Just a heads up, these figures were all tallied up last week. There may have been more coverage since then. The data comes from this website, all you have to do is search the person's name.
http://www.politifact.com/
I've been keeping an eye on Politifact's rating of President Obama's "truthiness" as Stephen Colbert likes to call it. Last week in one of my semi-regular checkups I decided to rate him against the remaining GOP Presidential candidates, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul. President Obama's rates don't really surprise me, partly because I've been paying attention to it but mostly because the GOP is generally not on good terms with the truth, with an exception of Ron Paul. Without further adieu, here are the various rankings from different points of view:
First, here is the breakdown of statements reviewed:
1) President Obama - 341
2) Mitt Romney - 108
3) Newt Gingrich - 47
4) Ron Paul - 31
5) Dick Santorum - 20
Here is the ratio of True/Half True/False ranked by highest truth percentage:
1) President Obama 46% Truth, 25% Half True, 29% False
2) Ron Paul 45% Truth, 16% Half True, 39% False
3) Mitt Romney 36% Truth, 27% Half True, 37% False
4) Dick Santorum 18% Truth, 36% Half True, 46% False
5)Newt Gingrich 17% Truth, 23% Half True, 60% False
Here it is broken down, giving the benefit of the doubt to half truths:
1) Obama 71% Truth, 29% False
2) Romney 63% Truth, 37% False
3) Paul 61% Truth, 39% False
4) Santorum 54% Truth, 46% False
5) Gingrich 40% Truth, 60% False
The Biggest Liars:
1) Gingrich
2) Santorum
3) Paul
4) Romney
5) Obama
For Pants on Fire (really freaking bad lies)
1) Gingrich 9 out of 47 - 19%
2) Romney 10 out of 108 - 10%
3) Santorum 2 out of 22 - 9%
4) Paul 2 out of 31 - 6%
5) Obama 5 out of 341 - 1%
100% True
1) Obama 81/341 - 24%
2) Paul 7/31 - 23%
3) Romney 21/108 - 19%
4) Santorum 3/22 - 14%
5) Gingrich 4/47 - 9%
President Obama outpaces everyone pretty well when it comes to honestly with Ron Paul close behind. Mitt Romney isn't bad off. Dick Santorum is slightly on the truthy side, but it is a tough call. My favorite part about all of this though is Newt Gingrich's breakdown. You can literally say that every other word out of Newt Gingrich's mouth is a lie, and that is still an understatement.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Boehner Ethics Violation
Speaker of the House, John Boehner, is no stranger to ethics violations. Last summer, in response to the Obama administration's decision to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act, which was discriminatory towards many people, Speaker Boehner hired outside counsel to defend the act. The problem is, while he does technically have the authority to do that, he authorized the payment of $500,000 to the firm he hired to defend 10 cases that were currently before courts. This amount makes up over 35% of the total money appropriated for the Office of General Counsel meaning he has over obligated the office's available funds, encroaching on operating expenses and even salaries. Due to the Antideficiency Act, this is very illegal, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. Fast forward to the past month or so and all the controversy over the Keystone XL pipeline owned by TransCanada. Ignoring the fact that the company is also facing charges for misleading on how many jobs it would create by 10s of thousands, ignoring the potential dangers to the environment and ignoring the the fact that we are ceding United States of America property so that a foreign company can transport it's product to our ports for export to other foreign countries because they can't get approval to transport it across their own land. Ignoring ALL of that and you still have something that reeks of corruption. There are 7 companies here in the good ole USA that stand to benefit from this pipeline going through. That isn't bad, that is actually quite awesome. During all of this commotion congressional Republicans are banging the job creation drum about how good this will be for the economy and that President Obama is Satan if he doesn't approve it. Well President Obama didn't approve it, not on any of the environmental grounds I have mentioned but because in order to pass the extension of the payroll tax cut the republicans slipped in a provision that forced Obama to approve of deny the pipeline in a relatively short period of time. The time stipulated was well before multiple studies, currently still underway, were due to finish so President Obama did what he was forced to do, deny it due to lack of information. The GOP came out en masse, calling President Obama a job killer and some people threatened to bring up charges on him for violating the Constitution and not doing what they saw as in the best interest of the country. Now the stage is set, all parties are in