Valero Energy of Texas has spent over half a million dollars to fund a ballot initiative in California, that seeks to repeal California's landmark clean energy law of 2006. In addition to this, the multi-millionaire CEO of Valero, Bill Klesse, has sent a taunting text message to a member of a pro-environmental group, Credo Action, that is leading a boycott of his gas stations.
Credo reported in an email that I received this morning:
We know Klesse got those messages because he's responded to at least one of them, defiantly taunting Californians and our support for clean energy. Here's what he wrote in an email to Courage Campaign member Tim in Sacramento:
From: Klesse, Bill
Date: Mon, Apr 5, 2010 3:32 PM
Subject: Seriously?
To: Tim in Sacramento
Are you afraid to let people vote?
Sent from my iPhone
In reality it's Klesse who is afraid of Californians voting with their wallets -- boycotting Valero as long this Texas oil companiy tries to tell Californians what to think about clean energy and green jobs.
From your atheist "prayer" exercises considering the frail mysteries of unknowing, life, the planet, and the universe, look at how you interact with the world and ask yourself how you want to be remembered, known. Honor those you love who have died, by keeping them alive in your actions, embodying the best of their essence and learning from their shortcomings and mistakes. Do good because it honors them, it honors the future, and it honors the every person with whom you come into contact.
Give credit where credit is due. Quit blaming the devil, sin, or evil, and admit that you are the one that is capable of hurting others. Quit putting off changing your ways for the better to the next life, because god will forgive you. There will be no divine "do over." Accept yourself, as you are, here and now. Acknowledge your gifts and limitations, and then go do what is good, because you only have one life to make a difference.
Thus ends our journey through the Lenten practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. If any of your other free thinkers, post-theists, agnostics, and atheists have other prescriptions for these "Lenten" practices, please add them to the comments below.
Then God said: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and the cattle, and over all the wild animals and all the creatures that crawl on the ground." God created man in his image; in the divine image he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them, saying: "Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that move on the earth." -Genesis 1:26-28
Even within mainline Catholic and Protestant scripture circles the book of Genesis is considered myth. The creation story is similar to other Middle Eastern creation myths as is the flood story. Who knew that the holy spirit practiced borderline plagiarism? Still, that doesn't stop proof-texting religious conservatives of all Christian denominations from abusing the above quote from Genesis.
This text is often used to condemn homosexuals. Those condemning claim that same sex couples can't be fruitful and multiply. (As if having your own biological children is the only way to assist the species.) They also claim that god created one man and one woman, male and female and that this is the only natural way for human beings to interact. "It's in Genesis! God's decree!" they argue. But so is the fantastic account of the Nephilim, giants, appearing in the land after "the sons of heaven," celestial beings/angels, came down from heaven and had a little "divine intervention" with the sexy, hot human females, if you know what I mean. (Genesis 6) I mean: WTF?
That said, the myths of the Pentateuch are ripe for misuse by the far right. One common myth is that because god gave human beings dominion over the earth, that we can do whatever we want to the planet. The earth is our garden, our playground, and our ash tray. There is no global warming, because whatever is happening to the earth is god's plan and our dominion.
They are wrong. When myth continues to trump the scientific evidence, we all pay the price. Perhaps, they will get that flood of cataclysmic proportions after all.
Jesus: “Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me. And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” (Mt 25:36-44)
Postscript: My friend at Everything Sounds Better in French lists a link for you to email your political representatives and demand that they make it illegal for health insurance companies to count rape and post-exposure prophylaxis treatment for possible exposure to HIV-AIDS as a preexisting condition.
It’s a Sunday in October and everywhere in the United States holy people are bailing out of church after communion so they can get home in time for football. Many will be praying for the Dallas Cowboys, the self-proclaimed “America’s Team.” I hope they lose. In fact, I hope that a random meteorite catches the Earth’s gravitational pull and slams deep into the heart of Texas destroying the state’s latest excess: the Cowboys’ new $1.3 billion stadium.
I hate the Dallas Cowboys! Everything about them disgusts me. Even when I was a kid, I recognized that there was something malignantly wrong with the Cowboys. They way they proselytized the rest of the country: “We’re your team. You love us. We share Thanksgiving with you! Our cheerleaders are what beautiful American women should be.”
The plastic, deified Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders personify the worst of the fan-whores that have sold out to the Gospel According to the Cowboys. Yes, you, the fans! Do you really think your Jesus cares whether Tony Romo throws that last second touchdown pass to squeak your way into the playoffs? Do you really think that your Virgin Mary approves of the not-so-subtle subliminal messages your top-heavy bulimic cheerleaders are giving to young girls and boys? Even when I was a kid, the low angle cuts before commercial breaks to catch more leg and the high angle zooms rushing past the pompoms right over that enhanced cleavage stirred my unconscious feminist tendencies and made me think, “If that was my mom, I’d step in front of the team bus.”
And it’s not just the cheerleaders and the fans, it the owner, Jerry Jones. The way he lords over the proletariat from his pope-like balcony! How come when Dallas plays the owner is shown repeatedly throughout the game, especially when it’s close, as if we’re supposed to care about the plight of some straight white billionaire who just corralled a city into spending 1.3 billion dollars on a stadium that was built right next door to an already built stadium that was only a few decades old?
At 26.9%, Texas has the highest percentage of uninsured residents in the nation. They don’t want to spend money on people’s healthcare, but they’ll spend it on a fucking 900,000 square foot stadium that they air conditioned on a day when it was over 80 degrees outside and then opened up the stadium before game time letting out all that cold air. What could be more “American” than that? Thank you Dallas Cowboys for sucking money from sick and dying children and for furthering the global warming cause by building a giant refrigerator that you leave open for five hours every home game. Didn’t your mama ever scold you for leaving open the fridge? Who raised you? Aren’t you thinking about your children? You’ve left them this fantastic new stadium? So what? So they can knock it down in ten years and build a new one in order to keep up with the 2.5 billion dollar stadium that Houston will build?
Everything’s big in Texas: the stadiums, the egos, the ignorance (BTW, thank you for W.), the hair. As they say in the Lone Star State: “The higher the hair, the closer to Jesus.” So, Cowboy fans and cheerleaders, tease your hair high and keep praying to your Jesus that the money you’ve spent on “America’s Team” will win you that prized Superbowl. And then make good on your threats and secede from the union. We’ll be better off without you, and as far as I’m concerned you can take your sinful stadium, your overrated quarterback, your feudal lord of an owner, and your beach-ball-implanted priestesses with you.
