(Washington Examiner) While Cheech and Chong were the main attraction at the 15th annual Marijuana Policy Project gala Wednesday, the real buzz in the room was over the slew of employees who have resigned since summer.

Seven of the organization’s 38 employees left because of what four former employees described as inappropriate behavior by Executive Director Robert Kampia after an office happy hour on Aug. 6.

One of the former employees who immediately resigned spoke to Yeas & Nays on condition of anonymity. “It was so egregious that I, and a number of other employees, that even in the most generous telling of the story, made it impossible to work for Rob,” the ex-employee said.

Department heads at the organization unanimously asked Kampia to resign but their request was rebuffed with word from Kampia that Chairman Peter Lewis would no longer fund the organization without Kampia as the head, according to Pearce and a former employee at her level.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/blogs/yeas-and-nays/81590192.html#ixzz0ceQSZckT

I’ve met Rob Kampia.  I’ve spoken to him on numerous occasions.  I’ve even been a guest in his apartment in Washington, DC.  Never once has Rob Kampia ever directed any sexually inappropriate advances toward me.

Just for the record.

It’s quite telling that Rush Limbaugh would compare getting quality health care to the relative size of one’s housing.  It’s just another commodity to conservatives, just another business.  If you’re rich, then you get health care, if you’re poor, then you just do us all a favor and slink away and die.

But see, Rush, that’s exactly what doesn’t happen.  Viruses and bacteria don’t care how big your mansion is.  Eventually, sometime, you have to go out among the public, and it benefits you in the short-term and the long-term if that public isn’t sick and dying and spreading their germs and infections to the people you love.

The very first sentence of the document that defines this country, our Founders wrote:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

I’m educated enough to know that the Founders’ “Welfare” does not equal the modern notion of “welfare”, as in “government assistance payments for food or rent”.  But it does mean “health, happiness, or prosperity; well-being.”  And we willingly accept government regulation and support of myriad organizations that promote the “health, happiness, or prosperity” of the general public, from student loans to public fire departments to meat inspections to small business assistance.  If “general Welfare” of a nation doesn’t include its collective health, then the term is meaningless.

Rush is the cheerleader for the “I gots mine, you gets yours” amorality that infects the modern conservative movement he leads.  It’s a narcissistic myopia that allows them to believe that “no man is an island” is a falsehood, that somehow a taxpayer-funded program to protect the public health is a case of Marxist distribution of wealth, and that funding basic health care for less-fortunate Americans is tantamount to cutting checks to promote laziness.

So we were all stunned when President Obama declared that he was going to have the Justice Department file an emergency injunction to halt the entire college football bowl season until an anti-trust investigation was completed, unless the university presidents and conferences in Division 1-A football agreed to his demands.  “We’re not going to go through another season where an undefeated 2008 Utah, 2007 Hawaii, or 2006 Boise State has no chance to play for a title,” Mr. Obama sneered angrily.  “Any system that tells us in 2008 that a Texas team that beat Oklahoma is ranked lower than them, or in 2009 has a 2-loss PAC-10 champ in a BCS bowl while the undefeated Boise team that humiliated them goes wanting is fundamentally unfair and unAmerican.  This is a corrupt system designed to maintain the superiority of six football conferences over the other five, and if there’s one thing we have learned in American history is that ’separate but equal’ is never equal.”  (Oh, how I have wished Mr. Obama could find similar backbone to stand up so forcefully for universal health care coverage, but even that’s not as popular as killing the BCS was!)

Mr. Obama’s plan was quite simple.  First, the existing contracts between all the bowls and all the conferences were declared null and void under anti-trust rules.  Second, a 16-team playoff was instituted with the winners from all 11 conferences gaining an automatic berth, plus five more “at-large” selections consisting of the next five highest-ranked teams in the BCS formula.  Third, to appease the bowls, only first and second round games were held on higher-seeded teams’ home field, while the semi-finals and championship were played in two of the current “BCS bowls” (Championship and Rose Bowl, plus the Cotton Bowl.)

Most interestingly, “consolation” bowls were created, where the losers of the quarterfinals and semifinals were matched up in the other three “BCS Bowls” (Orange, Fiesta, and Sugar Bowls), and four other January bowls (Outback, Capital One, Gator, and Liberty Bowl) hosted the losers of the first round match-ups.  Thus every team in the sixteen-team playoff has a chance to win a bowl game in January, and for the loser of the national championship, they still get a bowl win from the semifinals.

Some of the teams locked out of the playoffs, like BCS-ranked #14 Virginia Tech, #15 LSU, and #16 Oregon State, complained about such cupcakes as unranked Troy and Central Michigan taking what they considered to be their “spot” in the playoffs, but all three had three losses and found it tough to defend the notion that they had any better chance of winning the entire playoffs than those two teams.  The public’s support for President Obama’s playoffs was overwhelming and since the other two dozen bowls were still in operation, those teams and many others still got to play a post-season contest.  And as Mr. Obama said, the playoffs had to give an equal chance to every team from every conference or it wasn’t truly a playoffs.  When he made those references in his televised speech to Notre Dame’s “Rudy”, the Indiana high school team chronicled in the movie “Hoosiers”, and Buster Douglas’s knockout of Mike Tyson as icons of the American spirit of supporting underdogs, any hope of supporting a system that kept out Troy and Central Michigan was sunk.

Another consideration was that the extended playoff was going to possibly have the national champion playing 17 games.  The first two rounds would be held in the 2nd and 3rd weeks of December, then the Christmas Break, followed by the necessity of having one semifinal on Jan 2nd followed by a consolation game January 5th.  President Obama asked that universities provide special consideration for student-athletes this semester, apologized to players and coaches who might face a terribly short week with lots of travel, but insisted that the possibility of two deserving top 10-ranked undefeated teams having no chance to play for the title was an “emergency situation”.  The president told the country this would be the only year run this way with such a grueling schedule and in the future, teams will schedule only 10 or 11 games and the playoff bowls will be spread farther apart.

