In October, 2018, Charlie and I bought a large corner lot where our new Sun City Mesquite (Nevada) home was to be built.
It wasn’t until our home deal was almost done when we were told by the Pulte/Del Webb sales agent that we didn’t own what we thought we did: that there was a roughly 50’ wide by 150’ deep H.O.A. hunk of dirt bordering the southern side of our property.
We were not amused.
However, we were assured that the “open space” area would be landscaped like other similar areas in Sun City. Since we thought that all of the other H.O.A. areas were nicely fitted with grass, trees and shrubs we assumed that the adjoining H.O.A. area would be treated similarly.
We were wrong.
When we came to Mesquite to occupy our new home, we realized that the builder (Pulte) had merely plugged in some native plants that it had scrounged from the desert. There were no irrigated shrubs, no grass, no trees… in fact, there was no watering system whatsoever, unlike the other H.O.A. landscape strips and pocket parks in our community.
We were pissed off.
For about six months, I did battle with the H.O.A. and the Pulte Corporation over the travesty that our neighborhood was stuck with. I went to the H.O.A. Board of Directors meeting and wrote letters to Pulte corporate offices in Atlanta. I even met with the Pulte Western Regional manager to discuss the matter in private.
The Pulte rep told me that the lot in question was designed to be a “native area” in keeping with the desert around Mesquite. The plantings there, he said, were specifically selected by a professional landscape designer and didn’t need any more water except the rain that fell from the sky. That was convenient for Pulte, as a buddy of mine who worked for Kokopelli Landscape (the folks who installed the desert rubbish) told me the actual reason for the stark dirt lot: Pulte didn’t want to spend a few thousand dollars extending a water line up the street a few hundred yards from a local pocket park. So, instead, they created a dirt and rock covered lot surrounded by homes and streets and called the landscape treatment “native desert transition” or some other bullshit. Basically, it improved Pulte’s bottom line by a few thousand dollars… which is all that matters in corporate boardrooms.
It also created the only un-irrigated landscape area in Sun City that was bounded by streets and homes: it was a neighborhood eyesore.
Charlie and I were about to spend about $50,000 landscaping our new backyard. In my private meeting with Pulte, I told the rep that I would be happy to extend a drip irrigation line (i.e. my water, my cost) into the H.O.A. lot so that a few trees or other green stuff could spruce up the lot. The Pulte rep seemed amenable… but nothing ever happened. The lot just sat there collecting tumbleweeds.
The lot was officially the H.O.A.’s property now, as Pulte had finished building homes in our neighborhood. When I had grown weary of collecting tumbleweeds and disposing of them, I went to an H.O.A. Board of Directors meeting to vent my spleen.
It was an eye-opener.
The Homeowners’ Association was, in fact, a Property Owners’ Association. There were three Board of Directors members: one Pulte rep; one Property Management company rep; and, one Homeowner rep. The Property Management company was, essentially, hired by Pulte to do Pulte’s bidding, because most of the Sun City lots (to be built) belonged to Pulte. So, Pulte had two votes and the homeowners had one vote. Anything that Pulte wanted, Pulte got.
And that included ignoring my complaints about the neighborhood eyesore.
The property management company’s “man” in the H.O.A. was/is an old fart named Phillip Crapo who runs the daily business of the Association. His job is, basically, to ignore Sun City homeowners unless Pulte deigns to cooperate with the unwashed masses. (Ironically, Mr. Crapo has a plaque on his desk which reads, “Phillip Crapo, a member of the Property Management Hall of Fame”. I wonder how much that “award” cost him?)
When I berated the General Manager about the unmanageable crop of tumbleweeds in the famous “native area” next to my home, Crapo told me (publicly, in front of the H.O.A. Board and audience) that the Association had a budgeted plan in place that provided for landscape maintenance of that particular lot quarterly.
I called him a liar in that meeting: we’d lived in Sun City for a year by then and had never seen a landscape maintenance crew on that lot.
I told Crapo (and his Board of Directors) that if the Association was paying someone quarterly to keep that lot in presentable shape then the H.O.A. was getting screwed monetarily and the neighborhood was getting screwed aesthetically.
On the next business day, a landscape crew arrived to remove the tumbleweeds and trash that had accumulated from construction activities in the neighborhood.
Since that time, the unsightly “native”/waste area adjacent to our property has been known unofficially as Crapo Park in dishonor of the H.O.A. General Manager.
I have not seen an H.O.A. landscape team on that property since the tumbleweed fiasco several years ago; Crapo is, again, ignoring homeowner concerns.
Over the years (we’ve been here going on five years now) I’ve done a few non-authorized enhancements of the subject lotto the delight of neighbors.
Many of the original Pulte plantings (junk scrounged from nearby B.L.M. lands, like Native Yucca, Sage, and Creosote bush) have croaked. So, occasionally, I go out into the desert and liberate some native plants to replace the original desert plantings that Pulte put in. Since there is zero irrigation on the lot, I have had to utilize things like Fire Barrel Cactus, Cholla Cactus, and small Joshua Trees, vegetation that exists out in the wild on the scant rainfall that occurs in this area (average of 7 inches a year, although this year was the first in the past four to achieve that level).
