Month: October 2017

Tomorrow, we head back to Oceanside for the final eight nights of our 2017 Road Trip.

I can hardly wait to get back to the beach; it’s still warm here in Murrieta. In fact, it was 100 degrees a couple of days this past week. In late October!!

We may be getting out just in time. There is a large fire burning in the hills above this area. Bear Creekers have been given a courtesy heads-up by County Fire, but we’ve not been ordered to, or even recommended to, evacuate our homes…at this time. The fire seems to be heading into the Cleveland National Forest, which is generally west of us. So far, so good. Lot’s of ash falling from the sky, though.

Speaking of crap hitting the fan, the political environment right here in our Bear Creek community is getting downright nasty. There’s a big recall campaign being waged against the Master Home Owners Association Board of Directors.

I hate living in communities covered by HOA’s; this will be our last, I hope. It seems that a lot of people elected to HOA Boards of Directors seem to feel like they are a lot smarter than they really are, forgetting, of course, that the smart folks don’t strive for elected office. Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, Thomas Edison, Oprah Winfrey…I could name more…didn’t run for office. They let the other schmucks handle that messy stuff.

Speaking of dumb patsies, I’ve served on a few HOA Boards myself. The smart guys stay on the sidelines, throwing darts from behind the bushes. That’s OK, it’s part of the process. But, what really got me annoyed were Board members without principles; I guess they were the politicians. At any rate, suffice it so say that serving the public in this way is a thankless task, particularly when other Board members stick a shiv in your back. It kind of takes the shine off of the noble endeavor.

Our history in Bear Creek, with respect to the Master HOA, is that Board members tend to embark on strange projects of dubious worth to the community and fight battles that they can’t win. Invariably, the HOA gets sued by someone, and it (we) always lose. The past Board or two has really gotten Bear Creek’s proverbial tit in a wringer, and have cost property owners at least a million dollars in legal fees. And, that number is rising.

Bear Creekers have had enough of these jokers and there’s this big recall campaign to replace the entire bunch of idiots and start over. Big meetings are being held, nasty e-mails are flooding digital mailboxes, and neighbors are giving each other the stink eye. It’s gotten ugly. The good news is that the recall ballots will be counted on November 13th and, perhaps, sanity will be restored to this peaceful place.

I hope so, because we don’t want “Recall the H.O.A.” signs in our neighborhood in the Spring, when we intend to put our home up for sale. We have to pretend that this is a great community where everyone loves one another.

Speaking of that, we’ve begun to tidy up our estate here, shining up the 19 years of wear on this nice house of ours. Last week, a handy man replaced some worn baseboard, and repaired some wood areas that Baby had chewed on. Charlie had the wrought-iron fence in our backyard replaced a few months ago and it really looks nice. We’ll continue to spiff up the joint over the Winter and get it ready to show by the  end of tax season. Our neighbors, the Pace’s, have their home for sale, and, hopefully, its sale will set a high comp value.

If/when we sell, we’re not sure yet what we’ll do or where we’ll set down roots. We have the luxury of a “tiny house” that we can comfortably live in, at least during the nice months. So, it’s only a question of whether or not we want to have a Winter “nest” somewhere; maybe a modest single-story rental house where we can store our things and retire to in the event of illness or injury. Those steep RV steps are OK now, but…how long will that last? If Charlie or I broke a leg, how could we get up and into our mobile house?

Speaking of stretching out the good life…on Wednesday, we are going to take JayJay, our 11 year-old male Boston Terrier, back to his eye doctor for a re-check. JayJay has cataracts in both eyes, and they’ve been getting worse lately. Both eyes have this opaque look to them:

He can’t catch food treats tossed to him anymore, and he has begun to stumble into things. So, we believe that he’s on the verge of going blind. Charlie and I are both committed to avoiding that. JayJay is a very healthy guy, and, other than the vision issue, would probably last another 3 or 4 years. So, we’re probably going to bite the expensive bullet and have at least one of his bad eyes surgically fixed. We may pop for both of them if the price is right.

Yeah, he’s only a dog. But, he’s part of our family. And, when we adopted him about eight years ago, we committed to him, as he did to us, come rain or shine. He’s been my best buddy around the house for many years, and I’d be sick if he couldn’t see anymore. So, we’re hoping that JayJay will be a good candidate for cataract surgery and that we can afford to do this for him. We want him whole again, like this:

Thank goodness, the other two dogs are doing well. We’ve got Booger on medications for joint soreness (old age!), and she doesn’t seem to hear as well as in years past, but she’s still a pretty nice specimen. Baby is fit as a fiddle, and brings a lot of energy to this Old Folks Home. We’re lucky to have them in our lives.

Well, as long as the fire doesn’t sweep down into Bear Creek tonight, we will pack up some duds and the dogs and drive down to Oceanside tomorrow morning. We’re looking forward to cool ocean breezes and the simpler life, even if it is only for another week or so.

 

 

In January, 1961, in his “Farewell Address to the Nation”, President Dwight Eisenhower (5-Star General and Supreme Allied Commander during World War II) cautioned citizens about the rise in power of what he called the Military-Industrial Complex.

Specifically, this President, who knew more about this subject than any previous or subsequent Commander-in-Chief, warned: “…we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex.” And, he added:  “We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.”

What Eisenhower feared in 1961 has become the reality of today. Basically, the United States exists in a permanent war economy, and has been so for many decades. In 2016, American military expenditures totaled $611 billion, which is twice the amount of China and Russia…combined. In addition, the United States is the world’s largest military arms exporter, selling $48 billion in 2016.

Our Nation’s well-heeled arms industry tends to contribute heavily to incumbent members of Congress. Any aspirant for public office who isn’t on the “correct” side of the National Rifle Association has an uphill battle for election.

It is no wonder that America seemingly has its fingers in every conflict around the world. As George Kennan wrote in 1987, “Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military–industrial complex would have to remain, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.”

Nothing much has changed since 1987 except the villains: then, it was the Russians; now, we have the Russians, the Chinese, the North Koreans, and pretty much all of the Middle East to “worry about”. Breaking news this week revealed that, unbeknownst to most Americans, the United States military has troops on the ground in quite a few African nations. Say what?!

So, the military-industrial complex is thriving; business is booming.

It should, therefore, not surprise us, to find some concern in Washington D.C. by Senator John McCain (ex-POW, Vietnam War fighter pilot) about the further stacking of the Defense Department with high officials barely removed from the private weapons industry. President Trump recently nominated John Rood, a top executive at Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest defense company, to take over as Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. The number two man in the Department of Defense, Patrick Shanahan, was a longtime employee of Boeing, and the Secretary of Defense himself worked for General Dynamics after a long military career.

Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and General Dynamics are three of the top five weapon systems producers in the world.

And, for reasons only he understands, President Trump has surrounded himself in the policy-making realm with ex-Generals. They would include: John Kelly, White House Chief of Staff; James Mattis, Secretary of Defense; and, National Security Advisor, H.R. McMaster.

There has long been a tradition in American government of keeping the political and military sectors separate, because elected officials decide policy and military officials implement policy. President Eisenhower, in his speech, might have been alluding (somewhat) to the intrusion of military influence into policy making when General Douglas McArthur, a popular WWII hero, disobeyed President Truman in Korea and was summarily fired for insubordination. McArthur thought he was “in charge” and had to be reminded that he wasn’t. At all. Similarly, General George Patton, a great hero in World War II, lost perspective and had to be publicly dressed-down, a decision that then General Eisenhower probably participated in.

Many people are concerned about the military presence in President Trump’s cabinet; i.e. that military thinking could hamper policy development by limiting the type of advice the President gets. Military men tend to be very task oriented and gravitate toward blunt force solutions. As the saying goes, “If the only implement in your tool box is a hammer, every problem begins to look like a nail.”

It is very evident that President Trump, who is uber-authoritarian and embraces blunt force tactics in his business and, now, his political endeavors, finds comfort being surrounded by ex-military superstars. And, not having served in the military himself, Mr. Trump has a hard time understanding why others (who may have served) would not appreciate the pedestal upon which the President has placed “his generals”.

Of course, when it served him in his campaign for the Presidency, Trump regularly bad-mouthed American military leaders for “losing” wars that, in the draft dodger’s opinion, we should have prevailed. Candidate Trump even went so far as to insult ex-POW, now Senator John McCain, for being captured and tortured for years by the North Vietnamese: “Heroes are guys who don’t get captured.”

Now that Donald Trump is the boss, however, he is a great supporter of the military (-industrial establishment?), and thinks “his generals” are beyond reproach. And, by extension, he feels that their credibility should rub off on him and insulate the President from criticism.

 

Recently, the President was called out by the press for not contacting the families of U.S. soldiers who died in an ambush in Niger (why were they there in the first place?). The President responded by claiming that he had made more condolence calls than previous Presidents. This immediately proven to be false. Then, according to first-person accounts, Mr. Trump hurriedly called the wife of one of the dead servicemen and made an offhand comment in his condolences that her husband “knew what he signed up for”. The call was received on a speakerphone, with a Congresswoman in the car consoling her close friend, the grieving widow. When the President’s faux-pas was brought to public attention, Trump denied it. Then, he called the grieving widow a liar and the Congresswoman “wacky” and a liar, to boot. Needless to say, the incident became the latest Trump shitstorm.

So, what happens next? The President reaches into his toolbox of respected ex-generals and trotted out Chief of Staff John Kelly to save the day. And, to his shame, one-time Four Star General Kelly covered for the President, talking down to people who aren’t military, as if those who have “served” exist on a higher plane, and calling the Congresswoman an “empty barrel” who was lying and grandstanding. His basic thrust was, to the Press, the widow, and the Congresswoman…was “Shut up, and that’s an order!” And, thereby, debased himself on behalf of his shameless President.

By the next day, it was pointed out that the “grandstanding” that Kelly alluded to by the Congresswoman was disproved by a videotape of the alleged incident.

In typical Trump Administration fashion, the White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders then doubled-down on the fiasco, when she stated, “If you want to go after Gen. Kelly, that’s up to you. But I think that if you want to get into a debate with a 4-star Marine general, that’s something that’s highly inappropriate,” she said.

That was a very revealing statement that goes a long way toward understanding the Trump Administration and it’s reverence of militarism in the United States. As if…an ex-General, now operating in the political arena, is above reproach, should not be called out when lying, should not be ashamed of disrespecting a grieving widow? Since when did our democracy elevate ex-military officers to that status? We are not operating a Third-World military junta here…or, are we? Is that what Trumpism is all about?

As of this writing, there have been no apologies to the grieving widow by Press Secretary Sanders, Chief of Staff Kelly, or President Trump, who caused the entire kerfluffle by his offhand and less than empathetic words to a dead soldier’s wife. Of course, President Trump has never been known to apologize for any mistakes that he’s made. “Never happened”, “Fake news”, etc.

But, I digress.

(Update: Ex-General, now White House Chief of Staff Kelly this week stepped deeper into the political cesspool when he opined about the Civil War and the real reason why it was fought: “failure to compromise”! He made this inane statement in his defense of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, explaining that he was actually a heroic figure, not a traitor, who just got caught up in some fracas because the politicians couldn’t compromise (again!) on slavery. It seems, based upon this position that Kelly is taking (on behalf of his Boss?), that slavery is OK in moderation…??? WTF!)

It’s times like this that provide a pretty good explanation why military men typically don’t make great politicians. And, this is the guy who is President Trump’s co-pilot in the White House. Scary.

The military-industrial complex that I am most concerned about is this state of mind in certain quarters of America (a majority?) that militarism is OK as an appropriate guiding doctrine for our democratic Nation. That is how fascism arose in Germany.

Most elected officials in Washington D.C. have never served in the military. Mr. Trump pulled out all of the stops to avoid being drafted when he was a young man. And, he wasn’t the only one. And, since that time (Vietnam War era), our military has operated on a volunteer basis. So, since 1973, over 44 years now, most young- to middle-age Americans have not served, and, subsequently have no real clue about military life and the military way of thinking. That’s two generations of citizens and voters who have gotten their understanding of military service from Rambo movies and the like.

