Bernie Sanders Just Stabbed Us In The Back And Screwed Us As A Result - Rev. J.T. Smith

Bernie Sanders had been running a campaign that fought for We The People over the wealthy and corporations, that was consistently against the forever wars, and recognized how much the inequality in America has hurt us all.

#NotMeUs.  Ha!  Us are boned now, thank you very much.

Sanders and Warren were the ONLY  true Progressive candidates to run.  My hope had been that Warren and Bernie would run together.

Now?

Bernie has bowed out of the run for the nomination.  He says he'll keep fighting the fight, but he just gave up his best potential avenue to fight for us: As the President.

If you believe that the only viable political parties are Democrats and Republicans, the Bernie has just screwed us!  Our options are a bigot Republican and a bigot corporate Democrat.  I seriously do not see a whole lot of difference here.  While I grant that Biden is somewhat saner than Trump. the end result is still the same: The wealthy are still going to be in charge and the wars are going to keep on going until a real leader steps up and is put in office!

I had believed that leader to be Bernie Sanders.  Clearly, I was in error.

Gee, thanks, Bernie! 

by Rev. J.T. Smith

2020 United States Presidential Election, My Choice - Rev. J.T. Smith

There is no perfect candidate for President.  Ever.  This is simply because perfection, aside from God, is purely subjective.

Of course, there will always be candidates that are better than others.  In 2016, I supported Bernie Sanders in the primary and hated the way the D.N.C. blew him off as viable candidate even though he was able to consistently draw more people to his rallies than any other candidate.  Go figure.

In 2016, I ultimately voted for Jill Stein because I couldn't in good conscience vote for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump [see It's Neither A Spoiler Nor A Protest Vote! by Rev. J.T. Smith for full account of exactly why] as she was the best available candidate.

Once again, Bernie is running for President, and he is once again my choice for President.  My reasoning is thus: Bernie Sanders has been leading the fight since well before the 2016 elections, including steadfastly and consistently fighting for We The People and against the corruption and warmongering so prevalent in government.  And he's also the first to propose Medicare For All, which eliminates all deductibles and co-pays with the exception of elective non- medically procedures.  No one is perfect, but he's the best choice of candidate.

Voting for a person strictly because of their gender or sexuality is a mistake.  Yes, it is long past time for a woman or a member of the LGBT+ community to become president, there is no question of that; but as with any position of authority, it needs to be the right person, regardless of gender or sexuality, to be voted into power.  
While I find it commendable that Pete Buttigieg is open about his sexual orientation while running for President, I cannot vote for him simply because he's a corporate Democrat.  And corporate Democrats, which are nearly as bad as the Republicans currently in power are among the last things Americans need voted into office.
I cannot vote for Amy Klobuchar for simple reason she's effectively Hillary Clinton lite.  Still a corporate Democrat, even if not quite as deep into the pockets of Wall Street.

Tom Steyer, like Mike Bloomberg, is yet another billionaire running for President, and America definitely never needs another billionaire as president.  And like Steyer and Bloomberg, Joe Biden is yet another corporate Democrat.

To make it worse, Biden and Bloomberg are also notorious bigots.  And while Tulsi Gabbard seems to barely register in the polls compared to the others who're still running, I do like that she's Hindu and running against the endless wars, but she also has a history of bigotry and troubling past actions in terms of her foreign policy positions solidly working against her.

The only major issue I have with Warren is her relative inexperience compared to Sanders.

Frankly, my current dream ticket is Sanders/Warren with Sanders as president for eight years followed by Warren for the following eight years.  Though I would accept Warren as President with Sanders as VP for the same eight years followed by Sanders as President for eight years.

Ultimately, I am still not a liberal Democrat, I'm a progressive independent; and if a superior third-party contender runs for President, then I'll vote for them.  At present, that doesn't seem likely regardless of the party.

- Rev. J.T. Smith

Are these Senators' jobs guaranteed for life? That's up to you.

#LetLizSpeak

This Song Is Just As Fitting Now As When it First Came Out

Lyrics (in case you're interested)

Lives In The Balance - Jackson Browne

I've been waiting for something to happen
For a week or a month or a year
With the blood in the ink of the headlines
And the sound of the crowd in my ear

You might ask what it takes to remember
When you know that you've seen it before
Where a government lies to a people
And a country is drifting to war
 

And there's a shadow on the faces
Of the men who send the guns
To the wars that are fought in places
Where their business interest runs

On the radio talk shows and TV
You hear one thing again and again
How the USA stands for freedom
And we come to the aid of a friend
But who are the ones that we call our friends
These governments killing their own
Or the people who finally can't take anymore
And they pick up a gun or a brick or a stone

And there are lives in the balance
There are people under fire
There are children at the cannons
And there is blood on the wire

There's a shadow on the faces
Of the men who fan the flames
Of the wars that are fought in places
Where we can't even say the names

They sell us the president the same way
They sell us our clothes and our cars
They sell us everything from youth to religion
The same time they sell us our wars

I want to know who the men in the shadows are
I want to hear somebody asking them why
They can't be counted on to tell us
Who our enemies are
But they're never the ones to fight or to die

And there are lives in the balance
There are people under fire
There are children at the cannons
And there is blood on the wire

The Shortsightedness Of Blaming Religion - Rev. J.T. Smith

Obviously, not everyone shares the same religious beliefs.  Right and wrong, good and evil, those are subjective rather than objective terms and ideas.  What's right and good for some can be considered wrong and evil by others.  Everyone is the hero in their own life story.  An often overlooked example of perspective is that America invaded Iraq and Afghanistan purportedly to fight the terrorists, yet to the noncombatant Iraqis and Afghans it's Americans (who invaded their countries, drop bombs, and launch missiles from planes and drones that destroy their homes, culminating in the combination of the missiles, bombs, and soldiers that kill their children and families) who're the real terrorists.  There's the adage that “there's two sides to every coin,” the obverse and the reverse (heads and tails).  Coins have a third side that people either forget or completely ignore: the edge between the sides that you can spin the coin on.  And just like situations involving contention, there are three sides: You're side, their side, and reality.