Just like that, the BCS “Berlin Wall” fell.  Schedules were shuffled and many people sacrificed many long hours in negotiations and arrangements, but the 16-Team Obama Playoff System was instituted.  The results, as we all saw last night and over the past month, were so thrilling that people are already thinking of the BCS as a dark chapter in college football history and can’t remember why anyone was so reluctant to change it.  The overnight TV ratings and the increased gate at the playoffs have already brought around those reluctant college presidents and bowl committees.  And as it turned out, the SEC, Big East, and Big 12 each got two teams into the playoffs and the Big Ten got three, and the big six conferences had eight of the twelve berths to the big six “BCS Bowls” anyway (with the Cotton Bowl earning “big six” status this year).  Let’s look back on a miraculous playoff system that may have just made college football more popular than March Madness and perhaps even the NFL.

First Round: The home games that took place the days of Dec 9-12 were quite an appetizer.  While the #1 Florida / #16 Troy matchup and #2 Texas / #15 Central Michigan games turned out to be the blowouts they were expected to be, these games were no less appealing than a late-season SEC or Big12 “cupcake” match-up that usually takes place late in the season.  There was even some excitement when Central Michigan scored first on an opening kickoff return TD, briefly sparking the notion of an upset, before Texas took the return kickoff on a five-play, 75 yard drive for the tying score, then scored 59 more unanswered points.

But the other six games provided some real excitement, even though every home team won.  #9 Pitt only lost in overtime at Autzen to #8 Oregon.  #4 TCU won by ten against #13 Penn State, but Joe Pa and company gave them a real game for three and a half quarters.  #5 Cincy squeaked by #12 Oklahoma State on a game-winning field goal.  #7 Georgia Tech never trailed #10 Ohio State, but it was never more than a 7-point game.  #3 Alabama survived a terrible performance following their close loss to Florida in the SEC Championship, but rebounded after three first half turnovers to take control over #14 Houston in the second half.  The only surprising rout was a game some people had picked to be severely mis-ranked, #11 Iowa on the blue turf at #6 Boise State, where the chip-on-their-shoulder Broncos dispatched the Hawkeyes by 21.

What was also nice is that two games each were scheduled on Wed, Thur, Fri, and Sat, with the top four-ranked teams playing on consecutive days.  Thus, Wed and Thur featured the Florida and Texas blowouts, but also gave us great Pitt/Oregon and Ohio State/Va. Tech games.

The first round consolation bowls for the eight losers of these games were then set, with the losers to the higher-ranked opponents playing each other.  This made for some competitive New Years Day bowls (more on those later).

Second Round: This round featured the top eight ranked teams in the country, quickly silencing some few remaining critics complaints that the playoffs might not determine the best teams.  Wed – Sat, Dec 16-19, featured a home playoff game each day.  The ratings for these games were through the roof, even surpassing ratings for some of the big bowl games from last year.

#1 Florida proved its dominance by pushing around the #8 Oregon team, which didn’t play its best game on the road.  #4 TCU continued to assert its legitimate claim for a title by handing #5 Cincinnati its first defeat, but we know Cincy fans will long recall the game for the “phantom fumble” call where an official falsely considered a fumble by the TCU QB on a sack to be an incomplete pass.  #2 Texas survived a real battle from #7 Georgia Tech, which was driving for the go-ahead score with two minutes remaining when an interception sealed their fate.  And in the first real upset, #6 Boise State goes into #2 Alabama and pulls off a stunning win when Coach Chris Petersen calls for a two-point conversion to win when a simple kick would’ve tied the game with :03 on the clock.

Of course, Oregon, Cincy, Ga. Tech, and Alabama go on to play in the Fiesta and Sugar Bowls, respectively, as consolations for their second round losses.

Semi-Final Week: The big bowls all began on January 1st, which included the Semi-Final playoff games and the consolation bowls.  To make the games as competitive as possible, the lowest-ranked seeds were pitted against each other.  #16 Troy and #15 Central Michigan put on a great show in the Outback Bowl (which some sportswriter dubbed the “Outhouse Bowl” as it featured the two lowest seeds) with Central Michigan winning on a game winning 4th-quarter touchdown drive.  #13 Penn State manhandled #14 Houston in the Capital One Bowl.  #12 Oklahoma State beat #11 Iowa in the Gator Bowl. And in the one New Years Day semi-final playoff bowl, the Rose Bowl, #1 Florida holds off a very tough #4 TCU by only four points.

On January 2nd, the other first round consolation bowl, the Liberty Bowl, had #9 Pitt beating up on #10 Ohio State.  In the other semi-final playoff bowl, #6 Boise State shocked the football world by defeating #2 Texas in the Cotton Bowl.

Final Week: On January 5th, the one remaining consolation bowl for the semi-final losers, the Orange Bowl, found #2 Texas getting beaten again by a supposed “mid major”, #4 TCU, and it wasn’t even close.  Longhorn fans complain that Texas had only three days to prepare, but they’re answered by Horned Frog fans who note TCU had just four days and farther to travel.

Then on January 7th, the final, real National Championship game was played by undefeated #1 Florida and undefeated #6 Boise State.  Looking back, it seems so obvious that a playoff that began with such a shocking and dramatic beginning would also have such a shocking and dramatic ending.  After a triple overtime thriller that people are calling the greatest college football game in history, I couldn’t be more ecstatic that my beloved alma mater, my Boise State Broncos, are truly the undisputed…

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!  Argh!  Egads, my alarm clock is ferocious!  I’m awake already!  Hey, why is my laptop turned on?  Have I been blogging in my sleep again?  What’s this?  A 2010 college football playoff?  With Boise State winning the National Championship?  Man, I gotta swear off the hashish and pepperoni pizza before I go to bed.

