Dear Thom,

I realize you haven't started your show yet. I was listening to you on Carl's show just now and I heard you talking about Max Bauchas (don't know how that's spelt) having doctors and nurses arrested. I knew we were fighting fascism in our democracy, but I didn't realize that it was a rear-guard action. Scary! I can't find this article on Reuters.com. Where did you read about this egregious mockery of representative democracy?
Love your show, Anna in Portland
P.S. Good luck to Montana in ousting Max the DINO.

The people with the most dollars get the most votes-

Yes, and do not the masses have the most money taken collectively- which is why boycotts DO WORK.

JP Getty said, it is far more profitable to take a little money from a lot of people, rather than a lot of money from a few people.

If the masses were simply empowered for example, they would boycott AT&T for allowing the spying on of Americans and switch to Quest in order to reward them for choosing not to have participated in the surveylliance.
This principle is how Barack Obama raised more money than anyone else.

You take a mortal man,
And put him in main control
Watch him become a god,
Watch peoples heads a'roll

Chorus

Just like the Pied Piper
Led rats through the streets
We dance like marionettes,
Swaying to the Symphony...Of Destruction

-Megadeth

Anybody notice anything peculiar about the timing of our recent “Economic Meltdown” (aka Global Financial Collapse), and its timing in relation to the Baby Boomers reaching retirement age?

I realize this is could be a construed as a bit of a “tin-foil hat” theory, but hear me out.

The first wave of Boomers was being conceived soon after World War II concluded in August of 1945, and the first wave of boomer began arriving onto the scene in 1946.

Our “Economic Meltdown” came to a head in September 2008.

How ironic is it that just as the first wave of Boomers hit age 62, and can now think of retiring and collecting Social Security and Medicare, we then have our “Economic Meltdown”?

If you were a Boomer and did as so many financial advisers suggested, and had invested in your 401k and purchase a home, and thought you were going to began to sell those assets, you would be in for a rude and cruel surprise.

Many boomer I know that wanted to retire this year, or within the next few, have put those plans off indefinitely, most telling me it will take them several years to recover what they lost based on the current value of their “assets”.

Here is a little more food for thought...

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2009209408_apussocialsecu...

Why not just quit cherry picking the scriptures & admit that the Bible is not the "word of God" and is intead written by many differant people with many differant world veiws?

wow. san fransisco is a liberal city. sanfran is so liberal that the bogeyman or rather bogeywoman that the conservatives want to use over and over and over again for her scary "san fransisco liberal" values took impeachment immediately off the table as soon as she got into power and drives some of the liberal minded people like me crazy for the stuff that she is not doing.

are we entitled to the same facts that dr. brown is entitled to? i've never been to san fransisco but it sounds like san fransisco is just about as liberal as my hometown of louisville, kentucky which is not surrounded by oceans of progressive thought.

I think the real problem is religion. Indoctrinating a child with a myth so powerful it can lead the person that child becomes to commit suicide should be a crime.

I want to share a story very few people know about me.

Ever since puberty I knew I was gay. However, it wasn’t until several years later before I came to terms with my sexual preference.

When I was in the ninth grade, I was a total outsider at my school. My family had moved to a small town in Louisiana, and I went to a school where all the other kids had grown up together. I was truly the “outsider”. Not a good environment for a kid trying to figure himself out. I discovered if I could make people laugh, they’d like me better. I went from a total loaner to a semi-loaner.

Mind you, all this time I knew I was gay. I just didn’t know what to do about it because I didn’t want to be gay. And I dared not tell anybody about this. It wasn’t an easy time for me emotionally. I had to live with this secret-terrified somebody would find out.

There was another kid in my class who EVERYBODY knew was gay. His name was Mike. I’m not sure if he was “out of the closet” or not, but it was very evident he was gay. He seemed nice enough, but I don’t know because I never got to know him. No way would I be caught befriending a queer.

All I knew about Mike was that he was very effeminate-his speech, voice, mannerisms, dress. Everything about him screamed faggot. As far as I could tell, he only had one close friend, a black girl, who I can’t remember her name.