Today, I planted two Joshua Trees that had “fallen off a truck” to replace two Native Yucca plants plugged into the dirt by Pulte and non-maintained by Mr. Phil Crapo. Since the H.O.A. doesn’t give a shit about our neighborhood, I’m sure it won’t mind.
My neighbors and I have a lot of money riding on our real estate investment here in Sun City, and I’ll be damned if Phil Crapo will crap on our “forever home” that we are so proud of.
Charlie and I have recently been watching a docudrama regarding the 1993 Mt. Carmel, Texas standoff between the ATF/FBI and the Seventh Day Adventist Branch Davidian cult that ended in a fiery conclusion.
Federal agencies had received information that illegal machine guns, grenades, and bombs were being stockpiled on the compound and that sex crimes against minors were being perpetrated by the cult leader David Koresh.
When ATF agents approached the compound, a firefight ensued that left many people dead on both sides. A long stand-off/siege ensued with the FBI lead negotiator trying to reason with Koresh who, like most cult leaders, existed in an apocalyptic world of his own imagination in which he was the arisen Christ. In the end, tempers on both sides heated up, bad decisions were made, and scores of Branch Davidian men, wives, and children were incinerated when the FBI tried to breach the compound’s defenses. It was a cock-up of Biblical proportions.
Slain cult leader Koresh had been obsessed with the Book of Revelation, a scary “end of the world” screed penned by some unknown dude in the late 1st century C.E. Undoubtedly, the Revelation writer was a priest who was devastated by the razing of the Jew’s holy Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 C.E.
The Temple was integral to the Jewish religion and it was the seat of power of the Jewish religious elite (the Levi priestly class). The writer may have been a Levite who was pissed off enough to pen the apocalyptic allegory that was supposedly passed along to him by God, his angels, and prophets. Guess what he learned from that hallucination? There would be all manner of strife and bloodshed, the dreaded “666” (i.e. Nero, the Romans, etc.) would be vanquished, and the “true believers” would end up atop the pile, victorious. It was good news, indeed.
Like many other Christian self-proclaimed prophets over the years, Branch Davidian leader Koresh was certain that he was living in the End of Times. “Repent, the End is Near!” goes the saying, “It’s time to get right with God!”, etc. This forecasting of the end of the world as we know it has been going on ever since Christianity was invented.
Why the fascination with the end of the world? What’s the rush?
According to religious nutjobs like Koresh, the world is corrupted beyond measure and needs to be erased. However, the last time this happened, according to the Bible, God simply flooded the earth, obliterated life, and started over with a clean slate. The Boss could do that again, I suppose, but obviously the Flood didn’t solve the underlying problems of wickedness, sin, and disrespect of God.
Scientists know that Earth has been around for more than a billion years and human beings have existed for several million years. The Creator of it all seemed to be perfectly satisfied with His creation until religion was created by man perhaps ten thousand years ago.
Hebrew goat herders, in particular, seemed to be unsatisfied with their lot in life and wanted more, so they invented their God of Abraham. Not surprisingly, their new God decided that this group of Middle Eastern humans (who had created Him) was His “chosen people” and they were entitled to other human beings’ lands, possessions, women, and so forth, and they could take such booty by force. They had God on their side. How convenient for them!
And then along came the Persians, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Greeks… basically any bully in the Middle East that happened to be passing through the land that God had “promised” to them… the Chosen People were getting their asses handed to them! Time to re-think our religion, the Jews thought. And, so, lots of prophecy ensued, promising good things from God for the faithful down the road.
And then the Romans came along to shatter the dream. This was the impetus for the religious introspection that evolved into Christianity.
All the “end of the world” things that are described in the Book of Revelation seem quite elaborate, un-Godlike, vindictive, and blood-thirsty… almost like the rantings of some pissed-off, drug-induced priest determined to “get even” with those nasty Romans (the Devil) who destroyed God’s house in Jerusalem and those unappreciative citizens who hadn’t fallen for the religious bullshit that the priestly writer was putting to papyrus.
The Book of Revelation spawned a lot of guessing as to the coming Apocalypse. Early Christian theologians predicted the world would end in the year 365, then 400, then 482 , then 500, then 793, then 800, then 806, then 847, and then 892. Pope Sylvester II allegedly declared that the end would come on 1000 C.E., setting off riots and pilgrims heading off to Jerusalem. None of these predictions, revealed from the lips of God, came true. Not to be outdone, Pope Innocent III declared that the end date would be 1284 C.E., exactly 666 years after the birth of Islam. His Holy Worship, God’s representative on Earth, was also wrong.
Question: If even God doesn’t know when He is going to end the world, how are His self-appointed prophets to know? Who should we believe? Or, more importantly, why should we believe any of the fantastical story?
