Kate Braun : Winter Solstice Falls on Saturn's Day

Saturnalia by Ernesto Biondi, 1909.

Io Saturnalia!
Winter Solstice 2013

This seasonal celebration takes from many traditions, including the Roman Saturnalia, Druid customs, the German 'Yule,' and the birth of Jesus; and Queen Victoria popularized the lighted Christmas tree.

By Kate Braun / The Rag Blog / December 17, 2013

Saturday, December 21, 2013, marks Yule, the Winter Solstice, also the date observed as Saturnalia by the ancient Romans. Fittingly, this year’s Yule falls on a Saturday, Saturn’s Day.

For the Romans, Saturnalia was a time to remember and celebrate Rome’s “Golden Age," when Saturn ruled and life was perfect: the earth had no winter, food was abundant, there was no war, all living things on the planet coexisted peacefully.

In remembrance of this time, Romans gave each other gifts, opened their doors and shared hospitality, and partied like there would be no tomorrow! Many of the elements of Saturnalia have been absorbed into our Yule celebrations. Giving gifts and hosting parties are the most obvious ones.

There were other Sun-Gods in the Long Ago, most notably Mithras. His birth was celebrated on December 25 and involved much feasting and partying. In the 5th century, Church leaders moved the date of Jesus’ birth to December 25 in order to take advantage of the already existing celebrating and to shift the focus away from what they considered paganism.

Druid customs bring us the hanging of mistletoe over doorways. Give a kiss of peace on entering a home and it conveys the promise to not perpetrate mayhem or other negative mischief while inside.

Germanic influence brings us the Yule log and the decorating of trees. We can thank Queen Victoria for making a lighted Christmas tree popular; it was a custom introduced into England by Prince Albert. Queen Victoria found the custom delightful, and if it was good enough for the queen it was good enough for all her subjects!

The word “Yule” comes from a Germanic word meaning “wheel” and signifies the shifting of Planet Earth from the dark time to the lighter time when Lord Sun once again begins his ascendency. It is interesting to note that this year Lady Moon is in Leo, a Fire sign, on the day that marks the beginning of Lord Sun’s new life.

Use the colors red (for fire and Lord Sun’s new energy), green (for the new life soon to be seen in the emerging green shoots of plants), and white (for the snow that will melt away) in your decorating. Use evergreen boughs to symbolize the rebirth of life.

Serve your guests roast meat (it need not be a whole boar’s head), nuts, spiced cakes, and sweets as well as wassail (egg nog may easily replace a steaming wassail bowl) or other celebratory libations.

Sing carols to welcome the new life of Lord Sun: "Yonder Come Day," "Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming," "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day," "Pat-a-Pan," "White Christmas," "Angels We Have Heard on High"; any song that lifts your spirits. Don’t fret overmuch about how well you sing.

Sing in new life, brighter days, shorter nights, new beginnings, love, peace, goodwill towards all.

[Kate Braun was a contributor to the original Rag. Her website is www.tarotbykatebraun.com. She can be reached at kate_braun2000@yahoo.com. Read more of Kate Braun's writing on The Rag Blog.]

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Lamar W. Hankins : Right-Wing Rants and the Abominable Straw Man

The abominable Straw Man argument. Image from Linda's Bees.

Frosty the Straw Man:
How right-wing rants 
poison political discussion

If we could have civil discourse about our disagreements and try to understand why we have differences of opinion, perhaps we would have fewer rants from all sides of the political divide.

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / December 10, 2013

The Internet is a marvelous tool when used honestly and correctly, and with recognition of its limitations. Not a week goes by that I don’t find in my email inbox ridiculous and false political narratives about some atrocity or other going on in Washington or directed by Washington. Our politicians are purveying plenty of nonsense without anyone making up stories about what they do.

The most recent nonsense I received is an email angrily claiming that under the authority of Obamacare, the administration is setting up gasoline stations to provide free gas to low-income people:

According to a report in The Detroit News this morning, the [Obama] administration is using its authority under the Affordable Care Act to “improve transportation routes to hospitals” to dispense gasoline free of cost in disadvantaged neighborhoods.

The $2 billion-a-year program aims to distribute 40 million gallons of free gasoline each year through 70 new gas stations constructed in major metropolitan areas. The Department of Health and Human Services (DHS) will be responsible for operating the network, whose first station opened yesterday in Detroit...

“Supposedly access to the station is determined by income,” says Ebony Jackson, manager of the first Obamastation. “But it’s pretty unrealistic to do an income check on each and every driver. So what we do is basically let all the black people pump for free, and charge all the white people the market rate.”

A simple Internet search reveals that factcheck.org explained weeks ago that this information started its life as a piece on a satirical site, The Daily Currant. There are many satirical sites on the Internet, including the better-known publication The Onion, where patently ridiculous material gives some of us something to laugh, or -- at least chortle, about.

But the free gasoline story was sent to me as fact, and it had morphed from being about gasoline for poor people into “Government Opening Free Gas Stations in Poor Black Neighborhoods.”

There may be a bit of racial animus in that evolution, but I’ll let you judge that. I mention this point only because my source for the gasoline story regularly sends me racist material about Obama and continues to question where Obama was born. Readers of my column know that I am no Obama apologist and have been as critical of his presidency as I was of George W. Bush’s.

Some of the latest right-wing drivel comes from sites I read regularly or magazines to which I subscribe. The latest offender in the “just making stuff up” category is the respected Biblical scholar Robert M. Price. Price is an avowed atheist and political conservative.

In two pieces recently, he has taken on what he calls liberalism. The problem is that he posits liberal positions that exist mostly in his imagination and then proceeds to knock them down, acting like he has refuted a liberal position. This practice is referred to as the “straw-man” argument, because it is easy to tear down. But it is the kind of deceit that undermines honest, rational discourse.

In a blog entry, Price says that the supporters of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) promised that it would “leave no one uninsured.” Unfortunately, the best the ACA was intended to do is reduce the 45 million or so uninsured by about half, leaving 23 million Americans uninsured in 2023 when the ACA would be fully functional.

While reducing the uninsured by about half is better than nothing, it is a far cry from assuring that all Americans have health insurance from birth to death, as every other western industrial country has accomplished. But the ACA never promised health care for all. It was always an incremental step toward providing all Americans with a product as vital as water to a full life.

Further, in Price’s world, the “mainstream media” (because of political correctness) refuses to identify the race of perpetrators of a “new” type of criminal assault -- the “Knock Out Game.” Price claims that this kind of assault is one carried out by African-American youth against Jews, mainly for the amusement of the attackers, who don’t commit any other crime, such as robbery.

A review of on-line reports makes clear that such an assault was perpetrated against a Norwegian exchange student as long ago as 1992, followed by more recent attacks in 2005 in Britain and France; attacks in Illinois and Missouri in 2009; in Missouri again in 2011; in Chicago in 2012; and in Connecticut, Britain, New Jersey, Syracuse, and Brooklyn in 2013.

These attacks have been perpetrated against minorities, members of ethnic groups, and whites by African-American youth and others who were not African-American. At least one such attack was carried out by a 35-year old man with drug or mental problems, according to the Columbia Journalism Review. Eight victims in Brooklyn were Jewish and the attacks were linked to Jewish-Black tensions by several news reports as a result of a statement by a newly elected council member.

The Anti-Defamation League issued a public statement charging that the attacks there targeted Jews and lamented the comments of the council member-elect for spreading a false justification for such attacks -- that Jews owned the rental housing that Blacks lived in and were threatening them with eviction. At least one attacker was charged with a hate crime under New York law.

Many politicians and organizations have spoken out about the attacks, which have been reported in the mainstream media, including the New York Daily News, CBS, CNN, ABC, and the New York Post. Otherwise, I would not be able to read extensively about them. Some media sources, mainstream and others, have found these attacks to be limited in scope, while some disagree. However, I could not find evidence that the mainstream media is not reporting the attacks accurately and fully, as Price alleges.

Another claim by Price is that he can’t make certain statements blaming “Islamofascism on Muslims” without being seen as insensitive. Perhaps it is hair-splitting to suggest that the very name “Islamofascism” carries with it the implicit criterion that to be an Islamofascist means that one is Muslim. That is not the same as suggesting that all Muslims are Islamofascists, but Islamofascism has to be blamed on those Muslims who fit that description.