I served in the Vietnam era, did not care for military life, and moved on after my four-year volunteer stint. But, it was a valuable exercise for me…one that, I believe, every young American should experience, like they do in Israel. Why? Because part of our job, as citizens, is voting for individuals in the Federal government who shape policy as it relates to the military establishment and the use of military power. The better that one understands what the military is, and isn’t, the better than he or she is equipped to make informed decisions such as electing a President, Senator, or Congressman.

I read something the other day that brings home the point about the difference between civilians and the military, and how they think differently. It was was some advice given by an old Marine colonel to young man considering a military career. He said, “So you want to be a career soldier? Good for you. But remember that the longer you stay in uniform, the less you will really understand about the country you protect. Democracy is the antithesis of the military life; it’s chaotic, dishonest, disorganized, and at the same time glorious, exhilarating and free — which you are not. After a while, if you stay in, you’ll be tempted to say, “Look, you civilians, we’ve got a better way. We’re better organized.  We’re patriotic, and we know what it is to sacrifice. Be like us.” And you’ll be dead wrong, son. If you’re a career soldier, you may defend democracy, but you won’t understand it or be part of it. What’s more, you’ll always be a stranger to your own society. That’s the sacrifice you’ll be making.”

A soldier is trained to obey orders from his superior officers. Criticism is not permitted. And, there is a way of doing things, by the book…”there’s the Army way and then there’s wrong way”. Additionally, and this is important, achieving an important military objective could mean the decision to sacrifice fellow soldiers (i.e. “take that hill at all cost”).

Civilians have the ability to obey or not obey their bosses (of course, they might get fired!). Free speech is an important right in the civilian world, and it’s the way that scandals are uncovered by the Press and good ideas pop up in the workplace. In the public sector, there is some merit to the old saw that says, “If you’re doing something the way it’s always been done, then you’re doing it the wrong way.” Experimentation equals innovation, and that’s how society moves the ball forward.

So, when we thank a serviceman for his “service”, we’re not only thanking him and his family for the risk he has taken on behalf of America, but also the sacrifice he has made personally…because he is now different from you in the way he sees things and thinks about problems and issues, and he’ll always be that way.

We have a lot of these people out in society now, and one reads about some of them in the newspaper all of the time: guys who have PTSD, can’t adjust to civilian life, become suicidal or homicidal, etc. And, others who can’t get the militarism out of their system…they’ve joined paramilitary groups, feel that they’ve got to carry weapons at all times, demonstrate animosity toward sectors of society that they feel are “unpatriotic”, and harbor thoughts of left-wing conspiracies to overthrow the United States, etc. “White Nationalists” fit this profile, and there seems to be a rise in this type of militaristic political  movement which proclaims that the public is “soft” on crime, not patriotic, too critical of authority, etc.

We have in America right now a perfect storm of political leadership, the underlying military-industrial economic momentum, and a society which seems complacent about the application of military thinking to civilian issues. In my opinion, this is a recipe for trouble. If the Administration continues its bellicose, militaristic stance toward other nations and it own citizens, we could be headed toward facism. Alternately, if the voters reject Trumpism in coming elections, we may run into an uprising by the President’s white nationalistic base of support…and be looking at a civil uprising, pitting well-armed, militaristic “patriots” against the rest of society.

We’re damned if we do, damned if we don’t.

I worry about this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Tax Reform” and the “Federal Budget” are big in the news right now. How much do you know about taxes and government budgets?

Governmental agencies don’t budget their planned activities like a household or small business might. Instead, they utilize what is called “fund accounting”.

In your own household budget, you have a pretty good idea how much money is coming in (i.e. your wages or salary, after taxes), which is pretty much fixed, and roughly how much your expenses are going to be. The latter might be your rent or mortgage, your utilities, food, auto expenses, insurance, credit card debt, etc. Whatever is left over, if any, is your discretionary income that you might apply to entertainment, savings, investment, etc. If you’re on top of your finances, you keep a close tab on your bank balance and credit card obligations to make sure you don’t bounce checks or get in arrears with credit card companies. You stay responsible and live within your means.

Governmental agencies rely on taxes, basically, to fund their operations. The various departments don’t collect these taxes directly; that is done by  specialized agencies such as the Tax Collector in local government or the Internal Revenue Service in the Federal government. The various agencies, when they prepare their annual budgets, estimate the annual cost to perform their function, the legislative branch reviews those estimates, and then approves an appropriation, which is the agency’s authorization to spend. And, off the agency goes, doing it’s job, and incurring costs required to do so…up to the limit of the appropriation.

Of course, almost all of the Federal agencies, with the exception of the tax collection branch of government, are uninvolved with tracking the tax money coming in. They have their own duties to perform. The assumption in fund accounting is that the projected tax revenue will materialize and be collected by year’s end.

In your household budget, you know immediately if (a) your income shuts off, or (b) if some unexpected expense arises that puts your budget in jeopardy. Since you have early warning, you might be able to adjust your spending accordingly to weather the storm.

In governmental fund accounting, the realization that budget is in trouble comes much later, as individual agencies are not collecting taxes on a real-time basis, and the agencies who do the tax collecting receive the money not on a monthly basis, but, rather, quarterly or annually. So, when a budget is blown, it is too late to “fix” the problem.

That is why, in governmental fund accounting, it is critically important to estimate revenue realistically. “Wishful thinking” is not a sound practice among budget professionals.

Whether you are managing a household budget, or a governmental one, a budget crisis is typically resolved by borrowing money…if you have good credit.

In the case of the Federal government, a blown budget or “deficit”, occurs because the overall expense outpaced the revenue that was actually received. Although this could have been caused by unanticipated emergency spending (for disasters, wars, etc.), typically the deficit is caused by overblown revenue estimates. When this is a regularly occurring phenomena, i.e.  the Administration and Congress intentionally inflate revenue projections, then it is called “deficit spending”.

For example, President Trump’s 2017 Budget projects a $400 billion budget deficit.

The result of “deficit spending” is an increase in the National Debt, as the government needs to sell Treasury securities to generate money needed to pay it’s bills. The total National Debt of the United States is almost $20 trillion, or more than the annual Gross Domestic Product of the country.

As a result, the Federal Budget must project an increasing Debt obligation payment each year to pay the interest cost of the money that Uncle Sam has borrowed in years past. The current annual interest payment in the Federal Budget is about $400  billion dollars.

Thus, the 2017 Federal Budget could be balanced if either (a) it didn’t have to include the debt repayment obligation, or (b) if expenditures were pared down by roughly $400 billion. Of course, this also presupposes that this year’s budget revenue estimates are honest ones. Typically, the political party in power likes to fudge the revenue estimates a little high, so that it can justify spending more money. As the saying goes, “Money is the mother’s milk of politics.” So, revenue estimation accidents happen…all of the time, as a matter of policy, at least in the Federal government.

To be fair, both Democrats and Republicans play this game, and always have. They just don’t like it when the other party gets more of the pork.

Let’s assume some well-meaning (or, cynical) Federal official campaigned with the promise to eliminate deficit spending and balance the budget. That would be a very admirable goal. However, cutting $400 billion from the Federal Budget sounds easier than it really is. This is because each Federal agency has a purpose and, therefore, a constituency (i.e. voters who support that agency’s role in our government). Elected officials are loathe to reduce or eliminate programs that voters support…because those officials might not get re-elected.

There are some Federal agencies and programs which can’t be touched, in a political sense. That would include Social Security, because all of those old geezers (including me!) vote. Similarly, you’ve got Medicare and Health, National Defense, and Veterans’ Services…really tough ones to take the ax to if you’re planning on getting re-elected. And, of course, you’ve got the Debt interest; you can’t do anything about that.

These “sacred cows” account for roughly 80 percent of the Federal Budget, leaving approximately $750 billion in miscellaneous Federal agency budgets that would have to absorb a $400 billion haircut in order for the overall budget to be balanced.

Of that $750 billion, $88 billion goes to Transportation (i.e. our highways), and $56 billion to Justice (our Federal courts and prisons). Who wants to be soft on crime or be responsible for potholes on our Interstate highway system? Probably no one. So, now, we’re looking at $400 billion being subtracted from $600 billion in remaining programs to balance the budget. What’s left?

The GOP/Trump solution is two-fold: (1) gut the regulatory agencies, and (2) enact massive tax cuts for the rich and for corporations which will miraculously kick-start the Nation’s economic engine, thereby generating more tax revenue.

Part 1 would allow financial institutions free reign to prey upon consumers, Wall Street charlatans to cook up Ponzi schemes, and corporations to improve their bottom line by abusing consumers and the environment. Basically, it would set us on track to become a Third World country.

(News Flash: Yesterday the GOP succeeded in passing legislation that takes away citizens’ rights to sue banks and credit card companies for predatory practices. Yes, Folks…it’s happening to us. This is “Making America Great Again”?)

Part 2 would further enrich the Nation’s elite… guaranteed… but would be unlikely to generate sufficient new tax revenue to pay for those gifts. It would be a repeat of the Reaganomics and Bush “trickle down” experiments, which failed. In the absence of the projected taxes from the promised super-charged economy, the Federal budget would be significantly out-of-balance, and massive deficits would result…just as occurred during the Reagan years, when the National Debt doubled.

The bottom line: be wary of “Tax Reform” and the proposed Federal Budget. Remember the story about the Trojan Horse…danger hiding in plain sight.

By the way, the Federal Budget doesn’t include a massive slush fund for disasters and wars.

When catastrophic events like hurricanes and fires devastate America, FEMA renders aid and provides loans to help victims rebuild their lives. The actual appropriation for all FEMA relief in a calendar year is limited, and the magnitude of this year’s disasters is unprecedented. Unfortunately, FEMA is one of those agencies that the Trump Administration nominated earlier this year to receive a massive budget haircut. (I’m sure that’s why he’s declaring “Mission Accomplished” in Puerto Rico while 80 percent of the country still has no electricity a month after the disaster.)

Wars are not budgeted, and their cost can be prohibitive…i.e. budget-busting. The last Gulf War, under Bush, cost us an estimated $1 billion per day. Thus, it should be alarming when President Trump, as is his nature, makes warmongering comments practically every week. He’s threatened North Korea and Venezuela with armed conflict in the past several months, and this past week we’ve learned that we have U.S. military troops in Niger (Africa) doing…who knows what? Heaven forbid we add another far-flung front to our international war effort that already includes Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and probably Yemen.

We could be talking about serious money, all of which would have to be borrowed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(This is the second installment from my book, Disbelief, which I wrote several years back.)                                         

                                            ONE GOD OVER OTHERS

 The first five books of the Old Testament of the King James Version of the Holy Bible are known as the Torah, the most holy of the sacred writings in Judaism.  Jewish religious “tradition” (i.e. authenticity vouched by the priestly class) ascribes these writings to Moses through a process of divine intervention.  In other words, with the God of Abraham dictating the story to Moses.

According to dating of the text by Orthodox rabbis, the revelation of the Torah to Moses occurred in 1380 B.C. on Mount Sinai, about 600 years after the Epic of Gilgamesh creation myth and Flood story was written.   In an alleged face-to-face meeting with Moses, God laid down his famous Ten Commandments, which represent the moral foundation in Judaism, Christianity and Islam.  God later dictated to Moses an additional 613 mitzvah, or divine commandments, which the Chosen People were required to observe and practice.  (Again, these immutable laws were written hundreds of years after Hammurabi’s Code was put to stone.)  Outside of its significance to Judaism, the Torah is accepted as part of the Bible by Christians and in Islam is seen by them as authentic revelation from God.

The remaining books of the Old Testament are comprised essentially of a chronology of events in the history of the ancient Hebrews, with occasional songs and proverbs (wisdom) providing respite from the constant warring and bloodshed between the Hebrews and conquering armies of Assyrians, Persians, Alexander the Greek, and so forth.  The last books of the Old Testament, First and Second Maccabees, describe a successful uprising against the Seleucid Empire led by Judah Maccabee, reasserting the Jewish religion, expanding the boundaries of Israel, and diminishing the influence of Hellenism (Greek impact) on their culture. This took place in about 160 B.C.  Within one hundred years, Israel would once-again be conquered by an alien culture… this time, the Roman Empire.

Prophecy, i.e. the prediction of future events by self-appointed holy men, is common throughout the Bible, and is replete throughout the Old Testament.

