Why I Love #StrikeDebt

Sorry for the long absence. I had a completed post on shopping locally and the emergence of a cool vibe in Uptown Shelby, but for some reason I hit the wrong thing on the iPhone app for Blogger and it zapped into the ethersphere somewhere and was lost forever. Pity, because it was a pretty darn good article if I may say so myself. Alas, it is gone and I threw my little tantrum and pity party and have now moved on. Back to the more familiar ground -- debt, banking crises, and the economy (Oh my!).

One of my favorite things in the world is a simple solution to a complex and seemingly impossible problem. I love it when one person sees a population suffering from generation upon generation of debilitating and painful goiter and eradicates the problem entirely simply by introducing iodized salt into their diet. Or when faced with needless preventable deaths due to an epidemic of malaria in Africa, people simply introduce mosquito nets saving thousands upon thousands of lives. Problems which have seemed impossible and overwhelming for so long can sometimes be solved with just one simple idea. This is why I love Strike Debt and Rolling Jubilee.

In the Fall of 2011, Occupy Wall Street took the nation by storm when they set up an encampment occupying Zuccotti Park in the heart of lower Manhattan's financial district drawing attention to the crimes that had been committed on Wall Street which led to the collapse of the nation's economy in 2008 ushering in the worst economic down turn since the Great Depression. With their protests, marches, occupations and outreach, OWS did more to shine a light on the root causes of our financial strife than any reporter, expert, politician, or economist did in the previous four years. They caught for a brief period of time the imagination, desperation, and outrage of much of the American public.

But, American sensibilities and attention spans being what they are, the occupiers were eventually evicted from what had become known as Freedom Park and their cause seemed to have died out. The main criticism of OWS was their amorphous organization, their lack of any stated goals or plans to achieve such goals. It seemed that OWS would go down as a blip and footnote to the financial scandals which brought about the financial bailout and recession of the late naughts and early teens of the 21st Century.

However, what OWS accomplished during their encampment and went unreported by the media who never could understand the movement, was the sharing of ideas of passionate and committed individuals who had the energy and know-how to put these plans into action. One of those plans grew into the group Strike Debt and their movement Rolling Jubilee.

Strike Debt saw the staggering problem of consumer debt and decided to use the exact same practices which lead to and perpetuate that system of debt to eliminate the debt entirely. Here's how debt works in a nutshell. A creditor whether it be a bank, credit card company, or institution such as a hospital lends a consumer debt which the consumer uses to purchase goods or services with a promise to pay that debt back over a period of time. The creditor makes money on the transaction by charging and collecting interest on the debt. However, many creditors will sell their right to collect the debts owed to them for a variety of reasons, usually because the consumer has defaulted on the debt and the likelihood of collecting further payment has diminished to the point where there is no longer any profit in the transaction for the original creditor.

What happens at this point is when things usually go horribly badly for the consumer. The original creditor will now sell the debt to the highest bidder so that they can realize some return on their remaining investment. Usually these are purchased by collection agencies. Collection agencies are the bottom feeders of the financial world. They buy bad debts for pennies on the dollar and then do absolutely everything they can get away with in order to collect on that debt. Anyone who, like me at one point in my life, has ever had to deal with these poor excuses for humanity, knows the type of abuse and stress that having a collection agency hound you can involve.

When I was in civil practice, I used to take great pleasure in throwing every conceivable legal roadblock up in front of these agencies to cost them as much money as I possibly could in order to collect their money. When possible, I took even greater pleasure in making life incredibly uncomfortable for any of these agencies I could prove engaged in illegal debt collection practices. My absolute favorite involved one insipid agency which had purchased a debt which was more than a decade old and was for all intents and purposes uncollectable. What they did to get around the impediment of the statute of limitations was to send a new credit card offer to the drug addled and mentally ill debtor. A new credit card offer for someone whose credit was destroyed for years would be seen as a gift from God for any such individual. However, what transferring the old uncollectable debt to the new credit card would make it collectable again. Fortunately, the debtors elderly parents intercepted the offer and brought it to me. After a very tersely worded letter offering to forego suing the pants off of the collection firm for illegally trying to collect an uncollectable debt if they would forego ever contacting my client again, they discharged the debt from their books.

But, the genius of Strike Debt is that they looked at the process by which these scum sucking maggots known as collection agencies buy the debts and realized that they could do the exact same thing. Strike Debt formed a 501(c)(4) corporation which serves essentially as a debt collection agency and bids against other debt collection agencies in auctions of distressed consumer debt. Because these debts are worthless to the original holders of the debt, they can be bought for substantially less than what is owed. In fact, they found that for every $1 paid, as much as $20 of debt could be purchased.

Once the debt was purchased, however, unlike the circling carcass gorging vultures known as collection agencies, instead of trying to collect on the debt, Strike Debt would simply extinguish the debt. That's right, the debt would simply no longer exist. In the financial world, this is known as "forgiving" debt. Strike Debt doesn't use this term because in their view, rightly, the debtor has nothing to forgive as they haven't done anything wrong.

This became known to some as the People's Bailout and with good reason. What Strike Debt had done was similar to what the government and the Federal Reserve had done to wipe out the toxic debt held by the Too Big to Fail financial institutions and apply it instead to ordinary debtors. What's even more ingenious is that they used the exact process which had shackled millions of Americans in a spiral of debt and financial ruin, to subvert the system and free those same Americans from those shackles.

But, Strike Debt doesn't stop there. There is also the Rolling Jubilee, a movement which brings this process to the next level and has the potential for permanent debt relief for America and across the world. The term "jubilee" refers to the year in the Biblical  Dueteronomic Code in which land and property were returned to its original owner and slaves were freed. Because Strike Debt is purchasing debt and then extinguishing it, thereby returning it to its owner, it is in some fashion acting similarly to this traditional Hebrew law. The term Rolling Jubilee refers to the movement which encourages those receiving a benefit from this purchase and extinguishing of debt to then pass it on and contribute to the purchasing and extinguishing of debt of others.

For example, if you have a medical debt of $40,000 for an operation that you had to have but have no means to pay for it and have defaulted on your debt, your debt will most likely be sold and purchased by a debt collection agency in a debt auction. If you are fortunate enough to have your debt purchased by Strike Debt (they have no way of choosing which debts or debtors they purchase and extinguish, they are simply purchasing a block of debt) you would be notified of this fact. Rolling Jubilee is based on the hope that those whose debts have been extinguished will then use the money that has been freed up to donate back to Strike Debt in order to allow them to purchase and extinguish more debt.

This is what makes Strike Debt and Rolling Jubilee a community building, community empowering self-help organization rather than a charity. If this movement works, it could seriously change the nation's entire economic power structure which causes and perpetuates the economic inequality we see today. So far they have raised over $7 million. With this they can potentially buy $140 million in debt. If those whose debt is eliminated donate just 10% of what was extinguished back, with that $14 million, Strike Debt could purchase $280 million in debt, and so on, and so on.

Right now, this is an infinitesimal amount when looking at the staggering level of consumer debt currently owed in this nation, which the Federal Reserve estimates stands at approximately $2.4 Trillion. However, this movement can have incredible influence if it grows and reaches its potential. The affects of this will be felt throughout our entire financial and political structure. This has the potential to literally change our world.

Not bad for a bunch of dirty, unwashed hippies hanging out in a New York park banging drums, huh? Simple ideas can have incredible effects. It makes me excited to see what other ideas have been planted in the garden of Zuccotti Park that are just waiting to emerge and blossom.

Been a While

Hey there. Been a while, I know. Is there anyone still out there? Work and life have been conspiring to leave me little blogging time. That doesn't mean the ideas aren't there, however. So, you'll probably be deluged with a bunch of posts in a very short time. First, there is the matter of Uptown Shelby which is suddenly cool. Enjoy.

In Praise of Sisters

Recently, the stodgy old men's club known as the Vatican decided to launch an all out inquisition of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. The allegations concerned the group's apparent focus on ministering to the poor and suffering among us, rather than focusing on more important issues like, you know, speaking out about abortion and making sure that people don't use condoms or birth control pills. The Vatican went as far as calling this group of American nuns "radical feminists." I was reminded of Inego Montoya's line from the Princess Bride "I don't think that word means what you think it means."

I guess by radical feminism the Vatican means that these Catholic religious women look to God, rather than their religion's all male hierarchy for guidance in their ministry. How absolutely Christ like of them!

Needless to say, more than a few current and former Catholics are disturbed by the treatment of their Sisters by the leadership in Rome. For many of us, Sisters have served as a tremendous influence especially in the foundation of our faith and personhood. Despite our jokes about rulers, rapt knuckles, and roller skates, almost everyone I know, myself included, has heart warming memories of the Sisters from our childhood.

For me, it was my first Principal at St. Mary's School in Baldwinsville, New York. Sister Eucharista was simply the kindest person I've ever met. Although she was no pushover, she loved teaching and even moreso loved children. In return, we loved her back.

Sister Eucharista knew that the true meaning of the axiom "spare the rod, spoil the child" referred not to physical discipline, but to parental guidance, steering the pupils under her care in the right direction. Still to this day when I come upon two people facing each other having a conversation, I go out of my way to go around them or, if stepping in between them is unavoidable, doing so as unobtrusively as possible and apologizing as I do. This is because in my tender years, I unknowingly walked between a conversation she was having with someone and was stopped by Sister Eucharista and told, quite gently, that this was not the proper way to act and told to apologize. This was not done in a way to embarrass me or to be mean in any way, it was done to teach me and done with firm kindness because she understood I had not encountered this situation before. This is how you teach children, and this is why I think of her each time this happens to this day.