I do think it is important to be careful not to blame all Muslims for the transgressions of some Muslims. We might argue about how many Muslims are to blame for the fascism in their midst, but that’s a different discussion.

No one that I have heard has blamed all Methodists for homophobia in their midst, though the official policy of the United Methodist Church (UMC) is to remove any UMC minister who performs a wedding ceremony for a same-sex couple. I know many Methodists who disagree with this official policy, so I know that the homophobia involved cannot be blamed on all Methodists.

The problem with Islamophobia may be that Price and most Americans know so few Muslims that they are willing to engage in group blame for the actions of relatively few terrorists out of the 1.6 billion Muslims in the world.

Price also takes on Americans who favor reasonable gun control. He claims that “Our culture...thinks it best to take guns away from law-abiding citizens so they can’t commit the 'crime’ of self-defense...” Of course, he offers no evidence for this claim, but it gives him an opportunity to blame this state of affairs on liberals.

That should come as news to all nine members of the Supreme Court who seem to agree that reasonable regulation of guns is permitted under the Second Amendment, even while it struck down too much regulation in Washington, D. C. v. Heller five years ago, abandoning an understanding of the Second Amendment that had stood since 1939. But straw men are so easy to knock down, Price can’t stop.

I was amused to read Price’s claim that liberals embrace “the unscrupulous, amoral power tactics of Saul Alinsky.” As I remember, it was the right-wing Tea Party types in 2010 who used Alinsky’s philosophy and practices (especially his book, Rules for Radicals) to develop new tactics to oppose the ACA and fight other issues and candidates who displeased them.

Whatever Alinsky was, he was a patriot who believed completely in democracy. He was often criticized for being too focused on ends to worry about the propriety of the means used to achieve them. In 1966, at Union Theological Seminary, he addressed this charge:

Life and how you live it is the story of means and ends. The end is what you want, and the means is how you get it. Whenever we think about social change, the question of what and how, or means and ends, always arises. The man of action views the issue of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms... He asks of ends only whether they are achievable and worth the cost; of means, only whether they will work... He knows intuitively that the real and only question regarding the ethics of means and ends is, and always has been, “Does this particular end justify this particular means?”

Alinsky further explained in Rules for Radicals: “Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go to bed. He who fears corruption fears life.”

The same argument Price makes against Alinsky was made also against Martin Luther King, Jr. in the fight for civil rights in Birmingham. King addressed such criticisms in his Letter From Birmingham Jail, written 50 years ago. The letter was addressed to clergymen who criticized King for using the wrong means to end segregation: creating immense tension in Birmingham with the demonstrations he led, taking these actions at the wrong time, being an extremist, and violating the law.

King responded that creative tension was needed for growth in the hearts and minds of whites in the community. Without such tension, change would never occur. Those who support the status quo always want to wait for change to come, but King quoted Chief Justice Earl Warren, who wrote in an opinion in 1958 that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

King supported violating unjust laws as a moral responsibility and argued that civil disobedience is justified in the face of such laws. As to the charge of extremism, King wrote that Jesus and others revered through the ages were called extremists, "So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love?"

Whatever one thinks about Saul Alinsky and Martin Luther King, Jr., neither belongs just to liberals or right-wingers. Alinsky was a man for all seasons and political viewpoints. But he was not an ethics teacher or philosopher; he was a man of action in the quest for social justice.

Likewise, King fought for social justice his entire adult life, never willing to sit on the sidelines when social injustice needed to be corrected. His example inspired many across the spectrum of political opinion. While Alinsky’s tactics were often dramatically creative, both he and King supported nonviolent means to achieve their ends.

Finally, I’ll deal with one other claim of Price, though he makes enough false claims to write a small book. Price complains that he can’t use the word “Christmas” because non-Christians may be offended. I don’t know what universe Price lives in, but Christmas is ubiquitous in this culture. None of my Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist or atheist friends and acquaintances can possibly escape it unless they wrap themselves in a cocoon between Halloween and New Year’s Day. Only on Fox News is Price’s complaint about Christmas part of the real world.

The only Christmas complaints I hear usually concern the government’s promotion of Christmas as a religious holiday. Manger scenes at city hall sponsored by a city council have usually been prohibited by the courts. But Christmas itself is predominantly secular, focused largely on giving and receiving gifts and selling lots of merchandise. This secular Christmas is woven into the culture as much as Thanksgiving or July 4th.

While the materialistic aspect of Christmas has been criticized by ministers and other religious people, it has also been fodder for thoughtful comments by poets. My favorite is a poem written in the 1950s by Lawrence Ferlinghetti:

CHRIST CLIMBED DOWN

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no rootless Christmas trees
hung with candycanes and breakable stars

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no gilded Christmas trees
and no tinsel Christmas trees
and no tinfoil Christmas trees
and no pink plastic Christmas trees
and no gold Christmas trees
and no black Christmas trees
and no powderblue Christmas trees
hung with electric candles
and encircled by tin electric trains
and clever cornball relatives

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no intrepid Bible salesmen
covered the territory
in two-tone cadillacs
and where no Sears Roebuck crèches
complete with plastic babe in manger
arrived by parcel post
the babe by special delivery
and where no televised Wise Men
praised the Lord Calvert Whiskey

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no fat handshaking stranger
in a red flannel suit
and a fake white beard
went around passing himself off
as some sort of North Pole saint
crossing the desert to Bethlehem
Pennsylvania
in a Volkswagen sled
drawn by rollicking Adirondack reindeer
with German names
and bearing sacks of Humble Gifts
from Saks Fifth Avenue
for everybody’s imagined Christ child

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no Bing Crosby carolers
groaned of a tight Christmas
and where no Radio City angels
iceskated wingless
thru a winter wonderland
into a jinglebell heaven
daily at 8:30
with Midnight Mass matinees

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and softly stole away into
some anonymous Mary’s womb again
where in the darkest night
of everybody’s anonymous soul
He awaits again
an unimaginable
and impossibly
Immaculate Reconception
the very craziest
of Second Comings

If we could have civil discourse about our disagreements and try to understand why we have differences of opinion, perhaps we would have fewer rants from all sides of the political divide. I have dedicated this column to arguing my positions based on evidence and reason. I’m sure I have not always succeeded in that goal, but I will keep trying. And with a little luck, I may be able to avoid reading any more rants from any political perspective.

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins. Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.]

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Jim Rigby : Christmas Cancelled as Security Measure!

Three wise men arrested for illegal possession of “frankincense” and “myrrh.” Art from Dare to Create.
Christmas is no time to
talk about war and peace

When the angels sang, 'peace on earth good will to all,' they were expressing the song written in every heart. But, that song calls us out of empire and into our entire human family.

By Jim Rigby / The Rag Blog / December 22, 2011

When I heard the President speak to returning troops last week, my mind flashed back to an article I once wrote for our local newspaper. Each week a different member of the local clergy would write a column, and I had been asked to write the piece for Christmas.

That year all I could hear was the drumbeat leading toward a war with Iraq. I racked my brain trying to think of a way to put faces on the people we were about to bomb. Looking at a nativity scene I thought, “the people we are about to kill look like that.” Maybe a reframed Christmas story could help Americans stop hating Saddam long enough to care about the people who will pay the real cost of this invasion.

I submitted the following article, covering the Christmas story the way the U.S. press was covering the build-up to the Iraq war. Looking back, I should have known what was about to happen.

Christmas Cancelled as a Security Measure

ELLIS ISLAND -- The three wise men were arrested today attempting to enter the country. The Iraqi nationals were carrying massive amounts of flammable substances known as “frankincense” and “myrrh.” While not explosives themselves, experts revealed that these two substances could be used as a fuse to detonate a larger bomb. The three alleged terrorists were also carrying gold, presumably to finance the rest of their mission.

Also implicated in the plot were two Palestinians named Joseph and Mary. An anonymous source close to the family overheard Mary bragging that her son would “bring down the mighty from their thrones and lift up the lowly.” In what appears to be a call to anarchy, the couple claims their son will someday “help prisoners escape captivity.” “These people match our terrorist profile perfectly,” an official source reported.