place, it isn't hard to guess who both sides are working for in the issue, the President for environmentalist and the GOP for Big Oil. Now comes the juicy part. Someone went and did some digging and as it has been shown countless times before, when you dig into the guts of congress you come up with a fistful of crap. It turns out that Speaker Boehner has done some investing, which is good, a portion of the U.S. economy relies on it, it is part of what makes the USA great and is a very sensible way of saving for retirement in some cases and making money for doing nothing in other cases (Romney/Gingrich). This is where the real dirty laundry exists. Speaker Boehner owns stock in all seven of the companies set to profit from the creation of this pipeline. Speaker Boehner is one of the most influential people in Washngton D.C. and in turn has great pull in being able to secure the creation of this pipeline. Ethics 101 teaches us that when there is even the perception of a conflict of interest in an issue, you need to recuse yourself from the situation and let others handle it. Well, I'd say owning stock in companies who's profits will skyrocket because of this pipeline's creation is a pretty damn big conflict of interest. I wonder how much he would have made if the pipeline had been approved? Probably more than the salary he makes as Speaker of the House.
Also, throughout this whole post my spellchecker kept demanding I correct "Boehner" to "Boner." I couldn't help but throw that in at the end.
Also, throughout this whole post my spellchecker kept demanding I correct "Boehner" to "Boner." I couldn't help but throw that in at the end.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Newt vs Mitt ROUND N! FIGHT!
I will admit, I missed this Thursday's debate. Part of the reason is it is the 19th debate. The other part of the reason is that the last few days I have been on a coding spree the likes of which I have not seen in a couple years. It is amazing what you can do when you actually care about a project. But, I digress, as this post has nothing to do with my awesome programming abilities, well, it has a bit to do with it. Typically when I am coding I am doing one of two things simultaneously, the first, and most frequent is jamming to my music collection. Most of it is Japanese songs from anime but there are also some non-anime songs in there like High and Mighty Color and Hyde. The other simultaneous activity is how I get a lot of my news, by leaving the TV on MSNBC, CNN or if I'm in the right mood for bullshit, Fox News. I do this with other activities too, typically gaming and sometimes just chatting online. It is a great way to absorb the news without having to listen to every little story. If I hear something that interests me I will pause what I am doing and pay closer attention to the news and that is exactly what was going on Thursday night. On the TV was Lawrence O'Donnell an abashed liberal, which is not a bad thing, but I do find him someone condescending and it is pretty clear he has an agenda. I may agree with that agenda in a lot of places, but I don't really like to see that in my pundits and news anchors. As his show was coming on, the 19th Republican debate was ending on another network and MSNBC was going to pickup right there with their coverage of the debate. Sometimes it is better to see the debate in a few clips like you find on these shows because it takes away all the fluff and repetitive statements you have heard a thousand times and leaves you with the good and bad moments. So I will get right into it, here is the clip that this post centers on:
Here is the timeline of what is going through my brain as I watch this.
0:00 - Halfway paying attention while programming
0:10 - The other half listening to the MSNBC is rolling its eyes as Gingrich plays up the crowd.
0:26 - I swap full attention to MSNBC when Gingrich starts his sob story and moves to attacking Romney on something he clearly had been saving for a juicy moment.
0:36 - I say out loud "Ohhh shit!" It wasn't really loud, I was just caught by surprise, the debate is being held in Florida, the week before Florida votes. Florida has something like 1 out of every 2 homes being worth less than what people owe. It was one of the hardest hit when the housing bubble burst. Republicans, almost uniformly, blame Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for the bubble as opposed to pretty much everyone else who blames the idiots passing the mortgages around like they're playing hot potato. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are like curse words in this auditorium. This was a huge bomb dropped by Gingrich.
0:55 - By this point I've repeated "Ohhh shit!" many times. This type of attack is what Gingrich lives on. He framed it perfectly as a death knell for Romney's campaign in Florida.
