Columnist – John Sammon
Can you see the logic?

The close relationship, the natural progression, from one thought to the next?

Each year at Christmas we celebrate the birth of a First Century AD Galilean holy man and prophet, who preached, according to what we find in the Bible, humility, forbearance, sweetness and frugality. We celebrate this with an orgy of retail spending.

We also celebrate this short and obscure life, for there isn’t much hard historical evidence of the details, by promoting the mythological arrival on your roof of a German fat man in a red suit, in a sleigh pulled by wild bovines, one of whom has an incandescent nose.

Doesn’t it make sense? It all makes perfect sense to me.

This German fat man squeezes his way down your chimney, and leaves presents for your kids that you know you bought and weren’t left by the German fat man. But you tell your kid you didn’t buy the gifts. They were left by a German fat man who as he sailed away into the night yelled “Ho! Ho!”

You tell your kids this story until about the time they reach the age of 14, when they finally realize on their own, or are told by friends, it was all a lie. Thus, even from their earliest memories, you show them you love them by foisting a lie. And not just a small lie. A WHOPPER!

That’s supposedly because you’re a giving, generous person.

Interestingly, even when they’re small, your children sure know who to complain to if they don’t feel they got enough, or didn’t get what they want. YOU! For some reason, they don’t even bother searching for a fictional German fat man.

I’ve threatened to boycott Christmas for years.

Here are 10 reasons why:

1.   Let’s smell the coffee. Okay? Christmas is about spending, not about Jesus, not even about the concept of giving. If you doubt me, try spending a third what you normally spend. That’s still giving, isn’t it? Your kid will run sobbing to her room. You’ll feel guilty. A bad person. You didn’t spend enough. Don’t try to blame it on the German fat man. Try explaining to your child about the spirit of it, the thought that counts, not the amount of the merchandise. About Jesus. Yeah right! Your kid will get up and run sobbing into another room.

2.   This ritual requires an expenditure of at least $700 per year. That’s small. If you’re a rich airline pilot, it could be $1,200, maybe $5,000. If you’re like a lot of people, you don’t have the money. The cost of everything goes up. Even the Christmas tree now costs more than I once paid for a used car. You borrow money for it on credit cards and go deeper into debt, to please your kid, or whomever.

3.   Scrooge got a bad rap. He was a Republican businessman. If he killed and robbed people to get money, I’d be less sympathetic. But he made money by being ruthless, and didn’t want to share it. That’s just the American way. You know the story. Scrooge sees the light after being threatened by three ghosts. At the end, he’s throwing money at charities and anyone who will take it, and he’s a good person. Next year, when the charities come back for more, he’s out. He gave it all away. Now, instead of being an SOB, the charities call him a goddamned fool.

The moral is clear. People evaluate your character based on how you spend your own money, money you earned from hard work, and whether or not you give them that money.

4.   Most of the merchandise purchased is made by slaves or low income peons in China, ruled by a ruthless regime. Thus, the slave laborer sits in his Chinese jail cell putting together a DVD player that costs his jailer $7.95 to produce. They ship it and sell it to you for $198.95. With each purchase, you are helping China to become a superpower that will supplant the United States, and you are helping American crook corporate executives who are shipping jobs overseas to take advantage of slaves. What does this, and an overpriced DVD player, have to do with Jesus?

5.   Turn on the TV set. Look at the expensive cars being glorified. Look at the beautiful, supposedly rich, glamorous Hollywood actors portraying successful people giving and getting upscale gifts. It creates envy. You want to be like them. Happiness is not the inner being. It’s how you look, how much you have, and what you spend. Material possessions.

6.   It doesn’t take long to figure out that much of the economic growth of the military industrial colossus that the US has become depends on this single event. If you save too much, if you don’t go into high-interest debt, the powers-that-be don’t like it. Like the oil companies, they need you as a sucker.

7.   Each year the ritual involves visiting relatives. But not me. My malicious conservative relatives hate my guts and consider me a mama’s boy, a lazy bum, a coward, an anti-American traitor, a weakling and probably a pervert. I only agree with about half of this negative assessment.

