Someone did not get the memo about the separation between Church and State upon which the United States of America was founded 200+ years ago.
For two years, the state of Kentucky hung a plaque saying that GOD is helping out the US Office of Homeland Security.
I wonder if its the same GOD being called on to help Notre Dame football, or prayed to by starving children in Afghanistan, the Appalachian mountains, the Congo.
Seriously, when is GOD going to come down and slap people for trying to monopolize him for their own personal beliefs? Isn’t GOD too big for any one religion?
Atheists want God out of Ky. homeland security
By ROGER ALFORD
FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — A group of atheists filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to remove part of a state anti-terrorism law that requires Kentucky’s Office of Homeland Security to acknowledge it can’t keep the state safe without God’s help.
American Atheists Inc. sued in state court over a 2002 law that stresses God’s role in Kentucky’s homeland security alongside the military, police agencies and health departments.
Of particular concern is a 2006 clause requiring the Office of Homeland Security to post a plaque that says the safety and security of the state “cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon almighty God” and to stress that fact through training and educational materials.
The plaque, posted at the Kentucky Emergency Operations Center in Frankfort, includes the Bible verse: “Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.”
“It is one of the most egregiously and breathtakingly unconstitutional actions by a state legislature that I’ve ever seen,” said Edwin F. Kagin, national legal director of Parsippany, N.J.-based American Atheists Inc. The group claims the law violates both the state and U.S. constitutions.
But Democratic state Rep. Tom Riner, a Baptist minister from Louisville, said he considers it vitally important to acknowledge God’s role in protecting Kentucky and the nation.
“No government by itself can guarantee perfect security,” Riner said. “There will always be this opposition to the acknowledgment of divine providence, but this is a foundational understanding of what America is.”
Kentucky has been at the center of a series of legal battles involving religious issues in recent years, most involving displays of the Ten Commandments in public buildings. One case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in 2005 that such displays inside courthouses in two counties were unconstitutional.
Kentucky isn’t the only state dealing with religious issues, but Ed Buckner, president of American Atheists, said it’s alone in officially enlisting God in homeland security.
“I’m not aware of any other state or commonwealth that is attempting to dump their clear responsibility for protecting their citizens onto God or any other mythological creature,” Buckner said.
State Rep. David Floyd, R-Bardstown, said the preamble to the Kentucky constitution references a people “grateful to almighty God,” so he said he sees no constitutional violation in enlisting God in the state’s homeland security efforts.
Scary stuff. Yet when his brother was ‘handed’ the election by the Supreme Court, he sang a different tune.
Here’s an idea… Become part of the government, don’t set up a ’shadow government’. The Bushites didn’t do so well with the ’shadow banking industry’, did they? Their ’shadow torture’ isn’t helping the US’ image in the global village…
So giving another Bush a soapbox for his opinions (after the first two Bushes hugged then killed Saddam Hussein, went to war, let Wall Street waltz away with billion dollar profits while Main Street suffered, and let the shadow banking system take the US and world economies down) doesn’t seem like a wise move on our part. Bush should retire, along with his brother.
And take a look in the mirror, dude. You’re an ‘old white guy’.
But his religious beliefs, which he says impact his Presidential decision-making, preclude birth control as a method to protect yourself from AIDS…
But he started a pre-emptive war…
But he hasn’t been to funerals of his own soldiers, let alone those of innocent Iraqi civilians…
He thumbed his nose at the International community of nations and threatened to expand his war…
Ah, I understand. Its from Pastor Warren, the uber-Christian pastor of a wealthy mega-church, patting the back of his own…
For a moment there, I was worried what the world would think of us, if we gave Bush such an honor. But I see its a feel-good award and is probably meant to ease Bush’s humbling transition to civilian life. Pappy Bush was given a house and free jet travel, lucrative speaking fees and board memberships. Baby Bush will probably get the same thing from the free-thinking Christians that could conceive of George W. Bush as a Peacemaker…
The Big Three CEOs — Richard Wagoner of General Motors, left, Robert Nardelli of Chrysler and Alan Mulally of Ford — went begging on the Hill. (By Chip Somodevilla — Getty Images)
There are 24 daily nonstop flights from Detroit to the Washington area. Richard Wagoner, Alan Mulally and Robert Nardelli probably should have taken one of them.
Instead, the chief executives of the Big Three automakers opted to fly their company jets to the capital for their hearings this week before the Senate and House — an ill-timed display of corporate excess for a trio of executives begging for an additional $25 billion from the public trough this week.
The photo of the Auto Execs caught my eye.