1:05 - The moment has kind of passed, Romney is moving into the intellectual debunking that he needs to do to at least save some face. What he says, while mostly true, is entirely intellectual and really does nothing to save him in the eyes of the crowd, even if he is right. Boredom creeps back in.
1:30 - My mind snaps back to full speed, taking in every moment, something serious is coming.
1:35 - "OHHHHHH SHIIITTT! OHHHH SHIIITT!" Romney drops a freaking 100 ton hammer on Gingrich who now looks like a deer caught in the headlights.
1:47 - Still deep in the moment, realizing how huge of a screw up this is for Gingrich, I am drinking in every detail every second. Then I dive even deeper when Romney says HE HAS MORE!
1:58 - By this point there is nothing that could take my attention away from the TV, short of having myself enter a state of spontaneously combustion. Romney, strutting his stuff, turns everything Newt said about him around and slants it towards the audience. He doesn't invest in the government, he LOANS the government money in the form of bonds.
2:10 - As Romney shifts gears AGAIN and brings up more on Gingrich, I am thinking "OHH SHIT MAN THIS JUST WON'T END!"
2:35 - Clip over, I'm just staring at the TV wishing it was on my DVR so I could rewind it, but alas that was on another tv.
As soon as the clip ends I am off and running on a mad search of YouTube for just the right clip of this moment so I can show it to all my political junky friends and for later posting here. It takes me about 10-15 minutes to find it. I must have watched it 20 times between then and now and it never gets old. Later on as I knew what to expect, I was able to watch the reactions of the two candidates and you can tell what is going through their minds at each moment.
Now here is a timeline of what is going through their minds:
0:00 - 0:57 Gingrich is in his typical smug, egotistical mode, thinking it is about time to throw another one of his patented bombs and watch the fallout. You can just picture a tiny version of him inside his head sitting in a high backed chair doing the Mr. Burns "Excellent"
0:17 - 0:27 Romney is calmly taking in what Gingrich is saying, formulating a response
0:32 - 0:47 Romney begins to see where it is going and is setting it up in his head and if you look closely you can see a him form a very faint smile
0:49 - 0:57 It becomes more and more obvious that Romney is having trouble containing his glee and says something I don't think I've ever heard at a debate before, "This is Fun."
1:03 - 1:26 Romney hides his glee with a good calm argument re-characterizing what he has done
1:25 - 1:32 Gingrich, still thinking he's hurt Romney is formulating a response and then WAM he immediately shifts to a "HUH!?" face, clearly being blindsided.
1:32 - 1:39 - Gingrich realizes he screwed up, big time. Romney is thinking, "WHAT NOW!?"
1:39 - 1:47 - Gingrich is frozen unable to respond as the crowd turns against him to the point where he nods his head acknowledging what a blow it was. Gingrich never acknowledges anyone as his better. Romney is clearly reveling in Gingrich's misery, lets the audience pour it on.
1:48 - 1:50 - Romney is thinking "I HAVEN'T BEGUN BITCH!"
1:50 - 2:36 - Romney spends the rest of the time imagining himself standing above Gingrich, with Gingrich's face in the mud, Romney pressing down his foot on Gingrich's head while simultaneously peeing on him.
1:50 - 2:10 - Gingrich is thinking "Oh God, someone save me" you can see him almost crying
2:10 - 2:36 - Gingrich is thinking "Oh great, now he's tied my lobbying into it, at least I can defend that a bit to take some of the heat off"
I hope everyone who sees this clip enjoys it at least half as much as I did.
Here is the timeline of what is going through my brain as I watch this.
0:00 - Halfway paying attention while programming
0:10 - The other half listening to the MSNBC is rolling its eyes as Gingrich plays up the crowd.
0:26 - I swap full attention to MSNBC when Gingrich starts his sob story and moves to attacking Romney on something he clearly had been saving for a juicy moment.