All of the suspects claimed they heard angels singing of a new era of hope for the afflicted and poor. As one Wall Street official put it, “These one world wackos are talking about overturning the entire economic and political hierarchy that holds the civilized world together. I don’t care what some angel sang; God wants the status quo -- by definition.”

A somber White House press secretary announced that it might be prudent to cancel Christmas until others in the plot are rounded up. “I assure you that this measure is temporary. The President loves Christmas as much as anyone. People can still shop and give expensive gifts, but we’re asking them not to think about world peace until after we have rid the world of evil people. For Americans to sing, ‘peace on earth, good will to all’, is just the wrong message to send to our enemies at this time.”

The strongest opponents of the Christmas ban were the representatives of retail stores, movie chains and makers of porcelain Christmas figurines. “This is a tempest in a teapot,” fumed one unnamed business owner. “No one thinks of the political meaning of Christmas any more. Christmas isn’t about a savior who will bring hope to the outcasts of the world; it’s about nativity scenes and beautiful lights. History has shown that mature people are perfectly capable of singing hymns about world peace while still supporting whatever war our leaders deem necessary. People long ago stopped tying religion to the real events in the world.”

There has been no word on where the suspects are being kept, or when their trial might be held. Authorities are asking citizens who see other foreigners resembling nativity scene figures to contact the Office of Homeland Security.

A few days after submitting that piece, I received a nervous call from an editor. “We love your story. It’s very funny.”

“Thank you,” I said waiting for the other shoe to fall.

“The thing is, we want to take out the part about Iraq and Palestine.”

After a horrified pause, I explained that had been the whole point of writing the story -- to humanize the people who were about to be killed. When I refused to gut the story, he told me they would have to drop it all together.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. Clergy who want to talk about real events in the world are seen as too political for the religious section, and too religious for the political section. Of course, if a minister gets in the pulpit and waves the flag and prays for the troops, that’s not called “political," but if a minister questions any war, then it is considered mixing religion and politics. The resulting pablum in most clergy columns validates their strategic placement somewhere between the obituaries and the comics.

What have we learned as a result of the war? That was answered by Obama’s words to the returning troops:

Because of you -- because you sacrificed so much for a people that you had never met -- Iraqis have a chance to forge their own destiny. That’s part of what makes us special as Americans. Unlike the old empires, we don’t make these sacrifices for territory or for resources. We do it because it’s right. There can be no fuller expression of America’s support for self-determination than our leaving Iraq to its people. That says something about who we are.

Looking back at my earlier Christmas article, I feel pain not pride at what the President said. His speech to returning troops could have been taken from any leader, of any nation, from any period of history, simply by changing the names and places. It is the kind of speech every leader has given since the emperors: brave and noble words, written in someone else’s blood.

This President who ran, in part, against this war, has come to repeat the party line. This President, who once spoke of respect for all people of the world, has now deported more immigrants than Bush.

Hearing another speech expressing our nation’s narcissistic delusion made me physically ill. I could not help but think of the bloody wake such rhetoric leaves behind when put into action. The fact that we are leaving Iraq at this point says nothing about the purity of our initial motives. Even bank robbers don’t stay around after the crime has been committed.

I appreciate trying to make our young soldiers not feel like they were pawns in someone else’s parlor game, but for the sake of future generations we must painfully remember and affirm, that is exactly what happened.

We, from the United States, are not like the people in our nativity scenes. We are like the Romans looming ominously in the background of the story. Christmas is about the little people of the world who find joy and meaning while living under someone else’s boot. We from the United States can only celebrate Christmas by ending our cultural narcissism, renouncing empire, and making room for the poor and the weak of the world like Joseph and Mary.

Christmas is not a fact of history, but Christianity’s particular symbol of every human being’s hope for world peace and universal happiness. When the angels sang, “peace on earth good will to all,” they were expressing the song written in every heart. But, that song calls us out of empire and into our entire human family.

Maybe stopping the frenzy of Christmas long enough to really hear the song the angels sang to the wretched of the earth, would give us the humanity to stop hanging our Christmas lights until we no longer kill our brothers and sisters for the fuel to illumine them.

O ye beneath life's crushing load, whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way with painful steps and slow;
Look now, for glad and golden hours come swiftly on the wing;
Oh rest beside the weary road and hear the angels sing.

[Rev. Jim Rigby, a human rights activist, is pastor of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas. He can be reached at jrigby0000@aol.com., and videos of his sermons are available online here. Read more articles by Jim Rigby on The Rag Blog.]

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Lamar W. Hankins : A Humanist Looks at Christmas

Orator and humanist Robert G. Ingersoll. Image from the Council for Secular Humanism.
Robert Green Ingersoll:
A humanist looks at Christmas

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / December 22, 2011

Robert Green Ingersoll is one of the least known orators of the 19th century, yet he lectured six or seven times a week from the Civil War until his death in 1899. He was vastly influential and campaigned vigorously for every Republican elected President in those years.

He has been largely forgotten by history because he was a secular humanist, dubbed “The Great Agnostic” by friends and foes alike. His father was an abolitionist Presbyterian preacher. Ingersoll fought in the Civil War and greatly admired President Abraham Lincoln.

While Ingersoll was a lawyer by profession, he earned a good income from his mostly sold-out lectures for which people were charged $7 to $14 per person in today’s money. Much of this income he gave to charitable causes. Ingersoll had a photographic memory, which made it possible for him to memorize all of his lectures. A complete set of his written works and lectures were published in 12 volumes and are now available on CD.

Ingersoll’s life was summarized by Herman E. Kittredge:

He became the terror of the pulpit, reviled by the clergy, slandered by the religious media, and yet the friend of presidents, and the friend of great men and women such as Thomas Edison, Andrew Carnegie, Mark Twain and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Known as the "American Infidel," he went on to become the first Attorney General of the State of Illinois.

And Ingersoll was a great influence on Clarence Darrow three decades before the Scopes Trial.

Ingersoll was a good friend of Walt Whitman, who considered Ingersoll the greatest orator of their time. Upon Whitman’s death in 1892, Ingersoll delivered his eulogy. It was so well-received that it was published and can be found in Phyllis Theroux’s 1977 collection, The Book of Eulogies. Whitman said of his friend Bob Ingersoll, “It should not be surprising that I am drawn to Ingersoll, for he is Leaves of Grass... He lives, embodies, the individuality, I preach. I see in Bob the noblest specimen -- American-flavored -- pure out of the soil, spreading, giving, demanding light."

While Ingersoll started no humanist organizations to carry on his beliefs, a humanist organization took up his mantle 80 years after his death. The Council on Secular Humanism supports “a nonreligious lifestance rooted in science, naturalistic philosophy, and humanist ethics.” As the Council explains:

Secular humanists reject supernatural and authoritarian beliefs. They affirm that we must take responsibility for our own lives and the communities and world in which we live. Secular humanism emphasizes reason and scientific inquiry, individual freedom and responsibility, human values and compassion, and the need for tolerance and cooperation.

Ingersoll gave a lecture in 1897 in Boston titled “What I Want for Christmas.” Ingersoll’s views do not match everyone’s, and some of his thoughts will be abhorrent to many, but on the whole they harmonize nicely with the views of many Christians, for whom this time of year is especially meaningful:

If I had the power to produce exactly what I want for next Christmas, I would have all the kings and emperors resign and allow the people to govern themselves.

I would have all the nobility crop their titles and give their lands back to the people. I would have the Pope throw away his tiara, take off his sacred vestments, and admit that he is not acting for God -- is not infallible -- but is just an ordinary Italian. I would have all the cardinals, archbishops, bishops, priests and clergymen admit that they know nothing about theology, nothing about hell or heaven, nothing about the destiny of the human race, nothing about devils or ghosts, gods or angels.

I would have them tell all their "flocks" to think for themselves, to be manly men and womanly women, and to do all in their power to increase the sum of human happiness.

I would have all the professors in colleges, all the teachers in schools of every kind, including those in Sunday schools, agree that they would teach only what they know, that they would not palm off guesses as demonstrated truths.