Needless to say, Mike was on the receiving end of everybody’s’ jokes-including myself. These joke were both to his face and behind his back. It didn’t seem to bother him much. He kind of played along with it.

One particular incident that stands out to me was when I said something derogatory to him. I don’t remember exactly what I said, probably something about his lisp, or the way he swished his hips when he walked. It didn’t seem to upset him. He laughed along with everybody else. Everybody except the girl who was his only close friend.

Mike left the classroom for some reason. Maybe he went to the bathroom to cry, I have no idea. But after he left, his friend told me what a jerk I was. I mean she let me have it.

After that incident I did let up on the taunts directed to Mike. That black girl had an effect on me. But the other kids never let up, and I still laughed along with everybody, including Mike. Even though I wasn’t directing my jokes at him, I was still participating by laughing along.

Instead of standing up and telling the other kids to knock it off, I just laughed along. If I stood up for him, who knows what they would say about me. God forbid they might think I was just like Mike, just not as effeminate.

One morning toward the end of first period, the principle walked in and whispered into the teacher’s ear and they walked out of the classroom.

After awhile they both walked back in and said they had some sad news. I knew something was wrong. They announced that Mike was dead. No other details. I remember they were both real upset.

I had to look back at his assigned desk to confirm for myself that he wasn’t there. I didn’t even notice he was gone when class had started.

Well, the detail the school failed to mention was that Mike had committed suicide the night before. His parents found his body when they went to check on him because he didn’t wake up for breakfast.

All these years I’ve always wondered if the abuse he got at school played a role in his suicide. The abuse I dished out just as much as anybody. How could it not have played a role?

I made fun of this kid because I was terrified of my own secret. I may not have been directly responsible for him taking his own life, but I damn sure didn’t make his already difficult life easier. After the black girl put me in my place, instead of toning down my taunts I could have done more. I could have befriended him. I could have simply stopped laughing at him. I could have joined forces with his black friend.

This has been with me my entire life. I’ve come to terms with it, and done a lot of soul searching. Since I’ve come out, I’ve gone over this incident countless times. I wanted to find a way to try to make this up to Mike some how.

But, as we all know, nothing could be done. We can’t go back and undo things we aren’t proud of. Life goes on. Just like my life has gone on. But I definitely wanted to make a difference. I couldn’t change how the world looked at kids like myself. But I could change the way I looked at people. I could speak up when I saw prejudice. I came to realize I could not change the worlds bigotry, but I could change how I looked at bigotry and denounce it when it reared it’s ugly head.

Now you can see why I have an enormous amount of obligation to speak up and lend my voice to the fight against oppression and prejudice and bigotry.

(St.) Peter's not so great, either (especially with his misogynic view of the world.)

Re: Actually, Thom, I said “you’re getting your church in my state” to Stephanie Miller!

Not that it matters --- it was fun saying it!

I found your conversation with Dr. Brown interesting. However, the verse in Romans that he quoted as a proottext against lesbians, if you read it carefully, concerns HETEROSEXUALS who have turned away from their "natural" desires to same sex sex acts. Also, I tend to believe that the so-called "former" gays who have "changed" are possibly bisexual or even people in "transitional" or "temporary" homosexual situations (such as in prisons). In other words, people who are no really gay or lesbian in orientation.

Man these guys are ridiculous, I am so tired of having to apologize for being Christian, but I don't see that day coming anytime soon. I wish I could ditch the whole thing, but I just think the real Jesus is so awesome.

Jesus' message in a nut shell was this. Rules and laws are good until they get in the way of one's ability to love their neighbor, and if that's the case they've got to go. And because he challenged some of those rules that hindered love, which threatened the power structures of his day, they killed him.

Any Christian who thinks that rules and standards an conventional morals are static are not following the way of Jesus. Today, by not accepting homosexual couples as equal with heterosexual couples, it is clear that our laws are prohibitive of the act of love, and are thus NOT reflective of the life and teachings of Jesus.

Dear DRichard,

Actually, this is the first I've heard of him, though I think I remember Ms. Stone referring to him. But thank you for mentioning him. I've just finished asking my library to get all 4 volumes of The Masks of God. Thom is right. He does have the smartest audience ever! Thanks again for sharing!
Anna in Portland

terrorized -- like the guy they decided to blame for the anthrax. forced to commit suicide because there was no way no fight them. that leaves the question - will people get exonerated? found guilty by history? will the truth die with democracy as our country loses to fascism?