0:36 - I say out loud "Ohhh shit!" It wasn't really loud, I was just caught by surprise, the debate is being held in Florida, the week before Florida votes. Florida has something like 1 out of every 2 homes being worth less than what people owe. It was one of the hardest hit when the housing bubble burst. Republicans, almost uniformly, blame Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for the bubble as opposed to pretty much everyone else who blames the idiots passing the mortgages around like they're playing hot potato. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are like curse words in this auditorium. This was a huge bomb dropped by Gingrich.
0:55 - By this point I've repeated "Ohhh shit!" many times. This type of attack is what Gingrich lives on. He framed it perfectly as a death knell for Romney's campaign in Florida.
1:05 - The moment has kind of passed, Romney is moving into the intellectual debunking that he needs to do to at least save some face. What he says, while mostly true, is entirely intellectual and really does nothing to save him in the eyes of the crowd, even if he is right. Boredom creeps back in.
1:30 - My mind snaps back to full speed, taking in every moment, something serious is coming.
1:35 - "OHHHHHH SHIIITTT! OHHHH SHIIITT!" Romney drops a freaking 100 ton hammer on Gingrich who now looks like a deer caught in the headlights.
1:47 - Still deep in the moment, realizing how huge of a screw up this is for Gingrich, I am drinking in every detail every second. Then I dive even deeper when Romney says HE HAS MORE!
1:58 - By this point there is nothing that could take my attention away from the TV, short of having myself enter a state of spontaneously combustion. Romney, strutting his stuff, turns everything Newt said about him around and slants it towards the audience. He doesn't invest in the government, he LOANS the government money in the form of bonds.
2:10 - As Romney shifts gears AGAIN and brings up more on Gingrich, I am thinking "OHH SHIT MAN THIS JUST WON'T END!"
2:35 - Clip over, I'm just staring at the TV wishing it was on my DVR so I could rewind it, but alas that was on another tv.
As soon as the clip ends I am off and running on a mad search of YouTube for just the right clip of this moment so I can show it to all my political junky friends and for later posting here. It takes me about 10-15 minutes to find it. I must have watched it 20 times between then and now and it never gets old. Later on as I knew what to expect, I was able to watch the reactions of the two candidates and you can tell what is going through their minds at each moment.
Now here is a timeline of what is going through their minds:
0:00 - 0:57 Gingrich is in his typical smug, egotistical mode, thinking it is about time to throw another one of his patented bombs and watch the fallout. You can just picture a tiny version of him inside his head sitting in a high backed chair doing the Mr. Burns "Excellent"
0:17 - 0:27 Romney is calmly taking in what Gingrich is saying, formulating a response
0:32 - 0:47 Romney begins to see where it is going and is setting it up in his head and if you look closely you can see a him form a very faint smile
0:49 - 0:57 It becomes more and more obvious that Romney is having trouble containing his glee and says something I don't think I've ever heard at a debate before, "This is Fun."
1:03 - 1:26 Romney hides his glee with a good calm argument re-characterizing what he has done
1:25 - 1:32 Gingrich, still thinking he's hurt Romney is formulating a response and then WAM he immediately shifts to a "HUH!?" face, clearly being blindsided.
1:32 - 1:39 - Gingrich realizes he screwed up, big time. Romney is thinking, "WHAT NOW!?"
1:39 - 1:47 - Gingrich is frozen unable to respond as the crowd turns against him to the point where he nods his head acknowledging what a blow it was. Gingrich never acknowledges anyone as his better. Romney is clearly reveling in Gingrich's misery, lets the audience pour it on.
1:48 - 1:50 - Romney is thinking "I HAVEN'T BEGUN BITCH!"
1:50 - 2:36 - Romney spends the rest of the time imagining himself standing above Gingrich, with Gingrich's face in the mud, Romney pressing down his foot on Gingrich's head while simultaneously peeing on him.