Other notable End of Times revelations:
German priest Martin Luther: the year 1600
Christopher Columbus: the year 1656
New England Puritan minister Cotton Mather: the year 1697 (and then later 1716, then later 1736)
John Wesley, founder of the Methodist Church: the year 1836
Margaret Rowen, a leader in the Seventh Day Adventist Church: the specific date of February 13, 1925
Herbert W. Armstrong, founder of the Worldwide Church of God: four incorrect predictions of 1936, 1943, 1972, and 1975
Jeanne Dixon, famous astrologer: February 4, 1962, later the year 2020
Jim Jones, founder of the infamous People’s Temple: predicted a nuclear holocaust to kick off Armageddon in the year 1967
The Jehovah’s Witnesses: from 1966 on published articles contending that Armageddon would be finished by the Fall of 1975
Chuck Smith, founder of Calvary Chapel: 1981 “at the latest”
Televangelist Pat Robertson: 1982 and, later, April 29, 2007
Louis Farrakhan, founder of the Nation of Islam (Black Muslims): said in 1991 that the Gulf War was, in fact, the “War of Armageddon”.
Marshall Applewhite, leader of the Heaven’s Gate cult (that later committed mass suicide): the date of March 26, 1997, when a spacecraft trailing the Hale-Bopp comet would take his followers to safety
Nostradamus: July, 1999
The Amazing Criswell: August of 1999
Televangelist Jerry Falwell: January 1, 2000
Well-known Christian authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins(“The Late Great Planet Earth“)“: the year 2000
Harold Camping, televangelist: 1994, 1995, then 21 May 2011, then 21 October 2011
Gregori Rasputin, Russian mystic: August 23, 2013
David Koresh, the self-proclaimed “Messiah”, polygamist and child molester, didn’t predict any specific date for the Apocalypse, but he did tell all of his sect’s members that “all the signs are there” of the holy war that he had prophesied and was prepared to fight.
Koresh and his flock (including innocent children) experienced their own End of Times on April 19, 1993. The faithful members of the cult were burned to death, while Koresh took the easy way out: a gunshot to the head (presumably what God had recommended).
Who’s to say that their souls weren’t transported directly to Heaven after their deaths? Of course, who’s to say that there is a heaven?
Answer: Any person who says that God talks to him.
Many States have “Lemon laws” that provide a remedy for purchasers of cars and other consumer goods in order to compensate for products that repeatedly fail to meet standards of quality and performance.
Unfortunately, said laws don’t pertain to human beings, particularly children. If you produce a dud, you’re stuck with him or her and a lifetime of disappointment and, in some cases, shame.
We have one grandchild (out of 18, as I recall, most of whom I haven’t met) that fits the description of a lemon. He started out as an outstanding kid, but the wheels came off when he was a Junior in high school and got involved in alcohol and drugs and, eventually, a minor burglary. Since that time, he has been very disrespectful to his elders and to society as a whole. This substance-enlightened fellow thinks that he is the smartest guy in any room and constantly makes deprecating comments about others’ opinions on any matter, usually with a wise ass demeanor.
He has recently found himself in a Hell of a mess of his own doing.
It appears that he will be arraigned today on a D.U.I. charge. When arrested, it was found that he was driving on a suspended license. In addition, it appears that he may have evaded and resisted arrest. Normally, these would be serious matters that would probably result in a substantial fine and possibly suspension of his driver’s license
Of course, his license had already been suspended and he was driving illegally, so the Court would tend to be annoyed at such an individual. However, the biggest problem that the 31-year-old has now is that this isn’t his first D.U.I.: it is his fourth! California has draconian punishments for 4-time D.U.I. violators.
(With good reason. We knew a guy back in the day who was an alcoholic real estate broker who was well-known and -liked in his community. He had at least five D.U.I.’s on his record, but had been treated with kid gloves in the past by prosecutors and judges because he was considered a good guy in the community. Then, he got drunk at a Christmas party, drove off in his car, crashed into another car, and killed a mother and her young child. The court threw the book at him (belatedly!) and California law was soon changed to provide progressively harsh punishment for serial D.U.I.ers.)
To compound matters, it appears that our grandson didn’t show up to Court for his 3rd D.U.I., which means that there has been a bench warrant outstanding on him for quite a while. Law enforcement and the criminal justice system don’t look kindly on scofflaws who thumb their nose at the law (unless you’re billionaire Donald Trump and his army of attorneys!)
Our hero’s parents, who are recently retired and fit to be tied over his latest self-induced fuck-up, are trying their mightiest to help their son. However, they don’t have the wherewithal to afford him a high-priced lawyer or throw his bail. It is a clusterfuck that seems to be getting worse by the minute.
To be honest, the best thing that could happen to our grandson is for the Court to deal harshly with him. He’s had every opportunity in life and has squandered that, instead opting to “chill” with his substance-abusing friends, put forth minimal effort in growing up, and adopt a smirking, disrespectful attitude toward society and its laws. He was given an extra ten years or so to “grow up” and he still acts like a teenager.
He needs a forceful slap in the face: “Wake up!”