This led me to some Googling on other writers critiquing the “New Atheism”, including this post, entitled “Why Bill Maher Gets a ‘C’ in My Introduction to Religion Class”.

What Maher and filmmaking cohorts don’t appear to understand is that a person can be a Jew, have an enjoyable evening around the Sabbath table, and not believe that God actually created the world in seven days; that a Christian can stand up with her community, recite the 1700-year-old Nicene Creed, not believe a word of it, but still be moved by the experience of collective recitation; that a Muslim can make the pilgrimage to Mecca, touch the Kaaba, and still realize that at its base it is, indeed, a meteorite and not a holy rock from God. Maher even goes so far as to claim that “Christians believe” they are drinking the blood of a man who lived 2000 years ago. But he never asks anyone if they believe that. It’s a straw man argument. Even if this theological idea of “transubstantiation” has been written into Catholic dogma for centuries, I’ve yet to meet a Catholic who believes what Maher claims they believe (though I’m sure he could find a couple if he just kept throwing money at the film).

He’s got a point, and it is why I formed by oxymoronically-titled religion-of-one “A Positive Christian Atheism”. I was born into a Christian family in a Christian-dominated town in Idaho, so there are traditions and beliefs indelibly stamped onto my psyche. For example, when someone offers a “moment of silence”, I take off my hat, bow my head, and close my eyes. When someone says grace at a dinner table, I hold hands, bow my head, and close my eyes. I believe strongly in Christian concepts like “Do unto others” and “That which you do to the least of these”.

And yet, while I’m bowing my head, I’m fully cognizant that no supernatural power is reading my thoughts and preparing to act on them because I’m thinking them in concert with others*. I am acting in accordance with the traditions of my tribe, nothing more. I believe in the Christian concepts because I believe them to be universal truths in the closed system of humanity where we are all interconnected by six of less degrees of Kevin Bacon. Doesn’t matter if someone attributes them to Christ or to the homeless guy in the park, they are true.

So far, these enlightened religious folks’ criticism of Religulous is that Maher was setting up strawmen and like the excerpt above states, real religious folks don’t actually believe Jonah lived in a big fish, the universe was created in six days, or a snake spoke to the first woman.

And therein lies my issue with the enlightened religious folks’ critique – they think other religious people are as enlightened as they are. The enlightened religious person can look at the Biblical creation story as a metaphor and understand that geology and other sciences have proven beyond a doubt that Earth is billions of years old and the universe billions older, and that Genesis’s creation story (either one) is a fairly common creation myth in human history… but that person is the exception in the pew.

Religious people attempting to subvert science curriculum with “intelligent design” don’t see metaphors; they really do believe in a 6,000-year-old earth because “God said it, I believe it, that settles it”, to quote the popular bumper sticker in my home state of Idaho. Religious people legislating second-class citizenship for gay, lesbian, and transgendered people don’t relegate Leviticus’ condemnation of homosexual behavior to the same rubbish bin as prohibitions on wearing mixed-fiber cloth and eating crustaceans; they really do believe the Creator of black holes and quasars has a serious anger issue with boys touching each other’s pee-pees. Religious people circumventing the First Amendment by supporting “In God We Trust” on our money and placing the Decalogue on public property don’t do so out of the Supreme Court’s rationalization of “ceremonial” deism; they really do believe not placing (their) God’s “to not do” list in a courthouse portends the end of civilization.

One response I’ve read to this point of mine is that I’m focusing on fundamentalists (yes!) and that fundamentalism of any stripe – even atheist – is a flawed ideology. I can agree with that somewhat – even I hedge my atheism bet a little by postulating that if the Creator of galactic superclusters and nebulae does exist, It is such a magnificently profound entity that our relationship to It is a bit less chummy than Da Vinci’s relationship to a molecule of pigment in a brush stroke on the Mona Lisa**.

The megachurches I see near freeway interchanges*** aren’t building themselves on the donations of enlightened religious people who understand that the Bible was a set of Iron Age shepherds’ oral traditions passed down, misspoken and mistranslated by generations, selected among many contradictory accounts of the time period by political forces in a time when church was state, and kept secret from the illiterate masses by a literate priest caste for centuries. No, those collection plates are filled by the people who really do believe in talking snakes. (Or seriously doubt it, but are too afraid of being the black sheep to mention it, lest they be accused of lacking “faith”.)

And this is where I have a problem with the enlightened religious. They don’t ever seem to be trying to bring the “speaking in tongues” crowd to their level of enlightenment. Not once have I heard or read a mainstream religious leader say, “Now, we all know mankind evolved from lower forms of life, but the story of Adam and Eve provides us a useful metaphor for yada yada yada…” or “these ‘abominations’ written in Leviticus show us a less enlightened time before Jesus taught us to love one another without reservation, and we should understand that means extending the civil bonds of marriage to all people.” Fundamentalist’s beliefs are never addressed by the enlightened religious as the ravings of someone on par with proclaiming you have magic beans that will sprout a beanstalk to the giant’s cloud home, which is what I believe Maher and others are trying to do.

Even though the enlightened religious may only believe the Bible metaphorically and state:

Religion is a network, a system, and its currency is symbols, rituals, myths, and concepts. It takes place within communities that act, and interact, and is set within specific cultures. These are brief definitions wrenched from larger contexts and intended to be used for further investigation, but they begin to suggest that Maher somehow escaped from (or slept through) his religious studies courses in college.

… they still will call it “the Holy book” or “the Word of God” and thereby provide support and cover for those who take “the Gospel” literally. (Why would they raise the bar for the fundamentalists? God’s not making those mortgage payments on the megachurches.)

