Should the federal government help Oklahoma after this weeks tornadoes? Normally I would say absolutely yes. However, both of Oklahoma’s Senators, Jim Inhofe and Tom Coburn have repeatedly voted against funding FEMA and voted against relief for other areas of the country. The both voted no for Hurricane Sandy relief. So now comes Oklahoma with their hat in their hand wanting money from the government after they said no when the rest of the country needed help. Shame on you! Shame on you!

So – should we help them? Yes – we are America and we take care of each other in times of disaster. But if I were a senator I would tell Coburn and Inhofe that I’m not going to support disaster relief till the begged for forgiveness on the floor of the Senate. And I would make them pledge to never vote against disaster relief again. There just has to be a price to pay for that level of hypocrisy.

These so called not for profit tea Party groups deserved more scrutiny by the IRS, not because they are Republican, but because 100% of them are in fact in violation of the law. Tax exempt groups are supposed to be tax exempt because they are “charitable” or “social welfare organizations”. The organizations are supposed to be feeding the poor or the sick.

But that’s not what they are doing. These Tea Party groups are laundering money so that rich people can give campaign contributions to help candidates and deduct it from their taxes. So saying that they are targeting the Tea Party is like accusing law enforcement of targeting bank robbers. That’s what they are supposed to do.

America is no longer a democracy. America is now an oligarchy. An oligarchy is where a small group of rich people control the government. Here’s 3 strong indicators supporting my claim:

1) In 2008 there was so much fraud in the banking system that every major financial institution collapsed. They had transferred trillions of dollars out of our pockets leaving us with 18 trillion in national debt. And in spite of crashing the economy with fraud, no one is being prosecuted for these crimes. The rich don’t go to jail,

2) All of us in the lower 98 percent pay our taxes but the rich pay half the rate we do on the money they aren’t hiding in foreign bank accounts. Apple – for example -  has $137 billion stashed overseas. They live in California mansions while we pay interest on the debt.

3) When the sequester made air travel inconvenient for the rich to fly Congress acts instantly to releave their suffering while the old and the poor eat dog food in some alley.

And it’s not just a republican issue. Both parties are allowing it to happen. We need to tell Obama and Erik Holder to start prosecuting the rich the way they go after the poor.

Although the news media can attempt to alter what we remember about the Bush administration you can’t actually change the past. What happened happened and the results of what Bush did are still with us. The 16 trillion dollar debt is still here. The wealth transfer from the middle class to the rich are still here. All the people who dies in Iraq and Afghanistan are still dead. With the help of big media the memory might fade but the facts are still the same. One think that I think we can agree on. When it come to Bush – we shall forever be in his debt.

At the beginning of this year Democrat Majority Leader Harry Reed had the opportunity to end the filibuster and allow majority rule in the Senate. But that didn’t happen again in part because it wasn’t supported by senators Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein from California. Today gun background checks again didn’t get a vote because Democrats support the procedural blocks that Republicans use to black good legislation. At any time the Democrats could choose to stop the filibuster rule but they don’t do it. So they can’t blame the evil Republicans when they enable them through the filibuster. Both parties stand in the way of the will of the people for their own selfish purposes.

I have to say that I am very disappointed with the History Channel over their “The Bible” series. The definition of “history” is a record of what really happened. History is a reality based word and is in the domain of the reality based community.

The problem we realists have with “The Bible” series is that none of those events are real historical events. In short – it never happened. The Earth wasn’t created 6000 years ago. There was no ark and no flood. No mass killing of the first born Egyptions, no wandering the desert for 40 year, no parting of the Red Sea. People in the Bible like Noah, Moses, Jesus are not historical figures. They no more existed that Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock. These are all stories – fictional people. They aren’t like Lincon, Washington, Newton, Einstein, Ben Franklin, or even Hitler – people who are real and actually existed.

So by depicting stories like “The Bible” on a channel called “The History Channel” they are representing fiction and fact as if there is no difference. In doing so they are committing blasphemy against reality itself, basically stating that reality doesn’t matter. Well reality does matter because if we don’t learn to live in right relationship with reality the mighty hand of Darwin might strike us down like he did the Dinosaurs. . We need to understand the capital T Truth, what really happened in History. So I say to the History Channel, “May Darwin have mercy on your soul!”

On this Jewish holiday of Passover we are reminded of a story about God killing the first born sons of the Egyptians for failing to do what he wanted. But in real life some 65 million years ago Darwin smited the dinosaurs out of existence for failing to develop asteroid deflection technology. Last month an asteroid passed close to Earth and a large meteor exploded over Russia. What does this all mean? I think Darwin is tapping us on the shoulder asking “How’s that space program coming?” If we cut funding for NASA Darwin might reach out and strike us down the way he did the dinosaurs.

10 years ago the Bush administration started the Iraq war. It wasn’t intelligence failures that got us into that war, it was fraud, lies, and deception. We wasted 4000 American lives, tens of thousands of Iraqi lives, and 2 trillion dollars of debt, and Iraq is worse off today than they were when we went in. And because of the sequester we’re not providing services for the injured soldiers that gave their limbs for no valid reason. And to this day no one is being prosecuted for starting that war.

It is important that we remember it the way it really happened and stop lying to ourselves that there was some noble cause relating to Iraq. What will happen next time the government comes to us with a war? What do we say when they want to invade Syria or Iran? Do we pay for it on the backs of the old, the poor, the disabled veterans? Do we believe them when they say it’s to stop weapons of mass destruction? Denial and irresponsibility is not a good foreign policy.

Although Republicans make a lot of noise about the national debt the actually want more debt. More debt works in their favor. They want the debt to go up.

Republicans have been against Medicare and Social Security since it started and when Republicans ran up the debt in the Bush years it created an opportunity to use the debt as an excuse to “cut entitlements”. They also want to cut government regulation so they can pollute all they want, sell cigarettes, and let the banks rob us without the government protecting the citizens. “We have to cut spending!”, they cry. But they don’t care about spending. They just want to take our money and give it to rich people.

Our problem isn’t spending. Our problem is tax fairness. We need to tax rich people at the same rate as working people. We don’t get the tax breaks they do. The super rich are trying to enslave us in dept and we have to say no. We need to push the Republican boot off the throat of the poor.

Most people don’t realize it but the Pope is in a unique position to reduce global warming more than any other individual on the planet. How you ask? By embracing birth control.

The single biggest cause of man made global warming is overpopulation. There are just too many people on the planet and the number is growing. Even if we develop clean technologies to cut emissions per person in half, when the population doubles we are right back where we started. The evolutionary fossil record indicates that overpopulation where a species destroys its habitat is one of the most common causes of extinction. There is nothing that will prevent the extinction of humanity if we fail to do what it takes to survive.

If the new pope were to embrace birth control then 1 billion people on the planet would slow their reproductive rates and set a new example for reproductive responsibility. So there is an opportunity to do something responsible, something real. So I hope that the cardinals choose wisely and pick a pope for the 21st century rather than the 12th century.

The Iron Mountain Daily News Responds