The Binary Circumstance

Lest we forget, the current meltdown on Wall Street, started with deflation of the housing bubble. The bubble was created in large part by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buying up loans that should never have been made in the first place, packaging them as mortgage backed securities and selling them around the globe.

Both Barack Obama and John McCain have received money from people connected with Fannie and Freddie and both have relationships with lobbyists for the two firms. This came from the transcript of Bill Moyers Journal:

BILL MOYERS:Speaking of good journalism, check out the front page story in the NEW YORK TIMES by Jackie Calmes. We’ll post it on our website at pbs.org. Calmes joined the TIMES after 18 years at the WALL STREET JOURNAL covering politics, economics and public policy.

In the TIMES this week, she tells an important back story to the government’s takeover of the mortgage banks Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This is a move that could drive up the national debt by as much as $200 billion. To come up with the cash, the Bush Administration is reaching deep into your and your kids’ pockets. With the help of the Center for Responsive Politics, Jackie Calmes came up with facts to help us try to understand how, over so many years, such wild mismanagement of both corporations was allowed to happen. Why weren’t the watchdogs barking? Where were the people’s representatives? The answer? Follow the money.

Both Barack Obama and John McCain say the Fannie and Freddie mess is the result of the cozy ties between lobbyists and politicians, the very thing they will “change” if elected. But guess what? Neither one of them has ever had, quote, “A record of directly challenging the companies.”

To the contrary, Obama is second among members of Congress in donations from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s employees and political action committees, even though he’s only been in the Senate since 2005. The former chairman of Fannie Mae originally led Obama’s vice presidential search committee but had to step down in a controversy over favorable loans he received, while at Fannie, from a company doing business with Fannie.

Among Obama’s contributors are three directors and one senior vice president of the two companies. Furthermore, Obama’s fellow Democrats in Congress have long been enablers of both corporations.

And what about John McCain? His entire campaign team stepped right out of a predator’s ball. His confidante and top adviser lobbied several years for Freddie Mac. His deputy fundraiser lobbied Fannie Mae, and his campaign manager lobbied for both of them, leading a coalition of beltway insiders whose goal was to “stave off regulations” that might have short circuited this nightmare.

One wealthy member of Freddie Mac’s board has contributed more than $70,000 to McCain and Republican Party members working for McCain’s election.

Even the guy who vetted John McCain’s vice presidential options is a former lobbyist for Fannie Mae.

This week, both Obama and McCain are speaking up for taxpayers, like you and me, who have to foot the bill. But locking the beltway barn door after the horse is gone leaves the stable smelling like you know what.

Now, Senator Obama denounces “golden parachutes” for the deposed execs of the two institutions. Now, John McCain blames Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s troubles on “cronyism” and “special interest lobbyists.” Beg pardon? Does McCain know that if he really intends to throw the bums out he’ll have to start with his own inner circle. As we’ve heard, you can rewrite the myth but you can’t rewrite the facts.

Just think. In less than two months either Obama or McCain will be elected our next president. It doesn’t give people who hope for genuine reform of government much to look forward to. Sigh.

By accident last night I discovered that Julia Sweeney who played the gender-ambivalent character “Pat” on Saturday Night Live, has a blog.

She talks a lot about atheism and religion and recently posted about the recent raid on the LDS ranch in Texas.

She pointed out how frightened the children must be.

The children are caught between a rock and a hard place. They’ll clearly want to be with the families and their community because that’s all they know but at the same time their parents are teaching them nonsense, raising them in slavery and shutting them off from the outside world, a classic characteristic of an abusive, controlling relationship.

Lately I’ve been remembering how much terror I felt as a child being brought up Catholic and being taught by nuns who continually reminded us how we were going to Hell if we didn’t do what God wanted us to do, which coincidentally was always what they or the church wanted us to do.

I’ve certainly dealt with the issue many times before so I don’t know why it’s been on my mind so much lately. Maybe because of the LDS raid or the fact that I recently read a book about the history of the LDS church.

I feel for the kids too.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Religion is built on delusions and is therefore a form of mental illness. Religion forced on children is child abuse. Terrorizing children into obedience is wrong. Destroying their ability to think rationally with religious dogma is wrong as well. (See my book.)

I was watching a fascinating history of the Mormons on PBS last night. Like all religions it is built upon faith, the belief in things not supported by any objective evidence. (The full documentary is available for purchase or to watch online.)

Born at a time when new religions were popping up like weeds, Mormonism survived when most of the others failed. One historian interviewed in the documentary speculated that it was the Book of Mormon, authored by Joseph Smith, who claimed it was a translation of revelations found in gold plates delivered to him by an angel, that gave the religion a sense of legitimacy that other religious start-ups off the time did not have. Nobody but Joseph Smith ever saw the gold plates or the angel. No surprise there.

