And that's the way it was in 1999: "Whistling Past Don Pardo"

Hey Folks -

It was in 1999. My mother was still alive, and she got a call from Aunt "Sis" to come to the hospital. Uncle Joe was not doing well.

- Uke Man

This is my Bible!! This is my gun!!

The despicable poster below shows exactly why
we need only good Christian fundamentalists in
the Army.

Young men should thump their Bibles!!
Not their guns!!

Morons for Jesus

Hey Folks -

Read it and weep.

What Robyn Blumner comments upon has been going on for some time now, and it bodes ill.

We good ol' god-fearin' 'mericans have no trouble being aghast over foreign religious fundamentalist nuts mixing church and state and God and guns. They are clearly evil-doers.

But ya just gotta support our Bible-thumpin, skin-head, fanatical, fundamentalist Christian troops (do you hate 'merica or sumpin??).

Maybe someday we'll have a Coup for Jesus and wake up with Rev. Hagee as President-for-Life with God, the commandments, and Creationism back in the schools and gays in concentration camps.

It's possible.

Praise Cheeses - Uke Man



Evangelical culture of U.S. Army is destructive
Monday, May 5, 2008 2:59 AM
By Robyn Blumner

Maybe the reason the misperception persists that there are no atheists in foxholes is that nonbelievers must either shut up about their views or be hounded out of the military.

Just ask Army Specialist Jeremy Hall, who is making a splash in the news because of the way his atheism was attacked by superiors and fellow soldiers while he was risking his life in service to his country.


Hall, 23, served two combat tours in Iraq, earning the Combat Action Badge. He's been stationed at Fort Riley, Kan., having been returned state-side early because the Army couldn't ensure his safety.

There is something deeply amiss when we send soldiers on a mission to engender peaceful coexistence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, yet our military doesn't seem able to offer religious tolerance to its own.


Hall recounts the events that led to his marginalization in a federal lawsuit he filed in Kansas in March. He is joined by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a group devoted to assisting members of the military who object to the pervasive and coercive Christian proselytizing in our armed forces.

Hall's atheism became an issue soon after it became known. On Thanksgiving 2006 while stationed outside Tikrit, Hall politely declined to join in a Christian prayer before the holiday meal. The result was a dressing down by a staff sergeant who told him that as an atheist he needed to sit somewhere else.


In another episode, after Hall's gun turret took a bullet that almost found an opening, the first thing a superior wanted to know was whether Hall believed in Jesus now, not whether he was OK.

Then, in July, while still in Iraq, Hall organized a meeting of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers. According to Hall, after things began, Maj. Freddy Welborn disrupted the meeting with threats, saying he might bring charges against Hall for conduct detrimental to good order and discipline, and that Hall was disgracing the Constitution. (I think the major has that backward.) Welborn has denied the allegations, but The New York Times reports that another soldier at the meeting said that Hall's account is accurate.


Hall claims that he was denied a promotion in part because he wouldn't be able to pray with his troops. He was returned from overseas because of physical threats from fellow soldiers and superiors. Things became so bad that he was assigned a bodyguard.

This is nothing new to Mikey Weinstein, founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation and a former Air Force judge advocate general who served in the Reagan administration. Weinstein says that he has collected nearly 8,000 complaints, mostly from Christian members of the military tired of being force-fed a narrow brand of evangelical fundamentalism.


Weinstein, who co-wrote the book With God on Our Side: One Man's War Against an Evangelical Coup in America's Military, has documented how the ranks of our military have been infiltrated by members of the Officers' Christian Fellowship and other similar organ-izations. On its Web site, the OCF makes no secret of its mission, which is to "raise up a godly military" by enlisting "ambassadors for Christ in uniform."

Weinstein says OCF recruitment is easy in a strict command-subordinate military where the implied message is, if you don't pray the right way, your career might stall.

Beyond the mincemeat being made of church-state separation and religious liberty, it seems particularly combustible for our armed forces to be combining "end-times" Christian theology with military might. That's no way to placate Muslim populations around the world.


But there's no will for change. The military's virulent religious intolerance could be eradicated tomorrow with swift sanctions against transgressors. Instead, it's winked at, and those caught proselytizing suffer no consequence. It appears that brave men like Hall who simply wish to follow the dictates of their own conscience will be needing bodyguards for a long time to come.

Robyn Blumner writes for Tribune Media Services.
blumner@sptimes.com

Rest - temporary & eternal

Hey Folks -

Here's a poem of mine about age and mortality.

- Uke Man

The Earth is the Bedlam of the Universe

The Mad House

Hey Folks –

There’s an old joke that suggests:

“The Earth is the insane asylum of the universe.”

I’m not sure it’s a joke.

If you get old enough and you’ve been paying attention, a lot of what once seemed a guarantor of sanity loses its credibility, becomes a joke, or disappears altogether.

Santa and the Tooth Fairy quit coming around – imaginary friends who go “poof” before you really get to know them!!

Too many religious leaders who seemed so strong and wise are shown to be weak and venal, tied up defending contradictory dogma for personal, political, or institutional reasons (if they are not just crackpots or shysters to begin with).

Business, the focus of all society’s love and expectation, turns out to be an ungrateful and greedy master, expecting blind fealty and gratitude from employees but feeling no lordly responsibility toward their serfs, the community, or nation; bereft of humanity except in the legal personhood granted by incorporation (see "Supremes" below).

The “City Fathers,” and the state legislature too soon reveal their utter mediocrity and craven subservience to the earlier-mentioned money interests. The governor and the courts shuffle not far behind, maintaining a system of men-not-laws, serving certain men at the cost of the people’s justice and livelihood.

And then the congress - who are just state legislators with more expensive haircuts and greater guile - are discovered fattening up the grossest financial pythons, serving up ever larger portions of the people’s interests. And all this with the blessing of the shameless Supremes dancing to the music of the ruling class.

