Hope for Obama bashers

Many of the letters to the editor critical of the President published in the Morning Call are not only critical, they are downright ugly and vitriolic.  The letters are sent by people who not only don’t like Obama’s policies, they loath the man himself in irrational hostility.

I have been concerned about these Obama haters.  They have less than two years left.  What will they do after he is no longer president?  Where will they vent their spleen?  They’ll be adrift, uncertain of their purpose in a world without a President Obama.  I pitied them.

Then it hit me.  They can turn their irrational hatred against President Hillary Clinton.  That will give them another eight years.  They’ll have a whole new purpose in life.  

Consider the source

My mother seemed to have expressions that summed up situations in just a few words.  When a person said something really stupid, she would simply say,”Consider the source.”  With those three words she could dismiss both stupid people and the stupid things they said.

Former New York Mayor Giuliani said President Obama doesn’t love America.  Before you get too upset, consider the source.

Obama and the crusades

Why is it that just about every utterance of the President is attacked, disputed, or belittled.  In a recent speech the President noted that various religions at one time or another had done terrible deeds in the name of god, and he mentioned the Crusades and the Inquisition as examples.

People went nuts.

Maybe the President was talking about the members of the First Crusade.  According to a Christian chronicler of the time, when the Crusaders reached the town of Mainz in the Rhineland in 1096, they broke into a hall where Jews had taken refuge.  

“Breaking the bolts and doors, they killed the Jews, about seven hundred in number, who in vain resisted the force and attack of so many thousands.  They killed the women, also, and with their swords pierced tender children of whatever age and sex....  Horrible to say, mothers cut the throats for nursing children with knives and stabbed others, preferring them to perish thus by their own hands rather than to killed by the weapons of the uncircumcised.”   (From “The First Victims of the First Crusade,” by Susan Jacoby in The New York Times, Feb. 15, 2015, P. SR5.)

Actually, we don’t have to go back to 1096.  In the 1990s Christian Serbs were slaughtering Bosnian Muslims.  

Fanatics killing people in the name of various gods, which has been occurring for millennia and shows no sighs of abating, is about the most irrational and stupid thing I can think of.  If you balanced the good religions have done against the harm they’ve done, I think the harm side would win out.

A promise

I lay awake last night thinking that I shouldn’t have sent out that post on Turkey last night.  I assume that most of you knew that the President of Turkey really hadn’t thanked evangelical Christians for the idea of prayer in the schools, but I also am aware that some people believe everything they read on the internet.

The first paragraph of last night’s post was factual.  The second paragraph about the evangelical Christians was my fabrication.  

In almost all cases, the material I post is factual to the best of my knowledge.  Once I start goofing around, however, how would you know what is true and what is me goofing around?  

So, if I do make stuff up, I will tell you at the end of the post.  The only exception might be April 1.  

Prayer returns to the public schools

After decades of a secular educational system, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey is pushing to increase the number of religious classes, lowering the starting age of religious classes from 9 to 6, teaching religious values to pre-school children, and ending the school ritual in which students pledged allegiance to secular principles.

President Erdogan, elected by popular vote, said he got the idea to increase religious training and prayer from American evangelicals.  He said, “Although a majority of people favor teaching the values of Islam, we have been stymied by a minority of godless people.”  He thought that a return to prayer in the schools would make children not only more religious, but also more obedient and better citizens.  Erdogan said, “Those American Christians have been an inspiration.”

Strange bedfellows

One of the things I like about American politics is that occasionally people who have almost nothing in common politically can still join together on a specific issue.  Here’s an example.  

A bill was recently introduced in the Missouri General Assembly to limit the amount of revenue that Missouri towns can collect from traffic fines.  One of the complaints of African Americans in Ferguson was that residents were pulled over and fined for minor infractions.

Many states have speed traps.  My daughter fell victim to one in Wathena, Kansas.  (If you are ever in Kansas, be careful in Wathena.  It’s on Route 6.)  The municipalities that run speed traps care nothing about highway safety, only about increasing revenue from fines.

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Back to Missouri.  Testifying for the bill to limit municipalities were the St. Louis Tea Party Coalition and the American Civil Liberties Union.  According to an article in the Times on February 15, the leader of the Tea Party told a legislative committee, “If the St. Louis Tea Party coalition and the A.C.L.U. are on the same page on something, we must be going down the right path.”

The groups have different motives, of course.  Conservatives cite intrusive government; liberals cite racial injustice.  Both groups are correct.

Presidents' Day

This is the dumbest holiday ever.  We once celebrated Lincoln’s birthday (understandable and warranted) and Washington’s birthday (not quite on the same level, but still a great man).  As luck would have it, both men were born in February, and their birthdays often fell on a weekday. 

In the land of the three-day weekend, that can’t be allowed, so the date was moved to the third Monday.  (Washington’s real birthdate is Feb. 22.)  That wouldn’t be too bad, but instead of celebrating Washington and Lincoln, we now are supposed to honor all Presidents, such as Jackson of the Trail of Tears; William Henry Harrison, who took sick on inauguration day and died a few weeks later; the first Johnson, who should have been impeached; the nonentity Warren Harding; Nixon the Crook; Reagan, who wrecked the economy; and Bush Junior, who wasn’t even legally elected.  

C’mon.  This is ridiculous.  Let’s change it back.

And while we are at it, let’s celebrate Martin Luther King day on election day.  It would increase turnout, and it would honor King in a way he would appreciate.