I would like to see all the politicians changed to statesmen, -- to men who long to make their country great and free, -- to men who care more for public good than private gain -- men who long to be of use.

I would like to see all the editors of papers and magazines agree to print the truth and nothing but the truth, to avoid all slander and misrepresentation, and to let the private affairs of the people alone.

I would like to see drunkenness and prohibition both abolished.

I would like to see corporal punishment done away with in every home, in every school, in every asylum, reformatory, and prison. Cruelty hardens and degrades, kindness reforms and ennobles.

I would like to see the millionaires unite and form a trust for the public good.

I would like to see a fair division of profits between capital and labor, so that the toiler could save enough to mingle a little June with the December of his life.

I would like to see an international court established in which to settle disputes between nations, so that armies could be disbanded and the great navies allowed to rust and rot in perfect peace.

I would like to see the whole world free -- free from injustice -- free from superstition.

This will do for next Christmas. The following Christmas, I may want more.

It seems extraordinary to me that something written 114 years ago has such resonance for today. Whatever your lifestance, and whether or not you agree with Ingersoll, I hope you have a Merry Christmas or a Happy Holiday, and keep thinking free.

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins. Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.]

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Bruce Melton : I Want a Sequestration Machine for Christmas!

Photo by Bruce Melton / The Rag Blog.
Climate intrigue and a change in prosperity:
I want a sequestration machine for Christmas

By Bruce Melton / The Rag Blog / December 23, 2010

Climate change is not just another dangerous dead-end road for humanity. There is really no doom and gloom just around the corner. The situation is not as dire as the catastrophists would have you believe. Yet, the news from climate science land has gone from bad to worse.

The impacts are happening faster with greater strength. The feedbacks appear stronger. The thresholds are proving to be nearer and threaten greater consequences. Ecosystems are rapidly deteriorating right now, or in some cases like caribou and coral reefs, they are simply collapsing.

So how can I be convinced that the solutions to the climate change challenge are things that can easily be accomplished? That the cost will at first seem burdensome, but will quickly be realized to be the intelligent investment that it is?

In the thousands of scientific papers on climate change that I have reviewed, most of the results talk about how lab tests sequestered far more carbon than imagined; about how the new techniques have been “scaled up” to mass production capacity and shown to be valid. The cost analyses show what at first would seem like ghastly expensive expenditures, but upon deeper thought, are revealed to be no different than other challenges we as society have already conquered.

Lord Nicholas Stern was former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s head of economic services in the United Kingdom. In 2006, Stern authored a definitive review of the economic impacts of climate change. His work was 700 pages of evaluation that included most of the current knowledge on climate science.

What Lord Stern found was that it would take approximately 1 percent of world gross domestic product to address climate change every year. But in 2008 Stern came forward with a revision to his report. He said that in the two years since his book was completed, new discoveries about climate change and about how we as a society were reacting would raise the cost of mitigating climate change to about 2 percent of gross domestic product.

So, one or two percent of world gross domestic product (GDP) is what it will take to avert a climate catastrophe; is that a lot of money? How much money is this exactly, compared to something that we can relate to? The Moon shot maybe


To see the value of anything, first we must understand how that value is important to our society. Preventing “dangerous climate change," or as the scientists call it “dangerous anthropogenic interference," is what the scholarly climate change literature tells us is our goal. The climate scientists say that just 2 degrees C of change (about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) will result in dangerous climate change.

Or at least this is what they said five or six years ago. Today the answer is more like 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) and this is additional warming above pre-industrial levels. We have already warmed 0.7 degrees C (1.3 degrees C). So just 1.3 to 2.3 degrees F of warming is what remains between dangerous anthropogenic interference and us.

Considering that most of the warming that has already occurred has happened since 1970, It appears as if we cannot help but pass this dangerous threshold. But, you may ask, what is so dangerous about a couple of degrees of warming?

Most folks think climate change is no big deal. The polls these days show that nearly one-half to two-thirds of Americans think that climate change is either not real, not going to impact them in their lifetimes or is exaggerated.

All of this while the latest mega review of climate science literature shows that 97 to 98 percent of climate scientists agree on the tenents of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

In the climate scientists’ world, the one where I interpret the peer reviewed literature so you don’t have to, the beginnings of dangerous climate change are here now.

Right now, primary productivity in our oceans has declined 40 percent from levels in the 1950s because of warming. Billions of trees are dead in the North American Rockies in a sixty-one million acre attack. A native pine bark beetle is responsible and this event is 10 to 20 times bigger than anything ever recorded. It is still growing and is expected to impact virtually every pine forest in North America. Only extreme cold can kill the pine beetle, cold like we have not seen in nearly two decades.

Eighty percent of complex reefs in the Caribbean Sea have collapsed because of warming between 1969 and 2008 and the worst coral bleaching year ever recorded is likely to have just occurred in 2010. Greenland’s ice melt and discharge have quadrupled in 20 years. Antarctica is discharging now as much ice as Greenland, but Antarctica, in the 2001 IPCC report, was not supposed to start losing any ice for another 100 years or more.

These things are happening now, but as of yet they do not really rate as extreme enough to be called dangerous climate change. To get the idea across, I like to use an analogy comparing the weather to climate. We have all heard time and again that we cannot compare the weather to climate. We know that the weather is what happens tomorrow, or last spring, or even for the last decade and that climate is measured in decades, generations, and even centuries of average weather.

Climate happens on such a large scale though that it is difficult to grasp, even for me. So I have developed analogies to aid my own comprehension. My current favorite analogy compares the Dust Bowl to something that climate scientists call a mega drought.

We have these mega droughts in North America once every millennia or so, or at least we have had two or three of them in the last 1,500 to 2,000 years. These things are completely natural, they last for 100 to 300 years (the Dust Bowl lasted nine to 11 years) and they have only half of the rainfall annually when compared to the Dust Bowl.


As big as the Dust Bowl was, it was a simple weather aberration. Mega droughts however, at 10 to 30 times longer and twice as dry, are classified as something that would rate as a dangerous climate change. This is the scale of things that we have to contend with if we warm the planet just another 1.3 to 2.3 degrees F.

A mega drought would obliterate a continental agricultural region. There is only so much water underground that could be used for irrigation. Once groundwater is gone, all that would remain is shifting sand; for generations or centuries.

Another dangerous climate change would be 10 feet of sea level rise in a hundred years or maybe even as little as 500 years. It has already happened on a planet as warm as Earth is today, or within about one degree C of as warm as we are today.

The event occurred 121,000 years ago, in the interglacial warm period between the last 100,000 year-long ice age and the previous 100,000 year-long ice age (there have been about 10 100,000 year-long ice ages in the last million years.)

This globally catastrophic sea level jump happened naturally because of a collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet due to natural warming between ice ages. It is just this kind of collapse that the ice scientists have seen signs of starting in the last several years.

Ten feet of sea level rise would displace 700 to 800 million people. Once the West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapsed, it would likely unleash a rush of dammed up ice from the Antarctic Continent into the ocean. This ice would continue to raise sea level at rates up to 10 feet per century or more for centuries on end.

Today we are changing the CO2 concentration of our atmosphere 14,000 times faster than normal for any time in the last 55 to 65 million years. If we as a society continue ignoring climate science as we have been for the last couple of decades, we will see 3 to 5 degrees C of warming (5.4 to 9 degrees F). This means by mid-century, maybe even just another 20 years, we will cross the 1.3 to 2.3 degree F threshold to dangerous climate change.

Our future lives may never be the same, but they may never be better either. We can prevent globally crippling mega drought that would starve hundreds of millions. We can keep the West Antarctic ice sheet from collapsing, or any number of other calamities that could basically end life as we know it.

All we have to do is bring CO2 levels in the atmosphere down to 350 ppm or less. Considering that the Kyoto Protocol would have had our society reducing our emissions to somewhere slightly below 1990 levels by 2012, and that emissions levels have only continued to climb since 1990, it is no wonder that doom and gloom is closely associated with climate change.


But the technologies are out there. The research has been done, the technologies proven in the lab, and some scale models have been built that prove successful. We could even use current CO2 extraction technology, commonly used in industry, to do the job. All it takes is a will to do so, money, and manpower.

