In Case of Rapture....

I am just going to have to get off the dime here, folks.

After being told the other day that, as an atheist, I was 'precluded from seeing the light and the truth', I figure I really should put this to work.

There's millions in atheism, folks.  Millions.

Take these guys, who came up with Eternal Earth Bound Pets, Inc.

For a fee, they'll look after Fluffy, Poochie, Snuggles (or whatever inane name you've given your Chosen Varmint).

They've even got a guarantee - you see, because they're atheists, they'll Be Here when the Great Snatch happens and all those Good Christians wind up in Heaven.

In their own words, "...For $110.00 we will guarantee that should the Rapture occur within ten (10) years of receipt of payment, one pet per residence will be saved.  Each additional pet at your residence will be saved for an additional $15.00 fee.   A small price to pay for your peace of mind and the health and safety of your four legged friends.

Unfortunately at this time we are not equipped to accommodate all species and must  limit our services to dogs, cats, birds, rabbits, and small caged mammals."

Now, had I thought of this, I'd've put a more-comprehensive business-plan together, offering a smorgasbord of services including finding a few atheist veterinarians who'd offer to keep Little Snookie up on his-her shots. 

I'd also be a little more specific about the range-of-care.  After the Great Snatch, food, doggie-sweaters (like the one above) and basic shelter ain't gonna cut it.  There'll be locusts, sores (although if I'm correct in my translation, those are only going to affect people), bloody water, hailstones, heat waves - stuff that would kill Poochie in his tracks.   Me?   I'd see to it that Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie got bottled water and air-conditioning, at a minimum.

While All Dogs Go To Heaven (Disney told me so), there are bound to be a lot of animal-lovers out there who are genuinely worried about What Comes After the Great Snatch.  

I mean, they'll be worried sick about their Uncle Cletus, who scoffed at religion.   Here they'll be, at the Right Hand of the Man Himself, wearing a white robe with no reason to even take a bath again -- and Clete'll be down there in his trailer, drinking beer, scratching and farting.

It's enough to cause a newly-raptured saint some non-existent medical problems, with or without the worry that Poochie is running about, dodging rocks-from-the-sky and looking for water while all the two-legged creatures on the planet say, "Lookit!  The Jesus-Freaks are gone!   Hey!   Let's all engage in depraved activities of a Biblical sort!"


Unless, of course, Jesus decides to take the dog....

An Economy at Crush-Depth....

"All the way to the bottom, son, if we don't do something to stop her."

This was the response I received at age twelve when, in the 'tow' of my father during a tour of a submarine, I asked the question, "How far down will she go?"

(As submarine operational statistics are considered classified, this is the stock-response to that question.   It's also a piece of gallows-humor - because every submariner knows that a submerged submarine is, in essence, a sunken ship - it may be operating in a form of balance and harmony with its environment, but it's also underwater - and because humans can't breathe underwater, the time the ship can spend in that environment is limited -- which means that when the plug is pulled, sufficient resources have to be in place to bring it to the surface again - or the crew dies.)

It's that simple.

Likewise, economies are fragile things - a deep moral discussion of just-when bankers decided to become the New Age version of Dark Age bandits is well beyond the purview of this post, however.   Frankly, the ship has taken on too much water; it's going to sink, and it's up to me to tell you why, and why you should pay attention to the next few months.

Here's the good news:  There's going to be a recovery.

Here's the bad news:   It's not going to last.

While the trigger to all of this is likely serious inflation (as I've mentioned earlier, you'll first start to notice this when gasoline goes from $2.50 to $4.00/gal in the next eighteen months), you'll also see it in a rapid increase in credit card rates (Tip #1 for you - if you haven't already, get rid of your credit-cards.  Pay them off, cut them up, and send them back.  Now.)

The underlying causes are more insidious - inflation was the government's means of answering the question, "What do we do now?" after the credit-markets dried up.

A Brief History....

When Greenspan lowered interest rates to near-zero in the early part of this decade to ameliorate the recession, what he put in place was a chain-of-events which led to too much money, too soon, spun up from nothing and put in the most-convenient place - real-estate.  

This drove the price of real-estate to unsupportable levels.  People were talking about retiring on their real-estate portfolios, and in '06, the new head-of-the-Fed, Ben Bernacke, said that there wasn't a 'housing bubble'; things were fine.

I didn't share his enthusiasm then, and I see no reason to support his sunshine-and-puppies predictions now.