1:50 - 2:10 - Gingrich is thinking "Oh God, someone save me" you can see him almost crying
2:10 - 2:36 - Gingrich is thinking "Oh great, now he's tied my lobbying into it, at least I can defend that a bit to take some of the heat off"
I hope everyone who sees this clip enjoys it at least half as much as I did.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Spirit in the Sky
Today my cousin, her boyfriend and myself were coming home from running some errands and the classic oldie "Spirit in the Sky" came on and we all started rocking out because the song is awesome. About halfway through my cousin chimed in, "so is this song supporting or mocking Christianity?" I paused to think about it as I have mentioned in my other posts, I do not listen to music for lyrical meaning so I seldom pay attention to them. At the beginning I was unsure but then it got to one specific line that made up my mind. The line was "Never been a sinner, never sinned" which is very contradictory to Christian belief. One of the most quoted lines from the bible is "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of god." The idea that you have never been a sinner is directly contradictory. When I got home I did a little looking around the internet to see if there was any sort of confirmation and there wasn't much. The most I could find that could b e confirmedwas that the writer was Jewish. Based on that, other music at the time and a few other things, my ultimate conclusion was that he was just trying to tap into a popular segment. One side sees it as holy, the other as mocking, everybody is happy. Food for thought.
Monday, January 23, 2012
Politics and Animal Abuse
I had to cool down a bite before writing this post. There is political disagreement and then there is name calling and then there is this. Today the office manager of Ken Aden, a Democrat running for the 3rd congressional district of Arkansas returned home with his family to find a horrific image. Their cat was laying on their porch with it's skull bashed in in a rather gruesome manner, so much that it deformed the cats face pretty heavily. On one side of the cat was scrawled in what appeared to be marker, the world "LIBERAL." I saw a few comments stating that politics for both parties has gotten out of hand and I believe that is very apt, but I can't fathom a democrat ever resorting to anything like killing an innocent animal and defiling its corpse just so they could call someone a name. The southern tradition of trying to scare your opponents into submission is still living strong I see. At the end of this post is the gawker article where I first heard of this. There is a picture of the cat, fortunately it was taken so that the gruesomeness cannot really be seen and it is just the "LIBERAL" part. This is what conservative talk radio and Fox News has given our country.
The Gawker Article
The Candidate's website.
The Gawker Article
The Candidate's website.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
George W. Bush Jr. The most Successful Food Stamp President
Earlier tonight Newt Gingrich swept through South Carolina primary polling places, mopping the floor with all the other candidates with a 12% ahead of Mitt Romney, 23% ahead of Santorum and 27% ahead of Ron Paul. This is particularly amazing considering he was trailing Mitt Romney after New Hampshire by quite a bit. The dramatic change can be attributed heavily to a series of gaffs Romney has made as well as a good debate showing by Gingrich earlier this week. As it is, I am starting to get a little tired of the talking points continually regurgitated by Gingrich in every clip I hear. He is constantly calling the President "the most successful food stamp president in the history of the country." This statement drives me absolutely batty because of the simultaneous bald faced lying as well as the mud wrestling style of oration that is so well known with the disgraced former Speaker of the House so it is time to clear up some facts.
After analyzing the numbers, it is actually former President Bush that should hold such a title. When you take into account the situation each president inherited, the situation is even bleaker for the GOP former vacationer in chief. President Bush inherited a $230 billion surplus and left office with a $5 trillion deficit, two wars an economy hemorrhaging jobs and a record 14.7 million new recipients of food stamps. Conversely, President Obama via his stimulus package and other programs righted the ship and has 21 straight months of job growth, gotten us out of one war, averted another war, Libya, without setting a single soldier on the ground, killed Osama Bin Laden and countless other Al Qaeda leaders, is on track to double American exports in 5 years, a claim he made during one of his State of the Union addresses and most importantly, at least for this posting, has decreased the number of recipients on Food Stamps. While the numbers are relatively close, 14.7 million for Bush and 14.2 million for Obama, when you consider the starting point of each administration and what they inherited, it is pretty clear who the most successful food stamp president is, and it is not our current Commander in Chief.
I really hope Newt Gingrich gets the nomination. While he is thriving in conservative polls right now, if you look at the national polls, the man has huge name recognition compared to all the other candidates and also has the highest disapproval ratings, around 60%. Any incumbent would kill to face numbers like that.