For example, Klaus Lackner, at Columbia University, has shown how a polyester-like plastic sheet can absorb CO2 and the CO2 can be rinsed out with water. They built a full scale model and the technology worked well. The cost of the model was also in the feasible range.

Lackner’s full-scale test model was about the size of a train car. Thousands of these rail car-sized sequestration machines could easily be built. We could build enough to remove half of mankind’s CO2 emissions every year. The completed machine would be about the size of the Great Wall of China.

Lackner added up how much his machine cost and made some generalizations about full-scale implementation. When the numbers are looked at in more detail, a full scale model of their sequestration machine costed out so that it would take as much money as the U.S. spent on World War II, about $5 trillion adjusted for inflation, to pay for the machine.

That’s a lot of money of course. But Lackner was careful to explain that his cost was calculated on their own “actual costs” to build the one railcar-sized machine. Reduction in costs due to scale would likely be trillions of dollars.

This would still make the ultimate cost of the machine be trillions of dollars, but we just spent 3 trillion dollars on the economic conundrum bailout stimulus mess. And remember, this is just spending by the United States. Around the world, spending on World War II as well as spending this latest economic brain donation, was significantly more than just that spent by the U.S. alone.

Now comes the good part. These technologies are literally littered across the scientific landscape. We have all heard about how impossible clean coal is. But clean coal is only impossible on Earth as we know it. If our society finds the courage to address the true risks of climate change, clean coal suddenly becomes entirely feasible.


We are at the same point in our new clean energy economy today as we were just before the Interstate Highway system was built, or just before the Manhattan project ended World War II, or before John Kennedy said that we would go to the moon in 10 years because “it was hard.”

Wind energy is taking off like a bird. From 1996, wind energy installations doubled in capacity every three years. Installed solar capacity has increased 40 percent per year since 1990. Some parts of the U.S., Europe, and Japan have already reached parity -- where solar costs the same as coal-fired power. Worldwide, solar should reach parity with coal in two to five years. In a decade or less, we will see “naked parity” where solar costs the same as coal without subsidies.

All of this clean energy will change our lives for the better. A new economic engine will take over our planet. We will no longer be slaves to fossil carbon. Our skies will clear, our health will improve, our lives will be better, and economies will prosper. It happened when we changed our base energy unit from wood to coal and again when we changed from coal to oil. It will do the same when we change from oil to wind and solar.

Our society has an innate capacity to accomplish vast challenges. The Great Wall of China and the pyramids are two low-tech accomplishments, built by hand, that can be seen from space. The Apollo project put a man on the moon. The winning of World War II saved our society from global dictatorship (or worse.)

Like the pyramids, the Great Wall, the Moon Shot, and World War II, fixing our climate will not be easy. And like those other things, it will not be cheap. It will take one to two percent of global Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is $70 trillion today.

Remember Lackner’s sequestration machine the size of the Great Wall of China that you can see from the moon? One to two percent of GDP is a couple of trillion dollars.

So how much money is a trillion dollars? Let’s compare it to World War II and GDP. The $5 trillion that the U.S. spent on World War II was 25 times the U.S. GDP at the time, which was about $200 billion. Today’s U.S. GDP is $14 trillion. So 25 times today’s GDP would be about the same as what we spent on WW II, scaled for GDP. That’s $125 trillion dollars.


Scaled up to the actual size of the U.S. economy then (this is what GDP is), we spent $125 trillion dollars on World War II! So why is the measly $3 trillion that we spent on the economic conundrum perceived to be so much money? It’s all relative to perceived risk.

When the bailouts happened, Wall Street was being attacked by bad economic policy, not bad imperialists or Nazi’s bent on world domination. The perceived risk that the public has about climate change is just not comparable to world domination. It does not matter that the real risks of climate change are frightening beyond imagining; it is the perceived risk that counts.

Without public opinion, without the votes, without a global catastrophe threatening our very way of life, our leaders will not act. If the climate change threat were recognized for what it is, something worse than world domination, we would easily spend 25 times current GDP on prevention.

And the money is really there. Our capacity to create deficit spending 40 times greater than what we just spent on this little recession is real. It has happened before. We spent all that money during WW II because we saw the need. We understood the risks. We had the courage.

Please, in this time of thought about things bigger than ourselves, about the past and the future, and about our children, have courage. Go to meetings. Write your Senator. Tell your councilperson. Write a letter to the editor. Start a group. Attend a rally.

World War II was won by a revolution. The climate crisis is no less profound. It will need a revolution too. This new economic alternative energy revolution, this great societal challenge that we face, is not really without parallels. Repairing our deteriorating climate is a task that is within our grasp. There is no need for despair. We did not despair when we were attacked at Pearl Harbor. We rose to the challenge.

[Bruce Melton is a registered professional engineer, environmental researcher, trained outreach specialist, and environmental filmmaker. He has been translating and interpreting scholarly science publications for two decades. His main mission is filming and reporting on the impacts of climate changes happening now, unknown to the greater portion of society. Austin, Texas is his home. His writing and films are on his website.]

• See previous articles by Bruce Melton on The Rag Blog.
• Listen to Thorne Dreyer's Dec. 3, 2010 interview with Bruce Melton about climate science and global warming on Rag Radio.

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Dr. Stephen R. Keister : Christmas Spirit and the Compassionate Doctor

"The Family Doctor," lithograph by Grant Wood, 1941.
Christmas past:
The compassionate doctor
and today's medical culture

By Dr. Stephen R. Keister / The Rag Blog / December 22, 2010

The Christmas season means many things to many people; however, as I approach age 90 I tend to reflect on what was and what might have been. Christmas to me represents a time of giving -- not of material things, but of kindness and compassion.

Many of the modern day fundamentalist "Christians" might feel disdain for those of us who are secularists -- and believers in a code of secular ethical culture. But to me the largest concepts of Christian morality lie within Matthew 5:1-12 (The Beatitudes), Luke 10:25-37 (The Parable of The Good Samaritan), and Matthew 19:23-26, (Jesus’ tale of the possibility of a rich man entering the Kingdom of Heaven).

I would like to reflect on two outstanding physicians that I have known who I believe embody that spirit.

Dr. William Watt Graham Maclachlan was my mentor during my period of residency in internal medicine at Mercy Hospital in Pittsburgh, 1945-1950. Dr. Maclachlan was some 60 years of age, a graduate of McGill when the tradition of Sir William Osler still persisted there, a member of the Association of American Physicians with its membership of 50 outstanding doctors nationally, and personal physician to two diverse personalities, Andrew Mellon and Philip Murray of the National Steelworkers.

Dr. Maclachlan's great love was teaching and caring for the folks in the charity wards, especially those in the pneumonia ward where he supervised much of the early work with penicillin in treating lobar pneumonia, a disease that then carried a 50% fatality rate. The pneumonia ward was populated largely by residents of two local refuge houses, most of them alcoholics, who were admitted in dire straights and in many cases with little hope of recovery.

Dr.Maclachlan would pause at each bedside, check the individual’s name on his chart, pull up a chair, grasp the man’s hand, address him by his last name, and reassure him of his progress and care. It was from him that I learned to appreciate the true objective of the physician, love and consideration for the individual as a human being. In due time Dr. Maclachlan inspired me to become a rheumatologist, before such a specialty formally existed. and thus gave me a purpose for my life during the years 1950-1990.

At this season I think often of the privilege I had in knowing such a wonderful, far-sighted, compassionate human being.

Another person who I will always remember is Dr. Hyman Casselman, lovingly known as “Casey.” I met Dr. Casselman in 1950 or thereabouts, when I opened practice in Erie, Pennsylvania. Casey was a Canadian, also trained at McGill, who had interned in Erie, married a local lady of considerable means, and settled here to work as a family physician. During World War II he was assigned to an army dispensary in Arlington, Virginia. where his patients proudly included Generals Marshall and Eisenhower -- before they had achieved full military rank.

Casey was the physician for the underprivileged, the poor and neglected, in the Erie area. He made house calls day and night in all kinds of weather and he never pushed a family for payment. His primary concern was for the well-being of the individuals and their families, not for his financial gain.