A recurring theme of Jewish prophecy, echoed throughout the latter half of the Old Testament, is the hope and prayer that a Messiah (savior) will be sent by God to rescue the Hebrew people from these onslaughts and restore Israel to the prominence it enjoyed under King David.

Of course, not only were the Chosen People disheartened and disillusioned by the constant cultural upheaval that the conquerors brought with them, but their priestly class had to nimbly shift gears, as well.  In order to curry favor with new administration and keep their spiritual customers in the fold, they had to adapt, adopt, and improvise the mythological product being dispensed to the faithful.  A recurring theme of the Old Testament story is that the Chosen People aren’t pious enough, and don’t deserve God’s help and favoritism:  they need to lean more on their spiritual leaders, and heed their words.

In other words, be obedient to the priestly class.

God’s Imperfect Creations

The God that the Jewish priests invented was unusual for a divinity.  By definition, the Almighty One was perfect, all-knowing, all-powerful, and ever-present.  According to the mythology, this god effortlessly produced the universe, the earth, and all the beings thereof in a week’s time.  To accomplish this, he would have had to be a genius biologist, chemist, and physicist, all rolled into one.  Accordingly, one would expect his human creations to be perfect and act exactly as he intended, helping him execute his master plan for humanity.

And, yet, from the beginning, God’s human beings seem to puzzle, frustrate and anger him into punitive rages.  At one point in the Genesis story, God scrapped his entire experiment by drowning every human being except model citizens Noah and his family, and then re-started the process anew with their progeny.  Evidently, God felt that the failure of his initial design was an aberration.  But, alas, the descendents of Noah continued the pattern of living like fools, disappointing and disobeying God at every turn.  Even when he parted seas for them or helped them defeat their enemies time after time, his human creations doubted his powers and turned to other gods.  At this point, God threw a tantrum, and punished his Chosen People by making them wander in the desert for forty years before they could enter the Promised Land.

At some point in the reading of the Old Testament, the reader must wonder about the perfect, all-knowing nature of the God of Abraham.  A God who can design and build a universe in one week should be able to design a human brain that can follow instructions and learn from mistakes.   The question arises: if he failed in that task (i.e. who else is to blame?), then why was God constantly disappointed, angry and vindictive when his creations did as they pleased and annoyed him?

Of course, if the Almighty One had perfected the human being, and it performed exactly as he intended, there would have been no sin, there would be no need for atonement, no need for prayers and absolution, no need for offerings of food and valuables, and no need for worship.  In a nutshell, no need for the priestly class.  Thus, the authors of the mythology continually stirred the pot, with the hero (God) continually at odds with his ungrateful, less-than-obedient  subjects.

One Astute Man

So that the first human being Adam would not be lonely, God created Eve, the first female, from one of Adam’s ribs while he slept (Genesis 2:21-22).  Upon awakening and realizing what God had done, Adam matter-of-factly announced, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh” (Genesis 2:24).  This is an astounding declaration.  Until this point, God had not defined families or marriage, nor had there been any “fathers” or “mothers” on earth (i.e. Adam didn’t have parents), or “wives” in the seven previous days of creation.  Adam, in a stroke of mental astuteness that would have flabbergasted Albert Einstein, created all of these familial concepts in one off-the-cuff pronouncement.  And, he evidently married Eve simply by pronouncing her to be his “wife”, without her consent or the bother of a lengthy courtship.  It was arguably the first case of “love at first sight”.

Interestingly, this episode concludes by noting that Adam and Eve “were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed” (Genesis 2:25).  This is a curious statement.  Both of these humans were created naked, as were all of the other animals.  Why should either of them have any guilt feelings regarding their bodies?  Maybe that’s because…by the time the mythology was written (by priests), nakedness had become sinful in the eyes of the priestly class (and, therefore, the God that they had created)?

Placing Blame

A specific example of God’s perplexing thought process is provided in the story of the Garden of Eden.  God created Adam, the first human being, and placed him in the Garden.  Also within the Garden, God placed “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”, but forbade Adam from eating its fruit under penalty of death.   Adam later tried to learn by eating the fruit and God punished both Adam and Eve by exiling them from the Garden (Genesis 2:17-3:24).  This raises a few questions:  Why wouldn’t God want his human creatures to know the difference between good and evil? Particularly, since He later reveals that he is an obsessive stickler for the rules.   And, why would God have created such concepts (of good and evil) in the first place if it wasn’t his plan all along for Adam and Eve to learn these things?  Inexplicably, God doesn’t lay down the law regarding good and evil (i.e. the Ten Commandments) until the time of Moses, approximately 2,500 years later, according to biblical scholars.  Questions:  Why keep one hundred generations of Hebrews in the dark?  And, why the indignation when the people sinned?  They didn’t know what sin was.

By the way, the issue of nakedness is resolved when Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit.  The immediate consequence is that they realized that they were naked and hastily clothed themselves with fig leaf aprons (Genesis 3:7).  The moral of this story must be that God feels that nakedness is bad.  But, wait a minute!  God designed them: why would he create something that is evil or shameful?  Or, conversely, why put into their minds, via the Tree of Knowledge, the concept of being ashamed of something that God created?

It is ironic that the only animals that seem to be ashamed of nakedness are humans.  Of course, they have these feelings because the priestly class has laid an enormous guilt trip on them, via the Genesis mythology.

The Set-up

God also placed, among other things, a talking serpent in the Garden of Eden who convinced Eve to eat the forbidden fruit.  The all-knowing God seemed surprised when he found this out, and then cursed the serpent to crawl on his belly for all time (Genesis 3:1-14).  Again this raises obvious questions:  Aren’t God’s creations perfect?  The Almighty knew what he was doing when he created the serpent (who theologians say represents Satan), and had to have put the evil ideas in the serpent’s mind which caused it to tempt Eve.  So, why the surprise, anger, and vindictiveness?  The omniscient God had to know, in advance, how it would play out.  It is apparent that he (or, more precisely, the priestly authors) planned it that way.  And, therefore, it gave God and the clergy a convenient excuse to blame Eve for the sin and justify God making her and, by extension, all subsequent women subservient to men (“he shall rule over thee”)(Genesis 3:16).  Talk about unfair!

Re-read the Genesis story and it is very clear that God directly forbade Adam from eating the fruit before Eve was created.  Adam was the one who disobeyed God’s direct orders, not Eve.  Yet, as we have all been taught, the villain of the Garden of Eden story is Eve, “the temptress”.

Bad Boy Cain

Another hard to understand story is the familiar tale of Cain and Abel, the sons of Adam and Eve.   Cain became a farmer and Abel a shepherd.  They both made offerings to God (in order to gain his favor).  With no explanation, God respected Abel’s offering, “but unto Cain and his offering He had not respect”.  God vaguely inferred that Cain had sinned in some way.  Cain became upset and killed Abel in a fit of jealous rage.  In turn, God became vengeful and cursed Cain to a lifetime of misery.(Genesis 4:4-16).  This incident doesn’t make a lot of sense.  God had not specified the characteristics of an acceptable versus unacceptable offering.  He didn’t do so until Moses time, 2,500 years later, when he dictated an entire, very detailed chapter of Leviticus on the subject (Leviticus 1).  So, it was God who instigated the deadly fracas by unfairly slighting Cain and thus enraging him.  If anyone looks bad in this story, it is the Creator.

Then this episode gets stranger.  Upon being exiled from the presence of God, Cain went to the land of Nod, “knows his wife”, and she bore a son, Enoch (Genesis 4:16-17).  At that point in the Genesis story, there is only one woman on earth, Eve, who had had no female children.  How could Cain have fathered a child…unless his new wife and the mother of the newborn child was his own mother, Eve?  This does not seem to bother God; he neither repudiated nor punished Cain for having sex with his mother.  However, we later find out that God abhors incest; in fact, he commanded Moses that “if a mother and son have sexual relations, both must be put to death” (Leviticus 20:11).  What can we learn from this?  Perhaps that God realized that he had made a mistake in allowing incest in the first place.  OK… but could an all-knowing Divine Being truly make a mistake of any kind?

Killing, Smiting, and Murdering

In the Old Testament, God is crystal clear about murder… he says he’s against it.  One of the Ten Commandments delivered to Moses is “Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus 20:13), and one of his 613 mitzvah is very specific on the penalty:  “Anyone who commits murder must be put to death” (Leviticus 24:17).

Interestingly, however, God doesn’t personally practice what he preaches.  Nor does he seem to have a problem with his Chosen People smiting anyone who stands in their way.  In the Flood account, God drowned every living thing on earth except Noah’s family and the animals that were gathered onto the Ark (Genesis 6-8).  When God unleashed a plague upon the Egyptians, he killed all of their firstborn, including children and beasts (Genesis 13:15).

In these accounts, God aborted the lives of unborn children, slaughtered innocent infants and young children, and summarily executed helpless animals… because he was displeased.  What kind of a message did that send to his human creations regarding murder?  That it is permissible to kill someone if they anger you?  Later, God burned 250 individuals alive (Numbers 16:35), sent a plague to kill 14,700 unhappy Israelites (Numbers 16:41-49), sent another plague to slay 24,000 idol worshipers (Numbers 25:1-9), and called up three days of pestilence to kill 70,000 men because King David conducted a census (2 Samuel 24:10-17).  On one occasion, God sent two bears to slaughter forty-two children because they had made fun of a man’s bald head ((2 Kings 2:23-24).  Evidently, God’s philosophy is, “Do as I say, not as I do”.

But, even that’s not accurate, as there are many episodes in the Old Testament where God directed his Chosen People, through their leaders, to ruthlessly massacre armies, civilians, animals and pets.  For example, Moses and his Israelites murdered every man, woman, and child residing within the cities of Hesbon per God’s instructions (Deuteronomy 2:32-35), Joshua and his army killed every living thing in Jericho before burning it to the ground (Joshua 6:16-24), and then Joshua’s troopers did the same thing to six additional cities, sparing not one life (Joshua 10:28-40).  God later enabled Judah to kill 500,000 Israelite men for turning from him (2 Chronicles 13:15-20), and sent the army of the Chaldees to kill all the occupants of Jerusalem (2 Chronicles 36:15-23).  One wonders what the helpless children of these towns did to deserve their fate?

The lesson from these latter stories seems to be that if someone has something that you want (like, maybe, land and property?) it is acceptable in the eyes of God to steal it from them and murder them in the process.  But that, of course, runs counter to God’s tenth commandment:  “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house… nor anything that is thy neighbor’s” (Exodus 29:17).  Boy, religion is confusing!

The Birth of Intolerance

The God of Abraham not only kills or condones the murder of those who affront him or his people, but he also demands that the Israelites render the harshest of punishments upon those who disobey him.  The death penalty is required by God for many offenses which might be misdemeanors or minor felonies in today’s society, including:  anyone who curses his mother or father (Leviticus 20:9); anyone who commits perjury (Deuteronomy 19:18-19); any stubborn or rebellious son (Deuteronomy 21:18-21); anyone who harasses a widow or orphan (Exodus 22:24); any woman who has had premarital sex (Deuteronomy 22:21); and, (lest anyone forget who is making this stuff up) anyone who disobeys a priest (Deuteronomy 17:12) .

The Almighty is a little less clear about how he feels about strangers.  He told Moses that He “doth loveth the stranger” and that the Israelites should “love ye therefore the strangers, for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 10:18-19).  At the same time, however, God decreed that “any strangers approaching a sanctuary should be put to death” (Numbers 17:7).  Moreover, with regard to strangers with different beliefs, his attitude is resolute:  “If a city worships other Gods, kill everyone in it and burn it” (Deuteronomy 13:12-16).

This last directive conveniently provided Divine justification for all the smiting and mayhem conducted by Moses, Joshua, David, et al, as they confiscated the Promised Land from the native peoples who called it home.

Over-the-Top Punishment

There are scores of atrocities in the Old Testament that are attributed to the wrath of God.  Since He presumably dictated the story to Moses, God must have been quite proud of his achievements, wanting all the credit He was due.

