A Letter To An Old And Dear Friend, pt2 - Deflating The Lies Of The GOP.

Those of you who read my first letter know what's going on here. For those of you who are new to my blog, it's about a friend of mine, who now resides a couple of thousand miles away now, who has recently been spouting some of the fallacious diatribe of the right. He's said things refering to Obama as a Muslim (even if he is, so what?)and that POTUS will take his guns away.

This second letter is in response to some of his statements.


Dear *****,


Why do you call Obama 'Obummer'? When he took office, unemployment was at 10%, now it's at 8%. He restored our auto-industry, effectively Saving More Than 1 Million Jobs of jobs. If the GOP obstructionists in the House hadn't blocked a roosevelt-type jobs bill, millions more would have jobs. Obama has made healthcare available to 6 million more citizens. Is that really a bad thing? The republicans objections to "ObamaCare" are simply reactionary rhetoric from those who prefer a feudalistic society. Yeah, it's a bummer all right, a bummer he was blocked from helping the citizenry as much as he may have.

Obama doesn't 'appease rogue states', he deals with them in a more sensible manner. Besides, I think if Iran did have nukes, it would restore the balance of power left vacant by Georgy-boy's OPEC sponsored destruction of Iraq (which was actually a relatively mellow place till our 'brave' warriors showed up), maybe Israel wouldn't keep stomping on the palestinians and poisoning their water supply as much as they do. We always villify the opposition to our interests, even when our interests are less than admirable.


Progressives stand, like the greatest president ever, Franklin Roosevelt, who single handedly created the worlds largest middle-class, for moving humanity forward to a truly egalitarian society. The fascist-baiters of the Gop want a better society for the corporations and themselves, the public good is not even on their list.

So I do hope you are reading this w/an open mind and seeing that this is the reality of things, without the stench of corporate propganda from those who, as george carlin so aptly put it, "'Don't give a shit about you, they don't care...they don't care!"

Jen

In Defense Of Atheism And Reason-Based Thinking

Atheism is not a belief, just a greater awareness of the real nature of reality, untarnished by our ancient past's emotion-based thinking.

I'v read the Bible 3 times (twice in the Iron Bar Inn!) and extensively researched history particular to that time-frame, and I can say with great certainty that anyone who knows the larger context of the history of religion knows that the Bible is a horrid bit of ancient mythological nonsense that advocates slavery, advocates stoning to death as appropriate punishment for ridiculous transgressions, was assembled primarily by tyrants, and used to exploit and control the masses.

There is very little truth in the Bible. Except for a few philosophical ideas that anyone with any modicum of ethics would presume. It's mostly a gallimaufry of mythologies by bronze-age cultures that had not an inkling of understanding of physics or gravity or the properties of light, molecules or atoms, and who thought the earth was the center of everything.

The Jesus story is simply a rehashing of so many earlier mythologies, including the Ammen-Ra myth from Egypt ('Amen' at the end of christian prayer comes from Ammen-Ra), and Dionysus from the Mycenaean culture, all of whom were born of a virgin, had 12 disciples, walked on water, performed miracles and were crucified or killed and then resurrected after 3 days. These ubiquitous ideas represented the winter solstice when the Sun is 'Dead', or lowest in the sky and in the vicinity of a constellation called 'Crux', or cross, for three days between Dec 22 & Dec 25. On the 25th the sun starts to climb higher every day, forshadowing spring and renewed life. Thus, the sun died on the cross, was dead for three days, and then resurrected. This is what the Jesus story clearly represents, and the meme is from thousands of years before "Christianity" was even a twinkle in Abraham's eye! Seriously!
(Islam, Judaism and Christianity all share the same heritage, as sons of Abraham)

And last but assuredly not least is the unmitigated fact that there has been more suffering and death in the history of the world due to the Bible than by any other cause besides plague and famine.

Just the facts man.

Think for yourself. Question and research EVERYTHING! Don't take others word for it, after all, we're all born atheist.

Letter To An Old Friend

Sorry I defriended you on Facebook, I was pissed because you said Obama's a Muslim, I thought you were better than that, that you could see through the thin veil of deception of the GOP. They are not the republicans of your grandfather, these people hate the middle-class, always had, and are willing to destroy our nation and economy because Obama has tried to actually be helpful to regular people.

Paul Ryan is a follower of Ayn Rands perverted glorifying of selfishness. I have read her books, and if that'writers' philosophy influences a person in government than we are all in shits creek. They have explicitly said they hate the new deal, regulations, and appropriate taxes on the rich to contribute to the well-being of the citizenry, those same things that made the greatest middle class in history. Wall Street People like Romney casually do horrible things to people to bolster their bottom line.