I believe the religion definition excerpted above is a purposefully vague attempt by the enlightened religious to distinguish themselves from the cover they provide to the talking snake set. A “a system [with] symbols, rituals, myths, and concepts”? What human network does that not describe? We salute a cloth symbol in a ritual that perpetuates the myth of this country being founded on the concept of “all men are created equal”, even as we all know slaves built our capitol, the stars on that cloth represent the genocide of indigenous peoples, and women had little or no say in any of the matter. How, then, is the Pledge of Allegiance different from religion?

The difference, of course, is that religion is about God (unlike the Pledge until 1952). Religion is indeed, like many other human networks, “a system [with] symbols, rituals, myths, and concepts”, but specifically symbols, rituals, myths, and concepts about God, which inevitably become symbols, rituals, myths, and concepts about The One True God, which inevitably become discrimination within the tribe against those who question The One True God and wars between two tribes that worship different One True Gods.****

The “New Atheism” the author addresses is just thinking people like me who openly reject fairy tales and sky wizards and the symbols, rituals, myths, and concepts that support them. We’ve come to realize that our human networks can hold the same truths to be self-evident without relying on preachers, holy books, and megachurches full of people giving lip service to obvious myths. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” works just as well when it is said by a tortured Iron Age Jew as it would being said by The Virgin-Born Son of God Who Was Crucified To Forgive Every Bad Act Every Human Hence Shall Commit.*****

Maher mocks people for their antiquated beliefs though he never moves beyond an antiquated definition of religion himself. He borrows the same viewpoints of religion that all the way-out interviewees have. He is indignant that people actually believe in an existing Adam and Eve and the attendant talking snake, or in a man (Jonah) swallowed by a whale (or, really a “big fish”). These are the problems he keeps seeing: conservative religious people actually believe the myths of their traditions. But then Religulous splices in images of explosions, violent street demonstrations, and other aggressive activities. So, what’s the relationship between people who actually believe that Jonah was swallowed by a whale and suicide bombings? The film doesn’t really make those connections, nor could it, because they don’t connect.

It’s a simple connection, really. The horny teenager who never sees women because they’re covered up in religion-mandated beekeeper costumes can be convinced to blow himself up on the promise of 72 nubile virgins for eternity thanks to the gratitude of the Creator of dark matter and space-time Who hates “Baywatch”. The Wichita housewife who really believes God created Adam & Eve, not Adam & Steve, can be motivated to hold a “Thank God for AIDS” sign at a soldier’s funeral, and she can easily forgive her son should he punch a few Adams and Steves now and then. The elderly grandmother with service-age grandkids who believes the only way she survives death is through telepathic subservience to a 2,000-year-dead reanimated flying zombie is easily convinced to cut a check to George W. Bush’s re-election campaign to continue the “crusade” against the “evildoers”.

My ultimate point****** is that this writer’s enlightened religious person’s point of view, which claims Maher and other “New Atheists” demean only a fundamentalist subset of religion (a system that the writer himself backs away from), is just obfuscation of the point Maher and others like me are actually making: all religion, by definition, no matter how “enlightened” or sophisticated, must adhere to something that can only be taken on faith (i.e., without evidence), and that is an irrational way to run humanity. The writer may mock those who believe literally in the Nicene Creed, but if we are to believe he is Christian, he must believe that the only way his consciousness survives death is through that telepathic subservience to the 2,000-year-dead reanimated flying zombie, or else we’ve re-defined “Christian” to the point were it is no longer a meaningful term.

You are either rational or you are irrational. You either base your values on personal experience and evidence or you base them on tribal tradition and faith. You cannot be an “enlightened religionist”; it is an oxymoron.

** This is where one of my enlightened religious friends reminds me that infinite is infinite. If you’re an infinite being, you have infinite time and infinite resources. You have just as much time to build a quasar as you do to hear the prayer of a child. My response is that defining God as infinite thereby defines God as everything, and if God is everything, why do you need a separate concept from “everything”, and in fact, nothing that is “everything” can be something that is separate from everything else, so in essence, praying to God is praying to yourself. (I recommend two full bong hits of a quality sativa and a re-read of Heinlein’s “Stranger in a Strange Land” before trying to grok that one.)

*** There’s one on I-5 between Portland and Eugene that has leased out the top of its megacross to various cell phone companies for their receivers/repeaters. I call it “The Hotline to God”. Because Jesus was all about helping the “Can you hear me now?” Verizon guy get better coverage crossing the Willamette Valley.

**** This is where the Khmer Rouge / Communism / Nazism rebuttal comes from the religionist, pointing out that atheist Pol Pot / Stalin or Mao / Hitler (who actually used Christian symbolism a lot) started wars and killed people. Yes – over resources, land, and political ideology, not because the other side believed the wrong fairy tales. I don’t claim atheism would save humanity from war; I just claim it would remove the silliest reason for slaughtering humans from the menu.

***** I think it is even more impressive coming from the tortured Iron Age Jew. If you’re a regular dude saying revolutionary shit that may earn you a torture execution, that’s some serious balls. But if you’re God’s Kid, knowing what’s coming up in advance, but realizing after 72 hours of suffering, you get to be #2 in paradise for eternity, guaranteed, no faith required, then what’s the big act of courage in speaking out?

