EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE ACT MY ASS!

To: The Detroit Free Press
Re: “Change union – forming rules?” March 27th.


The new “Employee Free Choice Act” does away with employee secret ballot elections to choose whether to accept or deny unionization and replaces it with a card signing method. Employees will be approached by union organizers and will be asked if they support the union or not and they will have to answer loudly and in front of all the union supporting men. Does this sound a little intimidating? Reminds me of the days when union thugs made sure workers supported the union or else… Where is the free choice in this act?

BACK FROM SOME WARMTH & FRIVOLITY!

I took a week off to enjoy the heat, the sun, the water, the food and the drink at Vallarta Palace Resort in Puerta Vallarta, Mexico.

First time and only time, since we never go back to the same place twice, but highly recommended to escape from the bitter cold and gloom of Michigan in the winter, especially THIS winter.

I came back in shorts and a T-shirt to 34F weather but hey, I can take it, even with snow on the ground.

The Michigan weather is starting to show spring time tendencies so there is something to look forward to.

I noticed not much has changed in the world while I was gone; same ole’ crap – back to work!

SUPPORT FOR MY IRAQ PLAN!

Biden Braves the Political Risks of Moderation on War

Senator Biden is a candidate for President and he has been promoting a plan for Iraq that is very similar to the plan I have been screaming about for years.

It does not call for an immediate pull-out and that is good even though some say pull-out or nothing - wrong strategy.

Dividing the country into three (3) with a weak federal system to distribute oil revenues per capita is a workable plan. Our troops would have to remain to maintain peace and order which should be no problem once the Shia' and Sunnis are separated.

Our troops would also have to remain to guard against foreign interference so we may have to guard the borders for awhile but AT LEAST OUR TROOPS WILL NOT BE GETTING KILLED ON A DAILY BASIS and hundreds of Iraqis would not be blown up to smithereens on a daily basis. Iraqis may actually have a future - wow!

JESUS TOMB #3

Continuing my discussion of the “Jesus Tomb”, most of my religious friends, even the highly educated ones, remain committed to the accuracy of the Gospels as far as events described there being part of actual history.

They hold on to the belief that the authors were somehow eyewitnesses of the events they describe or at least wrote down the words dictated to them by someone (Apostle?) who was actually with Jesus when the events unfolded.

Going back to the chronology of the Gospels, Paul started writing his letters in 55 C.E. which is 25 years after the death of Jesus. Mark, the first Gospel was written around 70 C.E. or 40 years after the crucifixion. Mathew and Luke are dated around 85 C.E. or 55 years after Jesus’ death and John around 95 C.E. or 65 years after Jesus died.

If Jesus’ apostles were roughly his own age, they would have to be very old to write the Gospels or even dictate them and in the Roman age, life expectancy was not very high. Remember today’s life expectancy is 72, in Jesus’ time it probably hovered around 40.

I have found it helpful to change the dates discussed above to modern times. We can say Jesus was born in 1900 and died in 1930. The first written report about his life and his death appeared in 1970 and then others in 1985 and the final one in 1995. This dating trick allows you to experience the time differences in a more relevant fashion.

The other misconception still held by some of my friends is that the Gospels were actually written by the men the Gospels are named for: Mark, Mathew, Luke and John. Actually, all the Gospels were anonymous; they did not indicate the author’s name. In the Gospel of John, at the very end, the author indicates that the information for his Gospel was derived from a disciple whom Jesus loved - that disciple would have to have been near 100 years old.

When I bring out the fact that in Roman times 90% of the population could not read and that Jesus and his Apostles probably were illiterate, they tell me that the Jewish school system at that time was very good and taught all Jewish boys how to read and write. That simply is not the case since only the very wealthy could afford the teachers and the time to study. Plus the Gospels were written in Greek and not the Aramaic language of most Palestinians.

Greek was the language of choice in that era and Jesus and his Apostles probably knew Greek words just like we know some Spanish words to get us by.

So the Gospels are based on oral tradition as well as other sources available at that time. Mark is first and he used oral tradition as well as a Gospel called Q. Mathew and Luke used Mark as well as Q and John, well John was very different.