In late 2007, due to the large banks having taken on far too much debt, the credit markets dried up.   Banks simply could no longer capitalize loans - they were underwater by any standard - and there was no way to bring the 'ship' to the surface again.

With no credit, American business simply ground to a halt.  

Enter Obama....

Bush, having all but given the order to 'dive' by pressuring Greenspan to prevent a recession on his watch, did nothing while the crisis materialized.   The nation had taken on debt well beyond its ability to pay, and this debt had pushed the banking system underwater.   A crisis of international proportions loomed.

After election day in 2008, the new president announced his 'stimulus' packages.   In essence, he was going to crank up the press and monetize the debt of the Wall Street banks, favoring them over the regional and local banks which are responsible for the loans which create most of the jobs in America.  

Doing this was like fighting a fire with gasoline.

When done, Obama had 'monetized' (that's a roundabout way of saying 'printed') nearly five trillion dollars.   The total of the stimulus packages actually exceeded America's GDP.

I'll say this plainly:  There's no way our economy - or any economy - can support this.

What They've Done With It......

For their part, the Wall Street banks favored by Obama have sat on this money - you see, they know something we don't:   Serious inflation - perhaps hyperinflation - is right around the corner.  

Most small and intermediate banks are still in trouble.   The mortgage-mess is still there.   The prior decade saw the dismantling of the regulations put in place after the era of J.P. Morgan and the banking crises of the late 19th/early 20th centuries.   In fact, during Bush's watch, there have been an astonishing number of regulations abolished - banking leverage has been increased; money can flow between commercial and investment banks, and the prior controls on the SEC have all but disappeared.

Putting the fox in charge of the nation's financial henhouse wasn't enough - the Bush administration, having created the perfect petri-dish to breed this mess, turned the economy over to the next group - who administered the coup-de-grace in the form of printed money.

Where We Are Today.....

Banking:    The banking system is underwater.   (1) Banks simply aren't doing enough business to keep going; an annual growth rate of 2% isn't enough to keep them alive; (2) If you watch CNN and read any financial news at all, you're seeing that banks are failing at a rate unprecedented in the nation's history (annualized bank-failures have almost gone vertical); (3) The FDIC is bankrupt - holding only $41B in reserves as of March of this year, with four regional banks having failed this month; (4) Defaults are projected to increase through 2011, further impacting bank balance-sheets; (5) We are at or near historic lows in bank credit at 2% growth.

Real-Estate:    In March of this year, one in four American mortgages were underwater (more was owed on the home than it was worth).   With the economy still shedding jobs as an outgrowth of the credit crisis, fully 50% (one in two mortgages) will be underwater by the middle of 2010.

The Political Implications:

Big banks in America now have a power they didn't have before - they've been favored with more money than the nation can support via GDP.   In spite of the support they're getting from the Right, they're not opening those purse-strings and creating jobs.

That's because the large banks no longer believe in America.   They believe in more profits - and they've monetized their own debt, improved their own balance-sheets, and invested in other currencies to hedge their bets.

What Obama has created is a form of nascent National Socialism; a modern-day feudal system not unlike what was created in Germany in the late 1930's.

Summary:

The good news is that the leaks have stopped; there's pressure in the hull, metaphorically speaking - likely, the recession has hit bottom.

However, as with a submarine, once you've repaired the damage and you're not losing your air-supply, you still have to take stock of things and get the water out of the boat - or she'll still keep going down - all the way to the bottom. 

Ending the recession is well and good -but it's not what's needed here.   What's needed is a recovery of near-heroic proportions.   I'm doubting it'll happen - the forces at play here are going to push us back down into recession, and probably depression.

Over 40% of America's wealth has been erased - thus far.   If the government were to add up everyone not just on unemployment, but those for whom benefits have ended and those who have simply given up looking, the unemployment rate is nowhere near 10% - it's more like 20%.

The Obama Administration has seen fit to behave in banana-republic fashion, purchasing key industries, printing money and shoveling it into the economy via the large Wall Street banks, who now enjoy an oligarchy-of-sorts not seen since the 1870's.   

I'd hate to think that, having sufficiently turned things over to the large banks by default, we're going to see a repeat of the banking crises near the turn of the last century - but there's little in today's news or the stats (go click on the links) which tell me otherwise.

