Thoughts of a Freethinker

The rich mega-church preachers are mostly rather boring people. They preach prosperity or hell-from-your-sins, pass the collection plate and that's about it. One, though, stands out as so outrageous he entertains just by existing. That is Benny Hinn. Benny is of Middle East heritage and was born in Israel. He speaks with a slight accent. You can find clips on You Tube of Benny healing huge numbers of people just by waving his hand. People came in wheelchairs and walk out. According to some who wrote about it, there was a bus load of "sick" people who were hired to go from event to event as stage props.     Benny made millions and lived big. Then complications began. He divorced his wife. Then the fake healings and his flashy lifestyle were made public. Eventually, he remarried his wife but divorced again recently. Apparently, the showmanship of his healing events has lost its appeal. But, not to worry. I saw on Benny's website he has big healing events coming up this ...

Hearing and watching the "Sec. of War" makes one wonder if he is a actual official or someone performing parody. The constant God and war talk is from way back when. It turns out Hegseth belongs to a denomination that is all in for the same things. In that branch of Christianity there is no separation of church and state. There is no state except the church. The denomination, Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches is more an association of churches than what we think of as a denomination. It's founder, Doug Wilson, preaches at a church in Idaho where the central office is located. It preaches we are in a great war with Jesus fighting at our side. Women should not be allowed to vote and are to submit to men sexually. Needless to say women are not equals.  Hegseth's public pronouncements about bombing Iran reek with holy religious overtones. It's as if victory over Iran is a victory for Jesus. It's too bad we cannot hear a billion eye rolls around the world ...

When the President's cabinet meets each member present takes a turn at lauding the President. There are a very few Republicans in Congress who criticize him. Readers know most prominent Republicans speak no ill of him. The news day after day is about his mistake after mistake.  Following the news like our readers here do, I noticed something curious. After the bombing of Iran and the chest beating about how successful it was, Trump said Iran would call an end of its attacks in other countries and would turn over its uranium to the U. S. The political theater of such a development requires Trump or someone he assigns the task to to meet with Iranian officials, draw up such an agreement and come home to announce and brag about it.  Suppose you were one of Trumps cabinet members and knew Iran would not agree to this nor could be forced to agree. In other words, you knew it was not in any way possible. There had to be two men Trump would logically turn to to meet with Iran and pul...

In the past few months I've read three recently published books about China. Perhaps some readers have been to China. I have not. We have friends, a couple from China who were our students, that offered to host us on a trip there. That would have been wonderful but the time when we could do that has passed.  All of the three books were written by Chinese people. The first one explained how a person from the U.S. might understand the economic system. He wrote that China is like the U.S, would be if we took the presidents of the largest companies in the country and assigned them the highest posts in government. If we did that, without our kind of elections, he said, we would be China. Bill Gates would have the budget of the Federal Government to build the U.S. tech industry. The trucking exec for government truck policy, the road contractor, car manufacturer, housing, etc. Each industry chases its own growth without a broader view. This is why China has hundreds of skyscrapers that a...

Christian sites keep reporting on the rise in abortions. Those of us who comment on these sites point out that all the money going to anti-abortion groups and to politicians like Trump who say they working to end abortions is wasted. While Christian sites have staff that do investigative reporting, I've never seen an article that talks about the total amount donated and that it has accomplished nothing. I would think liberal politicians in liberal states might score political points by bashing these unproductive anti-abortion groups. Perhaps some of this will play out in the upcoming midterm elections. As Trump falls into deeper holes of mistakes, it is a good time to remember how much chest beating there was from anti-abortion about his election. "He would not be in office were it not for us" was repeated often. Now, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, an anti-abortion group, grapples in his weekly column for something good to say about Trump. All of us who foll...

Many pundits say Wisconsin will vote for Democrats in the midterm and next Presidential election. Wisconsin has a variety of industry but its rural areas have lots of dairy . Half the labor is done by immigrants. Almost 3/4th of the milk is produced by this immigrant-dominated labor pool.   I have no idea how many micro economies in the U.S. depend on immigrants to stay afloat. Just scanning the news one can see there are lots of them. To some degree, I suppose, businesses do not publicize this problem because they don't want to be raided and arrested.   It doesn't seem like immigrants, legal or illegal, are a huge problem. Most of the jobs they take on are not desirable to U.S. born people. School districts have to deal with large numbers of children without English language skills. They have been doing this for a long time. People living "underground" need medical services and with no insurance this is a problem. There has to be a solution to this.  All of thi...