****** Hooray! We made it! Finally!

(HuffPo) The President is offering the public a series of stories that are all missing half the plot and half the characters–namely, the part of the plot that says how we got where we are (e.g., 50 million without health insurance, half a million losing their jobs every month, 1 in 8 homes foreclosed or in danger of foreclosure, 70% of our energy coming from regimes hostile to us and gas prices on the rise again even as demand has fallen)–and the characters responsible for those gaps in the stories. He is trying to sell health care reform without calling out the drug and insurance industries, whose profits have soared at our expense. He is trying to sell financial reform without pointing his finger squarely at the banks and speculators who bankrupted us. He is trying to sell energy reform without blaming the oil companies who racked up record profits as Americans racked up record debts paying for their gas. And he is trying to sell all of these essential reforms without mentioning that there’s been a party–not just nameless “naysayers”–that has been fighting every one of these reforms for decades. When the President does feel compelled on occasion to mention the people who not only put their interests above the public interest but are now funding the lobbyists and attack ads aimed at derailing his agenda, he speaks in passive voice about how “mistakes were made,” or refers to unnamed “naysayers.” The President’s hero is Abraham Lincoln, but it is the Lincoln who penned the Gettysburg Address, not the Lincoln who ordered Union troops to fire.

Roosevelt never made the mistake of letting Americans forget for one moment that the Great Depression was Hoover’s depression. And as Paul Begala noted this week on Bill Maher, Ronald Reagan, who inherited an economy in trouble and an American public that felt humiliated over our government’s inability to recover our hostages from Iran, never failed to blame Jimmy Carter for every mistake he ever made as President–and then some. We remember Reagan’s brilliant ad as “Morning in America,” when in fact, the first line of that ad was, “It’s morning again in American” (emphasis added). The ad was, indeed, inspirational in tone, but it was also relentlessly critical by contrast with the “dark night” of Carter/Mondale.

No one should have been allowed to play with our financial futures the way the banking industry did. No one should have been allowed to amass fortunes in the oil industry or in oil speculation as everyday Americans were loading themselves down with credit card debt to pay four dollars a gallon for gas. No one should have lost a job or a home because someone wanted to turn a quick buck and didn’t give a damn what the impact might be on millions of families, shareholders, or pensioners. No industry should have been incentivized to increase its profits every time it denied insurance to someone with a “pre-existing condition” or stamped “denied” on a legitimate medical claim.

Those are stories the American people need to hear. Those are stories conservative Democrats need to hear echoed from their constituents if they are going to do what’s right by them.

As the President is fond of quoting Martin Luther King, the arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice.

Mr. President, now is the time to make it bend. Dr. King didn’t seek conflict, but he never avoided it. It’s time to follow his example.

Why bother to have elections if you’re not going to use the authority that voters delivered? When a winning campaign is based on the theme of change, then change, dammit. The Democrats want to buckle under to the status quo special interests and win over Republican support. To hell with that folks. Look at the numbers which leave little doubt about which direction Americans want. More on the NYTimes/CBS News poll:

The poll found that most Americans would be willing to pay higher taxes so everyone could have health insurance and that they said the government could do a better job of holding down health-care costs than the private sector.

Yet the survey also revealed considerable unease about the impact of heightened government involvement, on both the economy and the quality of the respondents’ own medical care. While 85 percent of respondents said the health care system needed to be fundamentally changed or completely rebuilt, 77 percent said they were very or somewhat satisfied with the quality of their own care.

Because our elections have become, by and large, a ball of yarn for the kittens, a useful distraction, an illusion of some say in how this country is run.  Banking interests own the Senate, Health Care interests own the House; we’re never going to see Wall Street CEOs do perp walks and we’re never going to see a reasonable health care system in this country that doesn’t chain the wage-slave to his job.

I literally believe there are businessmen at the top levels of all industries who strongarm our government into getting what they want by threatening to just pull the plug on the economy and bankrupting this nation.  They and their families and friends have enough money to live anywhere in the world in the lap of luxury; why would they care if they had to sink one of their companies and can a whole bunch of workers in Representative Spineless’s district or Senator Blowhard’s state.  The Rep. or Sen. is the one who the people will fire, not CEO Douchebag.

This is the only way I can reconcile the health care issue.  Take my small niche, marijuana.  In 2004, Barack Obama is running for Senate and saying things like our war on drugs is “an utter failure” and that “our marijuana laws need to be decriminalized”.  By 2009, he’s laughing at marijuana law reform even as support for legalization is topping 50% in some polls, decriminalization enjoys 70% support, and medical marijuana enjoys 80% support.  So what changed?  I imagine the pharmaceutical arm of the health care industry, making bank on 20,000%-to-500,000% markup on the top-five best-selling anti-depressants and addicted return customers for the top-three opioid painkillers, doesn’t like the idea of people growing a bush in their backyard for free and cutting demand for those pills by 50%-to-75%.

Whenever you have a question about this country in the form “Why the hell does X happen when the people obviously want Y?” the answer is inevitably “Because wealthy people obviously want X.”  And by “wealthy”, I mean that in the Chris Rock sense (i.e., “not rich, wealthy.  Shaquille O’Neal is rich, the white man who signs Shaq’s checks is wealthy.”)

(Christian Broadcasting Network) Randall Terry’s remarks and Scott Roeder’s alleged action against Tiller are not what pro-lifers are really about. Don’t get me wrong. Pro-lifers are frustrated and yes angry about the deaths of millions of these aborted babies.

One thing I will say for Scott Roeder is that he’s one of the few anti-abortion activists who really believes that abortion is the murder of babies. If I knew for a fact that there was a man in my town murdering babies, and the police knew and the people knew and nobody was doing anything to stop it, wouldn’t it be insane for me to allow that to happen day after day? Would you be content holding a sign or signing a petition to stop the bad man from murdering babies in your town?

These anti-abortion creeps are running like cockroaches now that the spotlight has focused on the rage they foment. They want to be able to have it both ways, to say that abortion is the murder of millions of babies, but no, we don’t want anyone to kill the murderer (an especially odd position for the non-Catholic pro-death-penalty anti-abortionist.)

