mikesmy.name

Hello and welcome to my Greece trip blog! I try to go on a European trip once every year and this year I chose Greece! This time, I am traveling with my mother on a Go-Ahead tour. Won’t you tag along and see where my adventures take me?

Bush came out today and said that congress should lift the ban on offshore drilling. McCain gave a speech on the environment last night saying the same thing.. This is nothing more than a political ploy similar to the ridiculous gas tax holiday proposal. Let’s take a closer look:

• We don’t have a supply problem. Demand is high, but oil supply is still meeting demand. Have you seen any long lines at the pump lately? I didn’t think so.
• We DO have a speculation problem. Oil is so expensive because middle men are buying up oil futures and causing the price to skyrocket.
• It will take AT LEAST 5 years, maybe more to develop Anwar and/or offshore rigs to the point that they start pumping oil into the market, and that’s if the oil companies got right to work. It’s very likely that the oil companies that purchased these leases would sit on them until the market was much worse just for the sake of profit.
• Even if they could start pumping oil out of these areas today, we would only be supplementing a small percentage of the US oil consumption. The price of oil would still be determined by the global market and the speculators. But the oil companies would be making even MORE money because they don’t have to go through the middle east to get their oil before they sell it to us for the same price.

It pisses me off when Republicans tout these ideas as “solutions”. It anger’s me even more when I think about how many Americans will be duped by this suggestion. We’re in this mess with oil because we didn’t regulate the oil companies like we should have. We’re in this mess because we spent the last eight years pumping money into Iraq instead of into researching alternative energy.

We need to face the fact that there is no quick solution to the skyrocketing price of gas. The only way we’re going to get cheap gas is to make it irrelevant by offering hydrogen, electric, and biofuel alternatives. Drilling offshore and in Anwar is just another gift to the oil companies and that’s the last thing we need.

It’s big news. You can’t have missed it unless you’ve been living under a rock the past decade. Baseball players are using STEROIDS! Oh, the horror! Jose Canseco, Barry Bonds (alleged), Roger Clemens (alleged), Mark McGwire (alleged), etc, etc. They’re all doping up! Something must be done! This has got to stop!

I agree… sort of.

Okay okay, I don’t really care. It’s baseball… it’s a sport. Sure, using illegal performance enhancing drugs is uh… ILLEGAL and baseball is America’s pastime, but can’t they handle this matter internally? Aren’t private and police investigations enough?

Why the HELL does Congress have to get involved? Why are we having congressional hearings to investigate who’s doping in Baseball? Why are we wasting federal tax dollars on this? Doesn’t congress have better things to investigate? I sure think so. Let’s look at some of the unresolved ILLEGAL activities that our Congress has yet to prosecute fully:

• The Valerie Plame CIA leak: Sure Scooter Libby took the fall for this, but what about all of the other KNOWN players? Why is Karl Rove still a free man?
• Illegal Wiretapping: Bush authorized it, NSA executed it, and multiple telecom companies were complicit. It was ALL illegal. Has anyone been prosecuted? No.
• Waterboarding: It’s torture, any idiot can see that. So why haven’t the perpetrators been brought to justice?
• Suspension of Habeus Corpus: We are illegally detaining people all over the world under the dubious suspicion of terrorist activities and branding them as enemy combatants in order to revoke their right to due process. Habeus Corpus is one of the KEY rights built into the founding of this country. Why is our government so afraid of prosecuting these “criminals” using due process in an American court of law? Why the hell isn’t our congress doing anything about this?
• Lying us into a war in Iraq: We know quite well now that there was no connection between Al Quaida and Iraq. We also know that the Bush administration knew this when we went to war. The Downing Street Memo is a smoking gun: “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy”. Why aren’t we investigating this? Where are the impeachment hearings?
• Lying under oath: When Clinton does it, it’s a big multi-million dollar investigation brouhaha. He lied about cheating on his wife. Alberto Gonzales lied about the U.S. attorney firings. Has anyone brought him to justice? No. At least Chuck Schumer is trying. I applaud that.
• Abu Ghraib: The highest ranking officer convicted of a crime in relation to this scandal was a Sergent. Are we expected to believe that nobody of higher rank in the Army or our Government was aware of these abuses? Congress let everyone off the hook. I’m looking at you Mr. Rumsfeld.