Oral tradition is the passing of information from person to person (by word of mouth) and in this case, for very many years and we know how accurate oral stories are when passed between a few people; how about hundreds?

I have always wondered if Mark’s Gospel existed why did Luke and Mathew think a need existed to write their own version – was Mark wrong?

I am afraid the Gospels cannot be trusted to be historically correct and there are many, many ways to challenge their historicity so I will go back to the time right after the crucifixion to see what can be known factually about that crucial time period.

See you next time…

THE JESUS TOMB, Part 2

The discovery of the “Jesus Tomb”, as predicted, has precipitated questions about the history of Christianity, questions that most Christian clerics or for that matter, Christian scholars cannot answer.

Even though I believe the people involved in promoting the “Jesus Tomb” story on TV, book and DVD are basically just shysters looking to make a buck; I do believe that they raise legitimate questions.

The speed at which various supposedly knowledgably people attacked the Jesus Tomb premise and the arguments they used points to a lack of knowledge of historic facts and an overdependence on Gospel literature that clearly is theological in nature and written to convince and not to relate any sense of actual history.

The problem is that history says nothing about Jesus, what he did and what happened to him. The man that changed the world as we know it had not one word written about him by anybody. That does not mean that we do not have any recorded contemporary data of the period, we do and we have a lot but nowhere is there a mention of Jesus yet most historians agree that he did exist.

In very general terms, our calendar / system of time, places the birth of Jesus at “0” and his death at 30 A.D. The first Christian literature appears as letters from St. Paul around 55 A.D. That is 25 years after Jesus’ death.

Paul did not know Jesus- never met him and judging by the content of his letters, knew nothing first hand about the life of Jesus and very little about what Jesus did and what he taught. Paul’s only contribution to the historicity of Jesus was to tell us that Jesus had several brothers and one of them was called James and that James was the leader of the Jerusalem Community of Jesus followers – that is it!

This community was not a Christian community as we know the word Christian. It was a community of observant Jews that were somehow related to Jesus; either by blood or by philosophical conviction.

What then happened after the crucifixion? What happened to Jesus’ family and his followers? Is it possible to know what happened between 30 C.E. and 60 C.E. – 60 C.E. being the death/murder of James the Just, brother of Jesus and leader of the Jesus Community in Jerusalem?

It is here that I usually hear a lot of opinions that are based somehow on the Gospels as they appear in the Christian Bible and it is here we must pause because we cannot carry on a realistic discussion if we don’t put the Gospels in historic perspective.

More to follow…

OUR SOLDIER'S LIVES HAVE BEEN WASTED!

I can’t seem to stay away from IRAQ for too long.

Barack Obama and now John McCain have had to apologize to the general public for saying that the Iraq war has “WASTED” American lives. McCain said that he should have said “SACRIFICED” and not wasted.

If we apply the facts as we know them into a logical train of thought, we can conclude that the invasion of Iraq and subsequent “war” was not justified. Iraq did not pose any imminent danger to the United States or its people. They did not harbor Al Qaeda terrorists or weapons of mass destruction. Basically we did not need to invade Iraq for any reason.

Bush, who now realizes he cannot justify the war, has been heard to repeat that he rid Iraq of a brutal dictator and therefore helped the Iraqi people.

Well that is an empty argument because Fidel Castro is a brutal dictator that has kept his people in poverty and desperation since the 1950s, is only a few miles from Florida and probably has an army of a few thousand troops and BUSH has not seen fit to help the Cubans – so stick that argument up your ass Mr. President.

We can state unequivocally based on facts that over 3,000 American lives have been absolutely WASTED and that is a painful thing to say for anyone. I also have been following the troops that have been terribly wounded to the point where it would have been better if they died in the field; those lives have been WASTED also.

An even harsher statement to make about our dead in Iraq is that THEY DIED FOR NOTHING! I know history may prove us wrong in future years but as far as we are concerned, at this time in our history, they have given their lives for no apparent reason.

Many supporters of the war in Iraq understand this and are calling for some type of victory so our troops would not have died in vain. But alas, there is no possibility of victory in Iraq so the country has to admit that OUR SOLDIERS HAVE DIED IN VAIN – shame on President Bush, shame on us.