Again, what would you say about a person who allows wholesale baby murder for near forty years, but doesn’t take direct action to stop it? It was inevitable that someone would take a look at the “needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” ethic and decide it is finally time to take action against baby murderers, especially when Christian theology is chock full of martyrs who disobeyed man’s law in order to implement God’s law (and this is the God who sent she bears to massacre 42 children for teasing Elijah about his bald head, so all bets are off regarding what “pro-lifers” are really about.)

Sorry, you can’t call abortion “America’s Holocaust” and then convince me you’re upset that someone assassinated Hitler. Hate speech has consequences.

*Hey, rhetoric that’s good for the Islamic goose is good for the Christian gander. Hmm. Islamic goose, is that even halal?

Sorry, you can't call abortion "America's Holocaust" and then convince me you're upset that someone assassinated Hitler.

Of course, this gives me the perfect opportunity to catch up with my favorite virginal gay-book-banning, Ten-Commandments-displaying, Terri-Schaivo-saving, Olympic-sex-life-policing, Vagina-Monologues-protesting, womb-baby-saving, 32-year-old orange-skinned hottie-for-Christ, Princess Barbie Talibania!  What would be her reaction to the act of domestic terrorism in Wichita?

I stand shoulder to shoulder with the pro-life community in condemning the killing of Dr. George Tiller. Those who resort to violence and vigilantism should be prosecuted and punished under the fullest extent of the law. I extend my thoughts and prayers to the family of Dr. Tiller.

Abortion is being reduced in America because of the loving and caring heart of the pro-life community working through legal means to offer hope and life-affirming options to those facing unexpected pregnancies. The majority of Americans consider themselves pro-life and stand against violence and killing. Caring for others is the cornerstone of the pro-life position.

It is reprehensible for any individual or group to exploit this tragedy in an attempt diminish the pro-life movement.

Would it be as reprehensible for any individual or group to exploit the tragedy of American government-sanctioned torture in an attempt to promote the “pro-life” movement?

President Obama has now taken the first step in having American taxpayers pay for the killing of innocent children through abortion and reinforcing Mr. Obama’s position as “The Abortion President.”

“Sadly, those promises are now in tatters. By promoting taxpayer funded abortions, Mr. Obama will clearly increase the number of abortions across the nation breaking his promise to reduce them. He will also force millions of Americans who embrace social justice and human rights to pay for the killing of innocent children with their tax dollars. [You mean like my tax dollars that bought depleted uranium shells that killed and will continue to kill innocent children in Iraq and Afghanistan?] This would include Catholics and evangelicals.

“We would encourage the President to embrace a culture of life and affirm human rights for all. It is hard to imagine that this President would take such a strong stand against torture while promoting abortion policies that crush social justice and brutalize innocent children.”

It’s like Barbie has just discovered the catchphrase “social justice”.  She cloaks herself in the mantle of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and tries to disguise her anti-women’s choice arguments as feminist arguments.  She’s really one of the more entertaining American Taliban (and that’s not just because she’s the only one I’d want to see naked):

“I think it’s important people understand I am in no way an anarchist,” she says. “I believe in civil, peaceful disobedience and follow the example of Martin Luther King Jr. My heart is to serve in a capacity to make a difference.”

“I had always been pro-life because it was taking the life of the baby, but what I realized is that it wasn’t good for the woman – that women deserve better than abortion.”

Swindell, who has never been married or had children, says she does not cast judgment or condemn a woman who has an abortion.

“Because I oppose abortion does not mean that I oppose the woman who has an abortion,” she said.

Hmm, 32-years-old and never married?  And based on her espoused views on the matter, most likely a virgin?  Why, that gives you all the perspective you need on understanding the plight of an 16-year-old girl pregnant by an incestuous rape who’s in need of reproductive medical services to save her life, doesn’t it?  (Weird, you’d think there’d be plenty of non-gay attractive Christian men in the “pro-life” movement for Brandi to date.  Strange plan of God’s to leave barren the woman who cares so much for the womb babies, huh?)

Swindell doesn’t see herself as a right-wing fanatic.

“That’s what I’m trying to get away from,” she says. “But as we’re seeing things ramp up with religious bigotry against Christians and seeing the exploitation of women and children through abortion … looking at all these significant issues around the nation, we have to get involved.

“Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a trustworthy and loyal person. It’s sad that someone would make harsh and vindictive comments about someone they don’t even know. As a society we should strive to rise above that kind of negativity. We should know how to disagree but value each other.”

Like when we disagree about placing The Joy of Gay Sex in a public library, we should rise above saying negative things like “We are deeply disappointed that the Nampa library board seems to care so little for the protection of their children.“ Or if a husband is suffering through the public spectacle of fulfilling his brain-dead wife’s last wishes, we should value him by saying “I really feel that Michael Schiavo is turning his back on his wife.  Men, and specifically husbands, are called to be providers and protectors of the women that are important in their life, and especially their wives. And so we [view] this as the ultimate form of domestic abuse.“ Or if a movie is made about the pioneering sex researcher Dr. Alfred Kinsey, a man Barbie never even knew, we should avoid a harsh and vindictive comment like “Alfred Kinsey is responsible in part for my generation being forced to deal face-to-face with the devastating consequences of sexually transmitted diseases, pornography and abortion.“ We really should value each other, even if we disagree about your perverting the children, abusing your wife, and your promotion of VD and porn to teenagers.

So how would Princess Talibania recommend we rise above negativity in our society?  A look back at an incident at my alma mater, Boise State University (where the BS comes before U), gives some insight.  This was one of those tempests in a teapot where the wingnuts complain that the university is too liberal and the school caved and offered a more “fair and balanced” lineup of speakers for a college lecture series. Brandi Swindell’s take?