They want to privatize the very programs that benefit me, you and millions of regular folks like us. The elites today, just as the feudal-lords & robber-barons of yor, view us as merely as commodities, The actions of the investment banks are sound evidence of this.

Thomas Jefferson stressed the importance of a FREE and open university system so as the public can better make truly informed decisions, yet Romney/Ryan would make it much harder for us, not them, to get higher education.

To top it off, I truly believe that hiding money offshore in the caymans and such, from the nation that helped make them successful, like Mitt, borders on treason, and Jefferson certainly wouldn't approve. I've read the entire Federalist Papers, and the Constitution and can come to only one conclusion, that our government that we have today, including BOTH parties, would completely disgust the nations founders.

Obama's the best option of the two, and no, he's not coming for your guns, that's just a bunch of reactionary claptrap with a hint of racism.

I really thought you wouldn't buy into the oligarchs propaganda.

Still love ya,
Jen

David Gregory's Dereliction Of Duty As A Journalist

I saw the David Gregory interview with Willard Mitt Romney today on MSNBC, and noticed an obvious question that should have absolutely been asked of Romney. below is a letter I wrote to NBC expressing my chagrin at David's dropping of a very big ball.
Read on.

To: steve.capus@nbc.com

From @jennifermerril2

This in response to David Gregory's missed opportunity during his interview with Willard Romney.
Romney said that his economic plan would need 8-10 years to implement safely. Mr. Gregory obviously should have asked why Willard expected that Obama's recovery could be done in 4yrs, and I found myself screaming at my TV for him to do so (too bad we don't have 2-way TV's). In my opinion, that was a dereliction of David's responsibility as a journalist. There is so much at stake in this upcoming election that journo's need to do what they used to do, and call these crooks on their BS. Unless, of course, you don't want to offend your corporate sponsors, like it would if you responsibly reported on the impending disaster that is climate-change.


Befuddled,
Jennifer Merrill

I certainly don;t expect a response, but I simply had to get it off my chest.

Theater Shooting Indicative Of Systemic Deficiencies

Today a friend of mine who happens to be a member of the NRA commented on the Aurora, Colorado Batman shooter. He said; "A gun didn't kill those people; a criminal did. With sympathies for the families and swift justice for the shooter." I replied by telling him that I obviously agree with his statement, but unfortunately life isn't so simple as to be explained away with a cliched altruism. I reminded him that the tension in our social environment is highly palpable, there's a great deal of divisiveness in ideologies and younger people are sensitive to this hostile atmosphere. Most kids today haven't known a time when our country wasn't at war with some nebulous entity that's ready to strike from the blue with an act of terror. They are fully aware of the financial catastrophe that looms, and their entertainment reflects their angst with the failed system. They see rampant fraud pervading just about every aspect of their lives, from GMO's to muni-bond bid-rigging schemes of wall street that put communities and entire nations into debt simply to loot their resources.

Added to these stressors is the violence in the video games and movies. I'm not blaming these products, but the producers market them in a way that makes violent crime and war glamorous. - Much of what passes for music these days seems to be all about 'popin caps' in someone, drug-dealing or 'bitches'. - Kids shows are a fast-paced barrage of flashing images and loud noise. - The commercials foster envy of the other kids that have these great shiny toys. The companies behind the ads do a great job of hiding the fact that, to them, their young impressionable audience is a huge market that needs to constantly be 'harvested' (marketing term, I kid you not). All this combined fosters cynicism, aggression, resentment and creates heightened social tension so that when you mix someone who's already on the edge mentally, and weapons that are too easily obtained, we get this.

I haven't heard any reports of neighborhoods, cities or states doing battle with each other (yet), so what other reason to have multiple assault rifles, thousands of rounds of ammunition, gas canisters and masks? For hunting? I'd say the critters are outgunned as it is. The fact that these items were legally obtained, even over the course of a few months shows that there needs to be a mechanism that alerts authorities when an individual buys weapons, bullets, body-armor or anything else that seems like the purchaser likes to play navy-seal as a hobby. How did this get past anyone? I'm sure the merchants of death are of the attitude "I'm not concerned with what they do after they leave the store." What a sense of community, huh? Every time someone buys munitions their name should be put in a data-base and, like many credit card companies, trigger an alert when any unusual patterns emerge.

While all this is bubbling just below the surface of our culture, the "war on terror" industrial complex seems more concerned with feeling up granny at the airport than conceiving a realistic and effective way of deterring nuts like this. Ben Gurion International Airport in Israel is a good model of what counter-terrorism should look like here. They use simple but effective tactics including bomb-sniffing dogs and profiling, Not racial profiling, but common sense observation of behavior. I suspect the various homeland security contractors here in the U.S. are more interested in assembling a security apparatus that maximizes profits in a way that looks like they're really concerned with our safety. Who knows, maybe James Holmes was a Manchurian Candidate let loose so as to promote gun control policies, or maybe he was just an ordinary guy, crushed by enormous debt, that became severely unhinged. Whatever the case, someone shoulda been hip to this cat weeks ago.