After analyzing the numbers, it is actually former President Bush that should hold such a title. When you take into account the situation each president inherited, the situation is even bleaker for the GOP former vacationer in chief. President Bush inherited a $230 billion surplus and left office with a $5 trillion deficit, two wars an economy hemorrhaging jobs and a record 14.7 million new recipients of food stamps. Conversely, President Obama via his stimulus package and other programs righted the ship and has 21 straight months of job growth, gotten us out of one war, averted another war, Libya, without setting a single soldier on the ground, killed Osama Bin Laden and countless other Al Qaeda leaders, is on track to double American exports in 5 years, a claim he made during one of his State of the Union addresses and most importantly, at least for this posting, has decreased the number of recipients on Food Stamps. While the numbers are relatively close, 14.7 million for Bush and 14.2 million for Obama, when you consider the starting point of each administration and what they inherited, it is pretty clear who the most successful food stamp president is, and it is not our current Commander in Chief.
I really hope Newt Gingrich gets the nomination. While he is thriving in conservative polls right now, if you look at the national polls, the man has huge name recognition compared to all the other candidates and also has the highest disapproval ratings, around 60%. Any incumbent would kill to face numbers like that.
Principles despite Religion
I am an atheist, I am not ashamed to admit that. The only reason I do not go out and do something like get "ATHEIST" on my license plate is because I live in Nebraska and I would rather not get my car keyed. Don't get me wrong, people around here are very friendly and generally great, but there still is a stigma around atheists and many people don't understand what it really means to be an atheist and that atheists have the same potential to be moral upstanding citizens as everybody else and ignorance can lead people to do stupid things. That being said, I have not always been an atheist. My family is by no means religious in the sense of the hate-mongering right wing, but my childhood was filled with worship services, bible studies, youth groups and other community events based around our church. My mom is very religious, my Dad is much more of a passive believer and probably closer to a deist than a Christian, but he truly enjoys the sermons he has attended since meeting my mother over 22 years ago. I don't think this is a one way road either, it is pretty clear my Dad provides my mom with a grounding point for when she starts to get more emotional because his very nature is calm and neutral. My mom found Christianity in the 70s when dealing with some extremely hard life issues. Her faith got her through it and she never forgot that. I have often contemplated what my mother would be like, as a person, today, had she not met my father. It does sometimes scare me to think that she could have fallen in with right wing Christianity but I suspect that might have happened. But that is just speculation, the reality is that she maintains a deep spiritual sense of self, often holding similar values as the Christian Right, but she keeps religion in religion and out of unrelated things like politics. When it comes to politics she falls left of center just like my Dad and myself while her siblings and mother all sort of fall in with the Christian right, but without the vitriol. I describe all this because the point of this post is to illustrate how a persons viewpoints can change in their lifetime and how much they can stay the same.