Have you noticed lately how the huge majority of business leaders asking for bailouts are old, white guys? Now my dad was an old white guy, my brothers are white guys, my sons will be old white guys, but its such a cliche in business that the old white guys parade around at the top of corporations, unable to understand or have empathy for their customers.
These guys had thousands of chances to whip their companies into new paradigms. They’ve known we need smaller cars with better gas mileage. But they wanted to sell big, huge tanks. So they did!
Now they’re flying private jets, at a fuel/carrying cost of $20,000, to ask for bailout money from overburdened Americans, the same Americans who’ve been looking for smaller, less costly cars! Excuse me? NO.
They should have taken Greyhound. Or carpooled. But they don’t pay their own transportation costs, so they have no idea how the rest of us live.
I took this photo at my kid’s sporting event: a huge luxury SUV, with GOP and Support our Troops stickers, pulled up and onto a curbed red zone, so the driver wouldn’t have to park in the parking lot like the rest of the families.
Same thoughtlessness as these auto execs, flying their huge planes in while their employees are wondering how they’ll survive the winter.
The bailout is a parting gift to the people that George Bush once referred to jokingly as “my base.”
“And I think, you know, Amy, the last time I was on Democracy Now!, we were talking about Henry Paulson’s original three-page proposal, the $700 trillion stickup, where he basically said, “Give me $700 trillion. Don’t ask any questions. I can never be challenged by any arm of government or any court of law.” Now, that aspect of the bailout was supposedly dealt with, and we were all reassured that there was going to be transparency, accountability, legality. But now we’re finding out that, in fact, Henry Paulson has achieved his original goal by stealth, because there is no accountability, and lawmakers are very hesitant to challenge this, because they’re afraid of causing a run on the banks, of causing more market instability. So, essentially, what the Bush administration has done is said, you know, “We dare you to challenge us and be responsible for the great depression.” And the Democrats, not known for their firm spines, have so far failed to challenge them in anything other than rhetoric.
Goodman: And what’s very interesting about this, of course, as I talked to you before the election, but now the election is over, and the Democrats are not in a weaker position, but in a far more powerful position, and they are meeting this week.
Klein: Right. They have a lot of leeway in which to act on this. You know, if Barney Frank means what he says, that this violates the act, then of course they can challenge the deals that have already been signed, these terrible equity deals that are so much worse than what Gordon Brown negotiated in Britain. I mean, let’s remember, Gordon Brown got voting rights at the banks that they bailed out, seats on the boards, 12 percent dividends for UK taxpayers, as opposed to the five percent negotiated in the US and no voting rights and no seats on the board. Other thing Gordon Brown did is he got it in writing that the banks had to start lending, as opposed to Henry Paulson, who didn’t get it in writing, and the banks are not lending.
So, there is room to move, but, you know, the logic that has really gripped lawmakers is that they can’t rock the boat. And we hear this across the board, really, in the talk of, you know, who to appoint as Treasury Secretary, how to approach economic policy in this period. We hear all these phrases — you know, continuity, smooth transition. And really, that’s code for more of the same, because what the market wants is for there not to be tough regulation, is for the free money to keep flowing. What will upset the market, what will create a rocky transition, is if it’s clear that there’s a new sheriff in town, that they’re going to have to follow the law, that they’re going to cut off all of this corporate welfare, there’s going to be real accountability, real conditions attached to the money. You know what? The market really doesn’t want that.
Unfortunately for the market, voters have just voted for change. They voted for a candidate who really turned the election into a referendum on this economic policy of rampant deregulation. So you’ve really got a problem here. How do you reconcile the market’s desire for status quo with the voters’ demand for real change? There is no way to do that without a few bumps along the way. And I’m quite concerned that what we’re seeing from Obama’s team is an accepting of this logic that they need to give the market what it wants, which is continuity, smooth transition, which is really just code for more of the same. And when you hear names like Larry Summers being bandied about for Treasury Secretary, that’s feeding the market exactly what it wants, which is more of the same.
Goodman: I wanted to go more to these — what you’re calling “borderline criminal” deals, the Washington Post revealing as part of the bailout, lawmakers changed Tax Code Section 382, which limits the kinds of tax shelters companies can use to — during corporate mergers, created to stop companies who avoid paying taxes by acquiring shell companies valued by the losses on their stocks. And then, going on in the piece, it says congressional aides admitted lawmakers agreed to keep the change hidden to avoid public outrage. Staffers with Senate Finance Committee chair, Max Baucus, a Democrat, reportedly asked that an administration briefing on the tax code change be kept secret. One congressional aide said, “We’re all nervous about saying this was illegal because of our fears about the marketplace. To the extent we want to try to publicly stop this, we’re going to be gumming up some important deals.”