It’s an amazing story because it is so bizarre that anybody would believe such things, but the fact is they do, by the millions. As Clifford Irving, who authored the totally fabricated “authorized” biography of Howard Hughes found out, the more fantastic the tale, the easier it is to get people to believe it.

People really will do just about anything to escape from reality.

The bit of Mormon history that shocked me the most was the Mountain Meadow Massacre where a group of Mormons, after promising safe passage to a group moving west to California through the Utah territory, brutally murdered 120 men, women and children.

From Wikipedia:

The emigrants stopped to rest and regroup their approximately 800 head of cattle at Mountain Meadows, a valley within the Iron County Military District of the Nauvoo Legion (the popular designation for the militia of the Utah Territory). [1]

Initially intending to orchestrate an Indian massacre, [2] two men with leadership roles in local military, church and government organizations, [3] Isaac C. Haight and John D. Lee, conspired to lead militiamen disguised as Native Americans along with a contingent of Paiute tribesmen in an attack. The emigrants fought back and a siege ensued. Intending to leave no witnesses of Mormon complicity in the siege and also intending to prevent reprisals that would complicate the Utah War, militiamen induced the emigrants to surrender and give up their weapons. After escorting the emigrants out of their fortification, the militiamen and their tribesmen auxiliaries executed approximately 120 men, women and children.[4] Seventeen younger children were spared.

It’s ironic that it culminated on September 11, 1857. September 11, 2001 would become the date of another very famous massacre orchestrated by religious fanatics.

In another similarity, the Islamic terrorists who massacred so many at the WTC believed their reward in heaven would be 40 virgins. Mormons at the time of their massacre regularly practiced polygamy believing that for a man to get closest to God he had to have multiple wives.

A representative of the LDS organization commented about the massacre that it was a blemish on the church’s history that was difficult to reconcile but he hoped that God had provided for the victims and also found a way to forgive the perpetrators.

Belief in God is so useful when you want to gloss over the contradictions and the ugly, criminal consequences of your faith.

Some historians believe that Brigham Young ordered the massacre or at least facilitated it. Young was president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and was married to 52 women. (Young denied any involvement in the massacre in a deposition for the trial of John D. Lee. But other researchers have concluded that he played an active role in the massacre and in its cover-up. Much more detail here.)

Another historian noted that either the revelation from the gold plates that Joseph Smith described either happened or it didn’t. That’s your binary circumstance again! If it didn’t happen, then Mormonism is a total fraud, like as Christianity is a fraud without the resurrection. That’s why it’s so important to have evidence to support beliefs.

Given that all religions are built on one or more one-time miraculous events that have never been replicated, it is far more likely that they are all frauds and that humans desperately need to believe in something that promises that death is not real but only an illusion. All th evidence suggests that death was quite real and final for the victims of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Certainly those who committed the murders believed it was final as well, otherwise they would fear that those they killed might haunt and harass them from the next life, which is by their own account is a place where humans have more power.

I highly recommend the PBS documentary if you ever get a chance to see it. I still haven’t seen the second half.

Religion is contaminating sports in the same way it is contaminating the current political climate.

Skip Oliva writes:

[Tony] Dungy uses his post as a football coach to proselytize, and media members like [Len] Pasquerelli give him a free pass. Somehow, I doubt a coach who used his post to promote atheism or even libertarian values would be given such kid-glove treatment. But religion–at least the evangelical Christian variety–is a shield when it comes to the sports press. Either they’re too afraid to challenge coaches and players who claim the moral high ground, or like Pasquerelli they’re willing to tolerate it if it means getting access or a good sound bite. (And Pasquerelli goes out of his way to explain just how wonderful an interview Dungy is, but then again, many religious fanatics are charismatic.)

Last year, Dungy faced mild press criticism for speaking at a fund-raising event for the Indiana Family Institute, a political group that advocates the imposition of Christian values by force (i.e., government.)

Religious delusions seem to always get a free pass in the media.

I can’t count how many times I’ve seen people make faith-based comments on TV shows like the evening news or The Today Show which go unchallenged by the interviewer. If the subject of the interview was talking about their belief that a little green man was sitting on the sofa next to them and having a positive impact on their life, it would be challenged and attacked as a delusion. But if they talk about God being present or orchestrating something that recently happened in their life, the interviewer just nods his/her head in agreement.

To run for president, it is imperative that candidates talk about their faith in the existence of little green men to even be considered for the job. Oops, I meant God.

Just because a belief is shared by the majority of people doesn’t make it true. Remember when most people believed the earth was flat? How did they treat people who said that evidence supported a round earth? The same way they treat people who question faith in God.