He never had a big house in the affluent section of the city. I remember encountering an elderly Afro-American who looked me in the eye and proudly said, "Dr. Casselman is my family doctor.” Casey was one of the few physicians who joined me in opposing the Vietnam War. I was proud to have such a partner in my personal and very lonely rebellion. I was also proud, in Casey's later days, to be asked to present him with the Maimonides Award. Casey died at the age of 92 in 1998.

These two gentleman would be entirely befuddled by today’s medical culture where, upon entering a physicians office, you are immediately asked for your insurance card and asked to sign a bunch of papers having to do with financial and legal liability. You are then paged by your given name as if the receptionist/nurse were an old acquaintance, and escorted into an examining room where you are interviewed by a physician’s assistant.

No more of this sitting down and talking to the doctor for 45-60 minutes on the first visit and developing a personal friendship. Finally, if fortunate, one is able to spend 15-20 minutes with the physician, who may well be taking notes on a laptop during the interview. Sometimes you are even granted the opportunity to ask questions before being hurried out the door to set up your next appointment.

I have personally been fortunate, and I do not believe that it is because I am a physician, to have had the privilege of communicative, caring doctors (very much an exception these days) as my personal internist, my pain management physician, and an oncologist at our outstanding Regional Cancer Center.

Since the health insurance industry takeover of medical care in the United States -- as we have noted in prior dispatches on The Rag Blog –- medicine has been transformed from a profession into a business not unlike those designed to sell insurance or used cars.

In the present culture of greed and materialism in the United States I see very little hope for our reverting to what we once were, or transforming our health care system into what exists in many other nations of the world. There appears to be little political interest, for instance, in establishing a single payer, universal health care system, as is promoted by Physicians for a National Health Program or the American Nurses Association.

In case you missed it, I would call everyone’s attention to an extensive and impressive document published on Mother Jones online. It’s the International Federation of Health Plans' "2010 Comparative Price Report, Medical and Hospital Fees by Country.” We should become familiar with the information in this report if we indeed some day hope to join the rest of the world -- with first rate care at reasonable costs.

There are only two nations in the industrialized world with "socialized medicine" -- Canada and the UK -- and 93% of Canadians are reported to be happy with their program. The UK program is a bit in flux under the current Tory Government and I have seen no recent statistics on satisfaction. The remaining nations have programs based on private health insurance with government oversight of costs and services.

I look to the future with more fear than I have experienced since the days of Sen. Joe McCarthy. The Obama administration, in spite of the howls from the political right, has little in common with the progressive America of the LaFolletts, Norman Thomas, and Franklin D.Roosevelt.

There is little hope of obtaining again our once national greatness under a Congress and Senate dominated by the corporations and their mainstream media shills. It seems to me a paradox that Obama is so hated by the mass of the conservative movement when in essence he is in bed with the majority of their policies.

One must surmise then that the dislike is based on his being seen as "the other" by a poorly informed, television-hypnotized public -- a public which lives largely in a world noted for what Hannah Arendt called "the totalitarian contempt for facts and reality." It was Joseph Goebbels who said, “It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion.”

Finally, as a "senior citizen" I am aghast at the commercial efforts to take advantage of the elderly population with contrived misinformation like the massive advertising campaign to sell Medicare Advantage Plans in place of normal medicare to the senior population. This advertising costs millions of dollars, all to be passed on to the poor devil who buys the junk.

And the unending barrage of pharmaceutical ads on TV! The pharmaceutical industry, which spends more on advertising than on research, is passing on the costs to the buyer with this flow of undocumented foolishness. "Be sure and tell your doctor if you have diabetes or high blood pressure." Goodness, if your doctor is not aware that you have high blood pressure or diabetes it is time you change doctors.

Happy Holidays to all.

[Dr. Stephen R. Keister lives in Erie, Pennsylvania. He is a retired physician who is active in health care reform and is a regular contributor to The Rag Blog.]

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Mariann G. Wizard : You Eat Too Much!

Image from diettogo.
Stayin’ Alive:
The reason for the season is not food

If what we love becomes the act of eating in itself, we’re shortchanging ourselves on the rest of life.

By Mariann G. Wizard / The Rag Blog / December 8, 2010

You won’t want to read this story.

You won’t want to hear what I have to say.

Here it is anyway: YOU EAT TOO MUCH!!!

Not only you, of course, almost all adult Americans gain five pounds annually between Thanksgiving and New Year’s; five pounds that Never. Comes. Off.

The real problem, however, isn’t holiday over-indulgence; it’s the mindset that feasting and gorging is an integral, necessary part of any celebration, even the ones we have every day when we leave work.

Today the world is experiencing a burgeoning epidemic of adult onset diabetes, especially among children -- soon the old name for diabetes type 2 may be wholly obsolete. It’s been predicted that by 2020 -- in less than 10 years! -- nearly one-half of American adults will have type 2 diabetes. Diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer are the three most frequent causes of human death today. While each is multifactorial, rather than having a single cause, they share one underlying risk factor above all: obesity, overweight, plain old fat.

Diet-related illnesses have been linked epidemiologically to transitions away from traditional diets in many parts of the world to a so-called “Western diet”: one heavy on red meat, transfats, carbohydrates, white sugar, white flour, and lots of salt.

They’re on the rise as well in the American heartland, where this very diet is the traditional fare. However, most Americans no longer do the farm labor or other exacting physical work that their grandparents did, yet many still “eat like farmhands."

The equation isn’t really complicated. Food intake produces energy. Energy that is not burned off by activity accumulates as mass. And mass that accumulates on your body is called what?

Our hearts are not built to carry and aerate the equivalent of two or more people’s mass. Our bodies do not produce sufficient insulin to digest heaping helpings of sugar. The stress of constantly dealing with too much food intake can contribute to chronic inflammation, communications malfunctions in cells, and eventually can lead to cancer.

While the concept of “super-sizing” junk foods, in particular, is a recipe for disaster, it’s important to understand that it’s just as possible to consume too many calories from healthy foods as from unhealthy ones. I can easily consume the same amount of calories from yogurt as from ice cream, if I just keep shoving it in the pie-hole!

Friend of The Rag Blog Frances Morey, in her book, The Skinny on Weight Loss (Xlibris, 2002), details her highly successful struggle to lose weight and keep it off for many years, in practical and hilarious form. What I use most from among her tips is the knowledge that, in its natural resting state, my stomach is about the size of my own clenched fist, and the idea that if the stomach is repeatedly stretched and distended beyond this size, several times a day, day after day for years, it loses its ability to bounce back to its natural size.

Recent evidence suggests that habitually engorged stomachs -- quite logically -- have more of the cells that signal hunger. The bigger the tummy, the more it demands.

But you don’t have to give in.

It’s important, if you want to avoid putting on that five pounds in December, or in January, to keep a few principles in mind:

Remember that food is not the reason for the season -- any season. We eat for energy to do the things we must do, the things we want to do, hopefully, the things we love. If what we love becomes the act of eating in itself, we’re shortchanging ourselves on the rest of life.

This isn’t to say that meals shouldn’t be savored! And we sure don’t want to get into the mind-set of self-denial, a damnably unhealthy emotional state in which one is divided against him/herself. That’s when you start “rewarding” yourself with “forbidden” foods. NOTHING IS FORBIDDEN. You are the boss of yourself.

But this is where the old adage, “All things in moderation” really applies. A small piece of pie is as delicious as a giant piece.

Before you go out to a party or holiday dinner, take a few moments to think about the people who will be there, what you want to discuss and do with them, and what they mean in your life. Good dinner conversation can be an effective aid to moderate intake.

Then make a fist and take a good long look at it. How much are you willing to stretch your stomach tomorrow for one more tamale today?

Now, not to claim I’m not packing some extra baggage, because I for sure am, but I’m trying hard to hold the line where the scale needle hovers. I usually have a small, healthy, low-fat snack before going to an event where food will be present, so I’m less tempted to camp out next to the buffet table.

It’s also wise to remember that, whether it’s a holiday or not, foods eaten less than four hours before bedtime are much more likely to be stored as fat than expended in activity. This is true even for items made with white chocolate and macadamia nuts.