8.   Statistics show Christmas is the time for suicide and depression psychologically because of the forced gaiety, decorations, inevitable caloric weight gain, tinsel and lights, and because again you don’t have enough money.

9.   Jesus wasn’t born on December 25. We don’t even know the exact year of his birth. Who picked the 25th? Everybody crowds airports at the same time to celebrate the not-the-day of Jesus’ birth.

10.   Despite personal responsibility, Christmas nevertheless encourages binge alcohol consumption, drunk driving and overeating in an already chronically obese society.

———————————————————————————————————————————————–

———————————————————————————————————————————————–

“The White House is planning a muted observance of Thursday’s National Day of Prayer, a response that has disappointed both Christian conservatives and an atheist group that wants to end the tradition.

Congress established the day in 1952 and in 1988 set the first Thursday in May as the day for presidents to issue proclamations asking Americans to pray.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said President Barack Obama would issue such a proclamation Thursday but not hold any public events with religious leaders as President George W. Bush did.” — RYAN J. FOLEY/The Associated Press.

The National Day of Prayer makes a mockery of the establishment clause of the First Amendment. Christians, Muslims, Jews, and everyone who treasures the Constitution should join atheists and agnostics in demanding that Obama boycott this insidious observance.

Obama must feel awkward acknowledging the National Day of Prayer, or he wouldn’t have scaled back the involvement of the White House. The President needs to stop pussyfooting around, and declare that henceforth his administration will not participate in a religious event that promotes monotheism (particularly Christianity) above the thousands of other religions.

At this critical juncture in our history, with the recession in danger of becoming a depression, Obama should call upon Americans to think clearly and act decisively, and not to bet everything on the efficacy of prayer.

President Obama, America needs change that we can believe in, please set an example by declaring that on the National Day of Prayer you will be hard at work researching solutions to the nation’s seemingly intractable problems, instead of praying.

—————————————————————————————————————————————————

—————————————————————————————————————————————————

“A federal judge has ordered the Santa Rosa County School District to stop promoting religion and prayer in the classroom and at school events.

U.S. District Court Judge Casey Rodgers ruled Friday after school officials admitted allegations in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Rodgers’ order prohibits employees from:

•    Promoting prayer at school-sponsored events, including graduation.

•    Planning or financing religious baccalaureate services.

•    Promoting religious beliefs to students in class or during school-sponsored events and activities.

•    Holding school-sponsored events at churches.”

http://www.pnj.com/article/20090113/NEWS01/901130315/1006/NEWS01

The news chronicles the failures of humankind, and it’s hard not to feel depressed after reading the morning newspaper. But every once in a while there’s an article that gives me hope that we are evolving into more enlightened human beings.

Principals and teachers are held in high regard by their students, and school officials can use their influence for good or evil. In this case Pace High School Principal Frank Lay used his authority to attempt to indoctrinate his young charges into his Christian faith.

I can hear millions of Christians saying “what’s wrong with that“? I would ask these fine Christians what if a Muslim principal or a Wiccan teacher spread his or her faith to schoolchildren?

When I try to convince people of faith that promoting the Christian faith at school is an abomination, they respond that atheists don’t have to participate during a school prayer. Would they have the same perspective if their children had to sit still while their Wiccan teacher cast spells for world peace?

God bless Judge Rodgers for his ruling, and thank God that we can look forward to President Barack Obama appointing federal judges who share Judge Rogers enlightened views.

————————————————————————————

Writes: Paul Jenkins

The GOP’s White Supremacy

When a 19 year-old white supremacist recently gained a seat on the Palm Beach County Republican Executive Committee, the election created such an outcry that embarrassed local politicians used a technicality to block his seating.

The entire process was buffoonish, although the views of the spawn of a grand wizard of the KKK and his supporters were not. Events such as this, or the stunning success of David Duke in Louisiana in 1990, occur every few years within the GOP, a reminder of the party’s racist faction.

