Oil Addiction

I recently read part of a book, written by a Christian fundamentalist who is both anti-Semitic and anti-Islamic. This book disturbed me to the point that I took it back to the library without writing down the title or the author (or finishing the book). 

One thing that he may be right about is the fact that the Middle East countries are supplying the United States with the major portion of our oil supply, upon which we are extremely dependent.  He points out that Saudi Arabia is using some of the money they make from selling us oil to establish Islamic studies in several of our major universities.  He states that some European countries now have rather large Muslim populations, large enough that they may not be “minorities”.  He also points out that the Muslim population in the United States is getting to be “significant”.  He declares that perhaps as much as 25% of the Muslims in the U.S. and Europe are militant anti-Christian, particularly the younger generation.  The ultimate goal, of course, is to make the major countries of the world “Islamic”, which includes all of Europe and the United States.  Where do India and China fit into this plan?  I do not know! 

If the price of oil, which is now more than $100 a barrel, goes to $300, $400, or $500 a barrel, reincarnation and religion is going to be the least of our worries in Europe and the U.S.A.  The United States consumes 21 million barrels of oil each day of which 14 million barrels is imported, primarily from Islamic controlled countries in the Middle East.  If the price goes out of sight, or Middle East production is drastically cut, or diverted to other countries, the comfortable Western economies are going to be a disaster in progress; a depression which will make the current economic situation look like a picnic in the park.  The question is not “IF”, but “WHEN”?  This whole nation, in fact the whole world, seems to be in complete denial to this addiction.

This same author states that there are 192 nations on the planet, all of them oil-addicted, who will be competing for oil reserves when those reserves have reached their peak and production starts to decrease.  As he puts it, the world is consuming almost 100% of crude production right now, which means that the production margin is non-existent.  The reserves in the North American continent are relatively insignificant and not nearly as large as the reserves in the Middle East.  Today, in the U.S., we are only producing one-third of the oil that we consume each day.  Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, and Iran have approximately 75% of the world’s known oil reserves.  At some point in time, China, India, or Russia may decide to compete with us for these reserves.

How can a country, whose economy is almost completely dependent upon consumption, compete with ambitious countries that are producing real goods?  The people in our government are almost completely obsessed with obtaining ideological power.  If we, as a people, are not in complete denial, what would you call it?  We are just standing here looking out over the river, swatting mosquitoes, while the bank is crumbling out from under our feet.

The "MOUNT" IS COLLAPSING!

April 8, 2011.  Last night we watched the second documentary (Public Broadcasting) on the Civil War.  I was particularly interested because my great-great grandfather, who grew up in eastern Tennessee, was a Union soldier who was captured and suffered out most of the war in two or three Confederate POW camps.  The Confederate POW camps were noted for their abuse and starvation of prisoners.  When the war was over the Confederates put more than 2000 POWs on a river boat designed to hold 200 to 300 passengers.  The over-worked boiler on the boat exploded and more than 1200 of the POW passengers were killed, my ancestor among them.

The Confederate States have never quit their efforts to defeat the United States.  For almost one hundred years after the Civil War the southern whites rampantly bullied and persecuted their Negro neighbors almost without restriction.  Because Lincoln was a Republican, the South for about that same 100 years was primarily Democratic.  In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Democratic administrations of Kennedy and Johnson shoved “racial equality” down their throats and the Southern states became solidly Republican almost over night.  Then, in 2008, the ultimate insult: a half-black was elected President in an election the Republicans were not able to manipulate.

Now, aided by gullible Conservatives and Tea Baggers in the more northern states, the representatives and senators of the Republican southern states have decided that if they cannot absolutely control the government, then it behooves them to handcuff it.  They have solved the tax problem.  Of the large corporations in the U.S., more than 90% are not paying taxes; instead they have moved their corporate headquarters off-shore, mainly to Ireland and Switzerland, where they do not have to pay U.S. taxes in spite of the fact that most of their business takes place within the borders of the U.S.  Add to this the tax cuts for the wealthy.  Now that the tax situation is handled, they start in on the national debt; the Republicans are not admitting responsibility for any of it.  Both the Democrats and Republicans ignored the soaring national debt during the Bush administration.  Thanks to Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld, contractors were added to the armed forces, tripling or quadrupling the cost of war.