Klein: Right. I mean, this is — that’s an incredible statement, Amy, because really what they’re saying is, we can’t afford to enforce the law, because there is an economic crisis, that somehow, because there’s an economic prices, legality is a luxury that Congress can’t afford. That is a very scary statement. But this is what I mean by this logic that you have to — you know, the market, particularly a bear market, has the temperament of an ill-tempered two-year-old. I mean, it throws temper tantrums whenever it doesn’t get what it wants, whenever it is frightened. So it is really dangerous to pander to the tastes of the market in this period. It needs a little bit of tough love. That’s what people have voted for. But there will be a temper tantrum if there is a clear message that the law is going to be followed.
Robert Greenwald made a great documentary on the war profiteers, Iraq for Sale. I wish someone could get out a quick documentary on the bailout profiteers!
I’m 48. When I was growing up, something might happen to you in your day and you’d wait until you ran into a buddy or your family in order to share the ’story’. You’d have the ’story’ in your head and you’d process it in the minutes/hours until you shared it. Many times, you’d forget it, with the next arising ’story’. Now we process things instantly, thru text messaging, each and every thing that happens theoretically gets shared instantaneously. We’re sharing at warp speed.
Read,Write,Web blogs about the massive increase in instant mobile messaging. We’re interconnected, especially while ‘on the go’:
Mobile messaging is experiencing a period of record growth, according to some figures released from VeriSign earlier this week. Looking at the numbers more closely, some interesting trends emerge. Those include the use of messaging for social and political change, marketing, such as that done by U.S. President-elect Barack Obama’s mobile campaign, and the use of mobile messaging for charitable donations. Other sectors experiencing significant increases are the enterprise and financial institutions. In those two areas alone, mobile messaging has seen a 115% increase in only a year’s time, and much of that is thanks to the financial industry’s adoption of the medium for business to consumer communication.
In Q3 2008, VeriSign Messaging and Mobile Media Divison’s mobile messaging networks enabled more than 58.3 billion messages per day to travel through their pipes…10% more than in the previous quarter and up from 280 million per day in Q3. Based on these record-breaking numbers, VeriSign projects that their mobile messaging networks will enable close to 200 billion total messages by the end of the year.
Enterprises and financial institutions have seen growing numbers of mobile messages sent, too. From Q3 2007 to Q3 2008, the total number of messages delivered rose from 129 to 227 million - a 115% increase.
Much of that activity comes from SMS’s new position as the preferred platform for mobile banking. VeriSign’s Mobile Banking platform, which includes seven of the top ten banking brands and three of the top five credit card companies, has grown 35% since last quarter alone.
My read: we are in the throes of global interconnectedness that will re-write all of our paradigms and systems. We just can’t see how that will yet unfold.
Our own government, using trillions of our hard earned tax dollars, is not willing to tell us what the ‘toxic waste’ assets are that we are getting for loaning the banking industry, the insurance industry, perhaps the auto industry and others, our money.
Considering that Wall Street stupidity and greed got us into this mess, we should be knowledgeable about how the toxic waste is now spreading into our own pocketbooks.
What is the United State worth? Its value is now tainted by trillions of dollars of assets that STINK so much that they have been removed from the balance sheet of the private industries that created it and they have been put in the public’s hands.
We are now responsible for cleaning up the toxic waste. But none of us got the $4000 bottles of wine at company dinners, the remodeled kitchens, the Hampton getaway homes that were bought with the cash that flowed as these assets were bought and sold by private industry.
Here is a great reminder of the billions the Dr. Frankensteins rewarded themselves with, less than two short years ago:
Now, two years later, like spoiled brats, they want to be rescued. Like youngsters who open all the family cupboards, eat and drink all the good stuff, run around partying and putting their dirty little fingers all over the walls and furniture, then drunkenly pee in the corners of the kitchen and let poo leak out of their diapers, they sit clasping their hands together, begging for relief from their own actions. Parental tough love is called for here. Why are we now picking up their poo?
Thank goodness for Bloomberg, for suing our government for what should be PUBLIC information.
If you take a knife and cut a B into your cheek, you’ll start with an up and down stroke and then make the two circles heading towards your ear. If someone else, say a MUGGER, takes a knife and cuts a B into your cheek, he/she is going to start near your ear with the up and down stroke and then make two circles near your nose.
Think it thru, people, before you maim yourself and blame others.