Regardless of your faith leanings, even if you're an atheist, the reality is that the three largest religions practiced in the West (i.e. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) all worship the same God.  The only difference between Yahweh, Jehovah, and Allah is the same difference between Michael, Miguel, Mikail, et al.: Language.  Yahweh is the Hebrew name for God, Jehovah is one of the Christian names for God, and Allah is the Arabic name.  This matters because it's the perceived differences that are used as excuses by all sides for the current strife in the Middle East.

And there are those who will say that religion, regardless of its name, is nothing but superstition in the first place and science “provides all the answers,” and it's those superstitions that are the real cause for the various wars.  Yet they'll still proceed to use science as a tool and weapon and religion as an excuse to commit heinous acts of violence.

And because that excuse is usually stated both loudly and repeatedly regardless of the theatre of combat, both the targets and those who witness the senseless violence, killing, destruction, and overarching tragedy will typically have an overriding fear/anger response and blame the religion (especially if they're not practitioners of the blamed religion) of their enemy.  It's the easy answer.  The over-simplified and fails to look at the entire picture answer, but still the perceived easy answer.  And who doesn't like simple, easy answers that require little to no thought?

The thing is, while not only is there no religion safe from blame or being targeted, religion in and of itself is never the culprit.  The Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition were perpetrated by Christians and were just as violent (relative to available technology) as what ISIL is doing now in the name of Islam.

We, this means all of us regardless of ethnicity or religious beliefs (including atheism), need to stop blaming religion for the actions of its purported followers and to stop accepting extremists' claims of following their religious beliefs when their actions demonstrate their real motivations are of feeling the need for perceived superiority and their evident desire to bully and dominate others.  Just because someone uses something as an excuse does not automatically make that excuse the cause for their actions.

Islam is not the enemy.

Judaism is not the enemy.

Christianity is not the enemy.

Religion, regardless of the flavour, is not the enemy.

Greed, intolerance, hatred, those are the enemy!

Even science and religion really can co-exist without being at odds with each other if people would just get over themselves.  Now if only the same could be said of humanity in general.

by Rev. J.T. Smith

Religion Vs Science - Rev. J.T. Smith

That title seems to imply that science and religion (any religion, I am not singling out any specific religion here) are at odds with each other.  And it seems that the majority of people (well, most Americans at least) share that sentiment: that science and religion are at odds with each other.  The reality, though, is that they're not.  I'm writing this as an ordained minister and a scientist.  Even Einstein said: “I want to know God's thoughts - the rest are mere details.”

Scientists rely on methodology, testing, and evidence to come to their conclusions.  Scientists, for the most part it seems, concur that science has all the answers.   Science does not have all of the answers; science does, however, provide a way of getting the answers.   The catch is that there will always be questions, there will always be mysteries.

Religion was basically the earliest form of science, the earliest means available to explain world and the universe.  Science as we know it came about because Religion didn't seem sufficient to answering questions as there was evidence putting holes in many of the core statements of Religion.   Part of the problem is a difference in the mental approach.  Scientists have ideas that they test and either verify and/or adjust as needed, or reject the idea as determined by the testing and the resulting evidence.  Religion, on the other hand, tends to engender beliefs.  Beliefs are far more intransigent, much harder to adapt to new evidence.  What many people don't seem to grasp is that simply because new evidence may contradict one aspect of a given religion it doesn't mean that the religion itself is wrong, it simply means that our understanding needs to be adjusted.

The Jewish Torah and the Christian Bible (of which the first five books are in fact the Torah) contain an ancient understanding of how the world and the universe were created; but that's not necessarily the whole story.  Evolution still fits easily into it all.  Especially once you look at the Creation as described in Genesis as the highlights much the same way the sports section of the news (i.e. the evening news, the sports section of the newspaper/newsletter, etc., et al.) doesn't describe every moment of a game/match but instead just gives the highlights for the “big plays”, the big events.

Science will explain how people reproduce, how groups of people form cultures and how those cultures interacted physically, economically, socially, etc.   Science in and of itself does not set moral boundaries nor recommend any laws governing how people should treat each other.  In many societies, religion does set those moral boundaries and recommend those governing laws.  In fact, not only were the oldest documented legal codes based on religious doctrines, but many modern legal codes still spring at the base from religious-based ethical doctrines.  That does mot mean that atheists lack morals or that religion is required to create a working and just code of conduct.  In fact, the American legal system has roots not only in the 10 commandments of Jewish/Christian heritage/faith, but also numerous others including ancient Roman and Babylonian legal codes as well as civil and common law traditions of Europe.

Ultimately, what's mostly missed in all this back and forth is that both religion and science are really after the same thing: Both want to understand the universe.  The difference is simply the approach, the effective questions being asked.  Science seeks to explain and understand how it all happens, how it all works, the effective mechanics of it.  Religion seeks to explain and understand why it all happens, what's behind it all, a reason beyond “that's just the way it is.”  The easiest way to understand it is to think of science as the medical approach to the universe as a body, while religion could be thought of as the psychological approach to the universe.  Science will see the body, but for many they'll see that body as a machine rather than a living dynamic entity.  Religion tends to treat the body as a living entity and tries to work from there, but occasionally misses that the universe is dynamic rather than static, and has been since the Creation.

by Rev. J.T. Smith

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