But more importantly than her guidance and her leadership, Sister Eucharista was our strength when we needed it, too. This was most apparent to me in an incident which happened to me in First Grade.

Up until I had my tonsils and adenoids out when I was 7, I was a rather sickly child. I had constant ear infections and nasty tasting thick pink penicillin was a mainstay in my Parent's refrigerator.
I was suffering an ear infection on the day of the incident.

Now, to understand this story, I have to explain something about the winters in Central New York and the clothing of the time. On this day, just like on most days, we were having a fairly heavy snow fall. The boots we wore for some reason that I can't quite remember required the wearing of plastic bags over our feet which we would then place in the boots. This, combined with the hats, scarves, mittens, and snowmobile suits that we would layer on each morning made the arrival in the classroom rather time consuming as we commenced the inevitable disrobing necessary to get ready for class.

On this particular day, my bus which covered the neighborhoods of Seneca Knolls and Village Green was late arriving due to the heavy snow. My fellow classmates on the bus were doing our ritual disrobing, placing our boots under the heater to melt the snow, placing our school shoes on our feet and so on, while the morning prayer, pledge, and announcements were being read over the loud speaker.

Inevitably there was some kind of commotion going on as would be expected of 6 and 7 year-olds on a snowy winter morning. Our teacher, the rather stern Sister Charles Dorothy not taking kindly to the commotion decided to make an example of one of us and for no particular reason at all chose me. She asked me to repeat what the announcement had been. I could not tell her since I had not heard the announcement. She assumed it had been because I was goofing off. What she didn't know is that I couldn't hear it because I was suffering a raging ear infection and my ears were filled to the brim with fluid and puss. Her punishment was banishment and I was made to leave the classroom and stand outside in the hallway.

Of course, it didn't take long for the tears to start flowing. As I stood alone in the hallway with tears streaming down my face, Sister Eucharista happened to walk by. She asked me why I was in the hallway. I explained what happened and why I had been made to stand in the hallway. She asked if I had been talking during the announcement and I explained about my ears.

Sister Eucharista very calmly told me to return to the classroom and asked me to have Sister Charles Dorothy come to speak with her. After a couple of minutes the most incredible thing up to that point in my life happened. Sister Charles Dorothy returned to the class and apologized for having made me stand in the hallway.

Now, looking back on the incident, I can see this with a whole lot of perspective I didn't have at the time. First, in my memory, Sister Eucharista went up one side and down the other of Sister Charles Dorothy. I know for certain this didn't happen. I imagine that she treated the younger, less experienced teacher with the same firm kindness with which she treated me when I walked in the middle if her conversation - not to embarrass, but to guide. And, looking back Sister Charles Dorothy is not the ogre I thought she was at the time either. She was a very young woman, inexperienced and in over her head trying to control a bunch of hyperactive First Graders while trying to impart the basic foundations of education. Like all of us, she was doing her best and sometimes coming up short.

But what Sister Eucharista did was in fact extraordinary because what she was able to show a sickly, skinny, scared little boy was that it was ok to stand up for yourself when you are right. She did that not with words but with actions. She taught me to stand up for myself by standing up for me when I couldn't. I never forgot that and I am forever grateful.

Everyone has experiences like this. The Catholic women religious are the heart and soul of the church. It pains me to see what they are being put through with this investigation which seemingly aims to cloister them, returning them to the meek, silent stereotype of nuns spending their time in secluded prayer and meditation.

I have heard many of the leaders of the LCWR interviewed about this. They are inevitably asked why they don't just leave the church, or if they would consider doing that if the commission comes down harshly against them which is everyone's expectation. They always respond with great sadness. Leaving the church to which they have dedicated their life is like a death to them. It is almost inconceivable and a choice which they should not be forced to make, but which they know they may have to. My heart breaks for these incredible women who have done nothing but do the thankless dirty work of their faith, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, comforting the afflicted, and yes at times afflicting the comfortable. In other words, they are doing the work that Christ himself did in his ministry.

It is my sincere hope that the Sisters are able to carry on as before, or at least to find a place of comfort within the faith to which they have dedicated their lives. If they don't find this place of comfort, I know that they will find their place, as I have, elsewhere in a faith that stands with its arms and hearts open to offer comfort and loving acceptance of the gifts that they offer every day of their lives.

For our Sisters, let us pray. Amen.

Brace For Impact

It has been four years since the economic implosion caused by financial derivatives, housing bubbles, and big banks putting trillions of dollars at risk on casino style bets for which there was no collateral. The result was the vaporization of untold trillions of dollars, an unprecedented bailout of the financial industry, the largest financial crisis since the great depression, and the loss of millions of jobs throughout the American economy.

Since then, our economy has been sluggish at best, crawling along through a painfully slow and anemic recovery. Now, as we start to see what may be the light at the end of the tunnel, the same exact thing is going to happen again, but this time it's going to be even worse.

I'm not talking about the fiscal cliff that Congress boxed themselves into with their inability to come to an agreement on something as mundane as raising the debt ceiling. I'm talking about a re-run of the entire economic collapse of 2008, with even worse results for our country and its citizens.

How could this happen so soon after the economic collapse of 2008? In order to answer that, let's take a brief look back at what caused the collapse four years ago.

The root cause of all of the problems that we are currently facing are the passage of two laws in 1999 and 2000 sponsored by Republicans in Congress and enthusiastically supported and signed into law by Democratic President Bill Clinton. These two laws, Gramm-Leach-Bliley and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, eliminated the Depression era separation of commercial banks, investment banks, and insurance companies, and insured that the complex financial instruments known as derivatives would remain unregulated. This was hailed as the beginning of a new financial golden age which would lead to unrivaled prosperity and wealth creation. In reality what it did was turn the world of finance into a casino and spread the risk throughout the economy so that even regular everyday banking customers with a passbook savings account were on the hook when everything went to hell.

The casino's main instrument was a derivative called a collateralized debt obligation (CDO) which is an investment wherein a bunch of consumer debt is purchased, combined, split up into tranches and sold to investors as securities. Any kind of consumer debt can be used for CDOs but the most attractive one in 1990s and 2000s was the residential mortgage.

In abstract, mortgages would seem to be a safe debt to use for these investments. Because mortgages traditionally used strict underwriting and financial requirements they were seen as a pretty safe investment. They also rarely had defaults because of these safeguards.

However, as we saw, the amount of money being made in these investments caused banks to create more and more of these types of investments requiring more and more mortgages to securitize. Combined with an official seal of approval from the president to increase non-traditional lending, mortgage lenders started giving mortgages to anyone with a pulse, throwing caution to the wind as the amount of sub prime loans started ballooning as lenders sold their mortgage loans as soon as they closed them. The lend to securitize movement erupted, sending housing prices skyward while at the same time eroding the very foundation of the industry making these once safe investments riskier and riskier.

In the end there were an awful lot of people with mortgages they couldn't afford and a lot of securities that were about to become worthless due to the high number of defaults that inevitably occur when you have people with no income owning $3 million homes.

There was another derivative product called a credit default swap (CDS) which made things even worse. CDS's were sort of like insurance in that you could pay a premium based on the risk that a particular CDO was assigned and if that CDO collapsed because the of defaults on the mortgages that made up the CDO, you would be paid the amount of the investment in the CDO. The only problem was, that these weren't insurance policies, they were derivatives and therefore required no reserves. The insurance giant AIG was bankrupted because they sold endless amounts of CDS's, believing that the real estate market would always go up and that these investments would never default. They had no money in reserve to pay claims in the event of a default. When the real estate bubble burst, AIG's entire worth was wiped out and the entire financial market put at risk as the investors in CDS's discovered that their investments were worthless.

So, how could this happen again? Weren't there reforms put in place to avoid this?

In a word: no.

The one grand financial reform bill passed by Congress in the wake of the 2008 economic collapse, the Dodd- Frank Act, really did nothing to prevent this same scenario from happening again. This is because Congress purposely adopted Wall Street's narrative of what caused the collapse of 2008 - that is that greedy and irresponsible homebuyers ran up too much debt causing the real estate market to collapse. This completely ignored the true causes of the collapse and failed to address the systemic problems in the financial industry itself. Therefore, Dodd-Frank's reforms were aimed directly at the mortgage industry and not at the derivatives market. In other words, they treated the symptoms while ignoring the disease.

There were some significant reforms put into place in Dodd-Frank that have made the mortgage industry safer -- especially reforms which took away incentives for banks and brokers to push riskier sub prime loans, and some higher reserve requirements for certain types of investments. These are good things for the economy and for consumers.

But it's what Dodd-Frank failed to do that creates the collapse that we are about to face. Dodd-Frank failed to do anything to reform the derivatives market, which remains for the most part unregulated. This wasn't by accident. Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, both Democrats and both chairs of their respective banking committees in the Senate and House were among the largest recipients of banking industry money in Congress. These two powerful law makers understood as well as anyone the root causes of the crisis and what would truly prevent it from happening again and yet they both chose to ignore real reform and instead protect the industry which had showed them such tremendous financial support over the years. So, suggestions that derivatives be traded on an open market rather than over the counter, that credit default swaps be regulated as insurance policies with reserve requirements and oversight, that large banks be separated into commercial and investment segments were ignored. The casino was reopened and now had the government's backing for its risk taking.

This brings us today. So how could this happen again? Mortgages have been reined in, housing hasn't recovered from its collapse, so how could a 2008 style collapse happen now?