Could Machine Life Be The Next Logical Evolutionary Step, And The Key To Immortality?

We often like to think of ourselves as the pinnacle of evolution, with our brains that can behold ourselves and plan the future. But we may not be the ultimate manifestation of natural selection which, theoretically, could progress until the universe ends. It may be the machines that we build to serve us that one day rule the planet, our solar-system and maybe even the universe. Imagine a vast artificial intelligence that links entire galaxies with beams of Tachyons, arranging the electro-magnetism of stars into hyper-networks. Even more amazing,our minds could be the ghosts in those machines!

Believe it or not there are those who would make this concept a reality. Collectively they are known as Transhumanists, and their progenitor is Ray Kurzweil, inventor of text to speech software and predictor of cloud technology. He foresaw the fall of the Soviet Union due to emerging decentralized electronic communication (which Gorbachev confirmed to Ray years later). He also lays claim to a list of tech-patents a mile long.

Now, the idea of becoming one with machine may seem far-fetched, but then so did the idea of wirelessly communicating around the world at the speed of light. Now, cell phones are more ubiquitous than people! Given the rate of technological progression as expressed in Moore's law, Ray predicts we will merge with machines sometime before 2050. Actually, we already do to a degree. When you drive your car you are interfacing with the machine to the point where you can 'feel' the road and know exactly where your wheels are. But Ray's idea is a little more of the kind where we can augment our brains with computer chips. He envisions a time when we upload our memories and brain patterns into a computerized data-base where we can live in a virtual world of whatever we program it to be. Or we could download into a waiting clone after we die (See last post), The possibilities are endless. This idea has also been featured in the popular TV series Battlestar Galactica (The New One) where the cylons, built by humans, have a "Resurrection-Ship" built solely for the purpose of getting a new body after the old one has been rendered useless.

Climate-change, Caused by humans or not (and I believe it is a result of pollution; you just can't pump trillions of TONS of crap in the air and expect nothing!), is progressing so fast that eventually, and soon, most biological life as we know it will find it hard to survive. Nano-tech based self-replicating machines with chips of human consciousness however, will be much more durable and can design their own upgrades, enhancements, and ultimately expand out into the universe itself.

This good-looking blonde chap on the right was actually built by roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro and is the latest of the geminoid line of androids his team has produced to study human-robot interactions. Again, bearing in mind the rapid progress of technology, think of what we'll be doing with these advancements in just the next 10 years!

What our technology will bring remains to be seen, but it's certain that it is growing exponentially and will absolutely have some unexpected surprises. It may be saddening to think that perhaps we are just a precursor to the ultimate living beings, that our tireless efforts at developing technology is simply driven by evolution with artificial intelligence the goal. But, as some have said, it's the journey, not the destination, so enjoy your corporeal body while you can.


Next post; "The Twisted Philosophy Of Ayn Rand", don't miss it!

Turning Inwards, Or Science Fiction Becomes Reality

I'm nearing the end of "Pandora's Star" by Peter F. Hamilton, a 988 page tour de force of a science fiction novel. In it, Hamilton portrays a future that I had imagined I would grow up in, where we have spread out into the cosmos and harvested the near infinite resources of space (asteroids, solar radiation, etc). In his novel, humanity has harnessed wormhole technology and used it to build a commonwealth of star-systems, and people use the holes almost as daily transportation; It's much quicker to ride into a wormhole station in New York and come out in Paris two minutes later. A ride to the nearest colonized star-system would take an hour or so.

In Hamilton's universe, we have learned how to upload our memories into data-bases so that when we grow old, or experience a catastrophic organic failure, the memories are then downloaded into a ready made clone that's been cryogenically frozen until such need arises. So with plenty of space to grow, and death all but eliminated, everyone can pursue very long-term goals and see them to fruition.

It was along these lines that, when I was around 9 and already reading hard sci-fi, I thought the world would look like when I grew up. Well, not quite as advanced, but I imagined that after the introduction of the space-shuttle when I was 10, it would be on to the stars from there.
So much for that.
Needless to say Iv'e become quite disillusioned, almost to the point of being misanathropic; how could my species let me down like this...let all of humanity down? Many esteemed scientists, including Stephan Hawking and Michio Kaku hold that the window of escape is closing, that if we can't establish a foothold elsewhere in the solar system within 50 or 100 yrs, then we will most likely become extinct from one man-made cause or another.

So instead of continuing to turn inward against each other in endless wars for resources and bickering about senseless ideologies, we should be reaching for the stars for a common cause... survival. We have the potential, it can be done but time is running out.