Remember that the pumps buy you time - but minutes only.   Everyone; get to a lifeboat.   Red lights lead to green lights; green lights lead to exits, and exits lead to an uncertain future - let's all hope it's better than the alternative.

Crazy in America - It's Been With Us For A Long, Long Time....

Most of us - at least, those of us who aren't infected with the desire to run out and gibber uncontrollably at the world - have a sort of 'governor' on our behavior.
 
We don't yell at people randomly on the street.
 
We conform to social norms about nose-picking.

We bathe before going to the grocery-store - most of the time, anyway.

We also don't get in people's faces and start spouting nonsense about the New World Order, the Illuminati, the Bilderbergers, ad nauseum - and we don't seek out senators at town-hall meetings and yell, "Someday, you're gonna stand before Gawd - and he's gonna give you what you deserve!"

Legal or not, we don't carry AR-15's to public gatherings where the President is going to speak.

(Yes; I've picked two events which Really Happened this week - so you could get an idea where I'm coming from).

However, just as Jesus said, "The poor you will always have," America has always been populated with a certain Crazy Element.

The media now has taken a different tack with the Crazies - instead of leaving them to gibber uncontrollably to each other, media pundits have found that it's better for ratings to take morons like these and actually give them a camera and a microphone.

This sets a dangerous precedent.

Rick Perlstein, a correspondent for the Washington Post, gives us a thumbnail-history of such events - and it turns out that while the latest turn of events is disturbing, this crowd has been with us for a long, long time:In America, Crazy Is a Preexisting Condition

Birthers, Town Hall Hecklers and the Return of Right-Wing Rage

Rick Perlstein
August; 2009 - The Washington Post

In Pennsylvania last week, a citizen, burly, crew-cut and trembling with rage, went nose to nose with his baffled senator: "One day God's going to stand before you, and he's going to judge you and the rest of your damned cronies up on the Hill. And then you will get your just deserts." He was accusing Arlen Specter of being too kind to President Obama's proposals to make it easier for people to get health insurance.


In Michigan, meanwhile, the indelible image was of the father who wheeled his handicapped adult son up to Rep. John Dingell and bellowed that "under the Obama health-care plan, which you support, this man would be given no care whatsoever." He pressed his case further on Fox News.

In New Hampshire, outside a building where Obama spoke, cameras trained on the pistol strapped to the leg of libertarian William Kostric. He then explained on CNN why the "tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time by the blood of tyrants and patriots."

It was interesting to hear a BBC reporter on the radio trying to make sense of it all. He quoted a spokesman for the conservative Americans for Tax Reform: "Either this is a genuine grass-roots response, or there's some secret evil conspirator living in a mountain somewhere orchestrating all this that I've never met." The spokesman was arguing, of course, that it was spontaneous, yet he also proudly owned up to how his group has helped the orchestration, through sample letters to the editor and "a little bit of an ability to put one-pagers together."

The BBC also quoted liberal Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin's explanation: "They want to get a little clip on YouTube of an effort to disrupt a town meeting and to send the congressman running for his car. This is an organized effort . . . you can trace it back to the health insurance industry."

So the birthers, the anti-tax tea-partiers, the town hall hecklers -- these are "either" the genuine grass roots or evil conspirators staging scenes for YouTube? The quiver on the lips of the man pushing the wheelchair, the crazed risk of carrying a pistol around a president -- too heartfelt to be an act. The lockstep strangeness of the mad lies on the protesters' signs -- too uniform to be spontaneous. They are both. If you don't understand that any moment of genuine political change always produces both, you can't understand America, where the crazy tree blooms in every moment of liberal ascendancy, and where elites exploit the crazy for their own narrow interests.

In the early 1950s, Republicans referred to the presidencies of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman as "20 years of treason" and accused the men who led the fight against fascism of deliberately surrendering the free world to communism. Mainline Protestants published a new translation of the Bible in the 1950s that properly rendered the Greek as connoting a more ambiguous theological status for the Virgin Mary; right-wingers attributed that to, yes, the hand of Soviet agents. And Vice President Richard Nixon claimed that the new Republicans arriving in the White House "found in the files a blueprint for socializing America."

When John F. Kennedy entered the White House, his proposals to anchor America's nuclear defense in intercontinental ballistic missiles -- instead of long-range bombers -- and form closer ties with Eastern Bloc outliers such as Yugoslavia were taken as evidence that the young president was secretly disarming the United States. Thousands of delegates from 90 cities packed a National Indignation Convention in Dallas, a 1961 version of today's tea parties; a keynote speaker turned to the master of ceremonies after his introduction and remarked as the audience roared: "Tom Anderson here has turned moderate! All he wants to do is impeach [Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl] Warren. I'm for hanging him!"