I called Sen Stabenow - my rep and on the committee - asked to put single payer on the table and at the table.

I don't care what the Bible says about homosexuality. I don't have to follow it's rules, I can live my life my way. Christians can have their own values and opinions on the subject, but they should not be able to use government to force their ways on me, as a homosexual. There is no Christian nor religious requirement for FULL citizenship rights in the U.S.

The only reason I would care what the Bible says about it is to try and educate some "Christians" that so misuse and misunderstand the Bible,or worse, cherry pick some sins and ignore others.

I think FrJon is on the right track with Romans (1:26): in my Bible, the passage comes under the heading, "Punishment of idolaters" - if you look at the prior verse (1:23), it declares the subjects have changed God's image into that of "corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things," which describe the forms of pagan idols. Thus Paul (and I agree with Thom his writings are problematic) was deploring Roman pagan cults, some of which were characterized by gender segregation and sexual ritual, meaning that homosexual acts were practiced in the context of sacred ceremonies by the members, regardless of their individual orientation, which promoted lust devoid of romance as in a loving relationship, as a divine moral imperative. Paul goes on to decry other activities of such cults, which must have been politically active, as various forms of conspiracy (1:29-31). Notice the following portion (2:1-3) warns those who judge such people condemn themselves: "man who judges those who do such things and does the same yourself" - which seems to refer to the conspiratorial nature of activities involving "malice, avarice, envy, murder, deceit, pride, plotting evil," etc. In divorcing this passage from the context of pagan ritual, the detractors of same-sex affection are practicing deceit.

The verse from Leviticus (18:22) used to declare male homosexuality an abomination is similar: a Dominican priest informed our class that scholars know this regarded worship of the pagan deity Baal, whose priests had as one duty personally inseminating farmers to insure the fertility of their crops (thus again, not the context of a loving relationship); the prior verse (18:21) specifically denounces consecrating one's child to the fire deity Moloch, which meant burning them to death.

Same-sex loving relationships are reported in the Bible objectively, but the fanatical, ill-informed crowd do their best to trivialize, distort or ignore such references: these include David and Jonathan (Jonathan's father King Saul wanted to kill them both for being "ravishers of men"), Elijah and Eliseus (regarded as "twin souls" to each other), and possibly Jesus and John (the latter described himself as "the disciple whom Jesus loved"). Jesus performed a long-distance cure of a centurion's slave boy, denoted with a word implying a sexual bond; it was Christ's love for Lazarus that brought him back from the dead; the arrest leading to the Crucifixion came when Judas kissed Jesus in a public place; Jesus on the Cross instills a mother-son bond between Mary and John; when the risen Christ speaks to Simon Peter of his future tasks, Peter wonders how John fits in ("What of this man?" "If I wish him to remain until I come, what is it to thee?") Anyone who claims they know about the sexuality or chastity of Jesus is simply deluded.

The efforts of so-called Christian groups motivating our citizens and lobbying our government in refusal to recognize committed loving relationships between people of the same gender, thereby depriving them of a variety of civil rights and financial benefits enjoyed by their opposite-sex counterparts, is an act of cruelty being propagated by willful ignorance and deliberate misrepresentations. Such people harbor no guilt that their toxic falsehoods lead to tragedies such as the despair of the youngster destroying himself, or the vicious murder of an honest innocent like Matthew Shepard: they instead likely feel delight that their lies have taken hold in people's minds, oblivious to the fact that the judgment spoken of in Revelations that awaits us all will be conducted via criteria with which they have yet to contend.

I want to comment on this comment:

<>

This indicates that the real "perversion" is the behavior that is dishonest or not honorable.

This is great. It turns the usual arguments by the homophobes on its head!

I too, find the "Economic Meltdown" peculiar but the timing, as Thom has pointed out, was not exactly as it was planned. The meltdown was not supposed to have started until Bush was out of office but in true "Bush" fashion he couldn't get that right either.