There was once a TV series called “Scared Straight”, which involved troubled youngsters being taken to prison to meet the losers who were spending serious time there. This was designed as an “eye opener” for these smart alecks, hopefully putting the fear of God into them and steering them away from criminal behavior. I would like to say that it helped, but I don’t know. (One of our four sons had to spend some jail time years ago due to a lot of unpaid parking tickets and, believe me, it scared him straight… he’s been a hard-working paragon of virtue ever since.)
This latest drama should be the defining moment of our grandson’s life. He is going to get punished and he can either straighten himself out or his life will go down the toilet.
It is time, as the saying goes, for our grandson to “make lemonade out of lemons”.
There is an alleged Chinese curse that goes, “May you live in interesting times.”
Yeah, we are living in those times right now and… it is strange with all the weird things going on in the Nation and the World.
One of the more unsettling things that’s grabbing headlines is the war in Ukraine. The conflict is a naked territorial grab by Russia that should be offensive to everyone, particularly the folks that like to think of themselves as “patriots”. Does anyone remember the Nazis and how they gobbled up large swaths of Europe while cowardly politicians hemmed and hawed, expressing the hope that Hitler would stop once he got some elbowroom?
Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is doing the same thing right now. Amazingly, we see politicians in this country making excuses for him as big, bully Russia rains down ordinance on innocent Ukrainian civilians. Disgraced Fox News talking heads seem to be fully supportive of Putin’s bloodlust, as do many prominent members of the M.A.G.A.-compromised Republican Party. They should be ashamed, but don’t grasp the concept of shame.
The U.S. economy is struggling right now, seemingly on the verge of a significant recession. I think the hammer is about to fall on commercial and residential real estate, while the auto industry is already in a bad spot. Banks and institutional lenders are holding a lot of “bad paper” (loans about to be defaulted, zero interest bonds, etc.), so we can expect more bank failures like the SVP debacle in Silicon Valley. Inflation is still high, despite the Federal Reserve’s aggressive interest hikes. I’m guessing that this situation will get progressively worse through Summer into the Fall.
Despite the continuing epidemic of mass shootings in the U.S., typically involving military-grade weapons in the hands of young people and mentally-deranged wingnuts, Congress refuses to take any action whatsoever except to offer up “thoughts and prayers” whenever some asshole shoots up an elementary school, a place of worship, or special event. It is amazing to me how the National Rifle Association has a firm grip on legislators’ testicles to the extent that our elected officials won’t even discuss the ongoing national tragedy. How many more dead innocents will it take for Congress do its job?
Speaking of violence upon human beings, showboating Governor Greg Abbott, who considers himself a “rule of law” and “law and order” disciple, announced recently that he intends to pardon a policeman one day after said cop was convicted of murdering a Black Lives Matter protester. Abbott is a great believer in the 1st and 2nd Amendments (free speech and the right to bear arms), or so he says. The murdered guy was exercising his right to assemble and protest and was also carrying, but not threatening anyone with, an AK-47, which is legal to carry in Texas. The slain man’s “crime” was his skin color and his audacity in “Constitutionally carrying” a weapons in public, a state law that Abbott strongly defends.
Many states, particularly in the South/Bible Belt, are passing laws to allow citizens the right, without a permit, to carry a gun or rifle in public. The absurdity of this is obvious: minor altercations between neighbors and routine interactions with the police get immediately ramped-up when one of the participants is obviously armed with a deadly weapon. Some of the same states, like Florida, have also instituted “stand your ground” laws which provide cover for aggressive gun owners “having to defend themselves” with deadly force because “they feared for their life”. All of these laws are a thin excuse to allow citizens to become unauthorized/untrained/amateur law enforcement personnel who are entitled to execute people they don’t like because of their nationality, skin color, religion or politics.
This trend is not going to end well.
The political fallout from the supposed, but never proven, “stolen election” of 2020 continues to wreak havoc on America. Not one scintilla of evidence has ever been produced by the complainants (Donald Trump, his attorneys, his lackeys in the Republican Party, or his squad of televangelist Born Again Christians, who claimed that God “guaranteed his victory) to justify the uproar over that election. There is no evidence of wrongdoing, other than the hundreds of millions of dollars that Trump has scammed from his cult following to “fight this injustice” (that money went into the billionaire hustler’s pocket).
One of the big “gotcha” events in this fiasco has been the $1.6 billion lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News for continuously libeling/defaming the voting machine manufacturer after the supposed “rigged election”. Fox News talking heads and their guests (in the period after the 2020 election and before enraged Trump followers broke into and trashed the Capitol Building) accused Dominion of massive vote fraud through their equipment. In pretrial disclosure, Dominion (and the general public) has learned that Fox News on-air talent and Fox executives, knew that the whole “stolen election” outcry was bogus but allowed the network to air segments touting the Trump’s Big Lie. The Fox News organization’s only defense appears to be that the First Amendment provides it the right to lie to the public and libel individuals and corporations because… such lying is newsworthy and their viewing audience expects it. Journalistic icons Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite are probably turning over in their graves, ashamed of this modern day depravity.