This is a fine example of what can happen when the public speaks up. I am encouraged by President Kustra’s swift action. Thank you to everyone who was passionate about this issue of freedom in the market place of ideas! The sky is the limit on the list of potential speakers we will now be seeing at BSU. Ideas for potential speakers include: Laura Ingram, Dr. Alveda King (niece of Martin Luther King, Jr.), Ann Coulter, Glen Beck, and many others.

Yes, a fine example of rising above negativity and valuing each other, by promoting speakers who call presidential candidates “faggots” (Ann Coulter), demanding that the first Muslim representative to the Congress prove he’s not “the enemy” (Glenn Beck), encouraging listeners to jam voter fraud hotlines during election day (Laura Ingram), and insinuating that all gay people are pedophiles (Alveda King).

Brandi Swindell and so many like her want to claim the high road and model themselves after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  She’s even working on something called The Birmingham Letter Project to protest abortion and lobby President Obama to end it as part of his health care reform.  What she’s missing is that Dr. King never singled out Lyndon Johnson as “The Apartheid President” and never singled out the tax breaks for married Klansmen as “paying for the lynching of black men with our tax dollars”.  (That and Dr. King was fighting for the rights of existing people and not to outlaw a medical procedure.)  Ironically, one of her favorite Dr. King quotes comes from the Letter from a Birmingham Jail where Dr. King cites the disobedience of an unjust law and suffering the legal consequences as the highest form of respect for the law.  I imagine it is the kind of justification Christian Fundamentalist Terrorist Scott Roeder would use to validate breaking the law against murdering a man responsible for “the killing of innocent children”.

If you believe laws regarding abortion need to be stricter, fine. If you think Roe v. Wade was a poor decision that needs to be overturned, fine.  If you believe abortion is a terrible thing and you want to do everything you can to counsel women to choose other options, fine.  But if you publicly condemn abortion providers as “baby killers”, you cannot be shocked that one of your followers took drastic steps to end baby killing.

Remember, this isn’t the same as the other couple of dozen states, like Oregon, that have banned gay marriage in their constitution.  In those states, the right for gays to marry did not exist.  In California, the court declared the right for gays to marry to be a constitutional right, and then the haters passed the constitutional amendment to take away that existing right.

Strangely enough, the Court left intact the marriages of some 18,000 gay couples who exercised their right before Prop 8 passed.  I guess somehow that 18,001st gay couple to get married would’ve been the trigger for gaypocalypse or something.  Weird, isn’t it, that 18,000 gay Californians have a right that hundreds of thousands of other gay Californians do not, a right the 18,000 would lose if they ever got divorced.

Conceivably, a majority of Californians could pass constitutional amendments to ban anyone from anything, so long as they didn’t touch the federally-protected classes of gender, religion, race, ethnicity, age, national origin, familial status, disability, or veterans status.  No decision on rights from the California Supreme Court can be considered final, because the majority could always overturn it.  This is much bigger than a ban on gay marriage, this sets precedent for the majority to take anyone’s rights!  A right isn’t a right if it can be taken away; it’s a privilege.  The California Supreme Court just decided that all rights in the Republic not granted by the federal constitution are now just privileges, granted unto you by the majority.

The reaction from some of the knuckle-draggers has been predictable.  This on from the HuffPo comments is typical:

There is ONE and only ONE fair solution to this problem and it is the same solution that has been proposed by many people including Elton John. Homosexuals should be granted all of the same rights, benefits of married heterosexual couples, the union should be identified by a different term than “marriage”.

Homosexuals don’t seem willing to accept that and I think that it speaks volumes to the underlying intentions.

Great point! Just like little black kids in the 1950s should be granted all the same rights and benefits of education as the white kids, but they should be housed in separate buildings identified by a different term than “schools”.

Strange how gay folks don’t seem willing to accept their lifelong loving partnerships being trivialized by straights as some sort of “sub-marriage” or “alternamarriage”. Homobigots don’t seem willing to see gay folks as equals and their need to cling to a word speaks volumes to the underlying intentions. You’d grant an equal marriage so long as it isn’t called “marriage”? It’s really just an eight letter word you’re hung up on?

Is marriage religious? Fine, keep it in your church, take government out of it completely, and ban anyone from it who makes you uncomfortable. But if marriage is a civil institution with government benefits, all citizens get to participate equally. Restricting one’s choice of lifelong partners to just half the population isn’t just homophobic, it’s sexist!

It will be fun being a cynical old coot, someday telling my grand-nieces and nephews about the days when we used to openly discriminate against gay people… if I can get past their holo-tattoos and cyber-implants.

Many people have asked if I am returning to the air anytime soon.  Probably not.

Here’s the deal: Not only was I the host of the show, but I also had to produce it, engineer it, record it, write it, sell it, promote it… basically aside from Stevie doing a fantastic job with answering phones and running the live engineering, everything about The Russ Belville Show was done by me.  I won the talk radio contest and they put me on XM with no budget, no staff, no advertising, and no promotions.  In fact, they were going to dump me six months into the deal when I rose a stink about being promised “a year-long contract” for winning the contest.  As it turned out, being on for twenty months was 14 months longer than they expected and 8 months longer than I expected.  Every show I put on the air actually ended up costing me $67 by the time you work through all the income vs. expenses.

(You want an idea why progressive talk radio is in the shitter?  Do you think it is the talent of the hosts, or… y’all discuss it; any speculation from me would be seen as ’sour grapes’.)

Now, if someone from a progressive talk radio network called up and said, “Hey, we found your old shows and thought you’d be a hit.  We’ve got a studio for you, a producer, and an engineer.  We’ll begin a big ad campaign and we can start you on five of our network’s stations right off the bat.  Interested?”, I’d be in the air faster than freeway chase in LA.  But doing it all myself?  No, never again.