   Dead GOP Elephant

Even more standard for Republicans, especially in the year that saw Barack Obama’s election, are the off-key comments about uppitiness, Senators whistling Dixie, and, most recently, a funny little party-endorsed mailer called "Barack the Magic Negro."

All of this stupidity, and hatred, is a symptom of the larger problem for the Republican Party: it is utterly unrepresentative of America in the 21st century. Its Congressional representation is nearly uniformly white, and overwhelmingly male.

So much so, in fact, that there is not one single African-American GOP member of Congress (out of 219 or 220); nor, for that matter, are there any black GOP Governors (out of 22).

There are just four Republican Latinos in Congress, all Florida Cuban-Americans; one of them, Senator Mel Martinez, has
announced his retirement. He is the only non-white or Hispanic GOP Senator…..[Continued]

| Read More At The HuffingtonPost |

——————————————————-

Watch Zbigniew Brzezinski Skewer the ALWAYS WRONG ReTHUGliNUT Joe ‘Marlboro‘ Scarborough, as his daughter Mika Brzezinski watches. Dr. Brzezinski Called Republican Scarborough — ‘Stunningly Superficial.’

——————————————————-

As the Bigot-Party prepares to descend on Minnesota for the Republican convention, I can’t help but recall the right-wing nutbag Stuart Shepard of “Focus on the Family Action” starring in a video that asked Christians to pray for “rain of biblical proportions,” during Barack Obama’s nomination-acceptance speech. He asked God for “abundant and torrential rain” that would create flash flood warnings and “swamp the intersections..” Shepard said he hoped the rain would start “two minutes before the acceptance speech begins.”

What a colossal waste of GOD’s time!

Well, that never happened and last Thursday Obama delivered yet another masterful speech which was applauded exuberantly by the left and grudgingly by right, and Hurricane Gustav(with speculation that two other hurricanes are right behind Gustav) appears to be on target to mess up the GOP convention — a gathering of Stuart Shepard’s Grand Old party of GOD!

Even “toe-sucking” Dick Morris loved it. “A master was at work last night. A politician who can inspire hope filled in the blanks of his program and articulated his vision with skill and panache,” said Dick Morris, a former Clinton advisor, now a wicked and rascally prime-time analyst for the “snake-pit” news channel — Fox News.

In 2004, when the Republicans couldn’t field a viable candidate (Republican Party challenger, Jack Ryan, was discovered to be a sexual pervert) to run against Barack Obama, they searched all over the United States — all they way to Maryland, where they found Alan Keyes, a “perennial presidential candidate,” and a black ReTHUGliTOM in the Clarence Thomas mold — an Uncle-Tom of “mental illness” proportions.

Alan Keyes — The Black “King of Bull-Shit”

Obama slaughtered him in the election, winning the Senate race to become 5th black U.S. senator in history. Keyes, in a combative speech that Tuesday night, quoted heavily from the Bible, but stopped short of conceding the race, vowing to fight what he called the corrupt politicians of Illinois.

“We are called to go into the ditch, and though we must wade knee-deep in muck we will come out the other side,” said Keyes. “This shall be our cause!” ……whatever that means!

This election cycle, McCain the Republican seems to be doing something similar.

After rejecting a congregation of flawed potential VP partners, he went looking — and snagged the “moose-eating” twenty month governor of Alaska, a former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska (Population 7,738 [2004 Estimate]), husbanded by a career fisherman, Todd Palin.

This condescending and laughable grab for ‘Hillary Voters,‘ will work with the far-right GOP females, who have been luke-warm towards McCain, for not being extremist enough, and some stupid, un-principled “Low Information” Hillary-Voters, but to the die-hard well-informed — angry or not, I think this is a major slap in the face.

Poor John McCain actually believes there’s a large army of bitter Hillary voters who will vote for a right-wing female NUT simply because she’s a woman.

Not only is McCain’s theory ludicrous, but it is every bit as sexist as can be.

Are Democratic women voters that stupid, as to not care about the issues Hillary Clinton stood for?

Yes, some are, especially those turned off by the color of Obama’s skin, but for the majority — I don’t think so.

Jon Stewart’s Take!