The harm this has caused to the Dominion Voting Systems business and the electoral system in general is obvious when one considers the recent actions of several counties in the U.S. who have moved away from Dominion equipment in favor of hand-counting paper ballots… because of never-proved election security issues. These moves by elected officials who are “loyal” to the Trump cult actually assist Dominion in its case against Fox News, the biased broadcasting bullhorn that helped get Trump elected in 2016.
“Fake news” indeed.
Speaking of legal problems, the ex-President has a buttload of them right now. He’s got one case brought by a woman who claimed that Trump raped her years ago and then defamed her when she brought the matter up publicly. In another case, Trump faces charges in relation to “hush money” he paid to an ex-porn star (just before the 2016 election) to keep the matter private. This case is not about infidelity, or paying a woman to keep her mouth shut, however; instead, it concerns the campaign financing and tax reporting laws that were broken when those hush money payments were disguised as “legal fees”.
Another legal matter concerns the attempts that Trump and his lackeys made to change 2016 election results in Georgia. It is a violation of the law to extort public officials, even when you’re President. This is a common practice of the ex-President: does anyone remember him being impeached for attempting to extort the President of Ukraine (during the 2020 campaign) into providing dirt on Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son?
And, last but not least, the ex-President is the target of a special prosecutor investigating his role in exhorting that crowd to swarm the Capitol Building and keep the Legislative Branch from doing its Constitutional duty to certify the results of the 2020 election. People died that day, many were injured, the Capitol was trashed, and hundreds of the Trump Army have been prosecuted and sentenced to jail. Without Trump’s incitement of that enraged mob, would all of that illegality have happened? Was he acting in a Presidential capacity when he encouraged his followers to un-Constitutionally halt the work of Congress?
Probably every American knows the answers to these critical questions. So, why isn’t Trump in jail already like the foot soldiers that he unleashed that day?
A lot of foolishness has transpired since that “stolen election” back in 2020. Conservative elected officials in many states have declared a war against the “opposition”, which includes minorities, pregnant women, teachers who have the audacity to educate their pupils, and writers who have the nerve to document actual history.
Educators have been fired, school administrators have been unceremoniously shown the door, libraries have been stripped of “controversial” books, all in the effort to deny the legacy of America and stigmatize folks who aren’t White and Christian. “Wokeness”, i.e. the public admission that our Nation has a checkered history on a variety of matters, seems to be extremely unwelcome in the Southern states and Bible belt. Of course, that area has produced a lot of dirty laundry over the centuries, not the least of which was the Civil War. Nowadays, books are more feared in the South than guns.
It appears that those redneck knuckleheads are at it again, wanting to enjoy the benefits of being America without having to act like Americans. Recently, two Black legislators were expelled from the Tennessee House of Representatives for a gun control protest. They weren’t the only lawmakers who protested that day… but the only ones who were expelled by the conservative Republican majority were Democrats who happened to be Black.
The same politicians who want Americans to remain “un-woke” feel it necessary to do something racist like this that underscores the ugly underbelly of partisan politics. Hey, folks, the Civil War ended 160 years ago… and you lost… so grow up!
Abortion is big in the news lately.
The termination of unwanted pregnancies has been going on in America ever since women came to this country. Teenage carelessness, criminal rape, medical complications, and marital rape occur all of the time, instances when carrying a fetus to term is not in the best interest of the woman carrying the would-be child. That doesn’t seem to matter to some politicians who can’t seem to separate their religious beliefs from their government responsibilities. Aren’t women entitled to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”? Not birthing a child that isn’t wanted should be a right of a woman, and thus abortion has been legal in this country for a very long time.
All of a sudden, religion seems to be driving the train on this issue… ironically, as church attendance has been dropping like a stone in America. Now, conservative politicians have taken the tack that un-born fetuses have the same rights as the woman who is carrying the fetus; i.e. that they are human beings despite never having taken that first breath. “Roe vs. Wade”, the Constitutional law case that gave women the right to abort, has now been undermined by the conservative-majority Supreme Court, which has ruled that States can enact their own laws on this subject.
Not surprisingly, the Bible Belt folks have gone into overdrive, banning abortion in their own States and devising laws to punish women who go outside their State to get an abortion and even punishing people who help them do so. The next item on the agenda for these clergymen posing as politicians is getting a ban on medicinal termination of pregnancy (via a pill), threatening pharmacological companies with criminal charges for selling the medications which are FDA-approved.
So, we have the Bible Belt politicians working with conservative Federal judges to impose the Bible Belt religious views on other States. Once again, those Southern States are trying to impose their values on the other States, just like they did in the Civil War. Slavery was legal in the South but not so in the North. The South couldn’t abide this and the prospect of newly-created States taking an anti-slavery stance. Southerners started the war, lost, and then, afterwards, tried to brainwash the populace and school-age children by stating the war wasn’t about slavery at all but, rather, “States’ rights”. Presumably, this included a State right to enslave people, mistreat them, whip them, and lynch them… because slavery is part of God’s plan. This Old Testament stance is similar to the current States’ rights argument that women shouldn’t have the right to control their own body… this right obviously belongs to male politicians.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the conservative-majority Supreme Court, which includes a lot of Catholics, ends up supporting those States’ rights plaintiffs whose agenda is to impose its brand of religion on every American. The abortion issue will be a key one in the upcoming 2024 elections. Most Americans in most States believe in a woman’s right to make her own medical decisions, including whether to abort a fetus or not. The attempt by conservative politicians to cram their views on this subject down the throats of American women could cost the Republican Party a lot of Congressional seats and the Presidency, as well.