Again thanks to Morey’s book, I’m also more conscious now of portion size. At Thanksgiving, for example, I was able to put two bites of almost everything available on my plate, and really, that was plenty. Smaller servings, eaten without haste and with conscious appreciation, let your stomach tell you when it’s getting full, so you can stop before you have to pop the button on your trousers.

These days, if possible, I like to provide myself and other party-goers with diabetic-safe sweets that don’t give a harmful “rush” of sugar in the blood, but are still rich and satisfying. Recent Food and Drug Administration approval of the South American herb stevia for use as a sweetener rather than a “nutritional supplement” is making party foods possible that, whatever their other ingredients, will at least make the dessert table accessible, and guilt-free, to diabetics, pre-diabetics, or simply careful eaters.

Alcohol intake may also rise during the holidays, and beer and mixed drinks typically contain many calories. Their use should be subject to the same considerations as food: don’t go to the party primarily to get sloshed; don’t drink alcoholic beverages to quench thirst (that’s what water is for!); do drink slowly and in moderation.

One way to get something more out of a holiday cocktail is to ask for an after dinner digestive, such as anything made with angostura. So-called “bitter principles” stimulate bile production. Bile is essential in digesting fats. High fat consumption is an underlying cause of high cholesterol and related cardiovascular issues. The sooner it’s digested and excreted, the less chance it has of sticking to your honky-tonk bedonk!

Speaking of honky-tonks, if you know you have or are about to overindulge in caloric intake, you also need a conscious plan to burn off that extra energy. Yes, this can be especially difficult during the busy holidays, and no, battling the shopping mobs on Black Friday doesn’t count.

Often, cold weather and early nightfall restrict outdoor activities as well. But the simple fact is that you have to move it to lose it. Whatever physical activity you do get in, turn it up a notch for the duration: walk a little faster, dance a little harder, drive to the hoop instead of going for the outside jumper. Take the dog twice around the park instead of once; make love more passionately. Sweat, and get your heart pumping like you mean it, several times a week.

If you’re the one throwing the party, clear some floor space and put on some dance tunes, then get out on the floor yourself and cut a rug! Your guests will surely follow, and all will be the merrier for a great cardio workout.

Need a negative motivator for movement? Diabetic neuropathy is a frequent outcome necessitating removal of gangrenous tissue or, often, entire digits or limbs. As long as you have legs and feet to walk with, take the stairs.

I can already hear some of you pissing and moaning about how your heart won’t let you “indulge” in strenuous activity -- like it’s something you’d otherwise want to do! And yes, you need to be healthy enough to exercise before you start getting carried away with activity! If you have any doubt about it, consult your health care provider.

But if you really aren’t healthy enough to exercise, then overeating is... there’s no nice way to say this... somewhat self-defeating. If your health is already impaired, what sugar-dipped or fried thing in the world is delicious enough to make you willing to hurt yourself more?

Well, maybe it’s the double-fudge brownie cheesecake with sour cream sauce. Maybe it’s the pork sandwich on fried bread. Maybe it’s the best thing you’ve ever tasted. Maybe it’s your last meal?

Go ahead, make yourself happy -- but can you maybe try to be happy eating just one? Or do you like knowing that your Higher Power is a stuffed crust meat-lover’s pizza with extra cheese? Tonight I hear homemade chocolate rugela and coconut macaroons, Hanukkah treats baked by a friend, calling me from the kitchen. I will not heed their call. I will have one (OK, two, they’re small!) tomorrow after lunch, and I swear I will walk the condo community perimeter twice in the afternoon.

Millions of words have been written about weight control. Americans spend millions of dollars a year on outrageously absurd products in hopes of dropping a few pounds at least temporarily. Yet we block out the simple, self-evident words that might actually help us: STEP AWAY FROM THE TABLE.

[Mariann Wizard, a Sixties radical activist and contributor to The Rag, Austin's underground newspaper from the 60s and 70s, is a poet, a professional science writer specializing in natural health therapies, and a regular contributor to The Rag Blog.]

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Mariann G. Wizard : Grinch Winning in 'War on Christmas'

Santa gets busted. This particular holiday pat-down took place in Akron, Ohio in 1978. But we're just saying... Image © Bettmann / CORBIS.
Carnivores, male hookers, and the Grinch
make advances in 'War on Christmas'

By Mariann G. Wizard / The Rag Blog / December 1, 2010

Thanksgiving came early this year, and a lot of non-traditional groups have had more reason than usual to be thankful. Among these, male sex workers are the big winners, but hey, babe, let’s take it slow!

Anti-family carnivorous loners got a boost from none other than advice columnist “Dear Abby,” who has for the last several years been impersonated by one Jeanne Phillips, daughter of the column’s kinder, gentler, founder. Asked by “Turkey Eater in Texas” whether one was under any obligation to respect the wishes of a brother and two nieces for vegan Thanksgiving fare, Phillips gave a resounding slap to family values, advising that the renegade relatives be told to “bring something they will enjoy or make other plans.”

Wonderfully grumpy, especially since including vegan dishes in our holiday fare might be easier than making them “traditionally”: simply leave the milk, butter, cheese, sheep-derived marshmallows, and lard out of the vegetable dishes when preparing them. Put butter and cheese on the table for people to use as they choose. Substitute vegetable oil for the swine fat.

Would it kill you to cut down a bit on the cholesterol during the holidays, Turkey Eater? You can have your turkey and ham on the table; the vegans don’t have to eat it, but omnivores shouldn’t have to clog their arteries, either. And, at the risk of revealing truly radical tendencies, couldn’t somebody make dessert with a non-sugar sweetener? Or will insulin be served with the coffee?


Kickoff of Grinchfest

Of course, Thanksgiving marked the official beginning of the annual “War on Christmas” season of national schizophrenia, when newscasters and columnists decry supposed threats to the pagan/Christian holiday. Grinches will grin to hear that this year network and cable television channels will present 160 holiday specials, not counting holiday episodes of almost every regular series, and ubiquitous holiday greetings from athletes and sportscasters during virtually every sports event from now through the New Year. (Think about all those advertising dollars, kids, and this phony “war” makes a lot more sense, like the once-secret U.S. attack on the “USS Maine”!)

How does this phethora of pablum gratify the anti-Santa contingent, you ask? Well, look at the odds: most of those 160 holiday specials, and most of the series holiday episodes, concern Christmas, not Hannukkah or Diwali or Yule. And in most -- really I don’t know of anywhere this isn’t the case -- Christmas is threatened, and must be saved by some unlikely hero or heroine: a freaky reindeer, a dog who thinks she’s a reindeer, folks who sing carols when their presents have been stolen.

Hey, it’s just a matter of time until one of these losers loses, and Christmas is defeated once and for all! So far, the closest to a real cartoon victory in the War on Christmas may be Futurama’s Robot Santa episodes, with a wise-cracking metal maniac delivering murder and mayhem to good and bad kids alike.

The huge variety of Christmas foes seen in the annual television glut is worth noting. From Central Park Rangers and low Christmas spirit in Will Farrell’s “Elf,” to miserly Scrooge in the Dickens classic, to Winter itself against misfit toys and talking snowmen; talk about a broad united front! And this year, the still-plummeting economy may at last deprive Santa’s media defenders of their most reliable weapon for saving Christmases Past: unrestrained consumer spending.


The holiday season and the sexually deviant

Now, as promised: the best news this holiday season is surely for the sexually deviant and/or adventuresome among us.

First, everyone has been salivating over the Transportation Safety Authority’s (TSA) official new gropings! I almost ran out and booked the first flight going anywhere! This fellow Tyson in California who got all upset by the prospect of someone touching his “junk” is clearly a terrible prude.

What will happen, you think, when a passenger moans in ecstasy while having her breasts diddled for contraband? Could one be aroused beyond the point of self-control by being felt up in the middle of a busy airport? In photos of the new pat-down procedure, TSA employees are seen kneeling or bending to probe groins and buttocks with rubber-gloved digits. Oh-baby-oh-baby!

Some irate travelers plugged for a national “opt-out” day to slow airport security lines and mess up everyone’s holiday travels, and a part of me wanted to go with that, but another part is like, “No, man, let’s have a big love-in on Concourse 3!”