Before the "black helicopters" of the 1990s, there were right-wingers claiming access to secret documents from the 1920s proving that the entire concept of a "civil rights movement" had been hatched in the Soviet Union; when the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act was introduced, one frequently read in the South that it would "enslave" whites. And back before there were Bolsheviks to blame, paranoids didn't lack for subversives -- anti-Catholic conspiracy theorists even had their own powerful political party in the 1840s and '50s.

The instigation is always the familiar litany: expansion of the commonweal to empower new communities, accommodation to internationalism, the heightened influence of cosmopolitans and the persecution complex of conservatives who can't stand losing an argument. My personal favorite? The federal government expanded mental health services in the Kennedy era, and one bill provided for a new facility in Alaska. One of the most widely listened-to right-wing radio programs in the country, hosted by a former FBI agent, had millions of Americans believing it was being built to intern political dissidents, just like in the Soviet Union.

So, crazier then, or crazier now? Actually, the similarities across decades are uncanny. When Adlai Stevenson spoke at a 1963 United Nations Day observance in Dallas, the Indignation forces thronged the hall, sweating and furious, shrieking down the speaker for the television cameras. Then, when Stevenson was walked to his limousine, a grimacing and wild-eyed lady thwacked him with a picket sign. Stevenson was baffled. "What's the matter, madam?" he asked. "What can I do for you?" The woman responded with self-righteous fury: "Well, if you don't know I can't help you."

The various elements -- the liberal earnestly confused when rational dialogue won't hold sway; the anti-liberal rage at a world self-evidently out of joint; and, most of all, their mutual incomprehension -- sound as fresh as yesterday's news. (Internment camps for conservatives? That's the latest theory of tea party favorite Michael Savage.)

The orchestration of incivility happens, too, and it is evil. Liberal power of all sorts induces an organic and crazy-making panic in a considerable number of Americans, while people with no particular susceptibility to existential terror -- powerful elites -- find reason to stoke and exploit that fear. And even the most ideologically fair-minded national media will always be agents of cosmopolitanism: something provincials fear as an outside elite intent on forcing different values down their throats.


That provides an opening for vultures such as Richard Nixon, who, the Watergate investigation discovered, had his aides make sure that seed blossomed for his own purposes. "To the Editor . . . Who in the hell elected these people to stand up and read off their insults to the President of the United States?" read one proposed "grass-roots" letter manufactured by the White House. "When will you people realize that he was elected President and he is entitled to the respect of that office no matter what you people think of him?" went another.

Liberals are right to be vigilant about manufactured outrage, and particularly about how the mainstream media can too easily become that outrage's entry into the political debate. For the tactic represented by those fake Nixon letters was a long-term success. Conservatives have become adept at playing the media for suckers, getting inside the heads of editors and reporters, haunting them with the thought that maybe they are out-of-touch cosmopolitans and that their duty as tribunes of the people's voices means they should treat Obama's creation of "death panels" as just another justiciable political claim. If 1963 were 2009, the woman who assaulted Adlai Stevenson would be getting time on cable news to explain herself. That, not the paranoia itself, makes our present moment uniquely disturbing.

It used to be different. You never heard the late Walter Cronkite taking time on the evening news to "debunk" claims that a proposed mental health clinic in Alaska is actually a dumping ground for right-wing critics of the president's program, or giving the people who made those claims time to explain themselves on the air. The media didn't adjudicate the ever-present underbrush of American paranoia as a set of "conservative claims" to weigh, horse-race-style, against liberal claims. Back then, a more confident media unequivocally labeled the civic outrage represented by such discourse as "extremist" -- out of bounds.

The tree of crazy is an ever-present aspect of America's flora. Only now, it's being watered by misguided he-said-she-said reporting and taking over the forest. Latest word is that the enlightened and mild provision in the draft legislation to help elderly people who want living wills -- the one hysterics turned into the "death panel" canard -- is losing favor, according to the Wall Street Journal, because of "complaints over the provision."

Good thing our leaders weren't so cowardly in 1964, or we would never have passed a civil rights bill -- because of complaints over the provisions in it that would enslave whites.



(Rick Perlstein is a regular correspondent for the Washington Post.  His bio and other goodies may be found here).