One conservative Supreme Court member who doesn’t seem to care what Americans think about him and his supposed impartiality on serious matters before the Court is Justice Clarence Thomas. He, like his brethren on the Court, has a lifetime appointment and, apparently, believes that he has the right to do whatever he wants with impunity.
It has recently been learned that Justice Thomas and his wife Ginni, who is a major conservative Republican activist and fundraiser, have been enjoying lavish treatment from a billionaire conservative Republican benefactor. Ginni was heavily involved in the “Stop the Steal” movement, including helping foster the Dominion Voting Systems libel by Trump agents.
The Thomases have been given very expensive “gifts” by this billionaire fellow, including travel on private jets and yachts, vacations at expensive resorts, and even an all-expense trip to the Orient. Having worked myself in the public sector for decades, I know that accepting “gifts” from public benefactors is strictly verboten, as it gives the impression that the giver will get special treatment. It turns out that the Thomas’ “friend” is a hard-line conservative and even has Hitler memorabilia in his home. One wonders why this type of individual would lavish hundreds of thousands of dollars of gifts on a Black man who he didn’t know until the Black man became an influential Federal judge. Thomas claims that other Supreme Court Justices (all conveniently deceased) told him privately that accepting such gift from “friends” was acceptable. Oh, really?
The big problem with all of this is that the Supreme Court, a bunch of un-elected judges with lifetime appointments, has recently become the de-facto legislative branch of the Federal government… because our elected Congressmen and Senators spend all of their time throwing mud at each other while doing zero lawmaking. In the absence, the Supreme Court weighs in with (lately) a very conservative take on the rights of Americans. What could go wrong?
Something amusing has been going on in the midst of all of this foolishness.
Governor Tom DeSantis of Florida has been doing his damnedest to attract attention to his yet-to-be-announced 2024 Presidential candidacy. He has become the face of the Southern “anti-woke” movement, he’s supported new Florida laws to limit the participation of Black voters in the democratic process, he’s fired prosecutors he doesn’t agree with politically, he’s supported the stripping of library shelves of books that don’t support conservative views, he’s mouthed support of the 2020 “stolen election” lie, and has signed legislation which makes it a crime to have an abortion after 6 months from conception. He is trying to make himself the poster child of conservative politics, all the while not to infuriate the vengeful Donald Trump, who has announced his candidacy.
One of the dumbest things that DeSantis has done is attempting to extort the Walt Disney corporation into adopting the Bible Belt attitude toward LGBQT individuals. The “Don’t Say Gay” campaign that DeSantis championed is an effort to marginalize folks that are different from DeSantis W.A.S.P. model. Disney has an “inclusive” attitude about Americans, and smartly so, since the corporation markets its products and theme resorts to all manner of people. DeSantis has taken steps to hamstring Disney in Florida, with regard to their Disney World tourist destination.
Unfortunately for him, Disney’s lawyers are smarter than Harvard-educated lawyer DeSantis, and his efforts thus far to “un-waken” Disney aren’t bearing much fruit. A big problem for DeSantis is that Disney is the single largest employer in the State of Florida: several hundred thousands of Floridians depend on Disney for their livelihood… and they vote. Disney World, on its own, accounts for a sizeable portion of Florida’s gross domestic product, something like $44 billion a year. So, “grand-standing” DeSantis has to be a bit careful how he treats the behemoth: he insults Disney in public but probably sings a more deferential tune in private… knowing that Disney could emasculate him by simply shutting down Disney World for a couple of days.
DeSantis is one of the same publicity-hungry politicians (Texas Governor Abbott is the other) who participated in flying homeless individuals and illegal immigrants one-way to New York and Massachusetts to somehow spite the Liberal politicians up there and embarrass President Joe Biden. I believe that DeSantis is being sued over this publicity stunt, which was designed to make him seem Trump-like to the right-wing electoral base that he will need to win the Republican nomination for President in 2024.
The fact that a wanna-be like DeSantis has to carefully maneuver around the ever-present dark force that is Donald Trump is one of the strangest things of all. The twice-impeached President, a pathological liar and con man, a citizen who is the target of multiple criminal investigations, and an individual who has lost the past two popular elections for President by three million and seven million votes, respectively, remains a darling of a large percentage of Republican voters who would rather follow him into Hell than nominate someone who has an actual chance of being elected.
They must think God has anointed Trump… again… just like in 2020 when their favorite televangelists on TV prophesied that God had guaranteed that Trump would win re-election. It is crazy world we live in where even God can’t predict what is going to happen.
Our grandson Dakota, who is visiting us at the same time as his parents Jeff and Carol, went to the supermarket this morning to buy some beer because, according to him, “What better way to celebrate Jesus’ birthday?”
