And now a word from God.

Every day on my Google homepage I get a Bible Verse of the Day. No. I'm not a religious man but it often sparks ideas for satire. Today, I saw this:

Phil. 4:4 Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice.
Author/Writer: God and the Apostle Paul
Read the Chapter Philippians 4

It's nice that they gave God first credit but I'm surprised that with two authors, one who is omnipotent and omniscient, nobody caught the typo.

I wonder how Paul and God worked together? Did they trade chapters or verses back and forth or just stay up late brainstorming, go home write and then meet back? Who wrote more?

Open Letter to Senator George Voinovich

Dear Senator Voinovich,

I, like many, am very concerned about the true identity of own of this nation's most powerful elected officials.

I speak of course of John Boehner. Why won't he show his birth certificate? How do we know that the minority leader in the House is an American Citizen? Are we supposed to merely take his word, the word of a foreigner about this?

We need to take America back from these insidious interlopers. Please introduce legislation making it a requirement that all members of congress prove their American citizenship as a requirement to hold office.

Come to think of it, sir, have we seen your Birth Certificate? What's good for the goose is good for the gander, no?

Thank you,
Rev. Caleb Bullen

You should write your legislators too about this. Seriously, have you seen John Boehner? He doesn't look like he's even from this planet much less America.

The Opposite of a Call to Arms

In St. Paul?s first letter to the Corinthians he wrote, ?When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child. Now that I have become a man, I have put away childish things.?

Over the last 30 years politics in America have become increasingly childish, petulant and angry to the point where it seems like we often do not see or hear those we disagree with as people who have differing views but as an enemy to be crushed at all cost.

And yet even the most disparate of us have more that we agree on than we don?t. We all value education, safety, family, and American values as we define them.

When men like Eric Rudolph, James Adkisson and Scott Roeder commit their acts of violence they may help their cause in the short term insomuch as it makes abortion more expensive because of security costs and may scare some away from their legal rights however in the long run they hurt their cause by sullying the reputation of the entire pro-life movement and its supporters in the eyes of the majority of Americans.

In light of Dr. George Tiller?s murder there has been a lot of mention of how certain news channels and websites went out of their way to call Dr. Tiller a murderer or Nazi and during the Bush years there were many on the opposite side of the political spectrum who called the president and his supporters murderers and Nazis. In either case, no matter how heart felt the opinion, such expressions reflected more poorly on the speaker than their subject matter.

Can we as Americans agree to disagree where we do without name calling, without death threats, without incendiary speech or literal calls to arms? Can we as Americans, right and left, pro life and pro choice, religious and atheist, come together to discuss, debate and even disagree like mature responsible people?

And if we can, can we also come together in calling out those who can?t, whether we agree with their fundamental position or not? Can we as a society put away these childish things and speak, at long last, as adults?

Reverse Racism and why its not the same thing as Racism

In the media wake of Sotomayor?s nomination the term Reverse Racism has been thrown about like so much confetti at a Rip Taylor performance and some contrarians have argued that there is no such thing as Reverse Racism; that there is only racism no matter who perpetrates it.

This argument seems logical enough at first blush. If you pre judge somebody based on their skin color, gender, religion, or ethnic background, does it really matter what your skin color, gender, religion or ethnic background is? As it turns out the answer is yes.

Semantically, racism is racism and bigotry is bigotry and it doesn?t matter one whit if you?re a Hutu who hates Tsotsis, a Jew who hates Palestinians or Rush Limbaugh hating? well? everybody. Unfortunately, we do not live in a purely semantic world and in the real world the bigotry of those in power has more impact than the bigotry of the oppressed.

The racist statement piles on to the tide of existing racism in our society and taken in with said tide helps to make the non white, non male person less likely to feel they can truly excel. Less likely to try. Less likely to? really if I have to explain how racism in general is bad to you, you shouldn?t be reading this in the first place. Let?s move on.