Well, since nothing has been done to reform the derivatives market, Wall Street just needed a new market to pump up, securitize, and sell. Enter the ever increasing student loan market.

During the last several decades, tuition at four year collegiate institutions has increased exponentially. Just in the last ten years for which data is available from the U.S. Department of Education, tuition and room and board at public four year institutions has increased 37%, whereas tuition at private four year institutions has increased 25% during that same period. Average tuition in the 2009-10 academic year for public four year institutions was $14,870 and $32,475 for private four year institutions compared to $10,609 and $26,795 just ten years earlier when adjusted for inflation.

This huge increase in tuition, led to a huge increase in student loan borrowing as well. Again, looking at statistics available from the Department of Education, in the 2007-08 academic year, the average debt burden for students graduating with a four year degree from public institutions was $19,839 with 61.1% of undergraduate students at four year public institutions borrowing. For private four year institutions the amount was $27,349 with 70.6% of students taking out loans.

The stratospheric increase in tuition amounts and the amount of loans being taken out by students in order to pay for these increases has presented fertile new market for Wall Street to exploit through financial derivatives. As the real estate market has continued to sputter, the student loan market has taken the lead in consumer loans. As was done with residential mortgages, Wall Street is now carving up these new loans, securitizing them, dividing them into tranches and selling them as new CDO products to investors looking for larger returns than they can find elsewhere in the bond markets.

In a way, student loans are the perfect consumer debt from which to create CDO's. First, many of the loans are subsidized by the Federal government. This means that if the borrower defaults, the government guarantees payment. The other reason these are prime for derivatives is that all student loans, whether subsidized or private are not dischargeable in bankruptcy, making it more difficult for the borrower to escape responsibility for paying back the loans.

However, despite the apparent security of CDO's based on student loans, you still have the same problems associated with the residential mortgage CDO's that collapsed the entire economy in 2008. First, the fact that these are overtly subsidized by the government is a bad thing for the American taxpayer when you look at defaults on student loan backed CDO's. The nature of the subsidization means that a TARP style bailout of the institutions issuing and purchasing these investments is almost inevitable. Second, none of these safeties prevents default on these CDO's. Even though the loans are not dischargeable in bankruptcy, that doesn't make the borrower pay back the loan, and with the job market failing to return to anything near what would be expected in a healthy economy, the chances of default are becoming greater and greater every day.

But what should frighten the American taxpayer the most about these CDO's is that the requirements for student loans are even less stringent that the requirements for residential mortgages even in the boom days of the sub prime mortgage bonanza. Most of the individuals taking out these loans are teenagers with no credit whatsoever and little knowledge about finances. With nothing done in any of the reform legislation passed after 2008 to curb lend to securitize behavior, and therefore very little risk placed on the initial lender, there is no reason for lenders not to lend to any student applying for these loans.

If you are looking for the types of "liar loans" that earned such infamy during the sub prime boom, with migrant farm workers buying $350,000 homes with 100% financing, look no further than the growth in for-profit educational institutions. According to the Department of Education, in 2007-08 the average amount borrowed for a student at a four-year private for profit institution was $24,635, with a whopping 97% of students borrowing to pay for the for profit educational experience. So, nearly every individual attending a for profit undergrad school is borrowing money, while at the same time the only requirement for admission seems to be a pulse and the prospect for employment after graduation seems illusory at best. These are loans that are guaranteed to fail and end up in default.

Another frightening development is the amount students are borrowing for post-secondary and professional degrees. Again, according to the U.S. Department of Education, in the 2007-08 academic year, law students were graduating with an average law school debt of $80,081 and an overall academic debt of $92,937. Medical students medical school debt for the same year was $119,424 with an overall academic debt of $127,272. These continue to increase in the years since. The problem is that although the cost of professional schools has continued to increase, the job market for these graduates has dried up in the years since the 2008 collapse. Add to this that with the advent of for profit law and medical schools, more and more people are pursuing professional degrees and taking on an ever increasing debt burden to do so, you have a recipe for financial disaster.

What all of this leads to is that student loan market is about to bust and bust big time. So, why will this be worse than the near total collapse of the economy in 2008?

There are a number of reasons this will be worse. The first and most obvious one is that the result of the collapse in 2008, the emergence of the Too Big To Fail financial institution which rather than making the economy safer has put it more at risk. A more apt name for these institutions would be Systematically Dangerous Institutions. Because of their enormous size, the failure of any one of these institutions puts the entire economic system in danger. These huge institutions are so enormous, that the taxpayer has no choice but to bail them out if there was anything approaching defaults in the derivative markets like there were in 2008.

Furthermore, despite what the TBTF institutions claim, the U.S. government still owns a large percentage of these institutions as they have not been able to repay the loans that were forwarded to them during the last bail out. If these institutions collapse, the American taxpayer is on the hook, as both the Treasury and the Federal Reserve are still holding huge amounts of toxic investments that the banks could not get rid of. For the last four plus years the Treasury and the Fed have been propping up these institutions and yet requiring nothing in return for their investment.

Another reason that the coming collapse is going to be worse is that the Federal Reserve allowed the huge investment banks such as Goldman-Sachs, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley to restructure as bank holding companies following the bail out. This not only allowed these banks to have access to cheap Fed loans, but also allowed them to further delve into commercial banking and further eroded what little separation there was from commercial and investment banking. The FDIC simply doesn't have enough money to cover the collapses that could result from the bursting of the student loan bubble, even though they could be on the hook for just such an occurrence if and when it happens (just look at what Bank of America and its subsidiary Merrill Lynch did when they were concerned about a European debt crisis here).

This collapse is going to happen. I can't tell you when. It could be this week, or this year, or in the next couple of years. There is nothing that either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney are proposing that will stop it. While we debate whether to extend tax cuts to the rich or to the middle class, while we worry about fiscal cliffs, while both sides of the aisle play chicken beating their chests for political gain, the greatest threat to our economy, a giant ticking time bomb of debt, is being ignored and will be ignored by both Democrats and Republicans.

But it will explode. And the results will be disastrous. And both sides will say no one saw it coming. And will blame each other. And we, the taxpayers, will suffer the consequences.

Where Is The Love?

Last Sunday as I sat in my church awaiting the sermon, I expected words of comfort for those of us seeking solace following the tragic events in Aurora, CO just a couple days earlier. Instead I was treated to a reminder of the difficulty all of us face to live up to challenge of being Christian.

This last week has not been a stellar one for the followers of Christ. As often happens following tragedies such as the inexplicable mass killing of movie goers at a midnight premier of the latest Batman movie, religious leaders came forth with various explanations for the shootings. Mostly, they went along the lines of the usual complaints about God not being allowed in schools, or religion being pushed out of the public square. Others took it further, blaming acceptance of gays and lesbians for a breakdown of our society. Even the usually respectable Billy Graham, who in his advanced age has grown further from his ecumenical love and respectful charm and has appeared to fall under the influence of his inept and crass eldest son, called American culture worse than Sodom and Gommorah, inferring that the shootings were somehow God's punishment for our sins.

This has sadly become the norm among Christians in America. It seems that the only difference between many of our mainstream churches and the Westboro "God Hates Fags" Baptist Church is the tactics, not the message. No wonder so many despise us.

Even those that showed some semblance of God's compassion offering prayers and remembrances for the victims missed the point. As was pointed out quite eloquently by Mother Valori from the pulpit last Sunday, where were the prayers for the shooter?

At first I was taken aback by the idea. Why should we show sympathy and love for someone who has shown such a manifestation of evil? The answer when you think about it is quite simple. Because that is exactly what we are called by Christ to do.

Christ's call for all of us is to love. Love each other as God loves you. Love your neighbor as yourself. Even love your enemies. This is the radicalness of Christ's love. The only acceptable reaction to anything or anyone for a follower of Christ is to love.

Where was the love from any of those preachers who sought out blame as an explanation for an inexplicable act? Who looked to find scapegoats and targets to attack and hold responsible? Is this what we have been called to do?

Being a Christian - that is living like Christ - is at once the simplest and most difficult thing to do. The late Catholic priest and radical activist Phillip Berrigan said "If enough Christians follow the Gospels they can bring any state to its knees." This is the power of love.

Christ commanded us to love. This is the only way we can truly practice our faith. We must meet hatred with love. And when we are beat down, shot, killed, beaten, we must show more love. For that is what it means to live like Christ.

So why are we doing such a piss poor job of it?

If I only had one wish for the media...

Only one? But there are so many things that could use changing or tweaking. False equivalency of views in an effort to seem fair, corporate control of news shows, the increasing focus on ratings rather than substance, the fourth hour of the Today Show, all the stories about side boob on the Huffington Post. You know all the things they rail against on The Newsroom.

But all of these fall to the wayside when I think about the single most outrageous thing I see in the news media and that is how they continue to equate rape and abuse with sex. It is appalling and it needs to stop.

Quite frankly I thought we had already fought and won this war a couple of decades ago. In my years as a student anti-rape activist all those idealized years ago, it seemed that I spent half my time speaking with the news media educating them on this very point. And for the most part they got it.

Fast forward to present day. I don't know if I stopped paying attention to the way media stories were reported, or things have really regressed in this area, but it seems that I can't look at news story about child trafficking, rape or other abuse without seeing a certain degree of prurient titillating equation of these horrific nightmares with sex.

Thanks to the evolution of tracking software, an increased focus by local and federal law enforcement agencies, and pressure by lobbying groups such as the National Association for the Protection of Children (protect.org), there have been an increasing number of high profile busts of child pornography and trafficking rings resulting in numerous arrests of the adult purveyors of this evil and rescues of the children enslaved in these unspeakable horrors.