Hmmmm, I think the 30-year-old fellow was asleep in Sunday school when their teacher talked about Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection back in the day.
On the other hand, perhaps Dakota has moved on from religion like many of his generation and was just making a cynical comment. I hope it was the latter.
I am not religious in any way, despite being “born again” in my teens when I was a member of Los Angeles Free Methodist Church. My Christian period was short-lived, as I noticed more and more the phoniness of the “true believers” when they left church and resumed their every day lives. Maybe, since the bad behavior of these folks was “forgiven” (and my Catholic friends got their sins forgiven each Sunday!), they considered moral behavior optional.
This way of living just didn’t sit right with me, a youngster who was taught right and wrong by my parents… who were quite serious about it. They, too, weren’t religious at all, but a finer pair of parents one would be hard to find.
It is perhaps a coincidence that today, Easter Sunday, I finished reading a book about the Bible. I have always been interested in the subject and, in fact, wrote a book of my own about religious belief over a decade ago. It was a compilation of stuff learned over the years on Wikipedia, so it wasn’t primary research and, quite frankly, not scholarly… I freely plagiarized stuff but admitted as much.
The 800-page tome that I just finished reading, On The Historicity of Jesus, is a very scholarly review of all the evidence, historical and biblical, regarding the founding of Christianity. The author, Richard Carrier, is a world-renowned PhD. in history and biblical studies. In his book, Carrier carefully reviews what is known and what is speculated and measures this information in terms of its historical or mythical genesis to ultimately derive a mathematical probability on the question: Did the Jesus Christ person really exist in human form?
Like the founders of most religions, Jesus left no writings, no personal effects, no bones… no nada. He was here on Earth, but left no trace whatsoever, as did his parents Joseph and Mary. People that lived at that time in Palestine didn’t know them either. Jesus became famous a century or so after he was supposedly famous.
Curious indeed.
Dr. Carrier ultimately concludes that the Jesus Christ we all know and love from the Gospels was likely a literary construct rather than a God Man who briefly lived among human beings on Planet Earth.
One reason for this conclusion, although certainly not the only one, is that the morphing of standard Judaism into Jesus Christ cults long preceded the development of the Gospel myths that open the New Testament with stories of Jesus’s birth, ministry, death and resurrection. Those fables are completely without factual basis but serve the purpose of selling the new and improved Judaism (Christianity) to the masses.
Don’t tell anybody that I’m not real!
The earliest “apostles” of this religion were disillusioned Jewish priests who were re-fashioning Judaism to explain why the Temple-focused, blood sacrifice and atonement Hebrew theology didn’t jive with God’s new plan (i.e. his “new Covenant”) with the Jewish-Christians. Hence, the Jewish-Christian cults (there were many of them experimenting with various interpretations of God’s manifestations and intent toward believers) that the self-appointed “Apostle Paul” described in his Epistles… groups of believers that Paul labored to indoctrinate into his version of the “new” Judaism. Paul, and others like him (all Jewish clergymen), were designing the new approach to God “on the fly” in the first half of the first century A.D. in many corners of the Middle East.
Of course, years weren’t denoted A.D. until centuries later (, as A.D. is an abbreviation of the Latin “anno domini” which means “the year of our Lord”). Thus, 1 A.D. would be the year that the God Man “Jesus Christ” was supposedly born. That would be the same Jesus who was allegedly born of a virgin, walked the earth, performed miracles, gave sermons, was crucified by the Romans, and arose from death after three days. All of the Jesus fable happened in about thirty years, thus during the very period that the earliest Jesus Christ “apostles” like Paul were out and about, teaching the new versions of Judaism that would ultimately be melded into Christianity.
For the record, the name Jesus in Judaism means “God is salvation”, while Christ means “anointed one”. In Judaism, the anointed one was prophesied to be the “Messiah”, God’s messenger who would deliver the Jews from their oppressors, of which they had many over the eons.
The odd thing about this critical period in Christianity is that no one living at the time of Jesus’ alleged life ever noticed that he was conducting his Godly business in Palestine. That included every religious and historical writer of the time who operated in the “Holy Lands”. Not one word was put to paper (papyrus) about the miracles, the Sermon on the Mount, walking on water, healing lepers, being crucified, or rising from the dead and appearing in front of 500 witnesses.
Zero attention was paid to the supposed Son of God, the Messiah who had come to deliver the Jewish people from oppression. It was as if he was invisible (or, more likely, not there at all). His allegedly ministry was, seemingly, like the New Coke: a product that no none was interested in.
At that time in Middle East history, the Romans occupied Palestine, the latest in a long line of great empires that had tormented the Hebrew people in God’s “promised land”.
