Republicans want Clinton

The current talk in the democratic race for presidential elections is what many term "the dream ticket", with Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton running together with either one of them on top. Now, I am a supporter of Barak Obama's message of change but I am not sure if the American public can stomach that much change all at once. Okay, assuming that they can (and please do not construe this to mean that the electorate is shallow, it's just that change comes slowly in America), the escalating attacks between the two candidates continue to draw a divide between them and an eventual combination of the two would seem, at least to me, more like a political compromise with an eye on the prize, than true dedicated and honest leadership.

That said, cross over to the Republican table and witness the feast of celebration. The squables over on the Democratic side are a gift that keeps on giving to their rivals. As things stand now, McCain can sit back and recuperate from his not so valiant victory and watch as his would be opponents deck it out. If anyone has cared to notice, he is not even saying much about either candidate at the moment. Obama and Clinton are destroying each other all by themselves. Feast on McCain. It might be a tough battle ahead.

But what if a curious person, say like me, were to ask MacCain who he would prefer to run against him? The answer is obvious. Clinton. Why, you ask? I'll tell you why. Because she is running on a ticket of experience. Unless she changes strategy very fast should she win the nomination (which she cannot do since it would compromise everything she stands for), Clinton would be bringing a RC toy to a monster truck convention. Her experience would be trumped underfoot by McCain's and he would do that gladly. Obama on the other hand is rallying for change. He might not be the most experienced person on the forefront, but people are tired of the "experienced" people and what they have - or should I say have not - done. Hope can make Obama triumph. Experience will kill it for all of us.

This is an appeal to Miss Clinton. Call it quits early and let us forge a campaign that can bring Americans long needed change.

Madd Shame

So emotional... So fake

So Brett Favre decides to retire after 17 seasons. No big deal, you think, right? Oh no, not to Mr. Favre. He gets all choked up because he is leaving the game. He will miss it all blah blah...

Put a sock in it Mr. Favre. First of all, no one forced you to retire. You are only trying to leave in a high note. No one can blame you for that, just don't make it sound like you are the first one to retire. Or maybe you were crying the disappearance of your multi-million dollar check. Now that is something to cry about.

Why am I griping, you ask. Because at that very moment when channels were feeding us the crap about a grown man crying over retirement, a woman was hosing her baby at a car wash, a father had just disappeared from home and somewhere a parent was waiting for a son or daughter who never came home. Oh yeah, there is a lot of bad happening out there worth crying about.

My suggestion: Take another hobby Mr. Favre, something that will not involve you bashing your head into anything harder than a pillow. You've already done enough damage to your body by taking all those sacks. Even better, why don't you dedicate more time to charity. That way, next time you cry over a child dying of Lukemia, we can all sympathize.

Have an emotional day.

Madd Shame.

Deconstructing the Jesus Phenomena

A few years ago I had what most religious pundits would call an awakening. Sorry for them it did not go in their favor. Instead, I found myself faced with the question "How could I have believed in Jesus so blindly?" Don't get me wrong. The existence of Jesus is a fact firmly recorded in the annals of history. What history cannot support is that he, or a likeness of his arose from death or a situation similar to death and ascended "up" into heaven.

Now, here is where I have a problem. Those of you that have ever attended a science class know quite well the small phenomenon of the spherical shape of the Earth. It so happens that if you are standing at the north pole poining up, you are in effect pointing away from south pole and to anyone on that end of the Earth, you would therefore be pointing down and vise versa. If you are still with me so far, you have to ask yourself, which "up" did Jesus ascend to. The one of south pole or the one of the its counterpart, the north pole.

I see those who subscribe to religious beliefs forming defensive thoughts of omnipresence and that heaven could be all around us. The fact that the bible alludes to heaven as a specific location much similar to Earth and the fact that it was conceived as so by the limitations of human imagination is a topic too wide for today's introductory discourse and surely topics for another day. What I would like to remind you is that before Pythagoras broached the subject of the shape of the Earth, before Plato introduced it to his students and before Aristotle sought to prove it, everyone thought the Earth was a disk and one side, the upper side, was good and represented heaven. The lower, bad side, represented hell. How come the "God" inspired bible did not correct these ambiguities that we now know for sure to be true? Did God not know that his world was a sphere, not a disk? Which begs the question: Where is this heaven and where did Jesus go?

The best way to explain Jesus would be to start with a disection of who Jesus was, which I will do in my next post.

Madd Shame

Jesus, Son of A Carpenter

In Nazareth around 8 B.C., a boy was born to a carpenter and his betrothed wife, who was supposedly a virgin at conception and according Catholic teachings, remained a virgin all her life, even after the birth of Jesus, despite the bible's express evidence that Mary indeed gave birth to other children. If you read your bible, those will be the same guys Jesus said were not his brothers when his mother brought them to see him. According to Jesus, all of mankind were his brothers. If that sounds profound to you, I suggest you do a quick doubletake. It spells delusions to me.

A little research shows that the first cannonical Gospel written was that of Mark around AD 65-70. Refer to my first sentence and do the quick math. That was roughly 60 years after the birth of Jesus. Jesus would have been dead about 30 years by then and the disciples were struggling to fight paganism which cited fantastic occurencies to support their theories, including the virgin birth of their pagan gods. How could Christianity compete if they said Jesus was born of a mere mortal carpenter?

Moreover, the gospels were written for those of non-Jewish descent, that is Gentiles who had no knowledge of Isaiah's original Hebrew writings and therefore had no knowledge of the distortions that followed erroneous translation from Hebrew to Greek. There is a saying that "One is never appreciated at home." Jesus came to understand this first hand when he was totally rejected in Nazareth after he returned from his mysterious 18 year sojourn. Why was he rejected? Let's try a small social experiment.

Remember the 1997 movie Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion? If you don't, here's the world's shortest synopsis: the two friends conspire to lie at their reunion that they invented Sticky Notes. Now, take a trip home and tell your friends and neighbors that you invented the camera technology in cell phones. If they do not hang you at the town square, they might commit you for your own safety. Repeat the same exercise elsewhere... say at a bar in Connecticut if you come from Buffallo. Those suckers there will have no reason to doubt you. If anything, they will crowd closer in hopes of more booze. But the main reason to believe you is that they don't know you are the son of a struggling carpenter. They haven't heard you fantasizing about ruling the world some day. They don't know that they are in for the con that would last for centuries.

Why did Jesus then, take it upon himself to perpetuate the myth that he was? You'll be surprised to know that it was not merely for selfish reasons. He had a good mission that he executed quite badly, albeit with a touch of genius.

I'll get into that next...

Madd Shame