Atheism - It's Good For America....

I don't have a lot of time to write today -- so I thought I'd answer a question which continues to hit my inbox - along with some hatemail.

I've been told - repeatedly - that it would be a good thing if "...the government rounded up all you atheists and shipped you to ________" (you can fill this in with one disagreeable country or another).

I've also been asked repeatedly, "Why is atheism a good thing?"

The following should give you pause, reflection, and more than a few items to ponder this afternoon....




Some stats, for your lunchtime-sandwich reading:

--   Atheists are over 10% of America's population.

--   Atheists are over-represented in every profession - we're the majority of scientists, teachers, doctors, nurses, professors, authors and intellectuals.

--   Atheists give, per-capita, more to charity than religious people (the head of the world's largest charity is an American atheist).

--   We dominate the performing arts.

On the other hand:

--   We are .25% of the nation's prisoners (most are devoutly religious)

--   We are collectively more intelligent than the American population.

--   We have lower STD, divorce, and teen-pregnancy rates than the population as a whole.

--   The abortion rate would actually increase - abortions are lower among atheists.

Lastly, America would, without atheists, take company with some pretty wonderful countries:   Somalia, Iran, and several other theocracies have little or no atheist population.

_____________________________________

The diversity which America enjoys thanks to the Constitution is one of the things which has made the nation truly great.   Part of that diversity is the productivity, creativity, and good citizenship which the atheist population brings.

We're your neighbors.

Your friends.

Your coworkers, employees, and managers.

We're 35,000,000 American citizens.   

American Fascism (or, "Are We There Yet"?)

"Fascism is a system of political authority and social order intended to reinforce the unity, energy, and purity of communities in which liberal democracy stands accused of producing division and decline; a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."

--  Robert Paxton; Historian

Folks, it really is that simple.
And, unfortunately, we're there.

Plenty of readers here and on my other blogsite have told me recently, "Will; your political material is getting pretty dreary.  Either you're crusading against 'moonbats', or you're predicting a pretty dire future."

Unfortunately, I've never been the guy to talk about rainbows in the middle of a lightning-storm.  While a rainbow might be the eventual outcome, my first order of business is to get everything under wraps, disconnect the telephone, and keep an eye on things in the event there's trouble in the form of 100,000 volts frying my house.

"Fascism", unfortunately, is one of those overused terms.  I've started this missive with a definition, because I believe it's important to understand what we're discussing.

That we understand what we're discussing is important - because we can now quantify the steps in getting there, thanks to Dr. Paxton's fine book, "The Anatomy of Fascism":

 #1 -- From Proto-Fascism to Tipping Point.    Fascism can only grow in the midst of a mature democracy which is both polarized and in crisis.  To grow, it has to have something to offer the growing disaffected members of society - in this, it invariably offers to restore national pride by rebuilding myths and traditions held dear by the disaffected.   The tipping-point - that point when fascism becomes something more than an irritation - occurs when enough people are disaffected with an underlying crisis to accept fascist ideology as a means of restoring what they feel is missing - 'traditional values'; 'law and order'; etc.

#2 -- From Tipping Point to Legitimacy.    Fascism is legitimized when a major political movement accepts fascism as one of its tenets.   In every historical case, support for fascist ideologies begins in rural, less-educated parts of a country, usually by intimidating immigrants, farm workers, and similar groups on behalf of a power base.   Legitimacy comes when these fascist groups, usually small in and of themselves but collectively powerful, are embraced by a political party incapable of governing themselves because of political weakness.   (If I sound like I've just described the Republicans and their sellout to everyone from the Minutemen to the Religious Right, you're correct.)

#3 -- From Legitimacy to Being There.    You know there's a problem;  the 'Teabag Movement' was all-but-organized by the likes of Dick Armey's FreedomWorks and Tim Phillips' Americans for Prosperity; the Birther movement; right-wing 'talk radio' calling openly for 'patriots' to 'take action' against the current administration; sitting Republican legislators openly applauding videos of the harassment of public officials - you've seen it all unfold, but as successive shocks tend to lose their value, the overall effect is lost - it's far too easy to examine each as a separate event, and negate their power.   What we are missing in this is the de-facto empowerment of these ad-hoc groups as a legitimate part of the right's power-base.   This is the clearest evidence we have that we are there, folks - right now.