The most common and shocking of the media's errors in reporting on these stories is the repeated referral to the victims of these crimes as teenage or child prostitutes. This term implies that somehow the victims of these unspeakable crimes were willful participants in the acts in which they were forced to participate. Whereas the media could refer to these children more appropriately as "teenage victims" the term prostitute is repeatedly foisted upon them, in essence victimizing them once again.

Recently, The Huffington Post inexplicably ran a story with the headline "Former Teen Prostitute's Racy Lingerie Show" complete with a picture of a young girl wearing a bikini top which looked like two facial tissues covering her small breasts. Besides wondering what the news value of this story was, the story's apparent exploitation of child slavery and its wink wink, nudge nudge tone was enough to make one sick to their stomach.

When the victims are older, the coverage is no less sensational, and even less compassionate. The recent scandal involving the systematic rape and harassment of female officers and enlisted members of the Air Force at a base in Texas offers a perfect example of this. Almost every story I read about this refers to it as the "Air Force Sex Scandal." Referring to a culture in which women are constantly subjected to the threat of rape and degradation on a daily basis, and an atmosphere where these crimes are either ignored or worse excused is not a "sex scandal." Using the word "sex" in describing this belittles the suffering these servicewomen have suffered and furthermore promotes an attitude wherein the perpetrator's actions are excused and the victims are blamed. This isn't a racy Friday night soft porn flick on Skinemax, it is a violent, devastating, dehumanizing crime and should be treated as such.

In fact, we rarely even hear the word rape anywhere in the media anymore. Instead we hear "sexual assault" or simply "assault." Rape is an ugly word, I admit. It should be an ugly word. It is an ugly crime. The word is viscerally violent and carries with it all of the pain and destruction that it denotes. Replacing it with a term that is more palatable softens the crime and lessens its impact on society.

It's time for the news media to get with the program. Stop conflating rape and sex. Stop conflating the enslavement of children with cheeky, exploitative juvenile bawdiness. Just stop. You are doing the public and yourself a disservice.

The Beauty of Hardware Stores

There is no smell quite as wonderful as the smell of a hardware store. It is a scent you will only find in a hardware store, and no Lowe's or Home Depot do not have this smell, as they arent really hardware stores As soon as you step foot inside, it hits you and for me, it brings me back.

There were really only two places I always wanted to go to with my Dad. The hardware store and the Millbrook Bread factory store. Both of these were for completely selfish reasons. At the Millbrook store, I could get a Peanuts coloring book, one of the most cherished prizes for a child in single digits. At the hardware store, it was my other most prized possession - a Tootsie Roll Pop of which the owner always kept a bag to give me and the other kids who tagged along with their fathers when they came to the store.

Everything about these trips was exciting for me. Riding in the car with my Dad in the old blue VW bus to the store in Lakeland, seeing the Winnebago parked in the driveway of the residence located behind the store, anticipating the sweet lollipop that would be mine at the end of the trip. While my dad would talk with the store owner, I would wander the aisles looking at Toro lawn mowers and Snapper trimmers, nails, drill bits, and power tools. During the 1979 World Series I even won an entire bag of Tootsie Pops from him betting on the Pirates to win it all. He was as happy handing over that bag as I was receiving it.

I had forgotten much of this from my childhood until the first time walking into the Shelby Hardware store several years ago. I had done most of my shopping for hardware and home repair items at Lowe's or the other big box stores for years, but on this one occasion I decided to go to the local hardware store to pick up an item and there it was - the smell. It took me back immediately to those cramped, dark aisles of the store in Lakeland and those trips with my Dad.

Since then, I have made it a habit to go to the local hardware store as often as I can. First it would be Shelby Hardware and now at my current house McSwain's True Value in Boiling Springs. The prices are a little bit more and you can't always find everything you need, but the service is superior and there is something you can't put a price on - the sense of community and the memories that you build when shopping at a local merchant.

Recently, a friend of mine organized a cash mob at a local merchant's store. The idea was to pick a deserving local merchant and have as many people show up at the same time and spend ten or twenty bucks to help boost their bottom line. The turnout was good and the impact was positive.

A colleague of mine couldn't attend the event, but donated $40 to it by dropping it off at my office. The mail in my office being what it is, I didn't receive it until after the event was over. I tried to return it, but my colleague told me to use it for the next one.

As things go, there hasn't been another one. The forty bucks was burning a hole in my desk drawer. So I decided to conduct an experiment with it. I would do my own cash mob by using the money only on locally owned businesses until the money was gone. I thought it wouldn't last long. I was wrong.

The money lasted almost a month. And during that month, I enjoyed fresh meats and vegetables from farmers markets, great meals at local restaurants, delicious coffee from local coffee houses, and other items from local businesses in and around my community. Not only did I enjoy wonderful things, but I met all sorts of new people, began relationships that will hopefully grow and last for years, and shared a little bit in their lives and they in mine.

I learned after planning this very article that this week is Shop Small Business week. I encourage everyone to start a new habit - spending whatever you can at a locally owned small business. Ten or twenty dollars a week may not seem like a lot, but if it is money you can reinvest in your local community rather than giving it to Starbucks or Wal Mart or Lowes, it is an investment that will go a long way toward saving jobs, families, and the very existence of your town.

Oh, and bring your kid along. You may just be planting memories that will bring a sudden smile decades from now.

Stop Giving Obama a Pass Already

In the aftermath of 9/11 when every politician on either side of the political aisle was drunkenly falling over themselves to see who could out macho the other and pass legislation even more outlandish and freedom restricting than the last, I had a conversation with a particularly conservative friend if mine. She stated, between sips of her extra fiery Bloody Mary, that she felt uncomfortable with some of the powers that were being given to the executive branch under the newly christened Patriot Act and wondered what my thoughts were. I agreed with her and told her that the best way for her to look at any grant of Presidential authority was to ask herself if she would be comfortable giving that power to Bill Clinton, and if she wasn't then it probably wasn't a good idea to give it to Bush, either.

That conversation seems particularly poignant to me now since I see those on the left repeatedly giving the Obama administration a pass as they grab more and more power for themselves at the expense of our freedom and the rule of law.

Just this week we saw the latest in an ongoing saga of stupid decisions on which the left continues to give Obama a pass. When the President invoked Executive Privilege in an attempt to avoid turning over subpoenaed Department of Justice documents my head hit my desk for about the hundredth time. But sure enough there was Democrat after Democrat lining up on this, that, and the other network news show to defend the President's misguided decision. And apparently none of them saw the irony.

Add this to the continued and expanded powers of indefinite detention which now apply to US citizens on US soil, the expanded drone program, the redefining of enemy combatant to include any male of fighting age who happens to be in the area of a drone strike in order to reduce reports of civilian casualties, a program of assassination of not only foreign enemies but US citizens the President himself deems worthy of being killed, and on, and on, and on, you start getting the idea that those on the left are simply willing to let the President do anything as long as he or she is someone for whom they voted.

Take the invoking of Executive Privilege for instance. I would have hoped for at least one elected person in the Democratic Party to have stood up and criticized the President for choosing very tenuous exercise of an extraordinary legal privilege in order to stymie a Congressional investigation into a legitimate subject of Congressional inquiry. The same elected officials who came to this President's defense were decrying GWB's use of this privilege in blocking the investigation into the leaking of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity, even though Bush's decision, while still improper, was a more legitimate exercise of Executive Privilege than Obama's.

The more we allow this President to expand on the power grabs given to the previous administration without criticism, the more we are ceding our rights to an ever more powerful executive at the cost of our own freedom, and the more we lose any credibility we have to criticize any expansion of governmental power by this or any future administration.

I have no problem with anyone who likes Obama or wants to vote for him because of the many good policies he has implemented. But just because you like his stand on health care, or gay rights, or immigration, doesn't mean you have to sit idly by while he sets fire to Constitution on everything else.

This is why I have such great admiration for people like reporter and author Chris Hedges or Icelandic Parliamentarian Brigitta Jonsdöttir who are two of the Plaintiffs in the groundbreaking lawsuit challenging the Obama administration on the indefinite detention powers granted under NDAA. By refusing to stay silent on a matter of such incredible importance to our basic liberties as Americans, they were able to expose the utter baselessness of the government's justifications for such expanded powers. They won a preliminary injunction against the government using indefinite detention under the NDAA.

The list of actions that I set forth above would have liberals taking to the streets in droves had the Bush administration even thought of implementing them. So, I ask to my liberal brethren the same thing I asked to my conservative friend ten years ago, would you feel comfortable granting these powers to Bush? If the answer is no, as I am sure if you are honest it is, then stand up and offer the same criticism to Obama.

If you won't, then you have already lost.

The Vagina Demogogues

If you haven't been following the news, Michigan is in the midst of a right wing legislative man-gasm. They have passed a series of laws, many of which immediately became law illegally (thanks Rachel Maddow for being the only person to realize this), which have taken power away from voters as well as infringing on citizens rights, especially if those citizens happened to be women.

The most recent in these series of laws would outlaw all abortions past 20 weeks without any exception. You were raped? Sorry. Your baby has a severe birth defect which renders it incapable of surviving outside the womb? Tough. You may die if your pregnancy continues to term? Well, that's just a chance you're going to half to take, because the men of the Michigan legislature say so.