The earliest Christian cult writers were ex-Jewish priests like Paul, who were kicking around theological ideas in the very timeframe that Jesus was supposed to have lived. Those original “apostles”)” would have known if a real Jesus was walking among them… but they never mention any of His works on earth. Paul, the earliest writer (whose Epistles date to about 60 A.D., or about thirty years after Jesus’ supposed death), admittedly never met the Man God. Instead, his teachings imply a celestial Jesus, not a once-human Jesus, who imparted his new version of Judaism to Paul through “revelation”… i.e. a dream, a hallucination, a vision… which was the standard way that famous Jewish religious figures ostensibly communicated with the Almighty and his angels.
In A.D. 69, Roman armies put down the latest Jewish uprising in Palestine and razed the Temple of Jerusalem, the most holy place in the Jewish religion, to the ground. Jews were devastated and disillusioned once again. (The New Testament book of “Revelation” was written by a very bitter Jewish theologian who hallucinated some colorful “payback” against those nasty Romans and other Devil’s spawn, culminating in heavenly rewards for the true-believers.)
The Gospels (of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) were Jesus myths cobbled together over a period of time estimated from 90 A. D. to 125 A.D., ostensibly to put a face to the new religion. Most of what is in those Gospels can be traced to the offerings of Mark; the others simply cribbed the basic yarn from his work and added some spicy details. No one knows who the Gospel writers were, but it is universally believed among biblical scholars that none of the writers ever met the Jesus Christ character that every Christian swears to “know” (because of the fiction of the New Testament).
So, sixty to ninety years after a supposed God Man was murdered by the Romans (an event unnoticed by the Roman themselves and Jewish historians in Palestine), a multitude of Jesus Christ myths were produced to give a public face to the new Christian religious offering. This marketing ploy is not dissimilar to the invention of the “Betty Crocker” character in the 1950’s to help sell cake mixes.
Eventually, as many as thirty Gospels, all fantastical stories about the mythical Jesus, were vetted by the developing Christian church clergy until only four “official” fables survived… the ones that were most similar in story line and message imparted. This “canon”, or the official backstory of the Christian religion, was approved by the Church in the early 4th century, approximately 300 years after Jesus’ alleged ministry in Palestine.
Mythmaking was standard issue for God-making in ancient times: the Egyptians, the Jews, the Babylonians, the Greeks, and the Romans all had religions which featured elaborate myths associated with their gods. It was how very complicated theological matters were communicated to the average man, who was typically not highly educated. “Keep it simple, stupid!” was the motto of the clergy in those days. The Old Testament (the fantastic story of Creation, Adam and Eve, the Flood, the parting of the Red Sea, Moses receiving the Ten Commandments, etc., is unanimously believed by biblical scholars to be myth, not factual in any way.
Two things are obvious about the Gospel writers: (1) They were not alive during Jesus’ alleged lifetime on earth; and, (2) they were obviously well-versed in Old Testament prophesy and were skilled writers, especially the “Mark” fellow. These writers were what we now might call “Madison Avenue” types, the clever marketing folks in New York who can effortlessly sell ice boxes to Eskimos.
The obvious “elephant in the room” is the question of how Gospel writers, who lived after Jesus’ alleged lifetime and never met the guy, were able to record for posterity every word He spoke in every sermon he gave, even the extremely lengthy Sermon on the Mount. There were no tape recorders or cell phones back then to document the speeches. So, how was it that these unknown authors, who did not live in Jesus’ time period and who never met him personally, were able to document every word he spoke?
Obviously, they were incapable of this.
However, theologians sequestered in a monesteries for decades with nothing to do except devise myths could easily have come up with the elegant prose that ties closely to the prophesy of Old Testament heroes. It is very apparent, from reading the “new” Testament that the writers were very knowledgeable in the Old Testament, particularly the prophecies about the Messiah that would soon come to rescue them.
Why has the Jesus Christ myth resonated with so many people? Probably because the overall message is uplifting and promises salvation of the soul plus Heavenly rewards to the true believer. One cannot believe something if he or she doesn’t want to believe. The Passion Play and Jesus’ teachings are something that people want to believe… so they do, much like a child “believing” in Santa Claus because it’s his best interest to do so.
And then there’s the threat: if you do not believe, you’re going to roast in Hell.
The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle once said, “Give me a child until age 7 and I will give you the man.” This is the rationale for “Sunday school”, baptisms and parochial education; basically, to indoctrinate (“brainwash”) youngsters in the Jesus myth and Church theology.
Children are baptized and confirmed before they grow pubic hair, already indoctrinated to be an obedient servants of the Church before they can even think rationally. They “know” the biblical Jesus because they have been told over and over that he was a real guy, and they have learned not to argue with their priest, pastor, minister or God-fearing parents. Supposedly, the parish priest is the expert that God talks to… he is God’s representative here on Earth. And, if one wants to “go to Heaven”, then he needs to attend church on Sunday and provide a generous tithe so that the work of the Lord can be accomplished.
Alas, church is where the endless propaganda campaign continues in the form of sermons and homilies.
All of that features the well-known Gospel fables, which have as much factual basis as the stories of Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, the faked Moon landing, and the “stolen” election of 2020. The smell of deceit is overwhelming to those whose minds have not been corrupted.
I feel sorry for the committed Christians who proudly say, “Jesus said it. I believe it. That settles it.”