Most of the budget cuts proposed by the Republican “antis” are designed to eliminate or cripple the social issues like Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, medical research, Planned Parenthood, education, National Public Broadcasting, environmental protection, etc.  Although these items are less than one-eighth of the total budget, this is where they want the cuts, primarily because it is where the cuts will do the most harm to the lower and middle classes and the least damage to the wealthy.  You may think that this is an exaggeration, but their actions speak much louder than the sound bites they put on TV.

If they succeed, the “American Dream” will be toast, history, nothing but a fantasy for all except the very well-to-do.  Instead of being a “world leader” the United States will be looked at with scorn by most of the rest of the world: the largest third-world nation on earth, second only to India (and maybe not second).  

Back in the 1980s Russia bankrupted itself, primarily by overspending on the military and because of a couple of useless military campaigns like Afghanistan (does that name sound familiar?).  Now Russia is hampered by alcoholism, unemployment and apathy and has become a second-rate world power.

Are we next?  The citizens of the United States support the Mexican drug cartels to the extent that the drug peddlers are as powerful as the Mexican government. Materialism has put our credit card debt at record levels.  We are completely addicted to the use of fossil fuels. The Republican congressional representatives want to severely cut the budget of the EPA, which would eliminate many environmental restrictions on corporations.  We are fighting two very expensive, unnecessary wars and have military units scattered all over the world.  The unemployment situation does not look solvable.  The U.S. economy depends on materialism, not production; production takes place over seas and consumption increases our debt to other countries. 

I should not be complaining and pointing out all the problems if I do not have a solution to these tribulations, but I am sorry to say “I do not!”  If this “Christian” nation were truly practicing Christianity, it would solve many of these difficulties.  We readily accept the admonition to believe in Jesus Christ so that we will be accepted in Heaven because that gives us the security that our materialistic personalities desire.  However, we just skip lightly over the fifth and sixth chapters of Matthew and become generous and loving if it is not too inconvenient or someone close needs help.

It is rather like driving downtown.  You can only drive one car.  When someone in another car does something dumb or dangerous, you do your best to see that you don’t get caught up in the same problem.  Each of us can only live the one life that we have been blessed with.  About all we can do is stand here and swat mosquitoes, while our so-called leaders ride our “MUSTANG” into the ground.

Unexplained Aerial Objects

A review of the UFO books, written by Dr. Jacques Vallee

I have recently read four books, written by Dr. Jacques Vallee.  Dr. Vallee has spent approximately fifty years researching what he terms “Unexplained Aerial Objects”.  The first three books, a trilogy (Dimensions, Confrontations, Revelations), were published in 1988, 1990, and 1991.  The last book, entitled “Wonders In The Sky” was published in 2009.  Each book contains many “occurrences”, and some opinions, although Dr. Vallee is very careful to not make any assumptions that are not supported by fact.  The subject, to me, is fascinating, but at the same time, it is also frustrating.  Why is it frustrating?  In spite of fifty years of careful research in which he and his colleagues investigated thousands of incidents, there is no conclusion: Unexplained Aerial Objects truly exist, and evidently have been around for thousands of years, but we still do not know the real source of the phenomenon and the reason they show up unexpectedly from time to time.

Dr. Vallee’s research has been severely hampered by two factors: the UFO cultists and the Air Forces of several countries.  The Air Forces are extremely interested in the technology involved – these mysterious objects in the sky can hover, change direction at will, zoom off at supersonic speeds, and disappear from sight in an instant.  They can also kill people and/or create severe health problems in observers.

The UFO cultists are another problem.  They are totally committed to the opinion that the UFOs are the result of visits of aliens from other planets in the Universe.  Dozens of UFO cults have been organized.  As soon as an individual reports seeing a UFO, he/she is very apt to be besieged by the cultists and reporters, most of whom are not interested in scientific facts, but the “story”.  The cult enthusiasts very often bring amateur hypnotists with them and usually have pre-conceived notions of what happened and often ask leading questions so that they will get the answers they want.  The final “story” is very apt to be exaggerated, contain untrue ‘facts’, or be a complete hoax.  Sometimes the subject enjoys all the attention, but very often the cultists leave the subject very angry and/or frightened and as a result, reluctant to cooperate with a true scientist doing research.  Either that, or the subject is very reluctant to tell anyone of the contact because of ridicule and/or the fuss, so the researcher does not hear of the event until years later, if at all.

