until the woman is impregnated by rape or by a close relative

There is another Cringe-factor Abortion Clause that is trotted out in political situations: I believe my belief until I may not get elected because of my belief, at which point, I will switch to the other side, or back again.

Let’s stop all the dancing around with niceties and exceptions regarding abortion.

Let all Pro-Lifers stand up and avow that no abortion should ever happen anywhere for any reason. And let’s get a vow from all Pro-Life politicians that if elected they will never allow an abortion ever to happen anywhere if they can prevent it.

And let all Pro-Choicers stand up and avow that abortions should be legal and available for all women all the time. And let’s get all Pro-Life politicians to swear that if elected all abortions will always be legal and available everywhere if they can make it so.

Or, let all Pro-Lifers and Pro-Choicers shut the fuck up.

GOP IQ is Soaring

The GOP’s Ignorance Quotient, that is.

On August 19th, Representative Todd Akin, the GOP Senate nominee from Missouri answered a question about abortion. He avowed that he was nearly absolute on the topic…no abortion ever for any reason, not even rape. Akin said,"It seems to me, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

As ignorant as this sounds, it’s not the first time such an off-the-wall idea about a woman’s body and its secretions has been presented as fact by a Republican Congressman.

In 1988, the Repub Representative from Pennsylvania Stephen Friend said that the odds that a raped woman will become pregnant are “one in millions and millons and millions” Friend backed his assertion up with his belief that rape causes a woman “to secrete a certain secretion” and this certain secretion kills bad sperm. 

In 1995, the Republican state Representative from North Carolina Henry Aldridge reported to the House Appropriations Committee that, "The facts show that people who are raped — who are truly raped — the juices don't flow, the body functions don't work and they don't get pregnant. Medical authorities agree that this is a rarity, if ever."

In 1998, during his Senate campaign in Arkansas, Republican candidate Dr. Fay Boozman said that hormones generated by fear prevented rape victims from getting pregnant. Dr. Boozman was an ophthalmologist. He said he had picked this information up about women’s bodies while he was a resident at the University of the Arkansas Medical Center in the 1970’s. 

In 1999, a physician and former president of the “National Right to Life Committee” John C. Wilke wrote an article in “Christian Life Resources. Wilke said: “Finally, the factor in what is certainly one of the most important reasons why a rape victim rarely gets pregnant, and that's physical trauma. Every woman is aware that stress and emotional factors can alter her menstrual cycle. To get and stay pregnant a woman's body must produce a very sophisticated mix of hormones. Hormone production is controlled by a part of the brain that is easily influenced by emotions. There's no greater emotional trauma that can be experienced by a woman than an assault rape. This can radically upset her possibility of ovulation, fertilization, implantation and even nurturing of a pregnancy. So what further percentage reduction in pregnancy will this cause? No one knows, but this factor certainly cuts this last figure by at least 50 percent and probably more.”

On Monday, Vanessa Heggie posted a blog in UK’s “The Guardian”. Ms Heggie said a legal text written about the year 1290 included a clause based on an old-old-old wives’ tale. Miss Heggie reported that part of the text said, “If, however, the woman should have conceived at the time alleged in the appeal, it abates, for without a woman’s consent she could not conceive.”

One would have assumed that fanciful lore from the year 1290 might have been discounted and finally disproved in the United States by 2012. One would have assumed this, except in the antediluvian, troglodyte, nonsense-spewing, myth-loving, ignorant Republican Party, that is.

Why Is the CDC Pimping For Merck & Co.?

Let’s see if we can figure that out.

The Center for Disease Control just issued a scare alert that all Baby Boomers should get tested for the Hepatitis C virus.

The CDC was founded in 1943 during World War II as a branch of the United States Public Health Service to help control malaria. 

The CDC now operates under the Department of Health and Human Services umbrella. Its current focus includes chronic diseases, disabilities, injury control, workplace hazards, environmental health threats and terrorism preparation. 

On Thursday, August 16th, the CDC made an overheated, nearly hysterical announcement that all persons born between 1945 and 1965 (Baby Boomers) should get tested for being infected with the Hepatitis C virus. The CDC said that most people would not know if they were infected until liver disease develops. The CDC said the Boomer group is most at risk because they could have received blood transfusions before blood was tested for infections. The CDC said Boomers should be tested immediately and get treatment for curing the Hep-C virus as soon as possible since two new drugs have been developed that will do the job.

The actual announcement from the CDC was careful to say that Boomers might be ill (and not know it) from “Hepatitis C-related illnesses”. Although this nicety was often omitted in newscasts about the announcement.

So let’s back off and take a deep breath. A Hepatitis C-related illness is an illness of the liver. Taking a medicine to control a virus is not going to cure an illness of the liver unless the illness was caused by a virus. 

Interestingly, there has been no agreement in the medical community that a Hepatitis c virus exists. 

So why is the CDC issuing an announcement that all Boomers should be tested for having the Hepatitis C virus when there may be no such thing? And Boomers who will be found to have a Hepatitis C-related disease would not be cured by a Hepatitis C virus drug, if there were such a thing, which there may not be.

Now here’s an interesting coincidence. The head of the Center for Disease Control under George W. Bush was Julie Gerberding. When Gerberding left the CDC, she was hired by Merck & Co., a pharmaceutical firm, to head up its vaccines unit.

Merck has just developed a Hep-C virus drug now being touted by the CDC as a sure cure for the Hep-C virus.

But hey! The Hepatitis C virus may not exist.

Well, at least now we know what the CDC is up to, and why it sent out a scare alert about getting treated by a new wonder drug for a virus that may not exist. The CDC, as well as the American Medical Association and most of Washington, DC is owned by the pharmaceutical industry.

Oh...and if there isn't really anyone out in reality land who will benefit from this new wonder Hep-C virus drug? Who is going to benefit from this hoopla? How about all the hospitals and doctors who will bill Medicare for the unnecessary tests, and how about the drug companies who will provide an expensive drug for a disease that doesn't exist?

Question answered? I think so.

New York Times Calls It Low-minded and Sleazy

Regarding Commonwealth Court of PA Judge Robert Simpson’s ruling that the Voter ID law will stand, a New York Times editorial this morning said "this is a clear and disturbing illustration of the way Republicans have manipulated legislation for their own ends, placing a veneer of civic responsibility on a low-minded and sleazy political ploy."

It is impossible to be more clear and incisive on this matter than that.

Judge Simpson acknowledged he was aware of PA Republican House Leader Michael Turzai’s remark that the Voter ID requirement would win Pennsylvania for Mitt Romney. But Simpson said there was no proof that other lawmakers thought the same way and even if it were true that Repub motives were behind the requirement, Simpson said that was not reason enough to invalidate it.

A PA judge has thumbed his nose at fair and impartial law in PA, he has admitted he has made a ruling that will likely throw the election to Romney in PA and he has said, in effect: “I’m corrupt…I have knowingly and notoriously made an unfair and biased ruling…suck it up…I’m the law.” What happens now?

I have no idea what Democrats and fair-minded Republicans are going to do about this. But of one thing I am absolutely sure.

THIS IS NOT THE END OF THIS MATTER. Pennsylvania is a Democrat state.