(Mostly male) pilots have been excused from radiating full-body scanners and pat-downs, through the efforts of their union. (Mostly female) flight attendants have not, and are crying double standard. And they’re partly right, but may not win the point. Pilots, the argument goes, can intentionally crash a plane anytime they want, so are unlikely to carry explosives in their underpants.

The TSA even lets pilots pack heat in the cockpit, as a last defense against in-flight terrorists. Flight attendants aren’t usually in a position to crash a plane, and don’t have permission to carry guns in the air. I figure they’re going to get stuck in the scanner lines with the paying customers.

And male sex workers have the most to be thankful for, following Pope Benedict’s approval of their using condoms to prevent AIDS. The startling announcement was received with wild expressions of renewed religious fervor among Italy’s devout male prostitutes, for whom contraception is usually not an issue.

Here, too, a double standard may appear to apply, as female prostitutes did not receive similar dispensation from His Holiness. Clearly, however, their spiritual interest in preventing AIDS infection from a diseased client is pre-empted by their spiritual duty to bear his child, should God will that they receive that infection instead of, or in addition to, the modern plague.

Can the day be far ahead when the Vatican will allow pedophile priests to use condoms while molesting choir boys, as a “first step in assuming moral responsibility”? But for heterosexual couplings of any age or condition, fuggeddaboudit!


And in a final travel note

If you’re traveling this holiday season, The Rag Blog hopes you’ll remember that everyone else on the highway is a homicidal drunk who is sexting Grandma while speeding blindly up your tailpipe. Don’t trust anybody over or under 30! And if you really pig out, try to spend a few hours after dinner with people who can recognize a heart attack. You can probably help save Christmas without falling under the sleigh.

[Mariann Wizard, a Sixties radical activist and contributor to The Rag, Austin's underground newspaper from the 60s and 70s, is a poet, a professional science writer specializing in natural health therapies, and a regular contributor to The Rag Blog. And, we might add, a world class cut-up.]

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James Retherford : Sweeping Away the Snow

Art by Mark Fiore. See link to animation below.
Citizens of the earth:
Best wishes in bad times

By James Retherford / The Rag Blog / December 29, 2009

Pardon me if I use this greeting to sweep away the usual seasonal accumulation of snow... and more. This is the time of year when we typically offer each other best wishes and hopes for peace and prosperity in the new year, and I wish each and every one of you all of these things and more.

But this year I also must consider how hollow these thoughts ring when so many of our fellow Americans are jobless and sinking into poverty -- and, in too many cases, homelessness. As I think about this, I must, as a citizen of the Earth, also consider how the collapse of the American middle class is but a ripple compared to the economic tsunami unleashed by the worldwide Ponzi scheme hatched by the grifters on Wall Street.

Finally I think of young men and women, forced to choose between careers in legalized war (the military) and illegal wars (drug gangs) because of the wholesale export of American manufacturing jobs to cheap labor markets.

American soldiers are returning from endless deployments to the endless war physically broken and psychologically devastated -- haunted by the growing awareness that they have participated not in a noble cause to keep America safe from terrorists or a grand religious crusade against the anti-Christ but rather that they themselves were unwitting pawns in a grand larceny and are nothing more than mercenary terrorists hired by American corporatists to steal the national wealth of Islamic peoples halfway around the world.

This is the season to stop and take stock of where we have been and what we must do. For me -- and I strongly hope for you too -- this is time to seriously consider what we ALL must do together in 2010 to FIGHT BACK! ... to take our nation back from the criminals, the oily oligarchs, the fancy financiers, the war-mongers, the inside-traders, the political hacks, the brown shirts, and -- did I mention? -- the criminals.

'Tis the season for giving, so let's hand out some long prison sentences at hard labor to ALL of those who have been robbing us blind while pimping the Constitution.

Maybe after we give Guantanamo back to its rightful owners, the Cuban government would loan it back to us as a place to incarcerate the corporate crooks and their cronies.

Meanwhile please enjoy Mark Fiore's seasonal reminder and "Ho! Ho! Whoa!" (Christmas may have passed, but the season of consumption is still with us.)

Oh, and have a happy new year. Please.

CLICK HERE FOR MARK FIORE ANIMATION.

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Yes, Virginia : The Truth About Santa Claus

Does Santa exist? Coke thinks so.
The truth about Santa Claus

The hope of us all is not that children will finally learn that Santa Claus is not real but rather that adults will finally realize that he is very real.

By Carl R. Hultberg / The Rag Blog / December 23, 2009

Now they tell me.

But what, exactly, is the truth? Is it true that something we believe in doesn’t actually exist? What about the belief itself? Isn’t that a reality? What about religion? What about faith in the goodness of humanity? Are these just wishful thinking projections upon a hardcore downbeat materialist reality? If that is really true, then how did we get this far as humanity?

Cynicism may be a good defense in today’s competitive male dominant human environment, but if you can feel secure enough dropping your guard momentarily, consider for a minute with me, somewhat objectively, a few of the myths that have sustained us so far.

Like, Christmas, for example. Everyone knows that this day in December is the day that the baby Jesus was born miraculously in Bethlehem some 2,000 years ago. The Wise Men, one of whom is traditionally portrayed as a Black man, came from the East bearing gifts. Obviously the gifts had some special significance. Never mind that the historical Jesus, if (H)he existed at all, wasn’t born in December according to the New Testament.

You can add that to the fact that he also was never chosen to be the Messiah by the Jewish people (Bob Dylan and Jews for Jesus excepted), and that the whole scope of Christianity is an attempt to assume the identity of the historical Jews to usurp their place in “Heaven,” a concept totally alien to Judaism to begin with.

If you can get beyond all those factual problems, then the Christian faith may work for you. Most “God” fearing folk concede some or all of these inconsistencies but see local spirituality held in common and the teachings and good works of the Christian churches as adequate compensation. So is the fact that Christmas is in reality an ancient Pagan holiday an embarrassing anachronism or is it really the essence of the matter?

Like for example, why is it that in our materialist culture the only two days you are expected to give gifts are Christmas and on someone’s birthday? Isn’t it true that in many so called “primitive” cultures, gift giving is pretty much universal? You wouldn’t dare fall out of the gifting cycle in one of these communities for fear of social stigmatization. Who do these people think we all are? Santa Claus?

This gift giving thing can be just about as oppressive as our system of selfish self gain, but the social benefits in terms of personal and familial intertwining ties are immeasurable. Maybe this is why Christmas is both so important and so seemingly alien and hypocritical in our society. The tokenism of a single day of generosity stands out like an ancient monument. This is the day we are to behave like Christians for once, like the Wise Men, like Jesus (H)himself. Like Santa Claus for Christ’s sake.

So maybe like a day of fasting, of abstinence from eating flesh, or the vestiges of the Kosher Laws proscribing cruelty towards animals, Christmas is just that ancient monument. Like Stonehenge we ponder what its significance might have been. All the while we try to maintain our respective competitive advantages in the present day rat race, perhaps put aside for the day, perhaps not. But what if we were to ponder the true meaning of Christmas, ignoring for a moment the religious and commercial overtones, what are we left with?

The food, the family reunion, the delight of children, the sacred tree. The tradition of gift giving, though buried under layers of familial obligations, useless throwaway items, capitalistic “Yankee Swaps,” etc., is still there. Children and, potentially, even jaded often defrauded adults can see the glimmer of hope, for a day, maybe just for a second.

Still such a vision may be hard to shake. The hope of us all is not that children will finally learn that Santa Claus is not real but rather that adults will finally realize that he is very real. He is one of the Wise Men who once carried the knowledge forward to us. He has a gift to give and in that gift we learn to give ourselves.

Of course the man with the beard in the red suit exists. It is the rest of humanity whose future existence is questionable. The sooner we all start believing in Santa Claus the better.

[Carl R. Hultberg's grandfather, Rudi Blesh, was a noted jazz critic and music historian, and Carl was raised in that tradition. After spending many years as a music archivist and social activist in New York's Greenwich Village, he now lives in an old abandoned foundry in Danbury, New Hampshire, where he runs the Ragtime Society.]

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