Needless to say there were a few members of the fairer (and saner) sex that also happened to be members of the legislature who were more than a little upset about this legislation. One of these, Barbara Byrum proposed an amendment which would apply a requirement that men prove to a doctor that the procedure was necessary to save the man's life in order to have a vasectomy performed. A vote was taken denying the amendment without any debate. When Rep. Byrum attempted to address the amendment and speak, she was ruled out of order. I guess turn about is fair play everywhere but the Michigan legislature.

Later, Rep. Lisa Brown gave an impassioned speech about the law on the chamber floor. In part of the speech, in response to those members who had argued that this was a matter of religious liberty for them as devout Christians, that she was Jewish and that her faith dictates that when there was a conflict between the health of the fetus and the health of mother, the health of the mother wins, and that the abortion would not be recommended, but would be required. She further stated that since she was not forcing her religious beliefs on the Christian members, why were they forcing their beliefs on her. She ended her speech by saying "I'm flattered you're all so interested in my vagina. But no means no."

The next day both Brown and Byrum were informed that they would not be allowed to speak on the floor of the legislature because they "failed to maintain the decorum of the House of Representatives." Huh?

Apparently the dispositions of the male members of the Michigan House of Representatives are so sensitive that they simply can't be subjected to words like vagina or attempts by women to actually speak on their amendments to a bill that actually affects their health and lives.

It was pointed out by Brown that her male counterparts had actually engaged in fisticuffs on the House floor recently and had suffered no such similar action.

Has "vagina" somehow become verboten? Should Representative Brown said hoo-ha? Or coochie? Or blossoming flower? Or are the bastions of male dominated Michigan law dudes so sensitive that they would prefer "private part" or "area" or better yet "down there?"

Perhaps they are threatened by powerful women who aren't afraid to use medically correct anatomical terminology when talking about their feminine parts. I did notice that each of the women was loudly gaveled down by the presiding male of the chamber and that gavel he was hammering was awfully big. Maybe there are some shortcomings amongst the male members of the male members of the House.

What else would explain such action for saying "vagina?" I guess not only are the men of the Michigan House of Representatives operating on a third-grade level of intelligence, but also a third-grade level of maturity. I guess next we are going to ban women from serving in the legislature altogether because, as we all know, girls have cooties.

What it all really comes down to is that the men running the Michigan legislature simply can't handle women who speak loudly, proudly, and angrily in defense of their rights, especially when those rights are under constant assault by those same men. The Michigan men would prefer that their women be demure and compliant, laying back and accepting the daily volleys lobbed against them.

However, I have one last thing to say to those that are trying to silence Michigan women figuratively through their laws and literally through their punishments against female members of the House. If you can't talk about vaginas on the House floor, should you really be passing laws that affect them so much?

Why the Democrats Will Lose in 2012

We heard it from three different voices. All of them acting as surrogates of the Obama campaign. They're message was as clear as it was disturbing. "Lay off Wall Street."

No sooner was Cory Booker walking back his now infamous "nauseating" comment about Bain Capital that two other Democratic titans were letting loose with the same criticisms of Obama 2012's milquetoast critique of their opponent's record of destroying American companies for profit. Deval Patrick, the current occupier of the only political office Mitt Romney ever held and none other than former president and current Wall Street stooge Bill Clinton joined in with their own version of the "Lay off private equity" argument.

Of course none of this should surprise us. The same wizards of finance who shipped off American jobs overseas, bankrupted our economy with complex and destructive derivatives, and are living off of the teat of the Federal Reserve's promise of free money in exchange for nothing are also currently footing the bill for the up and comers in the Democratic Party.

Without contributions from private equity, Booker would never have been able to break the machine of corrupt Newark politics which dispatched him with ease in his first election. Patrick would not be able to maintain his governorship in a state which has become more and more of a toss up. And of course Clinton would have nobody to pay his six figure speaking fees to appear at Wall Street conferences where he gets to rub elbows with financial high rollers (and in some cases, recently, porn stars).

And these Democrats know on which side their bread is buttered. In return for their handsome campaign treasuries paid for by private equity, not only do these donors get incredibly favorable treatment across the board in the form of beneficial laws and tax codes, they also buy themselves the luxury of being free from any criticism at all.

Obama is learning this the hard way. In 2008, the Obama campaign raised more money from Wall Street than any campaign in history. Their money paid off handsomely for the financial sector of our economy as the new administration bypassed any criminal penalties for the 2008 crash, passed what amounted to very weak reforms that were essentially useless in changing any of the behavior that led to the collapse, installed all of the architects of the financial bail out as his Treasury Department, re-appointed Ben Bernanke to keep the free money flowing, and even stated that the underhanded practices and scheming that led to our financial meltdown were legal. Not bad for a few hundred million dollars.

But all of that wasn't enough. Because Obama occasionally would break out his populist rhetoric from the campaign, referring to Wall Street as a casino or the CEO's reaping twenty million dollar bonuses financed by tax payer cash "fat cats" Wall Street has chosen not to fill Obama's coffers quite as much as they did four years ago. The message was clear: if you hurt out feelings, we will hurt your bottom line.

So, when the campaign rolled out long form documentary style ads on the Internet criticizing Mitt Romney's time at private equity firm Bain Capital, the surrogates had to be called out. And of course in cunning fashion, Wall Street's surrogates happened to be Obama's surrogates as well.

Let's take a minute to look at what Bain Capital, and their cohorts in private equity do, shall we? Private equity firms, also called derisively "vulture capitalists" target struggling companies, buy them out, load them with debt, more often than not then strip them of their value, selling off the remaining assets, thereby profiting off of the remaining carcass. The result is a boon to the private equity company and usually a modest profit from the company's shareholders. The other result, inevitably, is the loss of jobs for the company's workers.

This is the modern version of the corporate raiders like Ivan Boesky and Michael Millkin in the 1980's. The only difference is that Boesky and Millkin ended up serving long prison sentences after being prosecuted by the justice departments of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Now, the raiders get to potentially run their own justice department.

After seeing the fall out from 2008, the resulting recession/depression, the enormous crises in home foreclosures and unemployment and the still stagnant economy, attacking Romney's record in private equity should be a no brainier. But the Democrats are apparently still unwilling to bite the hand that feeds it.

Look, a growing number of people both across the country and across the globe are waking up to the fact that the financial sector and its growing influence on our politics, is the enemy of free and democratic process. This has been the spark that has led to uprisings across the Middle East, Europe, Canada, and in the US in the Occupy movement as well as the breathtaking protests in Madison against the anti-worker Scott Walker administration. People realizing that their livelihoods and futures are being sacrificed for some kind of corporate kleptocracy are refusing to lie down and accept it.

But the Democrats stubbornly refuse to believe in this movement, or for that matter refuse to show any real beliefs at all. By refusing to attack Mitt Romney on what is likely his most vulnerable issue, the Democrats will once again avoid what should be a reasonably easy win against a remarkably unlikable opponent. The same goes for the unwillingness if the DNC to aggressively campaign against Walker in his recall election in Wisconsin and the lukewarm support they are showing anti-Wall Street crusader Elizabeth Warren in her bid to unseat Scott Brown in the US Senate race in Massachusetts.

Of course by not fully representing their own true constituents, the Democrats deserve to lose, and by continuing to support front men for Wall Street running for office as Democrats, we all will end up with the government we deserve.

Five More Random Thoughts

I haven't done a random thoughts in a while and since there's quite a bit going on, I thought I'd give it a go.

1. Must be election time again

Remember the color codes? Yellow for be on edge. Orange for start to panic. Red for duck and cover, etc. We have fortunately left this little exercise in maintaining power by scaring the shit out of the populace behind. Or have we?

As the election nears, suddenly terror attacks are all the rage. It seems every week we hear reports of one attack or another broken up by law enforcement just in the nick of time. In the past few months we have heard about terrorists with guns and bombs in Washington, blowing up bridges in Cincinnati, and the latest version of the underwear bomb (this one fits into briefs instead of boxers). Add to this the stories about would-be terrorists hiding bombs inside their body and in pets on airplanes and you would think that we were under high alert all the time.

Of course what all these "attacks" have in common is they all involve either informants or undercover agents for the FBI or CIA. I'm starting to think that if it wasn't for these agencies, Al Qaeda may not be active at all.

This isn't anything new, of course. Once again, the Obama administration is taking a page from GWB when it comes to foreign policy. In 2004, I fully expected a "red" warning in the weeks running up to election. Of course they didn't need to because Bin Laden did the work for them by releasing an ominous video just before the election which served the administration's purposes just fine.

Ever since 9/11, we have looked for real leadership in this nation. Instead of leaders we keep having charlatans selling us security in exchange for our rights. In 2008, we thought we were getting an FDR. But instead of "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," we got another dose of "The only thing we have is fear."

2. Stop!

There are a lot of reasons to criticize Mitt Romney. If you don't feel you have enough, wait minute and he'll say something to add to your cache.

But there is one thing that I am hearing more and more commentators on the left using and that is attacking his faith. STOP! We're better than this, people. There is absolutely no reason to make Mittens's Mormonism an issue in this race and the more it is done, the more it is going to give rise to a backlash against the left.

Let the right turn themselves into pretzels over their own discomfort with Romney's religion. We simply do not need to engage in this type of outrageous bigotry.

3. A Winning Strategy

Amid all of the bluster and non-issues that are being portrayed in the media's coverage of the presidential election, there is one issue out there that almost no one is talking about. It also just happens to be an issue that is ripe for the picking for the President's reelection team.

