Dave Easterly’s Bravo Sierra Blog

Ron Paul in 2008?

May 29, 2007 on 4:14 am | In General, Political Musings, Videos |
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I may have to put my money where my mouth is and against all odds vote for a Republican candidate in 2008. I said two years ago that we needed to elect men like Ron Paul and now we may have to chance to elect THE Ron Paul. Ron is the most Libertarian candidate in the field from either of the big-party camps. And goodness help me, I like and respect a Texan Republican. What ever shall we as a country do?

Brief Overview of Congressman Paul’s Record

* He has never voted to raise taxes.
* He has never voted for an unbalanced budget.
* He has never voted for a federal restriction on gun ownership.
* He has never voted to raise congressional pay.
* He has never taken a government-paid junket.
* He has never voted to increase the power of the executive branch.
* He voted against the Patriot Act.
* He voted against regulating the Internet.
* He voted against the Iraq war.
* He does not participate in the lucrative congressional pension program.
* He returns a portion of his annual congressional office budget to the U.S. treasury every year.
Congressman Paul introduces numerous pieces of substantive legislation each year, probably more than any single member of Congress.

Ron’s YouTube Channel – http://www.youtube.com/user/VoteRonPaul08

Freedom to Fascism – http://www.freedomtofascism.com/

http://questforfairtrialinconcordnh.blogspot.com/

Sick and tired of getting raped at the pumps?

May 23, 2007 on 4:47 pm | In General, Political Musings |
This post is utterly devoid of comments. :(

It’s about time we took a bite out of the oil companies’ DISGUSTING RECORD PROFITS while the average American is struggling to have the gas to get to work. There’s a bill in the House of Representatives that would make the current price gouging a crime. Visit http://pol.moveon.org/stoppricegouging/ to sign the petition to show the politicians we are serious about changing the way Big Oil does business. Call and write your Representatives and tell them they MUST vote “Yes” on H.R. 1252!! According to MoveOn.org and The Nation Journal’s Congress Daily, “Speaker Pelosi has said she’ll move the bill to a vote this week—if there’s the two-thirds majority required to fast track the bill through the process.”

THIS will make a whole lot more difference than some meaningless one-day gas-buying boycott.

Farewell to the hate filled and judgmental Jerry Falwell

May 15, 2007 on 9:32 pm | In General, Personal, Political Musings |
This post is utterly devoid of comments. :(

I don’t know where to begin… As I kid I watched Jerry Falwell on TV. I heard him talk about how, basically, anyone who disagreed with him was headed for a fiery Hell. Me, being an impressionable kid who had been raised to be superstitious and trust so-called “Christians,” was willing to buy what they were selling so I sided my views with what I heard coming from him and Billy Graham and Jim Bakker. It didn’t feel quite right because what I’d read about that Jesus guy indicated to me that he loved everybody – even the homosexuals and the godless Atheists and the unrepentant sinners. But if Jerry and Billy and Jim were saying that The Almighty hated sin and hated all these other things, I figured I just must have been wrong and they were right because they were learned men of their faith and their scriptures. But it still didn’t feel right to me. As I got older and I began to question things more and more I began to question the faith I had put in all the things I’d been told since childhood and eventually my faith couldn’t survive under the burden of the real world, factual evidence that pointed to if not the non-existence of a God, then at least his abandonment of and disinterest in “his creation.”
I’ve been an Atheist for a lot of years, but I hold absolutely no ill will towards those people who insist on telling me that I’m headed for Hell. But these “loving Christians” seem to easily forget the lessons of their supposed example, Jesus. Let me first clearly and without doubt clarify my position on this: Jesus is a factual historical figure who was a philosophical and political leader, but in no way do I believe in his divinity, spiritual powers, virgin birth, miracles, or any other superstition surrounding this man. But what he was if the writings about him hold any grain of truth at all is a good role model – a model of tolerance and peacefulness (minus the little outburst when the wrecked the moneychangers’ tables in the temple), of teaching good ideas like “love thy enemy” and “blessed are the peacemakers,” and accepting everyone for who they are rather than what they’ve done or been (prostitutes, fishermen and tax collectors were all equal in his eyes, for example). I see none of those traits in ANYONE in a prominent position on the right. The religious right spew hate and vitriol in the same league as Ann Coulter and are right up there with the Klan when it comes to tolerance of those different from themselves. They turn a blind eye to torture and abuse in the name of “security.” And I see a lot more of the religious right calling for us to attack more people than to forgive them. And Falwell epitomized the closed minded, unyielding, exclusionary and hypocritical type of “Christianity” that seems to have been in vogue for the last couple of decades. Ghandi had it right when he said he’d become a Christian as soon as he met one.
As I’ve stated clearly many times, I’ve been an Atheist for a lot of years but I believe that no one has the right to force their views about religion and morality on others – neither for nor against. I wholly believe that people who are religious SHOULD be allowed to pray in school, in public, or anywhere they please but that no one should ever be FORCED to participate in something contrary to their beliefs. But that means that EVERYONE gets the SAME rights – Muslims and Buddhists and Satanists, Wiccans, and so on and as much as it pains me even the cults like Scientologists, et. al.. The greatest problem I see with religion as a political force aside from the Constitutional requirement of separation of Church and State as understood from the First Amendment is that both of these forces are often self-blinding when it comes to reason, logic, or letting petty insignificances like “facts” or “the truth” get in the way of them sticking to their dogmatic guns.

In science it often happens that scientists say, “You know that’s a really
good argument; my position is mistaken,” and then they actually change
their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really
do it. It doesn’t happen as often as it should, because scientists are
human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot
recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
— Carl Sagan, 1987 CSICOP keynote address

Farewell, Jerry. If you were right about the afterlife (something I sincerely doubt), I am willing to bet that you’ll be keeping all the other dangerous religious extremists company in that fiery Hell you scared me with as a child.