Today I went back to my parents house with my sister to go through the various tubs containing our childhood memories, toys, pictures, in one case a bowl of 10 year old, still good tootsie rolls, and to throw out the stuff we no longer wanted and keep the stuff we treasured. We didn't finish and indeed I have made another post before about the first time we did this where I found my Sega Genesis, so this experience will gladly continue for awhile. About halfway through our second tub, my sister found a sheet of paper with a letter to the editor that I had written and was published in the town paper. I distinctly remember writing it, turning it in, reading it with great pleasure the following week and then reading the responses, as there were more than one, the following week and being rather disappointed. The letter wasn't terribly long, only one paragraph, very straight and too the point and it was in response to a previous week's letter about the words "under God" in the pledge of allegiance. What amazed me as the memories flooded back to me and I read the letter, was that nearly every single word in it is exactly how I feel now and often defend when debating. There was one major difference though. The very first sentence and it was a stark difference. The first sentence was "Even though I am a devout Christian..." and as I looked at that again and was simply amazed at how much I have changed and how much I have stayed the same. Roughly 10 years have passed since I wrote that letter. I was only 17 or 18 at the time, quite capable of logically thinking and forming rational arguments but at that point the adolescent brain is still undergoing massive changes and is clearly not at the peak it will reach later. Looking back at that time in my life, it is after the first time I had doubts about Christianity, but I was still on my own journey and remained involved with Church functions so the statement that I was a devout Christian was still very much true and very much relevant. My spiritual progression, while overtime it was gradually sloping down towards atheism, still had its ascents. I started in the Methodist Church but my mother never felt very comfortable with the congregation and after a friend of mine from school invited me to a sleepover and to go to his church with him the next day, we did and we ended up changing to the local Baptist Church. None of this was based on the differences between the two ideologically, but rather the congregation of the Baptist Church was much more accepting and had many more kids my age, and my mother thought that would be beneficial. I was good friends with the one who invited me for many years, until early middle school, when kids began to change and go their own way. We never had a falling out but just didn't hang out anymore. I had other friends there though, the pastors son was my age and we became really great friends in Sunday school, he got me into football in middle school and we had been playing soccer on a select team, that is, kids chosen because they were good players and we traveled around Nebraska and Iowa playing other similar teams. There were two teams in our town of 6000 and both were pretty good. Each team had 5 members participate in the national 3v3 tournaments more than once and more than once the other team finished first with ours finishing second. Incidentally, my sister participated in the girl version in high school. Her team did fantastically and got the national championship too. I was so proud...and a bit jealous since I was not part of the players selected for the 3v3 team...but back to the issue at hand. I was friends with him to mid-high school, really good friends. We grew apart as well, but he is a good person, has a family now and I am glad. In my childhood I also participated in a group called "Awana" that met every wednesday for a sort of bible study and youth group activity that mostly consisted of memorizing bible verses and praying. I followed that through high school as well until around the time my health began altering my daily life. I stopped going to church, though my parents and sister still went regularly. This didn't particularly affect religion yet, the absence didn't really have anything to do with faith but everything to do with the rest of my life. It was about this time that this letter was written. In fact, I held many strong Christian views, views that are today considered pretty right wing, until I was at least 20, gradually changing as I experienced life and eventually when I came to realize I can be a good person even if I don't believe. Back then though, as I watched Vermont implement civil unions (2000) and the uproar that resulted, there began a huge conflict of my inherent sense for people to be free and my religious beliefs. Everything religion was telling me that this was an outrage. Everything logical was telling me that there was nothing wrong with two people loving each other. At the same time, the only gay person I knew was my mom's brother and I had maybe spent 10 total hours in my life with him so everything I heard about gay people, I believed. In the end I did what I do best, find a middle ground and settled on "give them a civil union, but stay the heck away from my traditional definition of marriage. You can tell from my other posts that I no longer feel this way. Civil Unions and Marriage is a Separate but Equal implementation and Separate but Equal does not work, ever. That wasn't the only issue either. To this day, despite knowing how a fertilized egg becomes a baby, why it is not killing a living being and every other sensationalized argument by the right, there is still a part of me that is "anti-abortion" so to speak. I don't particularly care what women do with their bodies, that is their business and not mine, but at the same time I know that if I had impregnated a woman and the pregnancy had progressed very far in, I would have an incredibly hard time not pursuing what would eventually be my son or daughter.
Throughout all of those significant theological changes though, one thing remained constant. My belief in the fairness involved in the separation of church and state. I am proud of the me from 10 years ago and I am pretty sure he would be proud of the him from 10 years in the future.
Today I went back to my parents house with my sister to go through the various tubs containing our childhood memories, toys, pictures, in one case a bowl of 10 year old, still good tootsie rolls, and to throw out the stuff we no longer wanted and keep the stuff we treasured. We didn't finish and indeed I have made another post before about the first time we did this where I found my Sega Genesis, so this experience will gladly continue for awhile. About halfway through our second tub, my sister found a sheet of paper with a letter to the editor that I had written and was published in the town paper. I distinctly remember writing it, turning it in, reading it with great pleasure the following week and then reading the responses, as there were more than one, the following week and being rather disappointed. The letter wasn't terribly long, only one paragraph, very straight and too the point and it was in response to a previous week's letter about the words "under God" in the pledge of allegiance. What amazed me as the memories flooded back to me and I read the letter, was that nearly every single word in it is exactly how I feel now and often defend when debating. There was one major difference though. The very first sentence and it was a stark difference. The first sentence was "Even though I am a devout Christian..." and as I looked at that again and was simply amazed at how much I have changed and how much I have stayed the same. Roughly 10 years have passed since I wrote that letter. I was only 17 or 18 at the time, quite capable of logically thinking and forming rational arguments but at that point the adolescent brain is still undergoing massive changes and is clearly not at the peak it will reach later. Looking back at that time in my life, it is after the first time I had doubts about Christianity, but I was still on my own journey and remained involved with Church functions so the statement that I was a devout Christian was still very much true and very much relevant. My spiritual progression, while overtime it was gradually sloping down towards atheism, still had its ascents. I started in the Methodist Church but my mother never felt very comfortable with the congregation and after a friend of mine from school invited me to a sleepover and to go to his church with him the next day, we did and we ended up changing to the local Baptist Church. None of this was based on the differences between the two ideologically, but rather the congregation of the Baptist Church was much more accepting and had many more kids my age, and my mother thought that would be beneficial. I was good friends with the one who invited me for many years, until early middle school, when kids began to change and go their own way. We never had a falling out but just didn't hang out anymore. I had other friends there though, the pastors son was my age and we became really great friends in Sunday school, he got me into football in middle school and we had been playing soccer on a select team, that is, kids chosen because they were good players and we traveled around Nebraska and Iowa playing other similar teams. There were two teams in our town of 6000 and both were pretty good. Each team had 5 members participate in the national 3v3 tournaments more than once and more than once the other team finished first with ours finishing second. Incidentally, my sister participated in the girl version in high school. Her team did fantastically and got the national championship too. I was so proud...and a bit jealous since I was not part of the players selected for the 3v3 team...but back to the issue at hand. I was friends with him to mid-high school, really good friends. We grew apart as well, but he is a good person, has a family now and I am glad. In my childhood I also participated in a group called "Awana" that met every wednesday for a sort of bible study and youth group activity that mostly consisted of memorizing bible verses and praying. I followed that through high school as well until around the time my health began altering my daily life. I stopped going to church, though my parents and sister still went regularly. This didn't particularly affect religion yet, the absence didn't really have anything to do with faith but everything to do with the rest of my life. It was about this time that this letter was written. In fact, I held many strong Christian views, views that are today considered pretty right wing, until I was at least 20, gradually changing as I experienced life and eventually when I came to realize I can be a good person even if I don't believe. Back then though, as I watched Vermont implement civil unions (2000) and the uproar that resulted, there began a huge conflict of my inherent sense for people to be free and my religious beliefs. Everything religion was telling me that this was an outrage. Everything logical was telling me that there was nothing wrong with two people loving each other. At the same time, the only gay person I knew was my mom's brother and I had maybe spent 10 total hours in my life with him so everything I heard about gay people, I believed. In the end I did what I do best, find a middle ground and settled on "give them a civil union, but stay the heck away from my traditional definition of marriage. You can tell from my other posts that I no longer feel this way. Civil Unions and Marriage is a Separate but Equal implementation and Separate but Equal does not work, ever. That wasn't the only issue either. To this day, despite knowing how a fertilized egg becomes a baby, why it is not killing a living being and every other sensationalized argument by the right, there is still a part of me that is "anti-abortion" so to speak. I don't particularly care what women do with their bodies, that is their business and not mine, but at the same time I know that if I had impregnated a woman and the pregnancy had progressed very far in, I would have an incredibly hard time not pursuing what would eventually be my son or daughter.
Throughout all of those significant theological changes though, one thing remained constant. My belief in the fairness involved in the separation of church and state. I am proud of the me from 10 years ago and I am pretty sure he would be proud of the him from 10 years in the future.
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