#4 -- From Being There to the Fail-Safe Point.     At this point, it becomes nearly impossible to stop the tide.   Blatant efforts to silence anyone who disagrees with the right are a near-daily occurance; outright assassinations (Dr. Tiller; anyone?) and near-daily calls to 'action' not only dull the senses; they seem a part of daily life.  

Dr. Paxton offers three short questions which, if answered in the affirmative, give us a good idea of where we sit:

1. Are [neo- or protofascisms] becoming rooted as parties that represent major interests and feelings and wield major influence on the political scene?
2. Is the economic or constitutional system in a state of blockage apparently insoluble by existing authorities?
3. Is a rapid political mobilization threatening to escape the control of traditional elites, to the point where they would be tempted to look for tough helpers in order to stay in charge?

If you can answer 'yes' to these three, it's likely that there is no way out of this rodeo.   Personally, I see three 'yes' answers.

#5 -- The Future.   "Will, you can't be serious.  I mean, you yourself call them 'moonbats', and their verbal-output 'batshit'."    That's right.   And, in doing so, I've been, in my own way, making the problem easier to swallow - but I might have been making too-light of the process.

Let me make one thing abundantly, perfectly, unequivocally clear:   These people are as serious as a heart attack.

   They will stop at nothing to get what they want - which is to roll back any change in American society which does not reflect their worldview.  They've gone from a political version of the Jerry Springer show - a guilty-pleasure sometimes worth watching - to a full-blown, honest-to-Franco political movement.   Their antics are supported by the former 'rulers' of this country, and are a last-ditch effort to save their asses and turn things back to where they were.

Ironically, they're making the most noise about 'fascism' -- almost every day, in the mainstream media and the blogosphere alike, I see one self-proclaimed pundit or another screaming 'fascism!' at the top of his or her lungs - about a moment before the same person screams 'socialism!' - proving they don't know the true meaning of either.

I return to Paxton - who said that an 'authentic American fascism' would have to be both 'pious', and 'anti-Black'.  

I guess we need to call that four-for-four, question-wise -- because Paxton is right about the neofascist movement in America there, too.

Once they start winning elections - the midterms are next year -- it's quite possible to see something very, very different rise to power - it may have the name "Republican" - but it's going to be a polyglot of disaffected former and current military personnel, Christian fundamentalists, rural neoconservatives, and others who ascribe to the worldview of America As It Was - complete with a new president in three and a half years who'll give us new presidential 'directives' and executive orders, making things like the Military Commissions Act and the Patriot Act look positively liberal by comparison.

The further irony is that if we get to that point, there is virtually no way to avoid taking the whole sorry ride - complete with a lot of very unpleasant side-effects which will spare no one.

The Atheist's Cookbook ('Baby Stew')....

Many of my recent recipes prompted a couple of emails from online-friends, asking, "You're an atheist - you should have some really good recipes for 'baby'."

As it turns out, I do.

At many atheist gatherings, baby-stew is the main dish, as it has been for thousands of years.  This is my version, after having attended many of these closet-gatherings.

Nowadays, with the waning of all-things-religious, we atheists are firmly out of the closet, with no real need to hide what we do any longer.

So, bon appetit!

Baby Stew
(Feeds four to six)

Ingredients:

• 1ea. -- Baby (either gender); about 12-14lbs (raw weight; will be around 3 or 4lbs when dressed)
• 4-6ea -- Medium potatoes
• 1bag -- Baby carrots (you'll get a lot of comments about the double-entendre here!)
• 4ea. --  Celery stalks
• 4-6 cloves -- Garlic
• 1/2tbsp - Salt
• 1/2tbsp - Pepper
• 1cup -- White wine (I prefer Chardonnay; I find it complements Baby fairly well).
• 1ea. -- Medium sweet onion
• 1/4cup -- Enbalmasalmic vinegar
• 4 tbsps -- Bitter herbs
• 1/4cup -- Worcestershire sauce
• 1/2cup -- Extra-virgin olive oil
• 6cups -- Water

Directions:

(If at all possible, have your atheist butcher shop [they're usually located in upscale parts of town] draw and quarter your baby.   While they might have a live selection, some find this process rather distasteful -- I've found that a competent atheist butcher will draw, quarter, drain, and even save the blood for later ceremonies.   You'll have to pay extra to have them skinned, although some shops will do this for free, as the skin makes excellent lampshades, book covers, and party favors.