One thing has been constant in every election across the world so far this year and that has been the people's rejection of austerity in favor of economic policies focusing on growth and jobs. This election should be about the same thing.

It is clear that the Romney camp is a fan of austerity measures. This will become abundantly clear if he picks someone like Paul Ryan, the biggest proponent of such measures, as his VP pick. They are promoting economic measures which focus on slashing government spending and programs, raising taxes on the poor and middle class, and cutting taxes for the wealthy. It doesn't seem to matter that these policies have never worked anywhere and are currently throwing the UK and most of Europe back into recession.

In his first term, Obama has been all too eager to give into neo-Liberal economic policies and focus ostensibly on deficit reduction rather than job creation. So it is quite possible that he won't be willing to go all in against these austerity measures like he should.

We know from his first campaign that Obama is a master at populist rhetoric even if he isn't willing to follow through with populist policies once elected. He could pull this off and if he and the Democratic party ride the wave of anti-austerity opinion, they could end up taking back the house as well.

Of course whether he and the rest of the democrats would follow through on this once elected remains to be seen and past performance does not leave me feeling optimistic.

4. Silver Lining of the Week

I'm trying to be more of an optimist. So, rather than ranting and raving about what an absolute idiot Jamie Dimon is, or how evil he is, or how his head should be chopped off, I will look on the bright side of his bank's $2 Billion loss on a wild bet from a division which was supposed to be helping the bank avoid losses.

On the bright side, at least this guarantees that he won't be Obama's treasury secretary in a second term. See, there's hope for the economy yet.

5. My Cheap Unfunny Pundit Schtick

I've noticed that in order to be accepted in the pantheon of punditry that you have to have a rhetorical gimmick that you and your fans think is hilarious but in reality is pretty unfunny. You also have to use it ad nauseum just so your base can yuck it up as much as possible while getting maximum eye roll from everyone else. An example would be Sarah Palin's "lame stream media". There's another right wing asshole whose name I can't remember who always says "New York Slimes.". Funny stuff, right? I mean it must have taken you all of 10 seconds and the comedy sensibility of a 12 year-old to come up with those.

So, taking a cue from these pillars of political commentary, I've decided to join the fray. I've done it in the past a little by referring to Fox News as Fox Comedy (ok, I wasn't trying to be funny, I just didn't really think that they were really serious. I mean, c'mon, right?).

So, because I want to be accepted by this esteemed fraternity, I will from now on refer to Republicans as Banana Republicans and Democrats as Plutocrats. See, aren't I funny? I can hear your knees slapping already, right? I know!!!!

On second thought, perhaps I'll just stick to not trying to insult the intelligence of my audience, as small as you may be.

'Til next time...

Cease and Desist

THE LAW OFFICES OF JOEL SCHWARTZ

May 10, 2012

Rev. Sean Harris
Berean Baptist Church
Fayetteville, NC

RE: Cease and desist

Dear Rev. Harris:

I am writing to you on behalf of my client, Jesus Christ. Yes, that Jesus Christ. The Big Kahuna, the Son of Man, your Lord and Savior, THE Jesus Christ.

It has come to my client's attention that you have been making certain statements and encouraging certain behaviors while invoking His name. Specifically, in a recent sermon, my client states that you encouraged your flock to crack the wrists of boys when they display effeminate behavior, then to punch said boys when they play with dolls. Furthermore, you then encouraged your congregation to make said boys dig a ditch because this is what boys do. You went on to state that when their daughters start acting butch they were to rein them in and make the walk, talk, dress, and smell like a girl. Again, I reiterate that this was all done in my client's name.

It goes without saying that my client is rather upset by your invoking of His name in order to encourage such un-Christlike behavior. Mr. Christ takes His name and reputation very seriously. By attributing this type of behavior to Him, you have harmed my client's reputation in His community and caused serious damage to Him.

We have no choice but to demand that you cease and desist from any further such invocation of my client's name thereby further damaging my client's reputation in the community. If you insist on continuing to invoke my client's name for such despicable behavior we will have no choice but to take action against you. My client has authorized to file suit against you for defamation of character, violation of my client's right of publicity, and for placing my client in a false light publicly. If this doesn't convince you, my client has invoked his rights as a Diety, wherein he can, well, just trust me, you don't want to go there (does the word "smite" mean anything to you?).

You are not alone in this. My client has retained me to send out quite a few of these letters to others in your position. I've been quite busy lately and this work now accounts for my entire practice. But, don't worry, my client has deep pockets. He's got more money than God. Well, actually, he has exactly as much money as God.

But, I digress. In summary, I expect that you will comply with my client's demands. Failure to do so will result in you hearing from me again, or you may just be hearing from my client directly.

Yours very truly,

Joel Schwartz, Esq.

Do North Carolina's Marriage Laws Violate Religious Freedom?

Jennifer and Renee met in college. They have maintained a monogamous relationship for many years, settled in the same city, have lived together and made a life together. They recently found a church in the city in North Carolina where they live which welcomed them as full members of their church and they have become active in their church's life. Recently, they decided that they wanted to solemnize their relationship and have their minister perform a wedding ceremony in their new church. They knew it was not legal for them to get married in North Carolina, but they wanted to have the ceremony nonetheless. They spoke with their minister and he had some hesitation. "You know, I can't perform a marriage ceremony without a marriage license and you can't get one of those in North Carolina," said the minister.

Undaunted, they went to their register of deeds and applied for a marriage license and were of course denied. They returned to their minister and after much thought and prayer, he decided that he would go ahead and perform the ceremony. "What harm could it do," he thought, "it's not a legal marriage, but I want you two to feel like you are full and equal members of our church community as we all consider you to be."

The ceremony was quite the event and even got coverage from the local media.

The next day, however, the minister found himself under arrest and facing a fine and possible imprisonment for performing the ceremony.

Sound far fetched? Well, under North Carolina law the above scenario appears to be quite possible.

And I'm not even talking about the wrong-headed and unnecessary constitutional amendment that the religious right came up with to try to spur turnout to the polls. I'm talking about the regular, old, run of the mill North Carolina statutes that cover the process that one has to go through to get married.

North Carolina's marriage laws are quite antiquated and painfully heterosexual. They are contained in Chapter 51 of the General Statutes.

According to North Carolina General Statute (NCGS) Chapter 51-1 the requisites for a marriage are as follows:
A valid and sufficient marriage is created by the consent of a male and female person who may lawfully marry, presently to take each other as husband and wife, freely, seriously and plainly expressed by each in the presence of the other, either:
(1)  a.  In the presence of an ordained minister of any religious denomination, a minister authorized by a church, or a magistrate; and
      b.  With the consequent declaration by the minister or magistrate that the persons are husband and wife; or
(2) In accordance with any mode of solemnization recognized by any religious denomination, or federally or State recognized Indian Nation or Tribe.

So, let's look at that first statute a bit. We know that it's only for boys and girls, not boys and boys or girls and girls. You have to be serious (No Elvis impersonators here!). And the only persons who can perform a marriage are a magistrate, an ordained minister, or an Indian Chief. OK. Sounds fairly innocuous.

The next section 51-1.2 states that marriages between persons of the same gender (interesting use of the wrong term -- I think they meant sex), even if performed in other states, are not valid in North Carolina. You know, for those for whom that whole thing in the preceding section about being between a man and a woman wasn't clear.

Of course, if those two sections still weren't quite clear enough, the Amendment to the state constitution stating that a marriage between one man and one woman is the only yadda, yadda, yadda...OK, we get it. The State really doesn't like gay people. Enough, already! (Except of course, that a lot of us do, but that's beside the point).

It starts to get a little bit dicey, though when you look further down in the statutes. Section 51-6 states that a Solemnization without a license is unlawful. "No minister, officer, or any other person authorized to solmnize a marriage under the laws of this State shall perform a ceremony of marriage between a man and woman, or shall declare them to be husband and wife, until there is delivered to that person a license for the marriage of the said persons, signed by the register of deeds of the county in which the marriage license was issued or by a lawful deputy or assistant." OK, those of us who have read the constitution are starting to get a little uncomfortable now.

If that wasn't bad enough, the next section, 51-7, makes doing so a criminal offense. "Every minister, officer, or any other person authorized to solemnize a marriage under the laws of this State, who marries any couple without a license being first delivered to that person, as required by law, or after the expiration of such license, or who fails to return such license to the register of deeds within 10 days after any marriage celebrated by virtue thereof, with the certificate appended thereto duly filled up and signed, shall forfeit and pay two hundred dollars ($200.00) to any person who sues therefore, and shall also be guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor."

WHOA, NELLY!!!!!! HOOOOOOOOLD EVERYTHING RIGHT THERE, MISTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The First Amendment of the United States Constitution says in its very first sentence "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Usually government intrusions into religion arguably violate the first clause -- the establishment clause -- as they seem to be an attempt to write into law the beliefs of one religion at the expense of others. But North Carolina's marriage laws seem to violate the second clause -- the free exercise clause.

Many religions accept and celebrate gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgendered members and clergy. Three mainstream protestant religions in America, the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, and the Presbyterian Church (USA), now accept openly gay members and clergy. Along with this many Jewish congregations along with Unitarians and various other denominations recognize and accept gay members and celebrants. Along with this, in the States where it is legal, many of these religious congregations also perform same sex marriages as part of their beliefs.

But what if a minister of any of these, or any other religion wants to perform a ceremony for their members, even though it won't have any legal affect, simply because they want to celebrate and solemnize for their own religious purposes their members relationship, commitment and love for one another and recognize their relationship as being equal to the heterosexual members of their congregation and in the eyes of God as they believe? What right does the government have not only to tell a minister that he or she doesn't have the right to do this, but that if they do, they can go to jail and have a criminal record?

This certainly gives support to the Libertarian argument that the State has no business in marriage to begin with. They argue that marriages should be left to the realm of religion and not be a matter for the State at all. Of course, this would never happen because if it did, then same-sex marriage would be legal everywhere (which I would add would be fine for most Libertarians, the Paul family notwithstanding).

Look, I'm fine with the State of North Carolina saying that for a marriage to be recognized by the State and for the couples who want to have the legal protections that the State grants to married couples that they have to follow the statutes set forth (actually, I'm not fine with it, but I think they have a right to do so). But where I think North Carolina crosses the line is dictating to religious leaders how and to whom they can grant the blessings of their church, and in many, if not most religions, marriage is one of the major blessings that a church can bestow on its members. To deny this fundamental right to religions in our state, and even criminalize the performing of a ceremony outside of the dictates of the State, I believe is a clear violation of the prohibitions set forth in the free exercise clause of the First Amendment.

I'd love to see this put to the test. It certainly would cause some consternation among the anti-gay citizens of our great state and that is always a good thing. I'd love to hear the thoughts of others on this subject and whether or not you agree with my analysis of this issue.

Thanks again for taking the time to read and discuss this.

My Journey of Faith

Ronald Reagan famously said when asked why he switched parties, "I didn't leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me." That sentiment aptly describes some of my feelings about the Catholic Church, a church in which I was baptized, raised, confirmed and married. It is a church which provided me with the moral background which has guided me throughout my life, gave me a first rate education throughout elementary and high school, and kept taking me back time and again when I would leave it and then eventually be drawn back for various reasons. It is also the church to which I find myself no longer able to call myself a member because I simply can no longer justify the divergences in our philosophies and beliefs.

My religious journey has been one which has been as heart wrenching as it has been joyful, as agonizing as it has been rewarding. I share it with you here not to convince you of any particular belief is "correct" as there is no such thing as far as I can see or to criticize any particular belief. I share it simply to help me make some sense of everything that has happened so far and perhaps to seek understanding both in myself and in others.

I was blessed to be raised in a parish outside of Syracuse, NY that was led by an incredible priest who saw his duty as not only spreading the word of God, but leading his congregation to live God's word by seeking justice in our community and in the world. Fr. Tom McLaughlin was not your ordinary priest. An Irish Catholic priest who preached more like a black Baptist minister, it was not surprising that he said that the closest he ever felt to his faith was when he marched with Martin Luther King in Selma, Alabama. Fr. Tom was nowhere near traditional and he at times ignored the dictates of the bishops, especially when those dictates tried to bring particular political issues into the pulpit. But where other parishes were closing or having to consolidate, we had to build a bigger church because parishioners were standing outside the doors of our small church at all three Masses on Sunday.

I loved my church. Not just my parish, but the church as a whole. I saw the Catholic Church as one that welcomed all people. One that stood for justice in our society and was a church of love and inclusion.

As I grew older, as with many young adults I grew away from the church. Like many people gaining new knowledge and insight, inevitably there are conflicts and often those conflicts lead to contempt. Church grew less and less important to me. I questioned my faith. I looked at other religions taking bits of truth where I found them.

For years I drifted, short on faith, rarely attending church. When I lived in the DC area, there was a Catholic church literally across the parking lot from my apartment. But I think I attended mass there twice, both when my then girlfriend who was a little less conflicted with her faith was visiting me.

Still, whenever I would move to a new community, the first thing I would do would be to find the nearest Catholic Church. Some of it was a sense of obligation, some of it was a sense of finding a social circle with similar backgrounds - a sort of tether on which to secure myself. But ultimately the doubts would get the best of me and I would fall back into my drift.

The next big step in my journey would involve a relationship which would eventually become my first marriage. She was raised Presbyterian and I would attend with her and her family most weekends. This was the first church in which I saw a woman leading worship as the interim associate minister at the time was a woman. I enjoyed my time at that church and although I couldn't quite buy the whole predestination thing, I did find the community welcoming. We were eventually married in that church (complete with kilt and bagpipes) but at our new home together we went back to our drifting ways.

It wasn't until the shock of 9/11 and the following week long coverage of the subsequent outpouring of bereavement and mourning that I returned to church. I followed the tragedy of Fr. Mychal Judge's death as he was ministering to his beloved firemen. I watched his funeral Mass as well as the funeral Mass of Barbara Olson, a conservative commentator and wife of Solicitor General Ted Olson. The latter Mass was held at the very church in Arlington, VA that I had attended on those couple of occasions, across the parking lot from my apartment. We felt we needed to attend a service that Sunday, but I made the request that we go to the Catholic church because I wanted something with which I was familiar.

After that, I started attending Mass regularly. As my marriage deteriorated for reasons having little to do with faith, my devotion to the faith in which I was raised became stronger. I found myself praying regularly seeking guidance (something very rare for me). I purchased a Bible and read the passages listed in the church bulletin daily. After we separated, I started a relationship with a Catholic woman who like myself had a somewhat rocky relationship with her faith. We attended church together regularly. That relationship eventually ran its course, and I met the woman who would become my wife and true partner in life. She, too, was Catholic and our shared faith helped cement our relationship. I had my first marriage annulled by the Catholic church and Celena and I exchanged our vows during a full wedding Mass on May 14, 2005.

So why is it, after all that the faith that raised me, formed me, and has played such a major role in my life have I at the age of 41 found myself leaving the Catholic church for another? Well, for the most part it comes down to finding the Catholic church to have become more dogmatic, more exclusive, and simply less accepting of any kind of debate among its ranks. It is hard to have a conversation when one side stops listening.

There are several examples in just the past weeks that illustrate my disenchantment with Catholicism. In the news in the past weeks were the Vatican's very serious rebuke and investigation into American nuns who were apparently focusing too much on social justice and ministering to the sick and poor and less time on dogmatic political ideas; the Catholic League (which let's face it with one dude with an Internet connection and a Rolodex of media contacts) calling for a boycott of the Daily Show because he made fun of the nonexistent War on Christmas; and a bishop in the Midwest who likened President Obama to both Hitler and Stalin during a sermon. The church which was once so welcoming was becoming increasingly dogmatic and intolerant of diverging views.

Unfortunately, the joy which I once found in my religion had been replaced by an increasing despair. Furthermore, I worried about my daughter and what she would face in the future if this trend continues as I expect it to. I did not want her to be raised in a church in which she would be seen as less than equal as anyone else and I did not want her to be not accepted or even worse to become intolerant of others who may be different from her.

But I don't mean for this to be a diatribe about the Catholic church. I have many friends and family who have found great faith and solace in the Catholic church. I will be forever grateful for the support the church gave me and my family during the ordeal of my mother's recent death. The church has a lot of good in it and for those who continue to find comfort and good in it, I have nothing but respect and well wishes.

You see, this is not a journey of loss, but a triumph of rediscovery of a faith which I thought dead and gone. It is a story of joy overcoming sadness and despair. It is a story of rebirth in which I rediscovered the tremendous love that faith in Christ brings.

There are three instances in which I can pinpoint in which I truly felt myself filled with the Holy Spirit. The first was the weekend of my confirmation (my parish obviously did a pretty good job on that one). The second was during the lowest period of my divorce when I was living in an efficiency apartment with a Murphy bed and awoke one morning to pouring rain, near freezing temperatures and could only think to myself "What a beautiful day". The third was the first Sunday I attended Mass at the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer in Shelby, NC (and for that matter every Sunday since on which I have attended).

What I experienced in my attendance at Redeemer was a reawakening of my faith. My experiences with what I perceived to be an ever shrinking and exclusionary Catholic church left me doubting the beliefs with which I had grown and even doubting my belief in God. I felt that there was something wrong with me since I was constantly told that the beliefs I knew in my heart to be true were wrong.

My wife and I sought out a place in which we could raise our daughter in a religious tradition. We valued the morals that our Catholic upbringing instilled in us, but we had stopped attending Mass at our local church due to severe disagreements we had with the current pastor of that parish. We had tried other parishes in neighboring communities, but none seemed to be a good fit and were a significant distance from us as well.

I first was drawn to Redeemer after reading that they were hosting a discussion against North Carolina's Amendment One which would enshrine in the state's constitution discrimination against gays and lesbians as well as harming any number of other domestic relationships.

Although I had for years advocated for LGBT rights and have had many close friends who are gay, I had been raised in a religious tradition which shunned and condemned gays and lesbians and treated them as a form of evil. I often wondered why so many of my gay friends identified themselves as Christian as the two things seemed mutually exclusive to me based on my religious background and tradition. Of course, as was made clear to me upon attending my new church, the reason they identify as Christian is because God's love encompasses all of us in all of our individual selves as important and valued members of His family and celebrates our humanness fully and openly.

I soon realized that it wasn't the message, but the delivery system that had alienated me. My faith with which I had struggled my entire life was suddenly stronger than ever. I was filled with a sudden sense of joy. The dissonance that I felt for years sitting in the pews of the various Catholic parishes I attended was replaced by a sense of calm and peace, as the realization that I could at once be fully committed to my faith while at the same time holding the beliefs I have on social and political issues fully settled on me.

I am grateful to Mother Valori Sherer, Deacon Pam Bright and all of the wonderful members of my new church community for welcoming me and my family with open arms and making us feel welcome and for building such a loving and welcoming community of faith. Most of all, though I thank my very understanding and ever patient wife for making this journey with me even though it has been even more difficult for her and even though she is not where I am yet in her journey. I thank God for her courage and understanding throughout all of this.

This has been my journey of faith. Although it may end up somewhere different than yours, I hope everyone reading this can find the love, peace, and joy that I have found on my journey. Whether it is a journey of faith or of non-faith, of whatever denomination or religion, the truth is there to be revealed to you as it is meant for you to find it. The search can be painful and fraught with fear and desperation, but the result can be worth much more than all the hardships.

This journey has made me more confident in myself, closer with my wife and my daughter, better able to see Christ in all those with whom I come in contact daily, and more loving in everything I do.

Thanks be to God.

Dear Lord, We Have Seven More Months of This?

I remember several years ago when there was great consolidation of media outlets into the hands of just a few large corporations that there were great concerns voiced by many about the resulting threat to journalistic objectivity. These warnings were largely ignored.

Next, there was the combining of news divisions with entertainment divisions within these large corporations. There were many saying that hard news would be tossed aside for sensationalistic "if it bleeds, it leads" tabloid style journalism. Again, ignored.

Shortly thereafter came the rise of the cable news stations and the 24-hour news cycle which took the earlier developments and put them on steroids and combining the sensationalism and profit motive with political editorials disguising themselves as news.

Put all of these together and you have the 2012 election in a nutshell. It seems that most of the "news" organizations would rather gin up controversy, looking for ratings rather than the truth. They end up treating the campaign more like a reality show than a serious event resulting in the choice of a person who is arguably more powerful than any other human on earth.

In the last weeks, we've seen several examples of this. Two in particular stick out - the Romney etch-a- sketch comment and the Ann Romney has never worked a day in her life comment. Both of these were essentially non-events. Both were throw away comments, one by an advisor to Mitt Romney about the truth that every candidate has to change their positions between the primary and general elections and the other making a point about how out of touch somebody with a couple of Cadillacs, a few mansions, and an elevator for her car is with the average American woman.

But in our über-sensationalist, infotainment news industry, these become what passes for serious news taking up hours of our daily coverage while anything discussing serious issues is thrown aside.

Combine the need for ratings with the unbelievable laziness of the modern television journalist and the presentation gets even worse. During my recent battle with my own digestive system, I spent the intermittent conscious moments of my day watching various news programs. Needless to say, I was less than impressed with the quality of the information put forth as newsworthy or even as fact.

One such report was of the "study" released last week stating that the President's health care law would add hundreds of millions of dollars to the deficit. This was reported as if it was an independent non-partisan government report. The graphic showing the amount of the increase listed the author's name. Since I had nothing better to do than lay in bed and run to the bathroom, I did a quick search of the individual. Within 5 minutes I was able to see that far from being objective this was a report put out by a think-tank funded by the Koch brothers and the study was for lack of a more apt term, a lie. But millions of viewers of ABC News think that Obamacare is going to add hundreds of millions of dollars to the deficit because the news said so and apparently there was no one in the news division willing to take the 5 minutes that I did to figure this out.

Then there is the arrest of George Zimmerman for the killing of Trayvon Martin. It amazed me how the shooting of an unarmed black teen could become such a raging controversy where we were actually having debates across our television dials over whether the unarmed black teen should have been shot to death. Seriously.

I was hoping that once the arrest was made that some of the sensationalism of the story would die down. Boy was I wrong. The morning after the arrest, all of the mainstream media outlets were showing George Zimmermann's receipt from the jail's commissary, including commentary on the size of his underwear (large) and his favorite snack food (Fritos). Apparently there were no adults in charge who were there to inform the networks that this was not news and was in fact trivializing an unimaginable tragedy wherein a young man's life was senselessly cut short.

So, we have seven more months of this kind of tawdry, embarrassing, scandal making coverage to go before we elect a President. Combine this with the billions of dollars of super PAC ads, all of which will make Himalayas out of the mole hills of differences between the major party candidates and I think we may end up with an electorate even more fed up with our political process than we have now. Yes, that may in fact be possible.

So, I think I may just take the rest of the campaign off. I'd simply rather read a book, or play with my daughter, or watch Syracuse sports, or a million other things than watch ginned up controversies between the campaigns of two well heeled conservatives vying to see who can better help Wall Street bankers get richer, trample on our fundamental rights, and bomb the hell out of this week's newest enemy of the state. Why do I care? Hell, why do any of us?

Why Obama's Waiver of NDAA Provisions Means Squat

There were great "Huzzahs!" across the liberal landscape last week as President Obama announced that he had signed a "waiver" of some of the most troubling of the provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2012. According to the announcement, the new rules which deal with Section 1022 of the law (previously Section 1032 as set forth in the original Senate bill). The White House announced that this section already is inapplicable to United States citizens and the President was waiving the applicability to legal resident aliens. Furthermore, the President was allowing for those who are required to be held under military custody to be transferred back to civilian custody when necessary..

Immediately following this announcement, both the liberal and mainstream press hailed this as a win for civil liberties (see the Huffington Post article on the announcement here). Posts on Reddit as well as on Facebook and the twitterverse were celebrating Obama's "veto" of the NDAA detention provisions. Once again President Obama was a friend to freedom and was living up to his promises to be the champion of civil liberties and the Constitution on which he campaigned in 2008.

Except that he isn't and his "rules" do no such thing.

I have previously discussed this bill on this blog in my post "We Are All Well and Truly F***ed" which can be found here. As pointed out there, this section of the NDAA only deals with the requirement that anyone covered under this bill be detained by the military and held indefinitely in military custody. It is true that this section does not apply to U.S. citizens and under these rules the President is agreeing that he is not going to apply this to legal permanent resident aliens either. Of course this does not prevent him from doing so if he changes his mind, which he can, of course, do since he is the one making the rules in the first place.

But what is genuinely appalling about the pass that the President is receiving on this is that nothing in these rules addresses the biggest and most troubling aspect of this law in the first place. That is that the President is still given the authority under this law to detain and hold indefinitely without charge or trial anyone, including United States citizens, who is deemed by the President in his sole judgment to be a terrorist or to have committed a belligerent act against the United States. Let me state that again so that you out there who are so scared of a Rick Santorum presidency that you are willing to buy any of the bullshit that the Obama campaign is shoveling at you: NOTHING IN THESE RULES CHANGES THE PRESIDENT'S ABILITY TO DETAIN AND HOLD INDEFINITELY WITHOUT CHARGE OR TRIAL ANYONE, INCLUDING UNITED STATES CITIZENS, WHO IS DEEMED BY THE PRESIDENT IN HIS SOLE JUDGMENT TO BE A TERRORIST OR TO HAVE COMMITTED A BELLIGERENT ACT AGAINST THE UNITED STATES.

This law sets up a despotic presidency and it was supported by almost all of the United States Senate and House of Representatives. Much was made in the media of the opposition to the bill by the FBI and CIA who said that it would harm their ability to pursue terrorist suspects in the United States. But, again, most of this coverage missed the point. The FBI and the CIA are all for indefinite detention without charge. It makes their life easier. They just didn't want the military to have all the fun, they wanted in the game themselves. Thus the changes to the law which cut out the requirement that the detention be by the military.

So, all of this celebrating among liberals over this decision of President Obama to do an about face and suddenly embrace individual liberties was all for nothing. The fact that the implementation of rules which have no effect on the very law which caused all of the rightful rancor among civil libertarians on both sides of the political divide in the first place, is being hailed as proof that a second Obama term would be much different than the first shows a lot about those doing the celebrating. It shows that the left is either willfully blind to what is happening due to their fear of a truly draconian right wing Presidency or it shows that they really didn't understand this law in the first place. Either conclusion is troubling.

If the left is being willfully blind to the abuses of the Obama administration in the realm of civil liberties, it shows a lack of real concern over these issues in the first place. It is one thing to vote for someone knowing that he is not the real deal because his opposition is so horrible, it is truly another to hail your choice as someone who truly believes in what you do. If you are voting for Barack Obama because you really believe that he is a civil libertarian and will fight for individual rights and liberties in his second term, you are stupid and there is nothing I can do for you. If you know this is not the case, but you are going to proclaim that he is such because he passed some meaningless rules regarding the worst piece of legislation he signed then you are a liar and any authority you claimed to have on these issues is forever forfeited.

It is also quite possible that those hailing this decision simply never understood the NDAA or its ramifications for the rights and liberties of ordinary Americans in the first place. This would certainly make sense since if people on either side of the political spectrum understood what this legislation, along with a whole host of other attacks on our civil liberties that have occurred over the last decade, there would have (or should have) been a revolution by now. Of course those on the left are not immune from the extraordinary lack of engagement in political and civil affairs that has seemed to become the norm for American citizens. Since 2001, the United States has seen the implementation of the largest Federal bureaucracy ever devised whose sole purpose is to restrict liberty and engage in unprecedented collection of information (read: spy) on American citizens in the history of our republic in the Department of Homeland Security, the unprecedented transfer of wealth to the richest individuals in the nation, as well as the largest criminal conspiracy ever to be pulled off in the banking meltdown of 2008, all done with the seal of approval of our Federal government. All the while, the only thing that the average American citizen seemed to care about was how cheap his gas was going to be and who was going to survive on this week's Dancing With the Stars. We get the government we deserve, and what we deserve right now is either Barack Obama or one of the four idiots who are battling to lose to him.

Look, I get that Barack Obama might be the lesser of two evils in 2012. But don't try and convince me that the lesser of two evils isn't evil.