Among the Creator’s accomplishments were: making people deaf, dumb and blind (Exodus 4:10-11); creating a rain of burning sulfur to kill the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:24-25); inflicting boils upon all the citizens of Egypt (Exodus 9:10-11); creating an earthquake to swallow up 250 complaining Israelites (Numbers 16:31-33); requiring a man to burn his daughter to death if He will help him conquer an enemy (Judges 11:29-39); inflicting severe cases of hemorrhoids on entire Philistine populations (1 Samuel 4-6); killing a man who kept the Ark of the Covenant from falling from an ox drawn cart (2 Samuel 6:6-7); using a hailstorm to kill citizens fleeing from a battle (Joshua 10:8-11); infecting King Azariah with leprosy for allowing incense to burn in the wrong location (2 Kings 15:1-5); and, directing Moses and his followers to stone to death a man for gathering sticks on the Sabbath (Numbers 15:32-36).

And, we already know what God does when he really throws a tantrum…He drowns everyone and everything on earth!

The Fear of God

As noted earlier, God made a covenant with the tribe of Abraham that, if they did what He asked, then they would become His Chosen People, He would favor them in their endeavors, and would reward them with the Promised Land.

Of course, they were merely human beings and didn’t always uphold their part of the bargain.  From time to time they screwed up, they backslid, and they sinned.  In order to coerce the Israelites into better behavior, God made examples of people as previously noted, smiting some, inflicting disease on others, punishing children for the mistakes of fathers, and whatever suited his whim.

In addition to actually terrorizing the population, God and his priestly spokesmen made alot of bloodcurdling threats to intimidate the Chosen Ones and others.  For example, if He didn’t get his way, God would:  kill men, have their children smashed, and have their wives raped (Isaiah 13:15-16); set people, animals, and even plants on fire (Jeremiah 7:20); make people hungry enough to eat their own children and friends (Jeremiah 19:9); break people’s bones and knock their teeth out with stones (Lamentations 3:1-16); turn daughters into whores and wives into adulterers (Hosea 4:13); send the children of Israel into slavery in a far away land (Joel 3:8); send plagues on people and animals to rot away tongues and eyes (Zechariah 14:12-15); and give away the property of men, “including their wives”, to other men (Jeremiah 8:10).

And, if He couldn’t play shortstop, he’d take his ball and bat and go home!

Women Underfoot

In case you missed an earlier point, the God of Abraham considered women to be the property of men.

After the Garden of Eden debacle, where God conveniently blamed Eve for Adam’s sin, He declared that “thy husband… shall rule over thee” (Genesis 3:16).  In Chapter 21 of Exodus, God explained His rules allowing a man to sell his daughter to another man and allowing men to take multiple wives.  Unfettered by law or Commandment, wise Hebrew King Solomon later accumulated 700 wives and 300 concubines (1 Kings 11:3).

Married women were commonly considered currency and sex objects rather than partners in a family enterprise.  Following the death of a man, the deceased father’s inheritance went entirely to his sons, or if he had no sons it went to the daughters, or if he had no children it went to the closest male relatives (Numbers 27:8-11).  Not only did the surviving wife get nothing, God’s law forced her to then marry (that is, become the property of) her husband’s brother if she didn’t have a son.  The brother-in-law had the right to refuse this wedding, by the way; the woman did not (Deuteronomy 25:5-9).

Not only were men considered to be superior to women, they were also considered to be cleaner.  God went into great detail explaining His loathing of female menstruation and prescribed numerous rules to keep unclean women away from other humans.  During menstruation, no one was allowed to touch the woman, and anything that she touched was considered to be unclean (Leviticus 15:19-30).  But, wait, since God created all things, he had to have created the physiological process which includes menstruation.  Why then would it be a bad or unclean thing?  God also considered women unclean after giving birth.  If the child was a male, the woman was considered unclean for seven days, while if the child was female the woman was unclean for fourteen days (Leviticus 12:1-5).

Rape, the paramount fear of many women, reared its ugly head often in the Old Testament.  Interestingly, God’s prescribed punishment for committing this most heinous of crimes was proscribed to be a pound of silver to the father and a forced marriage to the victim if she was not already engaged or married (Deuteronomy 22:28-29).  That’s right… the victim was forced to marry the man who savagely attacked her!  If a man raped an engaged virgin who didn’t cry loud enough to draw attention, the community was to consider the attack consensual if it took place in a city, and by God’s law the woman was to be stoned to death (Deuteronomy 22:24).  Yes, if a terrified woman is raped at knifepoint or is muzzled by her attacker, then she is deemed to have encouraged the sexual encounter.  Only a man could have written this stuff.

Also, the rape of a child by her father is condoned in the Old Testament.  In Chapter 20 of Leviticus, Moses goes into great detail identifying forbidden sexual relationships:  men and men, women and women, married women and other men, mother and son, etc.  Noticeably absent from this list is sex between father and daughter.  Since God considered daughters to be the sole property of fathers, this exception is understandable but, nevertheless, troubling to modern day sensibilities.

 God and Slavery

It is only natural to believe that God would be unalterably opposed to slavery, one of mankind’s cruelest institutions.  However, not only does the Old Testament not once mention’s God opposition to the practice nor His intention to abolish it, but He and his appointed biblical authors are vocal in their advocation of slavery.

The first mention of slavery in the Old Testament is a passage where Noah condemned his grandson Canaan to a life of slavery because his father Ham observed Noah naked and drunk (Genesis 9:20-27).  Yes, the son was enslaved for something his father happened upon.  And, this punishment from Noah, “a just man and perfect in his generation…Noah walked with God” (Genesis 6:9).  If God considered Noah perfect, then obviously he considered slavery to be acceptable.

God later went on to explain how slaves were to be treated.  A slave “cannot be corrected by mere words” (Proverb 29:19).  Does this mean that slaves can be beaten?  Yes, and if a man hits his slave hard enough to keep him down for a day or two, but the slave gets back up, “he shall not be punished: for he is his money” (Exodus 21:21).  This makes it clear that the slave was to be considered nothing more than a financial investment of the owner, very similar to a man’s daughter who could also be sold to be a wife or concubine, as previously discussed.

God goes on to explain how to acquire slaves.  He says that He prefers lifelong slaves to come from the surrounding heathen nations, perhaps purchased from foreigners visiting the Israelite regions.  And, if the owner died, the male children were to inherit these slaves (Leviticus 25:44-46).  Slaves could also be obtained as spoils of wars conducted at the orders of God.  When the Almighty delivered the enemy into the hands of his people, he ordered the men to be killed, “but the women, and the little ones…shall thou take unto thyself” (Deuteronomy 20:13-14).  This is great; God actually helped the Israelites obtain slaves.  However, turnabout is fair play.  Later on, following the death of Joshua, when the Chosen People defy him, God delivered the entire Israelite population into slavery six different times to various enemies (Judges 2-10).  From all of this, we can see that the God of Abraham was/is quite comfortable with the idea of human slavery, both as a socio-economic tool and as a preferred technique of mass coercion.

Interestingly, with regard to the latter, the Chosen People time after time returned to their sinful ways after God punished them with slavery.  One would think that a real God would know, in advance, what kind punishment would be 100 percent effective.

An interesting angle to the slavery issue was God’s treatment of “heathens”, or non-believers in Him.  As noted above, God directed the Israelites in their wars of conquest against these foreigners, helping the Chosen People to acquire their wealth, their land, and make slaves of them.  Of course, these enemies of the Israelites were not chosen to receive the Word of God and, as a result, had no Covenant with him, as did the Hebrews.  As these “heathens” lived their lives in ignorance of his laws, how did God justify punishing them with robbery, slavery and death?  Ironically, God was actually more forgiving and helpful to the very people who had received his Word, and then turned against him.  Again, the Old Testament story is very confusing.

The Whole Implausible Story

Truth be told, the Old Testament is one hell of a yarn.  It includes, among other things, a Creation story, a Great Flood story, a man being swallowed by a whale and surviving, a woman being turned into a pillar of salt, a wrestling match between God and a man, a burning bush that speaks, a great sea that parts when a wooden staff is laid before it, great city walls that fall down when a trumpet is blown, a human being carried up into Heaven aboard a flaming chariot, and a lot of enemies being smited with the assistance and encouragement of God.  The story ends with the Jews eagerly and longingly awaiting a Messiah, a Savior who will be sent by God to deliver them once again from their enemies and secure the long-awaited peace and security of their Promised Land.  It’s the kind of story that Hollywood likes: violence, sin, a cast of thousands, special effects, and the good guy winning out in the end.

Yet, it is a curious plot and the hero is a hard guy to figure out.  It stars a seemingly immature God who is jealous, spiteful, vengeful, and even cruel, at times.  At the same time, he can be very patient and forgiving toward his Chosen People, who constantly doubt Him, defy Him, and certainly don’t deserve Him.  And, for a God, he seems very human.  For example, He makes mistakes, He changes His mind, He lashes out in anger, and He plays favorites.  One would think that a real God would know what He was doing, would do it right the first time, and would say what He means and mean what He says.  God shouldn’t have to try out 150 different ways of coercion to make the Chosen People idolize and obey Him.

The bottom line is that God seems… very human-like, which would be odd is He were really a god.

By the way, there isn’t much doubt in the Old Testament about the so-called “free will” of man:  he has none, unless one considers the freedom to do everything that God demands, “or else”, to be actual freedom.  That is comparable to “voting” in a communist country where there is one candidate on the ballot.  Similarly, if you are free to defy The Man, but will be killed if you do so and tortured for all eternity, is your choice really a free one?

Reflecting on this, the biggest unanswered question in the Old Testament story is:  Why did the God of Abraham create human beings?  Since that subject isn’t discussed, one can only wonder.  Was the Creation intended to fill some void in God’s existence?  Perhaps He needed more recognition for His greatness, so he created a human cheering section.  (Or, so he thought!)  But, would a God who needs to hear praise and thanks really qualify as a Supreme Being?  What would ego mean to such an entity?  He already knows he’s the Greatest.  Or, was God simply fooling around in his laboratory and invented humans by accident?  It seems that way, like an experiment gone wrong, with Dr. Frankenstein furiously trying all manner of desperate measures to correct the behavior of his monster.  But, all of God’s flailing about seems so un-godlike.  Surely, the Almighty God wouldn’t create a defective product, or, if He did, He’d damn well know how to fix it.  Maybe there’s another, more esoteric answer to this question.  If there is, it is not readily apparent in the Old Testament story.

To greatly summarize the plot, God creates the world and everything in it, lays down the rules for humans to observe, and promises wonderful things to the Hebrews if they comply.  They don’t, and God waffles back and forth between punishing and redeeming them.  The Hebrews lose their temple and their Promised Land, and once again look toward God to save them.  End of story.

Really?  What is the purpose of this fantastic tale?  It was obviously completed many generations after Moses’ time, so “Who wrote it?” and, “Why?”

And the Author is…!

Scholars refer to first five books of the Old Testament as the Pentateuch, which is Greek for “five volumes”.  As noted previously, tradition deems that Moses personally wrote the Pentateuch with divine guidance.  Modern scholarship has turned this assumption on its head.  It is now obvious that many writers had a hand in developing the Old Testament story and that God didn’t dictate the stories or edit the proofs.  The Pentateuch is replete with historical and other factual inaccuracies, contains numerous contradictions and logical absurdities, and features many erroneous prophecies.  If anyone could accurately predict the future, it would be the Almighty One.  A book containing all these errors could not possibly have been produced with divine guidance.

The fact that Moses couldn’t have written the Pentateuch is obvious when his death and burial are described in the last chapter of Deuteronomy, one of the books he is alleged to have written.  In fact, the real author of the passage indicates that Moses burial location is hidden so that “no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day” (Deuteronomy 34:5-6).  In other words, that day, many years thereafter, when the real author wrote this passage.  Biblical scholars now believe that Deuteronomy was written shortly before 622 B.C., or as many as 800 years following the life of Moses, if he really existed.

Other indications that Moses wasn’t a biblical author include the inclusion of city names and tribes yet to exist at the time of Moses’ alleged death in approximately 1450 B.C.   Genesis 11:31 says that the Chaldees lived in the city of Ur during the life of Abraham, but historical records reveal that the Chaldees didn’t even exist as a tribe until well after Moses was dead, and they didn’t become a prominent enough group to occupy a city for another 800 years.  Genesis 14:14 mentions the city of Dan, but the city didn’t acquire this name until it was seized one thousand years later by conquest.

Some particular names mentioned in Genesis 14 and 25 are consistent with names of people recorded by the Assyrians as living during the sixth through eighth centuries B.C., not a thousand years prior in Moses’ time.  Also lending suspicion is the fact that the book of Exodus never provides the names of the Egyptian Pharaohs, even though Moses would have readily known this information.

Finally, the Pentateuch describes leading characters such as Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph riding camels.  However, there is no historical or archaeological evidence indicating that camels were domesticated earlier than 1200 B.C.  The real author(s) of these passages didn’t have the benefit of this knowledge and must have taken for granted that camel riding predated them by hundreds, if not thousands, of years.  So, he (they) innocently included it in the biblical myth.

The preponderance of biblical scholars are certain that Moses wasn’t the author of the Pentateuch and believe that there were probably four authors and an editor involved in the Old Testament compilation as we know it.  This “document hypothesis” recognizes different writing styles, different usage of words, and different topic areas of the authors, among other things.  Research has been unable thus far to determine the names of the contributors, so they are known in the scholarly community by initials: J, E, P, D, and R.

Unknown author “J”  used JHWH as the unpronounceable name of God and issues relating primarily to humanity were his focus.  He wrote a complete historical record of the Israelites from a Judean perspective, so it is presumed that he resided in the Kingdom of Judea.  Historians typically place a 950-750 B.C. date on his work.

Unknown author “E”, whose primary focus was on morality, consistently used Elohim as the name of God.  E emphasized the second born of families because they were of historical and personal interest to the North for symbolic reasons.  E left a complete account of the Northern Kingdom of Israel.  Historians date E’s contribution to have occurred in the range of 900-700 B.C.

Unknown author “P” is considered almost certainly to have been a priest.  He identified Aaron, the first High Priest, as his spiritual ancestor.  His manuscripts include rituals, laws, sins, chronologies, genealogies, and other subjects of definite interest to a priest.  P doesn’t attribute any human qualities to God, and the Hebrew terms equivalent to mercy, grace, and repentance don’t appear once in P’s work.  His interpretations and attitudes are often cold and harsh, something that might be expected from a traditional church leader.  He doesn’t include any mythical details, such as talking animals, likely interpolated into history by J and E as a result of popular urban legends.  As P was aware of the books of prophecy, he probably wrote his share of the book later than J and E, around 700-650 B.C.

Unknown author “D” received his name because he was the author of Deuteronomy as well as several of the historical books.  He likely wrote the book of Jeremiah because it contains several carbon copies of statements made in the book of Deuteronomy.  Historians speculate that D may, in fact, be either Jeremiah’s scribe, Baruch, or Jeremiah himself.  Evidence for the “document hypothesis” indicates that the person compiling the Pentateuch tacked D’s work onto the end of the compilation.  It is believed that D probably finished his work shortly before it was “discovered” during the realm of King Josiah in 622 B.C.

Author “R” has been designated as the redactor, or editor, of the Pentateuch as it is known today.  His work is thought to have been completed around 500-434 B.C.  The scholarly community consensually believes this editing was accomplished by the Jewish priestly scribe, Ezra.

It is not known why the books of the Pentateuch were combined.  It is speculated that a number of Israelites fled south into Judea with the E document in hand when the Assyrians conquered the Northern Kingdom in 722 B.C.  Consequently, the J document coexisted with the E document in this society prior to their combination.  Around this time, P likely became a widespread alternative priestly version of the J and E records.  With three variant interpretations, no doubt would come arguing factions.  R then saw the need, or perhaps was elected, to combine the documents into a single cohesive document agreeable to all parties.  Not wishing to eliminate any essential parts of the respective documents, R would then combine the contrasting stories into one quasi-harmonious account and do the best he could to avoid contradictions, inconsistencies, and repetitions.  Because the D document doesn’t step on the toes of the other three histories, the redactor likely tacked Deuteronomy onto the end for this reason.  By 434 B.C., the redactor had certainly compiled the modern version of the Pentateuch.  While scholars are certainly not fully able to explain the origins of the Old Testament with one hundred percent accuracy, they can conclude with great certainty that the Pentateuch is a set of conflicting passages scribed 500-3500 years after the events it purports.

We’ve learned that the Pentateuch was not authored by Moses, at least according the greatest biblical scholars of our time.  So, the next question has got to be, “Were these authors divinely inspired?”  Obviously a lot of this story took place long before the lives of these authors.  How could they know what happened unless either (a) God had provided them with the facts, or (b) the Pentateuch is primarily a mythology, passed down through the generations, designed to justify and support the Hebrew religion.

Divine Guidance?

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1), probably the most famous opening line in the history of literature.  Obviously, no human beings were in existence at that time, so either God related it to the author, or the author made this up on his own.  The two chapters of Genesis go on to detail how God created the universe and everything in it.  The first thing God did was to create light, and divided the light from darkness to create day and night.  This was accomplished on the first day of creation (Genesis 1:3-5).  Incredibly, three days later He created the sun and the moon (Genesis 1:16).  As any elementary school student knows, the sun is the only appreciable source of light for our planet.  In order for there to be “light” on the first day, the sun would have to have been in existence.  Surely, God would know this, but Bronze Age men, telling tales around a campfire, would not.

On the second day of creation, God allegedly made the “firmament” which divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were below it (Genesis 1:6-7).  This firmament is described in the Jewish Encyclopedia as the “arched solid vault of heaven… to which are fastened the lights, the stars”.  The concept, as detailed in Genesis, is that this firmament separates the “sky ocean” from the open air above earth’s inhabitants.  In case you haven’t guessed it, this alleged sky ocean is the source of rain.  Rain falls when “God opens the windows of heaven”, as he did to initiate Noah’s flood (Genesis 7:11).  To put it all together, the firmament is supposedly a solid dome above the sky in which are placed the stars and planets for illumination purposes, and above which is the great reservoir of water which is periodically released onto earth through windows that God opens.  Needless to say, any astronomer or astronaut can tell you that there isn’t any firmament above the earth and beneath the moisture-laden clouds.  God would know this, too.

The authors of the Pentateuch also got some bad information from God regarding basic zoology.  Following Noah’s flood, God said that all terrestrial and marine life would have fear and dread toward humans (Genesis 9:2).  Experts in the field of zoology disagree, noting that there are vast numbers of animals, ranging from pets to fearless predators, which have no fear whatsoever toward humans.  Later in the Genesis story, Jacob successfully alters the color patterns on lambs and goats by placing peeled tree branches in front of the mating livestock (Genesis 30:37-39).  Modern geneticists state that peeled branches have no effect on an organism’s appearance; DNA does.  Of course, the ancient writers wouldn’t have known of DNA, but God would have, because He created it.

God would also have known which animals chew the cud.  Twice in the Old Testament it is proclaimed that hares (rabbits) are “unclean” because they chew the cud (Leviticus 11:6 and Deuteronomy 14:7).  To chew the cud means to eat grasses, swallow, then regurgitate later for further chewing.  Zoologists assert that rabbits do not do this.

But, there’s even more bad zoology.  Later in the Old Testament, ostriches are painted as careless parents (Job 39:13-17), which is exactly the opposite opinion held by modern science: ostriches are extremely meticulous about how they take care of their offspring, and even the father helps out, which is overwhelmingly rare in the animal kingdom.  Leviticus 11:21-23 states, incorrectly, that insects and arachnids (e.g. spiders) have four feet, when actually insects have six feet and arachnids have eight.  Leviticus 11:13-19 identifies the bat as a fowl (e.g. a bird), when it is actually a flying mammal.  Later in the Old Testament, Jonah is swallowed by a fish and lives inside its stomach for three days (Jonah 1:17), something that is extremely implausible given the impact of the gastric juices and bile acids that Jonah would have been exposed to.  Of course, God would have known this, since He designed the digestive tracts of all living creatures.  So, it is doubtful that the Great Scientist in the Sky, who designed everything, would have given the authors this and other bad scientific information for their story.

Numbers Don’t Lie

The Old Testament goes into great length and detail to document the succeeding generations between Adam and Moses.  For some inexplicable reason, during this period the male descendents lived extraordinary long lives.  Adam lived 130 years before siring his son, Seth, and then proceeded to live another eight hundred years.  Seth lived 912 years, his son, Enos, lived 905 years.  His son, Abraham, lived 315 years, and then his son, Ishmael, lived 137 years.  Finally, the last patriarch in the Genesis account, Joseph, expires at age 110 years young.(Genesis 5:1-50:26)

Interestingly, the lifespans of the Hebrew patriarchs decrease over the thousands of years, exactly the opposite of what recorded history has experienced (i.e. longer lifespans as man has learned more about nutrition, diseases, safety, etc.)  Coincidentally, the lifespans of the patriarchs reach possible, but still implausible, levels the nearer the Bible approaches recorded history.  In other words, closer to the point that the biblical story could be verified by independent historians, such as the Egyptians, who kept very precise records of everything.  Modern scientists and historians have yet to discover evidence of any human being who lived 125 years, let alone the 969 years of Methuselah (Genesis 5:21-27).

The longetivity claims and the peculiar receding lifespan progression are, therefore, highly suspect, and paint the entire Genesis story as more of a collection of myths than actual facts.  As a matter of fact, anthropologists who study other ancient religions note that important figures in th0se religions also have extremely abnormal lifespans, sometimes reaching into the thousands of years.

Another anthropological exaggeration which manifests itself throughout the Pentateuch is consistently improbable population growth.  The first such example takes place during the post-Flood era when the population of the earth inexplicably mushrooms from eight human beings to a million plus in only a few hundred years (Exodus 1:5, 38:26).  By the time of 2 Samuel, later in the Old Testament, it is claimed that there were well over a million men in two armies alone (2 Samuel 24:9).  Simple math will tell you that these numbers are way out of line.  For one thing, if population doubled every generation (20 years), an initial population of eight individuals would expand to less than 10,000 people in ten generations (200 years).

Not only are the Old Testament numbers exceedingly exaggerated for a believable population growth spurt, but the living conditions were not exactly primed for such a magnificent, logarithmic eruption of life.  The reader might recall that every living thing that wasn’t on the ark, including plants and animals, was destroyed in Noah’s flood.  The survivors would have had very little to eat, not to mention the fact that all the freshwater sources would have been polluted by ocean saltwater.  This is the type of environment that kills people, rather than stimulating population growth.

Furthermore, there is no reliable archaeological evidence that there were that many people, including massive armies, living simultaneously in the Middle East until very recently.  Some 5,000 plus years after Genesis, Sadaam Hussein’s Iraqi army was numbered at 538,000 men, out of a population of roughly 30 million inhabitants.  Needless to say, no amount of procreation by Noah and his virile progeny could have created these massive population numbers.  Someone fibbed, and it wasn’t God.

Another case of exaggerated numbers occurs in the famous exodus of Moses and the Hebrews from Egyptian captivity.  The most widely accepted and latest possible date of this purported event is 1447 B.C., according to a chronology based on the reign of King Solomon (1 Kings 6:1).  According to the Bible, the Israelite slaves were used to build the Egyptian city of Raamses (Exodus 1:11).   This doesn’t square with the detailed genealogical records of the Egyptian pharaohs, however.  There wasn’t a Pharaoh named Raamses until 1320 B.C., or 127 years after the alleged Exodus.

Upon the Israelites alleged escape from their construction duties, God parted the Red Sea so that they could cross and escape from the pursuing Egyptians (Exodus 14).  This was supposedly the last that Egypt would see of them, and it was as far as the Bible is concerned.  Moses supposedly marched his people straight through the other Egyptian regions (several hundred miles of cities and military garrisions) without being noticed.  This was an amazing feat, considering that Moses’ multitude included “about six hundred thousand on foot, that were men, beside children” (Exodus 12:37).  If we assume only one wife per man and only one child for every other couple, there’s a total of more than one and one-half million escapees in addition to the “mixed multitude of flocks, and herds, even very much cattle” (Exodus 12:37-41).

This huge sea of humanity and animals then purportedly wandered around the region for forty years, likely expanding its numbers.  According to modern nutritionists, a human being on minimal rations would require a quarter pound of food per day.  That equates to at least 200 tons of food per day plus drinking water being generated for this human population in an inhospitable climate (i.e. mostly desert, sparse vegetation, temperatures up to 120 degrees in the summer).  The Bible specifies precise locations where this multitude resided during their desert journey; in fact, they were in Kadesh-barnea for most of the 40 years (Deuteronomy 1:19).  Interestingly, not one scintilla of evidence of an Israeli encampment or occupancy has ever arisen from the multitude of archaeological excavations conducted in this area, among the most-investigated in the world.  One would think that several million people would have left significant human and cultural remains.

Similarly, there is no evidence for several million people invading Caanan and destroying the inhabitants’ possessions forty years after the Exodus (Numbers 33:50-54).  Archaeological findings in the form of bodies, waste products, documents, and clothing tell us that the population of Caanan during this era was never greater than 100,000.  Thus, we can reasonably dismiss the possibility of a group in excess of one million ever conquering and inhabiting the region.  Lending credence to this is the historical record of the Egyptians, who kept records of everything.  Of the thousands of fourteenth century B.C. Egyptian records uncovered in this very region detailing the governments, armies, religions, trade routes, and everyday lives of the inhabitants, none pay any respect to the millions of Israelites allegedly moving about like nomads in Kadesh-barnea.

A famous monument uncovered in Thebes in 1896 contains hieroglyphs that describe the Pharoah Merneptah entering Caanan in 1207 B.C. and easily defeating the inhabitants therein, among which were the Israelites.  In fact, the stele says, “Caanan is captive with all woe.  Ashkelon is conquered, Gezer seized, Yanoam made non-existant, Israel is wasted, bare of seed.”  The Egyptians often used this last phrase, “bare of seed”, to indicate that a people’s granaries had been destroyed, making them subject to famine, and incapacitating them as a military threat to Egypt.  Pharoah Merneptah’s official records don’t even mention this campaign in Caanan, almost as if it was a minor skirmish, not worthy of special note.  This would not be the case if the Israelites were a mighty foe with a million or more men of fighting age.  Interestingly, the Bible does not mention this humiliating defeat either, nor the fact that the large Israelite nation had to endure a crippling famine.  The inescapable conclusion is that the Israelite population was not a large one, and that it may have been just a large tribe among many then existing in Caanan.

Real or Imagined Conquests?

The military campaigns of Moses, Joshua and other Israelite leaders were characterized by improbably massive armies and convenient miracles.  In the battle for Jericho, God directed Joshua’s army to blow trumpets for seven days… which caused the fortified walls of the town to crumble and allowed the Israelites to enter and put everyone in it to the sword (Joshua 6:1-21).  This is interesting, because never before or afterwards has the sound of a trumpet been shown to crumble a wall.

Later in the Old Testament story, God granted Joshua’s request to make the sun cease its motion so that he could defeat his enemies in the daylight (Joshua 10:12).  God complied and created a length of day that had never taken place in the past (Joshua 10:13-14).  Not surprisingly, there’s little credibility in this claim because astronomers at that time in Egypt, China, Babylon and South America would have certainly recorded this atypical event… and their records show no such extraordinary and unique astronomical event.  Another reason that it couldn’t have occurred is because the sun doesn’t move; rather, it’s the earth that orbits the sun.  Of course, God would have known this, but the author of this preposterous episode of the mythology wouldn’t have had a clue.

According to the Bible, Joshua was in command of a 40,000 man army before setting it loose against the city of Jericho (Joshua 4:13).  Even so, he needed the magical trumpets to conquer the city.  What is highly improbable about this story is not the trumpets, however.  At about that time in human history, the Egyptians were the most powerful nation not only in the Middle East but in the entire world, and in 1285 B.C. Pharoah Raamses recorded the size of his entire army at 37,000 men.  As noted above, there is no evidence of a 40,000 man army of Israelites roaming about the Middle East, obliterating cities with ease.

The consensus of archaeological findings points away from Moses or Joshua ever conquering the cities claimed by the Bible.  Jericho, in particular, is a very ancient city whose history is well-preserved archaeologically.  Although Joshua’s famous battle allegedly took place long after the death of Moses, there’s overwhelming archaeological evidence that suggests the city was destroyed before Moses would have even been born (Joshua 6).  Of course, God would have known that and, one would think, he would have shared that insight with the author of the Joshua mythology.

More Numbers That Don’t Lie

According to the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic faiths, the God of Abraham created the universe, the earth, and everything in it, exactly the way he told Moses, who faithfully recounted the feat in Genesis.  Biblical experts have carefully calculated the age of the universe/earth by painstakingly reviewing scripture (the entire Old Testament).  According to this calculation, the universe/earth was created between 4323 B.C. and 4570 B.C., making the universe/earth approximately 6,429 years old in 2013 A.D. if one was to believe the Old Testament story.  There is good reason to reject this account of creation, however.

Ironically, Christian scientists Baron Georges Cuvier and James Hutton, who are now known as the fathers of the science of Geology, made the primary breakthroughs in discovering the earth’s genuine antiquity during the eighteenth century.  They were the first to document multi-layered fossil columns in the earth’s surface and mixed vertical and horizontal rock layers in adjacent areas, suggesting exceedingly drawn out natural phenomena that caused these geologic formations.  Within one hundred and fifty years, breakthroughs in the field of geology yielded sophisticated age-dating methods which enabled scientists to date rocks based upon the deterioration of radioactive isotopes contained within them.  This discovery opened the door for scientists to place increasingly accurate estimations on the age of the earth, which is currently believed to be 4.3 billion years old.  The reader will recall that Genesis states that God created the stars on the universe’s fourth day (Genesis 1:16), again approximately 6,423 years ago.  Modern astronomers believe, however, that the most distant stars are more than ten billion years in age.

In 1859, Charles Darwin published his manuscript, “On the Origin of Species”, which turned out, in retrospect, to be the cornerstone of modern biology.  In his book, Darwin recognized how species are specifically adapted for their respective environments and speculated on how they acquired this adaptation.  He also noted the struggles among members of the species that lead to survival of only the fittest members.  In other words, only those members of the species that are the most successful adapting to changes in their environment will be among the survivors.  Importantly, Darwin correctly noted that these natural progressive events would take an enormous amount of time to occur.  Scientists have since located simple fossilized organisms, such as bacteria, within rocks well over three billion years old.  According to the theory of evolution, plants and animals both evolved from similar, primitive life forms.  Since plants and animals are obviously much more complex than the earthly array of prehistoric microorganisms, we would expect their fossils to appear much closer to the earth’s surface.  And, this is exactly what occurs.  Through a battery of analytical techniques, scientists have been able to solidly conclude that plants and animals began appearing on earth around five hundred million years ago.  Furthermore, increasingly complex animals presenting advanced nervous systems appear well after the more primitive, less evolved ones.

Human beings are much easier to date because we’re relatively new to the earth and because our distant relatives left behind extremely helpful clues.  Remnants of ancient human-like creatures found in the mid-nineteenth century prompted several expeditions to search for more of these mysterious life forms.  These human-like creatures would later become known as the Neanderthal, of whom we could be distant descendants.  Recent fossil discoveries in Africa yielded ape-like human remains dating to around a few million years, while paleontologists uncovered two-million year-old fossils of beings that evidently used two legs to walk upon the African soil.  Furthermore, modern humans, Homo sapien, began to appear around 100,000 years ago.  By the time of modern man’s dominating emergence, fossil remains indicating our migration to other regions of the world become readily apparent.  Only 10,000 years ago, humans became advanced farmers and hunters.  Tools uncovered in the eighteenth century have now been carbon-dated to verify their belonging to this era.

What do all of these modern scientific discoveries tell us about the Genesis story?  In a nutshell, that it didn’t happen that way.  All of the scientific facts now in evidence dispute the Old Testament’s alleged age of the earth, the story of God’s creation of all life forms, and Noah’s Flood.  This realization leads one to the obvious conclusion that the unknown author of Genesis didn’t know what he was talking about and, if he was getting divine guidance in the writing of the story, then the God of Abraham was/is not really God, because the Creator himself would be aware of the factual truth.

Copies of Copies of Copies

As has been previously discussed, biblical experts believe that the final editing of the Hebrew Torah or Pentateuch (which is comprised of the so-called Five Books of Moses and is the foundation of the Old Testament) was completed between 500 and 434 B.C.  Several centuries later, after Alexander the Great had spread Greek culture throughout the Mediterranean, Ptolomey II ordered the translation of the Pentateuch into Greek.  He supposedly brought together 72 Hebrew elders in Alexandria, Egypt and asked them to translate.  The result was the Septaguint (“from the seventy”), which was completed sometime between the 3^rd and 1^st century B.C. at the Library of Alexandria.   No original copy of that document exists.  The oldest surviving Old Testament text is the Codex Sinaiticus, which was handwritten by a Christian in Greek in the 4^th century A.D. and contains the New Testament, as well.  Without the original to compare against, it is unknown whether the Codex scribe faithfully copied the Septaguint, or revised it to harmonize with the new Christian theology.

Later, the early Christian clergyman St. Jerome translated this product into Latin; it is known as the Vulgate version.  This also presented an opportunity for editing and revision.  In the 1500’s, Martin Luther translated the Vulgate into German, revising what was now called the “Bible” to fit his Protestant message.  Even later, the Bible was translated into English in what we now know as the King James Version.  Many fundamentalist Christians are firmly convinced that every word in the KJV “Holy Book” is the verbatim Word of God, despite the five linguistic removes from the original Hebrew and the fact that every new round of translation had a theological “agenda” of some sort.

“Provenance” is a term used most commonly in the antique trade to document the authenticity of a relic.  If the chain of custody can be validated, that is, if it can be proved that the item is original and has not been altered in any way, then it is considered the real McCoy and has historical and monetary value.  In the case of the Old Testament, there are no surviving originals in Hebrew.  The well-known facts that the oldest existing translation postdates the original Hebrew to Greek translation by some five hundred years and was produced by Christian clergy casts considerable doubt on the provenance of what we commonly believe to be the Old Testament message.  This is an important fact, since the Old Testament is the underpinning of the New Testament story.

In Conclusion

Virtually every statement in the Old Testament regarding events prior to 1000 B.C. (i.e. the reign of King David) is unsubstantiated by historical or scientifically-derived evidence.  In many cases, the only record of important biblical characters and events is in the Old Testament itself, despite the fact that these supposedly-real characters and events allegedly impacted actual record-keeping cultures of the day.  The earth’s geologic record, as preserved in the Grand Canyon, shows no evidence of a Flood that allegedly covered Mount Everest by fifteen feet of water.  No remnants of Noah’s Ark have been found, nor have the whereabouts of the mystical Ark of the Covenant (the most sacred physical item in the Hebrew religion) been determined.

As a matter of fact, no original remains of the Old Testament document itself have been found to verify any of the Old Testament story offered in current versions of the Holy Bible.  It is possible the Old Testament story as we know it is markedly different from the Hebrew original.

In summary, one can reasonably and rationally conclude that (a) an all-knowing, perfect God had nothing to do with the writing of the Old Testament; and, (b) many generations of priestly salesmen created, and then doctored, the mythology/sales brochure to suit the times and needs of the Hebrew, and later Christian, consumer.

Charlie and I have been on the road for a couple of weeks, enjoying this wonderful country. We are blessed.

Our Nation, in a political sense, is not so blessed. We have a narcissistic, heartless, fascist liar running the Country, and we have a legislative branch of government that is willing to look the other way while it connives with him to improve the lot of the 1 percent of Americans who earn 25 percent of the Nation’s income and already control 40 percent of the wealth of the country. President Trump is already one of that group, and he is Hell-bent on further enriching his family.

If Trump and his Republican cohorts succeed in their efforts to manipulate the tax code, our children and grandchildren will pay a tremendous price.

The first act of this Republican farce was the attempt to deprive 20 million needy Americans of health care. The savings from this ploy was going to help disguise the chicanery of their Tax Reform plan. Luckily for the Nation’s poor, that cold-hearted endeavor was stymied…at least for the time being. I’m sure President Trump and his uncaring conspirators in Congress haven’t yet given up on that campaign goal…to further subjegate America’s disadvantaged population. At this writing, the President’s goal, in the absence of repealing Obamacare, is to sabotage it.

Now, the American public is starting to get barraged by our Republican friends (and Fox News) about the wonderful Tax Reform plan that is being cooked up.

Unfortunately for the 99 percent of Americans who are not driving this train, the immediate gains of this Tax Reform plan will be minuscule for the Average Joe, and he’ll pay dearly for it for decades. But, for the super-wealthy 1 percent, there will be an immediate bounty, and those gains will be protected over the long haul. “The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer” goes the saying; that’s how the shameful imbalance between rich and poor was achieved in this country in the first place. And, it’s about to get worse.

The sales pitch that the Republicans are making to the American public is the tired “Supply Side Economics/Trickle Down/Reaganomics” theory that sounds great, but that has never worked when tried. The Republican plan professes that large tax cuts to the wealthy and corporations will unleash tremendous economic growth, and the benefits of that will trickle down to all Americans. You know, “A rising tide lifts all boats.” Accordingly, life will be wonderful, there will be full employment…it will  Make America Great Again!

Excuse me, but we’ve heard this song several times before, and…just in my lifetime. Republicans pull this steaming turd out of the tool box about every generation, hoping that the new folks will be ripe for the pickin’.

Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts for the the rich and corporations had a short term boost to the economy, but taxes had to be raised in succeeding years, and the National Debt doubled during his Presidency. That means that the Nation had to borrow money in order to benefit the already wealthy elite.

President George W. Bush tried the same thing, but many economists believe that the modest spike in economic activity was caused by lowered interest on borrowing (the Fed rate was lowered from 6 percent to 1 percent). Low interest money always stimulates the economy. Again, the “benefits” of the trickle-down plan were, essentially, smoke and mirrors. And, remember what happened when lots of easy money was laying around…the banks started lending money to vagrants without jobs, and we got the stock market crash and…the Great Recession.

And, then, we bailed out those banks with taxpayer money!

Kansas voters fell for the “supply side economics” scam a number of years ago, hook, line, and sinker. A conservative Governor and Legislature slashed taxes dramatically, with the promise that unburdened corporations and the rich would stimulate unprecedented economic growth. The Governor’s goal was to eliminate the income tax entirely; his campaign was called the “March to Zero”. It turned out to be a sprint to bankruptcy. Within four years, the State was staring at a budget shortfall of $350 million, with a projected shortfall of $1 billion in  another three years. Bottom line: the economic growth didn’t materialize, and now Kansas is in the same boat as Puerto Rico…screwed.

But, the tricke-down idea sure sounded good at the time. People want to believe in Santa Claus.

Take it from a guy (me) who used to prepare billion dollar local government budgets: there is no magic Silver Bullet. Reduced taxes without reduced spending equals deficit spending. Projected economic growth based on faulty assumptions does not equal more jobs. Never has, never will. Only on Fox News and in Donald Trump’s fertile imagination.

Over the past ten years, the so-called “Tea Party” conservative component of the Republican Party has championed reduction of the national debt and Federal deficit spending by reducing government cost. Accordingly, Tea Party adherents have strenuously opposed optimistic (“pie in the sky”) estimates of Federal revenue based upon wishful thinking. Because why? Because when that projected revenue doesn’t materialize, and the spending continues unabated, budget deficits occur, resulting in more national debt. Finally, some common sense!

All of that sounded good to these fiscally-conservative Republicans, particularly when Democrats were pushing the National agenda, or when Democrats controlled Congress. Why? So that the Tea Partiers could use this common sense to thwart Democratic policy aims.

However, now that the tables are turned, and the Republican Party is driving the train, unhindered, the proposed Tax Reform plan (from those same, sensible legislators) is turning out to be the “Same Ol’, Same Ol'” flim-flam that got us in a mountain of National Debt.

The proposed Tax Reform plan alleges that very generous tax cuts to the rich and to corporations will spur tremendous economic growth, and the resultant bounty, spread out to all Americans, will easily cover the lost tax revenue. Most economists believe this to be…hogwash. Why? Because it’s never worked in the past.

These economists believe that the projected increased revenue will not occur, at least as it is projected by the Republican optimists, and that the “plan” will have a $1.5 trillion net shortfall over the next ten years. Tax increases, paid for by average Americans, will have to pay for it, in the end, and the value of the U.S. dollar will suffer.

And, yet, Republican fiscal hawks are now eager to hop on board. Why is that? Because it is THEIR pet projects that will receive priority in the Federal budget…the deficit be damned. There will be payoffs for their corporate campaign donors, Defense projects in their Districts, and large tax breaks for their rich friends.

Decreased Federal funding will be applied to watchdog agencies, rewarding the Republican Party’s banking, Coal, Big Oil, NRA, and Bible Belt lobbies. The big boys will get big tax breaks, and, as an added bonus, no one will be watching the hen house, because the Federal regulatory agencies will be underfunded.

The D.C. “swamp” will remain undrained, and America will not be made any greater. Just more of the same shit in a newly wrapped bag. Except, in this case, more income and more wealth will accumulate to the top 1 percent of Americans. And, the National Debt will skyrocket, just like it did under the so-called “Reaganomics”.

The tax benefits to the wealthy will be real, but will not necessarily produce more jobs…which is the touted goal of Tax Reform. The rich folks who get large tax breaks could hire more employees. But, but they have other options that could be more enticing to them. In 2008, when the Bush Administration lowered taxes and gave TARP bailouts (to failing financial institutions which had demonstrated bad judgment), instead of creating jobs with this windfall, businesses saved the money, sent it to stockholders as dividends, repurchased stocks and invested overseas. So, rather than creating jobs, the rich benefactors increased their wealth…at taxpayer expense.

We all know that it happened, because we saw it with our own eyes and were furious about it. But, people have short memories, and they want to…believe. And, as P.T. Barnum said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

That’s how Trump became President. But, I digress.

The economy has changed since Ronald Reagan’s days. More and more jobs have been lost to automation, the economy as a whole has become more capital- and technology-intensive. So, businesses are more disposed to use tax cuts to buy computers and other labor-saving equipment than to hire new workers.

The bottom line is that many Blue collar Americans who believe Tax Reform will spontaneously re-generate their old industries (coal, Rust Belt manufacturing, etc.) are going to be sorely disappointed. Congress is going to throw them a bone while picking their pocket on behalf of the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans.

Congress has been there, done that several times before. Just a little sleight of hand…it’s the old promise of “a chicken in every pot”, “it’s a no-brainer”, etc.

The fact of the matter is that while Average Joes vote to elect politicians, successful political campaigns are funded by the 1 percent. And, those guys always get what they pay for.

And, as Sonny and Cher said, “The Beat Goes On”.

The Chief Executive has been on a roll lately.

His Secretary of State was quoted as calling him a “moron”. Trump then challenged his appointee, the fifth in the line of Presidential succession, to an I.Q. test.

Two hurricanes devastated Puerto Rico, so Trump flew down there and tossed rolls of paper towels to the crowd, and then declared that the Federal response to the disaster was a “10+”.

Meanwhile, American citizens in Puerto Rico have been without electricity for a month now, food and water are limited, and things continue to look bleak. They can wipe their tears with those paper towels, I guess.

Then, the Commander-in-Chief lied about sending condolences to the families of four killed servicemen. Rushing to cover that lie up, the President called one of the bereaved wives. Trump being Trump, he told her that her husband “knew what he signed up for”… as a nice way of expressing the gratitude of the country, I guess. (Gee, that’s how he treated ex-POW, now Senator John McCain. There must be a pattern here.)

If the doofus keep this up, no one will want to serve in our Nation’s …volunteer armed forces! Talk about a guy having no clue…I think that the Secretary of State had a legitimate point.

In the aftermath of the horrible massacre in Las Vegas, President Trump didn’t want to get into any discussion about gun control…lest he offend one of his biggest supporters, the National Rifle Association.

Meanwhile, the President continued in his personal vendetta to abrogate, tear up, or water-down any and all international agreements made by his predecessor. This, despite admonishments by both Democrats and Republicans…and our allies.

One wonders who, if anyone, would want to enter into an agreement with this idiot. “Allies”? Who needs them?

Not surprising, the Nation’s press has been having a field day, lampooning the President for the chaos in his Administration, his false steps, stupid moves and lies that he tells virtually every day.

Our President, the defender of the Constitution and our democratic way of life, has lashed out…by proposing that the Press’ ability to criticize him should be curtailed. Yeah, he wants to limit the right of Free Speech. (What’s next…we have to salute him? Heil Donald!)

To paraphrase a famous moron…”America, you knew what you were signing up for!”

 

Don’t blame me; I didn’t vote for the guy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well, our visit to the Northeast is over, and we’ve had a great time. Charlie and I have seen and done a lot here in Boston, and we feel that we’ve left no stones unturned. A great vacation!

This is a big city, and an unusual one in many ways. Many buildings have been torn down, rebuilt, and rebuilt again. There are many eras of architectural style evident in this city. And, I think, that the various styles and looks compliment each other in an eclectic way. Also, the hardscape is nicely complimented by the wonderful landscape (i.e. trees) everywhere in Boston.

The only problem with the latter is that tree roots have raised havoc with the old brick sidewalks that are everywhere. So, you need to be very careful when taking a stroll, making sure that you keep your eyes on the ground.

“Brownstones”, or brick-faced, multi-storied residential buildings, are everywhere in this town. Many, like The Copley House, where we stayed for our last three nights, were built around the turn of the century (1890 to 1910). They have a style of their own.

Our “hotel room” was about the size of our quarters on the Serenade of the Seas…maybe 150 square feet. To get to it, one must climb three flights of very steep, narrow  stairs…which would violate a number of building codes in modern buildings. With a Queen bed, TV, table and chairs, kitchenette and bathroom, it was very tight in there. The toilet flushing mechanism was broken when we got there, and the medicine cabinet was hanging off the wall (it eventually fell onto Charlie’s head!). They got $250 a night for the dump.

But, as the saying goes, in real estate, it’s “location, location, location”. And this place was close to everything.

They’ve been building stuff in this city for about 400 years, so there is a nice variety of architecture. I tended to like the side by side contrasts in style and the “gingerbread” used to spiff up plain buildings. Anyway, here are some photos of buildings that I liked here in Boston:

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Lots of brick and stone in this city, most of it leftover from 100 to 200 years ago. It’s been re-modeled and re-purposed to “work” in a chic way. Everything else going up is 90 percent glass, and they are striking, particularly when they are juxtaposed against a nearby brownstone or ancient commercial building with gingerbread.

I love this place; it’s visually stimulating. I’d love to just wander around this city for a couple of days, exploring the architecture. Every idea that’s been developed in the past 300 years is on display here in Boston.

It’s a beautiful city.

Boston is the oldest city in the United States. The American Revolution started here. And, many believe that the so-called “Cradle of Liberty” was Faneuil Hall, a meeting place where the likes of John Adams, Paul Revere, and Samuel Adams (before he invented beer, remember?) conspired to make life in the colonies miserable for the Brits.

John Hancock, before he invented banking, was involved in those rebellious meetings, as well.

The Hall itself, and the area around it, have changed a bit in the past 270 years. Faneuil Hall is now a museum, but it is surrounded with tourist commercial businesses crammed with various trinkets manufactured in China. The Founding Fathers would be proud of the money-making chops of their descendants here in Boston.

As in most other Boston commercial venues, there is a shop which sells sports stuff. If you’re not a sports fan, then you would probably be unaware that Boston is a HUGE sports town, the home of many world champion teams. Strolling through a place like this, in this town, is unlike anything I’ve seen before…in the San Diego area (haha). Of course, they’ve had major league sports here since…major league sports were invented, for God’s sake.

The Quincy Market building has been right adjacent to Faneuil Hall for 150 years. It has been converted into a mall of sorts, with high-priced grab food in the middle aisle, and assorted vendors in the out-facing stalls. We bought some junk there, but no food.

This whole tourist trap is located in a very nice spot not too far from the harbor, surrounded by an interesting mix of old and modern buildings.

This building seems to have a crown on top.

This is the old Customs House.

The harbor is nice.

Here’s a tall one.

We eventually ended up in an Irish pub just around the corner from Faneuil Hall. It is called the Black Rose.

We had a nice lunch in there. Charlie had a cocktail and some fish tacos and I had a beer and a Reuben sandwich. Yummy!

My photo was taken just before I spilled some Reuben grease on my shirt, thereby requiring me to purchase an authentic Black Rose tee shirt for $20.

Damn…I almost made it out of the Faneuil Hall tourist trap without buying one stinking thing!

 

 

We had a great adventure last night: a trip across town to the north end of Boston to have dinner with a very nice lady. We could have walked there in about an hour, but we took a car and it took us…more than an hour. The proverbial “Slow Boat to China” would have been faster.

We met Connie Pittman on our cruise. She’s a very nice, hard-working divorcee with a big heart who lives in the Boston area. The three of us cooked up the idea of going out to dinner together after the cruise: Charlie and I would “treat” if Connie would find us a nice place to go. Mangia, mangia…

Connie decided that the Little Italy neighborhood in Boston’s North End would be just the place. It’s a small area, with cobblestoned streets, 80 restaurants, and a dessert bakery called Mike’s Pastries. We HAD to go to Mike’s, for sure, said Connie.

Charlie and I probably could have walked to the North End in less than an hour; it’s maybe three miles. But, Connie offered to drive us, so we happily agreed. Unfortunately, Connie used her car’s GPS system to guide us, with destination “Mike’s Pastries”. Little did we all know that there are three Mike’s locations in Boston, and the GPS system took us to Harvard Square first, which is in the opposite direction. Anyway, by the time we figured it out, and rejiggered the GPS, it was an hour before we pulled into Little Italy.

No harm, no foul…it was an adventure…and we got to see just about every inch of the Boston area.

BTW, the street, highway, freeway, bridge, tunnel, etc. transportation network in Boston is a flippin’ nightmare, and…the weather was good. I can’t imagine it in the Winter.

The GPS system in the car, and in my phone, was totally messed up because of the tunnels and such, and changed its mind every ten seconds.

The road network, from above, must look like a large plate of spaghetti thrown on the ground. Driving in Los Angeles is a cakewalk in comparison.

Jackson Pollack would be proud; Henry Ford would be pissed.

We finally found Little Italy, and…it was worth it! A great selection of little Italian restaurants in a cozy neighborhood. It reminded me of the neighborhood in “The Godfather”, where Mike Corleone meets the cop and the goombah in the restaurant, gets the gun from the restroom, and blows the guys up when he comes back to the table.

Our little restaurant was jammed with a bar, closely packed tables, and a bunch of people enjoying very good food. (No gun above the loo, though.) It was just right. Kudos to Connie!

I had the veal parm, Charlie had a salmon/vodka sauce pasta, and Connie had some spicy sausage with bombo pasta.

That, of course, was proceeded with beverages, antipasto, and caprese salad. None of us finished our entrees…we were stuffed. Bene, bene…

We then trooped up the street to Mike’s Pastries…the correct one. It was a scene, with a mass of people in there, ordering from a large selection of goodies, to be taken out in small boxes.

Notice the sign just to right and below the blue thingy…CASH ONLY. Everything in this joint is $3 to $5. No receipts, just greenbacks going over that counter, at a rapid clip. I’ll bet the owner declares maybe twenty percent of the revenue that comes in. Wiseguys would love this place.

It was Disneyland for Fat People; absolutely nothing in the place was good for you, but…what the Hell! So, we bought two cannolis for Connie, two for ourselves, and a big fat eclair for Charlie and I to eat when we got back to the hotel. (As if we needed any more calories!)

After we said our goodbyes to Connie, Charlie and I caught a cab back to our hotel. With a professional driver, it took us 12 minutes.

But, it wasn’t as much fun, that’s for sure.

Today we ventured across the Charles River over into Cambridge, Massachusetts to visit Harvard University.

We drove by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) on the way. It was huge and very impressive. The really brainy science nerds go to this school.

The ones that couldn’t get into M.I.T. continue down the avenue to the other school…

“Hahvahd” as the locals pronounce it, is the oldest university in America, having been founded in 1636, one hundred and forty years BEFORE the signing of the Declaration of Independence. That makes it 381 years old!

The oldest part of the sprawling University campus is Harvard Yard. It’s a beautiful 22 acre park-like crossroads surrounded by historic buildings. It’s quite a beautiful setting.

Our student tour guide, Julie, walked us into the “Yard” though these gates.

She quickly stopped at one of the old buildings to inform us that early Colonial super-patriots John Adams and John Hancock had lived there.

Patriot Samuel Adams, who also invented beer, I think,  also lived in that building.

Of course, many famous Americans have attended Harvard University over the years. As we walked the Yard and the rest of the campus, Julie couldn’t help name-dropping and pointing out what dorm building that they occupied. I seem to recall John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama among the Presidents. Then, there were Henry Kissinger, Yo-Yo Ma, Tommy Lee Jones, Helen Keller, Matt Damon, etc. Also, some drop-outs like Bill Gates (Microsoft) and Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) who eventually became successful. On the other hand, the Unibomber also matriculated from Harvard.

There’s lots of impressive buildings here.

There’s a statue in front of that building commemorating the founder of the place, John Harvard. Except, as Julie pointed out, the guy in the statue is not really Mr. Harvard, because all painting of his likeness were lost in a fire. So, the sculptor, Daniel Chester French (the same guy who did the Lincoln Memorial) had to fudge the job; the guy sitting there might be him.

Admission standards here are pretty strict; the average incoming GPA is 4.1. It’s expensive, too; tuition, room and board is about $63,000 per year. There are only 1,600 first-year students allowed each year. Those lucky/rich kids are definitely the “best and the brightest”.

If you were lucky to graduate from Harvard, your ceremony would be held at this building, while you stare out at 20,000 people, and have to listen to some boring alum like Al Gore give a speech.

Across that lawn is a structure called the Widener Library. It’s huge.

The magnificence of this library is due to the generosity of the family of book collector Harry Widener, who was a victim of the Titanic disaster in 1912. His estate donated $3 million to Harvard University (current value: $100 million), to be used to enhance the existing library. It houses 3.5 million volumes, including a perfect Gutenberg Bible.

The Harvard University campus has expanded over the years to include a great swath of Cambridge. The Business School and football stadium are actually across the Charles River (in Boston).

The buildings in and around the University are varied, including very old and brand new.

The modern one below is the Science Center, built with money donated by the Edward Land family (i.e. the Polaroid camera people). If you look closely, you can see that the building was designed to look like…a Polaroid camera!

Here are a couple of nerd geniuses playing chess outside that building.

This is something that I saw here in Cambridge that I’ve noticed in the Boston area: bikes for rent. They are available at kiosks all over the city. I believe you can rent them one-way, to be dropped off at one of the other 60 kiosks in the city. Pretty cool, like a personal-powered Uber.

The tour today was so-so. Julie was great, but it would have been nice to actually go into a few of the buildings, particularly the Memorial Hall. Julie said that it looks a lot like the Great Dining Hall at Hogwarts in the Harry Potter movies. Huge, impressive, with stained glass, etc.

Damn.

it was cold today, too. Around 49 degrees for most of the tour. Charlie was “frozen”, even though it was a sunny day.

I did get a “H” baseball hat. Now, when I’m wearing it, if anyone asks, I can honestly say, “Yeah, I went to Harvard.”

 

 

There are a number of iconic man-made structures in the United States: the Empire State Building, in NYC; the White House, in D.C.; the Golden Gate Bridge, in S.F.; the Hoover Dam, in Nevada; and, others. In Boston, probably the most famous building is Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox baseball team.

Today, Charlie and I walked a little over a mile to the stadium to get a guided tour.

On the way, we passed the Back Bay Fens, an urban wildlands park designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, generally considered the father of American landscape architecture. He designed Central Park in NYC and Golden Gate Park in SF. The Back Bay Fens was designed in 1879, giving the neighborhood the name of Fenway.

Right around the corner from the ball park is what could be the most famous Shell gas station in America. It has a good location and probably sells a lot of gas. But, when there is an event at Fenway Park, gasoline sales are shut down, and cars are crammed onto the property at $60 per. That’s some expensive parking. But, being a Red Sox fan requires some sacrifice, I guess.

The baseball team is a big deal in this town. Red Sox merchandise is everywhere, in every store.

In front of the stadium, there is a Red Sox team merchandise store that is, swear to God, as roomy as a Dick’s Sporting Goods store. There must be 50,000 square feet in there, all stocked with Red Sox goodies: caps, shirts, balls, bats, jock straps, game-worn jerseys, autographed photos, and probably logo embossed bras and condoms, although I didn’t see any. There must be $20 million in inventory in that place.

There’s some neat sculpture outside the park. Here’s Teddy Ballgame with a young admirer.

It must cost big bucks to bring a young son to a ball game here. Seats are expensive, of course, but then the lad’s going to need some logo merchandise. I suspect that these chicken nuggets cost plenty…

…because a bottle of water costs $4.50, a can of soda $5.50. Ouch!

And, where does all of that liquid go, you ask? Here’s one of many restrooms, this one with a lineup of thirty urinals. Can you imagine this restroom with the smell of a hundred loud-talking, beer-soaked guys peeing, pooing, belching, and farting? OMG.

We got a chance to check out the Visitor Team’s Dressing Room. It is really small; my high school locker room was bigger. Of course, the Red Sox don’t want the visiting team to be too comfortable, do they? There’s probably no air conditioning, no hot water in the showers, small hand towels only, etc. Gamesmanship, they call it.

I thought that this sign on the wall was interesting, having to do with warnings about different kinds of bats, what they’re made of, and how they may splinter. Baseball’s version of OSHA bulletins, I guess.

Fenway Park is the oldest MLB stadium in America. It was originally built in 1912; i.e. it’s 105 years old! And, it is also the smallest stadium, with some unusual dimensions and characteristics.

The ball park was originally much smaller, with seating for 24,000 in bleachers that went from first base, to home plate, to third base. Additional seats were later added down the foul lines, as well as upper deck seats. Capacity is now 37,000, which is very small for a MLB stadium.

The different owners over the years have added bits and pieces, adapting the facility to the structure of the existing neighborhood. For example, there was a large, several story auto showroom adjacent to the stadium. It was purchased at some point and modified, so that the stadium gained a large “stadium club” viewing area, complete with a full bar, TV’s, etc. And, it has a great view of the ball park.

The foul line dimensions are the shortest in the major leagues. In fact, down the right field line, it is only 297 feet, a few feet short of the major league minimum. But, hey, it’s Fenway, so no problem.

The other foul line is 310 feet, where it meets the famed “Green Monster” wall, which is the 37′ tall wall with an old manually-operated scoreboard inset at its base.

The wall wasn’t there originally. It was put up to protect businesses, cars, and pedestrians from home runs flying over the fence. In fact, there used to be a net atop the wall to catch outbound baseballs. But, in 2003, the ownership wised up and installed 269 seats atop the wall, and they are very pricey ones: $165 each, face value; scalper, game day rate might go for $400.

A great place to watch a game, though.

Those seats weren’t there in 1975 when, in the 12th inning of the 1975 World Series, Red Sox catcher Carlton Fisk hit a high, windblown drive to left field that curved into the left field foul pole…a game winning HOMER!

Here’s the view of that foul pole, from the pricey seats.

As I mentioned, this is a very old, unusual stadium that is cool on its own behalf, kind of like Johnny Cash’s car that was built “One Piece At A Time”. An unusual attribute of this stadium is that is has a several story-high vegetable garden (perhaps part of that old car dealership?), which produces 6,000 pounds of produce per year.

The stadium is so old that the skyline of South Boston sprung up later to give it a very urban backdrop. Many of the modern stadiums have attempted to copy the look; I’m thinking of PetCo Park in San Diego, Camden Yards in Baltimore, and others.

There have been a lot of great teams here in Boston, and quite a few Hall of Fame players. The most famous is this guy, who many say was the greatest hitter who ever lived: Ted Williams.

There is a seat way out in the right field bleachers that stands out in a sea of green seats because it is painted…red. Many years ago, Mr. Williams launched a ball that hit an old gent in his straw hat, on the fly, 502 feet from home plate…the longest ball ever struck in Fenway.

Of course, Ted Williams won a lot of accolades during his career, plenty of hardware like MVP awards, etc. There is a museum within the park that we visited on the way out which is chock full of famous photos, game-worn jerseys, bats, balls, etc. Some of Ted’s goodies are here, along with those of another pretty good ballplayer, Roger Clemens.

Like the rest of Boston, lots of history here.

I hate to say it, but…my beloved Dodger Stadium is an uninspired dump compared to Fenway Park.

What a cool place!