The reverse racist statement though it may be just as bad a statement as the racist statement will only have the same effect when, ironically, there isn?t any more racism. Sotomayors statement isn?t going to make any white kids grow up and think they can?t be judges. Questioning the intelligence of a woman who graduated 2nd in her class at Yale while suggesting she might have only gotten there through affirmative action, taken in consort with the other racism in society, could make a young Latina think she can?t be a judge.

I know this is all very touchy feely and shades of grey for many people but basically it comes down to this. Once there are no pay gaps based on gender or race, when our government representatives approximately represent the demographics of the people, when the percentage of CEOS or Firepersons, or Nurses breaks down approximately by the demographics of the communities they?re in, then there will be no reverse racism because there will be no more societal lean toward non-reverse racism. You can?t have one without the other.


(so shut up, Cracker ass cracker!)

Finally Good News from Wall Street

The FDIC reported today that for the first quarter of 2009, the banks made a profit of 7.6 Billion dollars. Not too shabby, eh? And that?s profit not income which gets the cost of salaries, rents, and the little chains for the pens taken out of it but profit which shareholders get to take home and roll around naked in. 7.6 Billion dollars of the stuff. Sounds like a lot of money, doesn?t it? Madonna doesn?t have 7.6 Billion dollars and she used to live in a castle! But when you put it into context, all of the sudden it doesn?t seem like all that much money.

For one thing, in 2008 the banks made 19.3 Billion dollars. So if you have a bad attitude about these things you could look at the meager 7.6 Billion dollar profits as a loss of 11.7 dollars. Can you imagine losing 11.7 Billion dollars? I lost two dollars this week because I left some spare change on my desk at work over the long weekend and I?ve been kicking myself ever since. If I had to multiply that loss by five billion or so, I don?t know what I?d do. But even that is candy coating things.

The American Tax Payer was kind enough to loan/give the banks 700 Billion dollars between that 19.3 Billion respectable first quarter of 20008 and the measly 7.6 Billion dollars of 2009?s first quarter. So if you add that in, the banks really made no profit at all and had a net loss of 692.4 Billion dollars. Fortunately, we?re all agreeing to forget about that 700 Billion dollars for now. Because if the FDIC came out and said, ?Good news! The banks have only lost 692.4 Billion Dollars this quarter.? It might hurt consumer confidence.

Good thing nobody?s putting things into perspective on the business pages.

Open Letter to Congresswoman Marcia Fudge

Dear Rep. Fudge,

I am disheartened to hear of congresses blocking of the $80 Million to close Guantanamo Bay's Prison.

It appears that the Democratic Party is cowering in fear from the roar of a mouse named GOP.

Why should democrats, or America as a whole, have to buy into the Republican's cowardice. I'm sorry that they are so terribly afraid to have detainees in domestic prisons but these are not times for fearful leaders. If our prisons can hold serial killers, drug-addicts, rapists, and arsonists, they surely can handle a handful of accused terrorists as well.

I think that it would help the Democratic party to shun Right Wing timidity and instead embrace the bold and brave spirit that has made this country great.

On the whole, you're doing a great job as a rep. Thank you very much

Caleb Bullen

thoughts on the torture controversy

I'm making an official prediction here. Let's see how it really pans out.

Very little will be done about torture until closer to the 2010 elections. That's not a weasel word, I don't mean closer like tomorrow would be closer than today, I mean when races heat up, Holder will move on this.

We won't find out much new about the investigation till the 2012 elections are coming up, again I mean once the GOP have drafted their candidate.

There might be some flak fired at underlings but mostly they will try to roll the investigation up to the top.

President Bush will claim he didn't realize all what was going on and the people at large will believe him. He will walk.

Cheney will get thrown under the bus as the torture scapegoat but will have yet another of his many cardiac incidents and will die of natural causes before he's brought to trial much less convicted.

Nobody important will do time. Nobody will feel things were set right from the whole thing. The best we can really hope for is that it will provide political fodder to force the GOP to run as the party of torture or as Christian Democrats for a couple elections.

Feel free to come back and heckle me if my cynicism proves incorrect.