Visual Thinking and Occasional Odds and Ends

I am sure you have heard Mike Huckabee say that our removal of religion from our public schools ultimately made the Connecticut shooting possible.  Right wing media have picked up on this and spread the word.  From an angry Mark Levin , to a more restrained Larry Kudlow (who spoke to a Fr. John McCloskey yesterday  on this same topic) the word it out.  Yep, the shooting was another instance of our secular society letting us down.  But did the recent shooting and all similar shootings occur because our society lacks morality?  And does it take religion to foster moral behavior?  No.  There is no correlation between religion and violent behavior.  Our “blue states” are nominally less religious than the red states, but they don’t show higher homicide rates than the “red states.”  In fact, the highest homicide rates include a number of Bible belt (and southern) states.  And the states with the lowest...

That is what Republican congressmen want, and so do their voters.   Yep, those small town salt of the earth types, the farmers and ranchers, the oil and gas drillers, the coal companies, and the property owners with big dreams - they want it both ways.   They tell themselves and anyone who will listen, that if we leave them alone, and keep taxes low - and reduce regulations, we’ll make the economy hum. That’s their story, and they are sticking too it.   But it’s a lie. We think of farmers as very independent.   And they are independent in spirit.   But many of them get some form of crop support (cash payments for commodity crops like corn, sugar and cotton).   Then there is crop insurance.   Crop insurance helps them through the bad times, and with the recent years of drought, crop insurance has been a godsend – but, and it’s a big but, the insurance is really our money.   Insurance agents sell the stuff, and insur...

Ok, the fiscal cliff has always been a self inflicted wound.  And like the debt ceiling debate, it is used by ideologues to get something on the back end that they cannot get up front. And here, it's the Republicans who are playing games. What they want to do is gut the social safety net - but if they say that during an election campaign, they will lose.  So they are using the debt ceiling (the fiscal cliff is the bastard child of the debt ceiling) to try to gut social spending. But it seems even they don't have the balls to do it.  So more temporizing. Oh well!  We get the government we deserve.  And if the crew who ran in the primaries are representative - and I say they are, the Republicans are no longer a serious party. Democrats have their problems too, but they are essentially honest, they believe in taxing the well to do to pay for social programs to help those in need.  Republicans won't admit what they believe - and won't pull the trigge...