So, stories from the past indicate that UFOs have been with mankind for thousands of years.  A most powerful biblical story is that of Ezekiel, who called them ‘Cherubim’ and described them: “Their appearance was like burning coals of fire, and like the appearance of lamps: it went up and down among the living creatures, and the fire was bright, and out of the fire went forth lightning.”  There are hundreds of petroglyphs in many places that are pictures of beings that answer to the description of the beings in modern UFOs.  We can only guess what influence these beings had on civilization, religion, and mankind in general.

‘DIMENSIONS’ is the first volume of the trilogy (1988).  In it Dr. Vallee reexamines the historical record that led to the modern UFO phenomenon and to the belief in alien contact.  He than tackles the enigma of abduction reports, which come from various times and various countries, as well as the psychic and spiritual components of the contact experience.  In the last portion of the book, he notes the factors that inhibit research into the phenomenon – the triple coverup and political motivations – and concludes that the extraterrestrial theory is simply not strange enough to explain the facts.

‘CONFRONTATIONS’ is the second volume of the trilogy (1990).  Dr. Vallee personally investigates forty astonishing UFO cases from around the world.  He finds it shocking that professional scientists have never seriously examined this material.  This book is about the hopes, experiences, and the frustrations of a scientist who has gone into the field to investigate a bizarre, seductive, and often terrifying phenomenon reported by many witnesses as a contact with an alien form of intelligence.

‘REVELATIONS’ is the final volume of the trilogy (1991). It presents startling evidence that well constructed hoaxes and media manipulations have misled UFO researchers, diverting them from the UFO phenomenon itself.  Dr. Vallee takes readers step by step into the tangled web of UFOlogy’s dark side, in an effort to clear the ever-thickening underbrush that has obscured the real nature of the UFO phenomenon.

‘WONDERS IN THE SKY’, published in 2009, is an unprecedented compendium of pre-twentieth-century accounts of mysterious aerial objects by two leading investigators of unexplained phenomena.  Using vivid and engaging case studies, and more than seventy-five illustrations, Dr. Vallee and his colleague Chris Aubeck, elucidate that unexplained aerial objects had a major impact not only on popular culture but on our history, on our religion, and on the models of the world humanity has formed from deepest antiquity.

Personally, I find all of this fascinating.  Tomorrow, March 22^nd, 2011, I will be eight months into my 85^th orbit of the Sun.  That means that it will not be very long before I find out what is on the other side (maybe).  IMHO I believe mankind has an exaggerated opinion of its intelligence and knowledge.  The older I get, the more I realize that we actually know very little about this world we live in, and, how to get along with each other.  Our main personality factor is hubris, when it should be Unconditional Love.

There is an old adage: The larger the sea of knowledge, the longer is the shoreline of ignorance.

So, where do we go from here?  I am almost half way through my 85^th orbit of the sun.  Most of the time, like the majority of my colleagues and relatives, I don’t look beyond the end of my nose unless I am almost forced to do so. 

I have no reason to complain.  I chose some excellent parents, lived through the 30s depression without missing a meal, survived the South Pacific in World War II, got a college degree and was always gainfully employed until I really retired.  I also have been able to volunteer for more than 5,000 hours at the local homeless shelter during the past 14 years.  I have been married to my best friend for more than 60 years and we have a wonderful extended family who love us and are a true blessing in many ways.

This past election particularly bothered me and, actually, I have been discouraged by the political actions of both the state and national legislatures and the individuals who waste millions or billions of dollars getting elected and then waste millions and/or billions of taxpayer dollars after they get the positions they fought so hard to get.  And now, after both parties have ignored the national debt for years and years, it has suddenly become the primary political issue.

I am registered as an “Independent” voter, which means, in Oregon, that I cannot vote for any of the party candidates in the primaries.  In spite of this, I have not missed voting in an election since I voted for Eisenhower for President, way back when (was it really 1948?).  I have always tried to be a good citizen, a good parent, a good husband, and a reliable employee.  I am far from perfect, but my wife and I survived our mistakes without any major catastrophes and ended up with a wonderful family.