So, what after three months has inspired me to return to the Radical Writ?  Is it Obama backing away from nearly every campaign pledge?  Is it the not closing Gitmo, not prosecuting torture, bringing in the insurance industry to ruin health care talks, giving money hand over fist to Wall Street thieves, snickering at the marijuana legalization question, not ending Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and tacitly endorsing every right-wing fraidy-cat terrists-gonna-kill-us FOX talking point?

Yeah, sure.  But first, I want to talk about something REALLY important: the embarrassment that was the selection of Kris Allen as the next American Idol.

Michael Glitz writes at HuffPo:

But for a theory about how Kris pulled an upset over the wildly popular Adam Lambert, the Christian vote is a pretty good one. It’s certainly one factor. (So is talent, Tiger Beat ready looks and viewers who get tired of being told someone is a lock when they haven’t even voted yet.) In fact, look at seasons past and where there’s a clear Christian vs secular showdown, the Christians have been winning handily. Take that, Charles Darwin! Sometimes the survival of the fittest goes to the person with the best telephone prayer chain. Check it out. (And please keep in mind I’m not talking about their personal faith, just our perception of it from what we told on the show at the time they were competing. Someone I describe as worldly might be exceptionally devout while the contestant prominently sporting a cross might be at the juke joint on Saturday and never even make it to church on Sunday.)

Season One featured wholesome Kelly Clarkson vs the worldly, media savvy Justin Guarini. Clarkson won big time and set the standard for Idols to come.

Season Two: Clay Aiken and Ruben Studdard both held forth on their faith. Ruben had an edge perhaps from the tight-knit black churches that came out strong for him. But this was a Christian vs Christian finale so you can’t draw any conclusions from this one.

He continues on through the current season, pointing out how the contestant with the most “God cred” wins the Finals.  (However, for Season 2, while both Ruben and Clay had the God card, don’t forget that Clay was “teh gay” for those Christian viewers.)

But I think the true theory is the Southern AT&T Text Messaging theory, only with the Christian vote acting as tiebreaker. In Idol voting, you’re allowed to call or text in ten votes per line. However, calls get you busy signals and you have to keep redialing to get just two votes, much less ten.

Text messaging, though, gets no busy signal and you can send in ten of them in the time it would take to get through one Idol phone call. Now, understand that anyone can call, but only AT&T subscribers can text, and AT&T’s subscriber base is largest in the South.

So when watching Idol Season 9, ask yourself, “Who would a 13-year-old girl in Mobile vote for?”

Evidence?

Allen (Arkansas) vs. Lambert (California)
7) Cook (Missouri) vs. Archuleta (Utah)
6) Sparks (Arizona) vs. Lewis (Washington) (Religion wins tiebreaker)
5) Hicks (Alabama) vs. McPhee (California)
4) Underwood (Oklahoma) vs. Bice (Alabama) (Religion breaks tie)
3) Fantasia (North Carolina) vs. DeGarmo (Georgia) (Religion breaks tie)
2) Studdard (Alabama) vs. Aiken (North Carolina) (”Not gay” breaks tie)
1) Clarkson (Texas) vs. Guarini (Pennsylvania)

What are the chances you’d get three finalists from Alabama and only two from California? Or that ten of sixteen finalists would be from former Confederate States and zero from the Northeast?

It has been a fantastic experience, from entering the local KPOJ contest and winning to visiting Washington DC for the first time to win the national contest. I’ve met Thom Hartmann, Ed Schultz, Bill Press, and other behind-the-scenes radio professionals, all of whom have been extremely generous in helping me to become a talk radio host. I’ll never forget it.

In a way, this is a blessing. As many of you know, I am the Associate Director of Oregon NORML , a non-profit dedicated to ending adult marijuana prohibition. Since April 21, 2007 (debut of the show), I have been unable to participate in our twice-monthly Saturday meetings where we help desperate medical marijuana patients acquire medicine and plants. Those meetings were a big spiritual part of my life – cannabis church, if you will – and it lifted my soul to help sick, disabled, and sense-threatened Oregonians find free alternative health care and learn about political activism. Now I will be able to return to those meetings just in time to help patients fight discriminatory legislation currently in the Oregon statehouse .

Also, time demands on my life have been stretched to the breaking point. I continue my work as the blogmaster/podcaster for NORML (http://stash.norml.org ), producing a 45-minute news/music/interview show that is downloaded by tens of thousands of listeners per day. My reporting is read by 5,000 per day, with traffic doubling week after week. I anticipate this job to continue to grow, and I was already trying to figure out how to balance the podcast, the blogging, my marriage, and a radio show. That decision has now been made for me.

To my current engineer, Stevie: We’ve been sacked!, but cheers, mate, all is tickety-boo, despite Sod’s Law biting us in the knickers the past couple fortnights. You’ve truly been the dog’s bollocks and I was a jammy bastard to get a chum like you engineering the sounds coming our of this Yank’s cake hole.

To my first producer, Woody: thanks for believing in my talent and teaching me the Prime Directive of Talk Radio (”Be Good. Don’t Suck.”)

To my first engineer, Peter: thanks for throwing the Bill Press substitute gigs my way and riding herd over a newbie talker.

To my mentor, Thom: thanks to you and Louise for all the advice – you’re still the top talker in my book and the smartest man it has been my pleasure to dine with.

To all my listeners: Thank you for your calls and emails and appreciation. I have actually noted every single call I have received on the air, by name and location, and I will post the Google Earth map of it soon. It’s amazing to think of all the people across this continent whom I have spoken to in 21 months! And now Dave in Chicago has to call someone else on Saturday mornings.

To my current engineer, Stevie, again: I apologise again for the end of the radio show. Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked have been sacked. The rest of this email has been completed in an entirely different style at great expense and at the last minute.

On to the next adventure…

“Radical” Russ Belville
Host – NORML Daily Audio Stash
Associate Director – Oregon NORML

Special assistance from “Ralph” the Wonder Llama.