This list goes on and on, but to me, this short list seems like MORE than enough to illustrate that Congress has more important things to focus it’s efforts and our tax dollars on than who’s doping in Baseball.

I mean, COME ON…(sigh)

I recently saw the following article on MSNBC.com:

Oklahoma lawmakers object to donated Qurans

Basically, the article says that some Oklahoma lawmakers have been returning donated Quarans because they object to the violence against innocents described in it. The books were donated by a diversity council that is trying to promote cultural and religious understanding.

Now I’m no fan of the Qaran, but I’m no fan of the Bible either. Using the argument that the Quran promotes violence against innocents is dodgy and hypocritical at best. These are the same lawmakers who legislate with a Bible in their hands and tried to put Intelligent Design courses in the public schools. Let’s review some of the Bible’s finer moments:

• What is the penalty for working on the Sabbath? Being stoned to death! (Exodus 35:2, 15:32-36)
• How should parents treat a stubborn and rebellious son? Stone him to death! (Deuteronomy 21:18-21, Exodus 21:17, Leviticus 20:9)
• What happens if you are not a virgin on your wedding night? You get stoned to death! (Deuteronomy 22:13-21)
• What does the Bible say about witches? Kill them (stoning method optional)! (Exodus 22:18, Leviticus 20:27)

I could go on and on. The Bible (particularly the Old Testament) is full of passages that advocate mass killings, child sacrifice, misogyny, polygamy, and other acts that most modern societies would condemn as immoral. Yet you don’t see any lawmakers ANYWHERE returning any donated Bibles.

This isn’t about condemning a book because it features acts of violence. It’s about condemning a book that represents a religion other than Christianity. It’s religious discrimination, pure and simple, and anyone who claims to be a public servant of the free American peoples should be ashamed of such behavior.

PS – Before you start posting arguments defending the Bible, consider the fact that the same arguments could just as easily be used to defend the Quran.

Winding down, winding down… Hello friends, and welcome to day 10 of my Paris trip blog. Only one more day to go before I have to say au revoir to the lovely city of Paris and head on home. Today was another leisurely day. I went to a fancy lunch at the Place de Vosges and then spent the afternoon at the Louvre. Yup, I HAD to go back. (Okay, click away.)

Welcome to the “Oh God, I’m an Atheist” section! I’d like to clarify a few assumptions before I get started, so please read this first before moving on to my other articles.

Welcome to the ninth day of my trip to Paris! I hope you have enjoyed tagging along with me on the journey so far. Today was another lazy day. I got up, looked outside, and saw that it was pouring rain. So I laid around the pad with a cup of coffee and worked on my blog. The rain was still coming down when the afternoon rolled around, so I decided to brave it and go check out the Musee D’Orsay. Later on in the evening, we went to a local Moroccan themed restaurant for some good eating. Anyway, prepare for more pictures of art, and, of course, more boobies too! (Okay, you can click the link now.)

Welcome to day 8! I don’t have too much for today as I slept half of it away (hey, I’m not a morning person). In the afternoon I walked around the corner to the Musée de Picasso. Later on in the evening we caught an exotic strip show at the Crazy Horse. Of course you want to read on! (So click the link, click NOW.)

Welcome to day 7! Today we went to the old Paris Opera House, the Arc de Triomphe, and L’Orangerie museum. We also did a little grocery shopping in the morning (good sample of French culture in action). Off we go! (That’s your cue to click the link.)

Today was a leisurely trip by train out to the French countryside to visit the charming town of Chartres. I don’t have a whole lot of pictures today, because we took it pretty easy (that, and I just wasn’t as snap-happy as usual). Anyway, enough with the introduction. I WILL say that this entry is free of pictures of naked people. I DO have a picture of a urinal though… So let’s get clicking!