In spite of this, I am discouraged.  It seems to me that this country, this society, this culture is going downhill like a runaway toboggan.  Is this just because I am an old fogey?  What are the facts?

1. The real God that we worship in this country is “Mammon” (money)!
2. Materialism is a rampant disease that has completely engulfed today’s society.
3. Church leaders avoid preaching the true philosophy of Jesus because they do not want to be labeled as “socialists”.  The majority of the congregations are “capitalists” who prefer security and materialism to wasteful generosity.
4. The state legislature is little more than a “social” club; the lobbyists write the bills and the voters make the hard decisions.  The budget is their only real chore.
5. The national legislature is primarily concerned with getting re-elected, protecting the corporations and the wealthy, and denigrating the ideological opposition.
6. As noted previously, this nation is supporting a huge illegal drug market that has enabled the drug cartels to paralyze the Mexican government and practically disenfranchise the Border Patrol.
7. We seem to be reverting to the “Old West” philosophy, that is: “I’ve got mine and I’ll share it only if I want to – to hell with paying taxes – and if you haven’t got yours, tough tits.  Let the devil take the hindmost.”
8. That means: “Let someone else take care of infrastructure, education, health care, the environment, the homeless, and the mentally ill.”
9. As soon as the “grass heads” get marijuana legalized the streets and highways will not only have drivers impaired by alcohol, meth and cell phones, but there will be a large influx of  “grassers” impaired by the legal weed to watch out for.

Are we just standing on the shore, swatting mosquitoes, while the bank under our feet is collapsing?

Illegal Immigrants?

Immigrants from Mexico, Central and South America come in all different categories; that is, some are laborers, some are educated, some are athletes AND some are criminals.  Now, we can put up with the workers, the students, and the athletes, but we do not want the criminal element in any way shape or form.

Who is responsible for the large influx of the Hispanic criminal element?  We are!!!!

The population of the United States, its citizens and residents, provide that undesirable element with a huge, and very profitable, illegal drug market.  The manufacturers of firearms in the United States also provide the drug cartels with an almost unlimited supply of late model firearms, to the extent that the cartels have fought the Mexican government almost to a standstill.

Our U.S. Border Patrol is also overwhelmed.  The Border Patrol can stop many of the innocents, but the drug cartel manpower goes back and forth across the border like it did not even exist.

As long as the citizens and residents of the United States provide a hugely profitable drug market, there will be a large, mostly illegal, Hispanic criminal element in our midst.  How long are we going to ignore this very expensive nuisance?  IMHO this is a crisis of gigantic proportion, more important than war, terrorism, and/or illegal citizenship.  Are we so busy swatting mosquitoes that we haven’t noticed the bank crumbling under our feet?

Who or what is a socialist?

If you use SOCIALISM as a pejorative label after reading this essay, you are definitely one of God's loved ones.  God loves the ignorant and gullible, He made so many of us.


Ted Clarke, Via the Internet writes:

Question:

I was pondering this past week about the right wing fundamentalists and their real fear of anything that smacks of socialism. For me, the word socialism means that the society cares for those who are marginalized, who have major difficulties coping with basic life issues, the poor, etc. My understanding of Christian belief is that this care is at the core of our belief - to care for those who need our care, our support, our understanding. Why do those who are “fundamentalist” refuse to see this as part of the Christian gospel? Or am I missing something?

Answer:

Dear Ted,

Thanks for your letter. Socialism is one of those words bandied about today rather loosely. To you it means care for the marginalized. For members of the Tea Party in America, it seems to mean having the government control one’s life down to telling us when one must die. I do not believe that using loaded, easily misunderstood words is helpful to dialogue, so let me approach your question from a different angle.

I do not see any economic system devised by human beings that does more good for more people better than capitalism. Capitalism, however, devoid of social conscience that expresses itself in making sure that the wealth of the nation is not limited to a very small number of people at the top of the economic pyramid on one side and that no one falls through the safety net on the other, simply does not work. This means that I support things like a graduated income tax, Social Security, mandated universal health care and the regulation of institutions to guarantee fair and equal opportunity in wealth creation for all citizens. If capitalism is not tempered with these restrictions then I am convinced that the capitalist system will drive toward the revolution that Karl Marx predicted. So socially responsible and democratically established legislation is today necessary if capitalism is both going to endure and to be effective. This means that it is essential that capitalism develop the means to allow the wealth of this nation to be spread more equitably and thus allow capitalism to continue to be the best economic system yet devised by human beings.