And then there’s the President.

Apparently, 28% of Americans still think the slacker presently in the White House (see "Supremes" above) is looking out for them, but the rest of us (after almost eight years) know better. Unfortunately, most of us think – after more than 200 years – that most of the other presidents were looking after us. Which brings me to my point.

Every election is a psychological examination of the inmates, an evaluation of our mental strength and stability, a measure of our rationality, an indicator of our place in the order of creation. Unfortunately we consistently are shown to be weak, unstable, and emotional; filling a space somewhere between monkeys and cows.

Evidence? Well, as pointed out in the recent book What’s the Matter with Kansas?, we consistently vote against our own interests - at the request of those who run our Bedlam.


What's the Matter with Kansas? made a splash, but it’s nothing new. Mark Twain in his Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court addressed the same issue; the Yankee describes the behavior of Southern whites regarding the interests of wealthy slave owners and the betrayal of their own:

It reminded me of a time thirteen centuries away, when the "poor whites" of our South who were always despised and frequently insulted by the slave-lords around them, and who owed their base condition simply to the presence of slavery in their midst, were yet pusillanimously ready to side with the slave-lords in all political moves for the upholding and perpetuating of slavery, and did also finally shoulder their muskets and pour out their lives in an effort to prevent the destruction of that very institution which degraded them.

Presently, the contemporary equivalent of Civil War era Southern whites seem pusillanimously willing to be manipulated by fear, patriotism, racism, sexism, xenophobia, and obvious lies into voting for their continued degradation.

H. L. Mencken said that no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

That's why the owners of the asylum are rich.

- Uke Man

Stagecoach BBQ - historical building - Burns - April 29, 2008

Hey Folks -

I've had an association with the Stagecoach BBQ from its first days. Unfortunately, we've probably seen its last days, too.

I drove to South Bloomfield Tuesday after I heard it had burned. Below is a piece composed of video and stills from that day, mixed with stills from a happier time

- Uke Man

Michael Wagner - 2nd night of Ukulele Caravan - the Percussive Uker

Hey Folks - Michael and I had a show here in Columbus at Victorians' Midnight Cafe last October. Maybe you were there. - Uke Man

Is Everybody Happy ???

Bitter ?? Damned Straight !! With good reason!!

Hey Folks -

A while back I expressed my self on the "bitter" controversy.

Robyn Blumner hits it even harder!! You MUST check it out !!

- Uke Man


Obama right to use the word 'bitter'
Monday, April 21, 2008
By Robyn Blumner

Sen. Barack Obama might have been a little too blunt in his quip about how the economic insecurities gripping small-town America manifest themselves, but the word bitter perfectly sums up my feelings these days.

You bet I'm bitter.

I've watched my country get hijacked by a group of self-serving incompetents who have little conscience about sending young men and women to die in an unnecessary war, while putting the bill on a credit card for the next generation.

You bet I'm bitter.

I've seen some of the greatest moral handiwork of modern civilization -- the Geneva Conventions -- get treated as if they were the naive ramblings of out-of-touch do-gooders. I've watched the founding principles of our nation -- the inalienable right of due process and the checks and balances of co-equal branches of government -- treated as a copse to be mowed down on route to the unitary executive.

You bet I'm bitter.

I've stood by as the wealth of our nation has been concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite while the middle class struggles to tread water financially. I've seen our tax policies shift to benefit this small group, starving our national treasury of needed resources and making it far less possible to prepare for the future by investing in infrastructure, education and shoring up Social Security and Medicare.

You bet I'm bitter.

I've watched a macabre health-care system become even more dysfunctional, so that a single accident or illness can destroy the economic security of a family. I've seen Big Pharma use its lobbying muscle to keep Medicare from negotiating better drug prices. I've observed as health-insurance companies with their inflated middleman profits add immeasurably to the cost of care while trying to deny coverage and services to their customers. I've heard our leaders whine about "socialized medicine" anytime a comprehensive fix is suggested.

You bet I'm bitter.

I've seen industry insiders put in charge of regulatory agencies so that worker safety and environmental protection are eroded in the name of increased profits. I've watched as science is subverted to ideology, as facts on climate change are ignored or manipulated to fit a politically driven script. I've seen the Department of Justice transform into the legal arm of the Republican Party.

You bet I'm bitter.

I've watched the dismantling of the wall of separation between church and state, allowing billions of tax dollars to flow to religiously affiliated groups that peddle their own brand of faith as part of the government-funded service. I've seen Christian fundamentalism defeat funding for international family planning and constrain the distribution of condoms in places where AIDS has decimated the population.

You bet I'm bitter.

I've stood by as the national debt nearly doubled in the past seven years because of irresponsible tax cuts and spending on such folly as an endless preemptive war that might end up costing $3 trillion. I've observed the privatization of core government functions, such as the handling of security assignments in Iraq by the unaccountable Blackwater company. I've seen billions of dollars in Iraq reconstruction money wasted and lost to a system of endemic corruption.

You bet I'm bitter.

I've watched our nation get less secure thanks to the counterproductive policies of the neocons in charge. I've seen the populations of otherwise friendly nations turn against the United States, seeing us as the world's biggest bully and hypocrite rather than its greatest beacon of liberty, justice and opportunity. I've observed that our willingness to abuse prisoners has become a recruiting tool for our enemies, making us masters of our own demise.

When more than 80 percent of Americans think we're on the wrong track, I'm not the only one who is bitter. Obama chose the right word.

Robyn Blumner writes for Tribune Media Services.
blumner@sptimes.com

Carmen Borgia & Friend - 2nd Night of Ukulele Caravan

Hey Folks -

This time it's really love!!

- Uke Man