Bhutto

The big news of the past 24 hours is that some fanatic shot or blew up ex-leader and current candidate Bhutto in Pakistan. This should be big news here in America because the nuclear bomb holding Pakistan is one of our few allies.

I saw that there were hundreds of thousands of people in the streets rioting. Apparently they are upset that she is dead. Perhaps they could use that pent up energy to do something about the radical jackasses that caused the mayhem.

Quit screaming, crying, and flailing your arms in the air and pick up a weapon and defend your country from the nut jobs. While difficult and ridiculously dangerous, that would be the reasonable thing to do.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I just like saying that phrase. I learned this morning that you can even say Merry Xmas since the X has some language significance as Chi thus it was used in place of Christ more than 500 years ago. Good to know.

As to Happy New Year - this is what I think would be reasonable and make for a happy new year.

• The promise of a new presidency that will come with the elections in November 2008.
• Leave Iraq, stay away from Iran and North Korea. Bring home our troops before too many more die in a needless and aimless "conflict."
• Agreement that taking care of the environment, for whatever reason, has to be better than creating a pig sty. It's as simple as that.
• An economy that somehow survives the ridiculous home mortgage fiasco.
• I hope the creepy lenders that caused this, along with the homeowners who weren't smart enough to think through these ridiculous loans have to share the burden THEY jointly created.
• I hope the government doesn't completely break the bank trying to buy the electorate back over the mortgage fiasco. Some bailout seems inevitable. I hope they don't buy the houses for the people. I am paying for mine - they should pay for theirs.
• Some sort of immigration reform before I cannot understand the majority of people in my own English speaking country.
• Along these lines, I hope the judicial system in Arizona will uphold the right of voters who said in 2007, "enough already - if the feds can't fix immigration, we will."
• I hope employers stop hiring illegal immigrants because they get them cheap. Only the employer benefits. Legitimate employers foot the bill in terms of higher taxes and ridiculously high insurance benefits. Oh, and legal immigrants and citizens pay the price as well.
• I hope we keep gun ownership rights, rights for a woman to choose what is correct for her body, freedom to say, "Merry Christmas" and to otherwise celebrate whatever religion (or not) that we want.
• And finally, the Green Bay Packers should win the Superbowl.

Again, Merry Christmas and Happy New Years! (try saying it - it feels nice)

Religion in the Political Process

Separation of church and state always seems to get stretched too thin. Liberals want religion completely out of our daily political - government lives. Conservatives want religion to be thrust upon the masses in order to insure morality, etc. Neither position is reasonable.

This debate has manifested itself in the 2008 election in the discussion of Mitt Romney and his Mormon beliefs. Apparently half of the Christians in the U.S. consider Mormonism to be a cult or are not sure if it is a Christian based religion. Clearly Mormons have some beliefs that are out of step with main stream Christianity. But all religions have some oddities I suppose. It is the nature of "beliefs" rather than provable, scientific fact.

Back to Romney - he felt compelled to give a speech about his beliefs because political pressures dictated the move. Kennedy did the same in 1960. If the candidate for president was a Muslim, would their be a need for a speech? Not a chance - affiliation would eliminate the candidate before he ever got a chance. Romney needed to explain his Mormon belief system because of the confusion over "Christian religion versus cult" status of the Mormon faith.

It is unreasonable to vote for or against a candidate solely based on his or her religious beliefs. However, it is certainly reasonable to consider religious beliefs as part of the equation of "who is the candidate?" In other words, we are all made up of a woven fabric, all parts intertwined. To think a Mormon or Lutheran or Catholic or Buddhist or Muslim or Jew or an atheist can "turn off" their belief system while making decisions that effect all of us is ridiculous.

One's belief system is reasonable fodder for consideration.

Happy Holidays Redux

Two interesting things have happened this year in terms of the Happy Holiday versus Merry Christmas debate that has been building over the years. And, yes I know this is my second stab at this topic.

One, all of the Jewish people I know say, "Merry Christmas" to me instead of Happy Holidays. I also say, "Happy Hanukkah" to them which seems to be the proper thing to do. Nice! I even listened to the Hanukkah song by Adam Sandler - I just love that, "drink your Gin and Tonica" line. From Adam I learned OJ Simpson is not a Jew.

On the other hand, Christians seem to have caved this year and are saying, "Happy Holidays" to each other. Now that is nuts. Somebody just has to take a chance.

Next year, and I mean starting January 1, 2008 Christians everywhere, led by Lutheran, Catholic, Baptist, etc. Christian churches should begin a campaign to get Christians to not buy anything for Christmas 2008 from any store that advertised "Happy Holidays" and put a picture of a Christmas tree or ornament on the advertisement in 2007. If they called a Christmas tree a family or holiday tree - no one should ever shop in their store again - period. Are you kidding me - a holiday tree?

We will need all year to build momentum and get the word out - "don't buy from Happy Holiday sayers!"

One outcome might be that Christmas gets put back into our most decidedly Christian country. If not, all the money we don't spend on plastic doo-dads that we don't need and will break any way, could be used to take a vacation together as a family or to support a worthy cause that interests us. Wouldn't that be nice? I am going to use the money to go on a cruise to Ixtapa.

What isn't nice, and is totally unreasonable, is the PC term "Happy Holidays."

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.