We are in fact mandated by our faith to care for the poor, to feed the hungry and to tend the sick. We are also enjoined to love our neighbors as ourselves. I do not see how those ideals can be served if we allow capitalism to develop an underclass in which poverty is never escaped and in which the basic elements of a caring society do not exist. Christian history, which includes the development of capitalism, also reveals that we have not only violated these ideals, but we also have been anti-Semitic, anti -Muslim, anti-people of color, anti-women, and anti-homosexual. That is a strange way to follow Jesus’ command to love our neighbors.

What is going on in America at this moment is the political manipulation of basic human fears in order to gain power over others or to have power, which the ruling classes believe they have lost, restored. One manifestation of this is that the white Anglo-Saxon population that claims to be the “first families” of America is facing the fact that the United States now includes enormous numbers of citizens whose ancestors migrated not from Europe, but from Africa, Latin America and Asia. We are thus engaged in an internal struggle between the American spirit of inclusion and the vested interests of the earliest settlers. The anger in our political system today also reveals our latent racism, our greed and our xenophobia. When these fears are coupled with unstable economic forces that cause the future to feel insecure, the problems are compounded.

I believe we will get through this time in our history. We need long term stability in our government so that the big problems in energy, financial reform, health care and the environment may be addressed. Whether we will have that long term stability is the question. My sense is that with an economic revival and the creation of jobs, the fears will subside. Will that economic upturn come before the election of 2012? I do not know, but that election will be crucial to our future as a nation.

John Shelby Spong

National Health Care?

The “news” on television does not give a person any real information.  Instead, they parrot a “sound bite” which is a quick phrase that gives a powerful, negative, and opinionated bit of propaganda.  The sound bite usually does not have any basis in fact, does not need to be true, and is most effective with the ignorant and gullible.  A sound bite is like a rock thrown through your window.  It is a favorite weapon of the politicians.   Like a bullet out of a gun it is effective, it cannot be ignored, it does not need verification, and a response is futile.  A good example is one that I have heard repeated several times lately: “Obama’s Health Care Program is a job killer!”

An excerpt from Bishop Spong’s essay on 12/29/10:

“They exhausted the administration in the Health Care fight, while prohibiting the Public Option, which was the one thing in the original Obama health care proposal that had any possibility of lowering health care costs. Once that was defeated they began their attack on "the government's takeover of health care." It was strange logic and observers noted that the price of the stock in the private health care companies went up during and after the health care debate.”

Information from Wikipedia:

In the first two bills the public option took the form of a Qualified Health Benefit Plan competing with similar private insurance plans in an internet based exchange or market place, enabling citizens and small businesses to purchase health insurance meeting the minimum federal standard. Persons covered by other employer plans or by state insurance plans such as Medicare would have not been eligible to obtain coverage from the exchange and therefore could not obtain this form of federal health insurance. The federal government's health insurance plan would have been financed entirely by premiums without subsidy from the Federal government. The plans stated in the Senate HLP Committee and H.R. 3962, the two that contained clauses establishing a public insurance option, required the repayment of "seed money" to the Treasury over a ten year period.

Democratic Representative Sheila Jackson-Lee, who represents the 18th congressional district in Houston, has said, "Surveys show that nearly three out of four voters want a public health insurance plan." She also has said that "73 percent of doctors and 1,000 state legislators favor health reform legislation with a public option. The American people want a strong public option heard in Congress... because their voices have been drowned out by insurance company propaganda and disruptive tea-baggers at health reform town hall meetings."

President Obama elaborated on his reasons for a public plan in his seminal September 9 address to the Joint Session of Congress:

“I have no interest in putting insurance companies out of business... the insurance companies and their allies don't like this idea. They argue that these private companies can't fairly compete with the government. And they'd be right if taxpayers were subsidizing this public insurance option. But they won't be. I've insisted that like any private insurance company, the public insurance option would have to be self-sufficient and rely on the premiums it collects. But by avoiding some of the overhead that gets eaten up at private companies by profits and excessive administrative costs and executive salaries, it could provide a good deal for consumers, and would also keep pressure on private insurers to keep their policies affordable and treat their customers better.”