A word of warning before I continue - 'baby' is a fatty meat at best; you're better off working with a reputable atheist meat-shop which will provide you a leaner product if you ask for it.  The fat ones are easiest to catch, and this has contributed to a quality-control problem over the past couple of decades, as most of you probably already know.  

When done, you'll have about three to four pounds of useful meat, not counting heart and liver.   Since most of us left off eating the heart a couple of centuries ago, the shop will likely keep it and the liver along with the other organs.

I know; some of you are still fond of baby-pate; it has a far more delicate flavor than its goose-liver counterpart, but is considered declasse in most circles now - best leave the organ-meats with the butcher!)

1. Using one of two large cooking pots, start by cutting the baby-parts into 1" cubes. 
2. With a little of the oil, start browning the baby-parts slowly.  Add oil and baby as needed*.
3. In the second cooking pot, use the rest of your oil to brown the onion and the garlic together.
4. Deglaze both pots with 1/2 cup ea. of the white-wine.
5. While cooking the onion and garlic, quarter your potatoes (skin on makes for better flavor)
6. Add potatoes to the onion and the garlic.
7. Cut up your celery.
8. When potatoes are browned along with the onion and the garlic, add the remaining ingredients.
9. Stir well; bring to a slow, rolling boil.
10. Add cubed baby to the vegetable-pot.
11. Cover; cook for at least an hour on medium or until the liquid has reduced by at least 1/4.

*You might have to drain the pot at least once; as mentioned, baby is a fatty meat at best, and if you wind up with a fat one, this process may have to be repeated at least once.  Still, keep the oil handy - I've found that olive-oil tends to accentuate the flavor.

This will make a wonderful fall stew for your atheist get-togethers.  I'm fond of making this for our Saturnalia gathering; while my neighbors are celebrating Christmas, my friends and I are 'kickin' it old school' with this recipe, which is not too different than that which nourished my barbarian ancestors.

Enjoy!

(If you've read this far and you think I'm serious, go to Dictionary.Com and look up the word, "Irony").

Disclaimer:   Actually, no babies were harmed in the making of this recipe.   Atheists don't eat babies, drink blood, or make sacrifices.   In fact, we're your neighbors; your friends; your coworkers; your employees, and your bosses.   We're about 40% of the population.  If you're still offended, (1) take a good look in the mirror, and (2) get over yourself.

Yet More Proof We Are Surrounded By Morons....

You're probably tired of hearing this.
Still -- I fear for the future.  I really do.

The people in the video below are your neighbors and mine.  They come from all walks of life - some are pretty successful, as society counts success.

I was awakened to this some years ago, by the daughter of a friend of mine.   I'd told her that I'd just gotten back from Pompeii. 
 

She asked, "Where's that"?

My first thought was, "It's fucking Pompeii, you stupid teenaged twerp!   Pompeii!   It's -- the only one in the world!"

Then, it hit me like the proverbial ton of lead in the ZZ Top song.

There are people in the world who will remain forever children - because they weren't born to parents who encouraged them to read; who simply weren't sufficiently interested in the world around them to do any more than make excuses for what they don't fucking know, rather than summon what little curiosity they possess and go find out for themselves.

This, by the way is just about a half-step above learning that you take a dump in a toilet, rather than anywhere you happen to be at the time.

In case you still don't believe me:

• Over 80% of Americans have not read a book since high-school.*
• Over half of Americans can't find any given state on a map.
• Nearly all Americans interviewed could not find most foreign countries.
• Almost half of American teenagers have no idea what the Second World War was about, let alone who won, when it was fought, or any of the details.
• Nearly half of Americans believe the sun revolves around the earth.
• Nearly one-quarter of Americans do not know that the United States landed a man on the moon in 1969.
• Almost half believe you can drink antifreeze if you're stuck in the desert.
• And the biggie -- over half believe the earth is 6,000 years old.

*(All stats courtesy of National Geographic Magazine)

(Yes.  That last one is a direct slam against religion - because religion breeds ignorance, mental and physical slavery, and the worst kinds of atrocities.)

And yes, while we're at it, there are people who are better than others - because they've bettered themselves.

It's not impossible - although it takes work.

So, even if you don't want to do it yourself - please - teach your children to read.  Encourage them to do so.   And, if they come home with the radical idea that the earth revolves around the sun; that Australia doesn't border the U.S., and that the planet is older than 6,000 years - please don't take their books away....

You want more proof?    Take a gander: