ANS -- Five reasons Americans already love ObamaCare ­ plus one reason why they’re gonna love it even more, soon

Send this to all the anti-ObamaCare people you know.  It's from Fox News.  and it's about the good stuff in the Affordable Care Act. 
--Kim
Find it here:
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/09/30/five-reasons-americans-already-love-obamacare-plus-one-reason-why-theyre-gonna/    
 

Five reasons Americans already love ObamaCare ­ plus one reason why they're gonna love it even more, soon

By Sally Kohn
Published September 30, 2013
FoxNews.com

•  

There's a reason Republicans have been rushing to try and defund the Affordable Care Act before October 1, when major sections of the law take effect. 

Republicans know what polls show ­ that most Americans don't know what's in ObamaCare, but when told what the law actually includes, a strong majority support the law.

Once state health insurance exchanges take effect, and premiums for all Americans go down , Republicans know the law will only become more popular and harder to repeal. 

As Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said, "It's a lot harder to undo something than it is to stop it in the first place." 

Exactly. 

Because just like Republicans railed against Social Security and Medicaid and Medicare when they were first proposed, those programs are now highly effective and broadly popular parts of our social safety net ­ supported even by strong majorities of Republican voters .
Americans of all political stripes like choice and competition, which is precisely what the ObamaCare health insurance exchanges will create.

So, for those of you who have been too busy criticizing ObamaCare for partisan reasons to actually look at what's in the law ­ and see what Americans like about it ­ here is a handy-dandy review:

1.  ACA allows young Americans to stay on their parents' insurance plans

Because of ObamaCare, which allows kids to stay on their parents insurance plans until age 26, 3.4 million young Americans now have coverage. 

The percentage of uninsured young people (ages 19 to 25) fell accordingly, from 48% in 2010 to 21% in 2012.

According to polling , three-in-four Americans support this part of the Affordable Care Act including, yes, over two-thirds of Republicans. 

2.  ACA bans insurance companies from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions

Another aspect of ObamaCare that has already taken effect is the ban on insurance companies denying coverage to patients based on pre-existing conditions. 

That means an end to insurance company horror stories like four-month-old Alex Lange being denied health insurance because he was too chubby.

This is why the conservative allegation about death panels is so ironic; while the actual ACA law does not contain death panels or anything remotely like them, the fact is that prior to ObamaCare, insurance companies were effectively operating like death panels in denying life-saving coverage to anyone with a pre-existing condition and by applying life-time spending caps on coverage.

The ban on pre-existing condition limits, which will apply to every single American by 2014, is supported by 83% of Americans.

3.  ACA offers tax credits to small businesses to buy insurance

The Affordable Care Act expands tax credits to help small businesses provide health insurance to their workers.  Companies with fewer than 50 employees do not have to provide insurance, but even for these businesses, ObamaCare will make it easier and cheaper if they choose to do so. 

According to polling , 88% of Americans think these small business tax credits are great, including ­ wait for it ... yes, 83% of Republicans.  That's right, over eight-in-ten Republicans support the provision of ObamaCare that helps small businesses afford and expand their health insurance offerings to employees.

4.  ACA requires companies with more than 50 employees to provide health insurance

Over 96% of companies with more than 50 employees already provide health insurance to their employees.  And contrary to Republicans claiming otherwise, studies show the vast majority of those employers do not plan to drop or reduce that coverage because of ObamaCare. 

Also, there is no evidence that ObamaCare has led to companies slashing full-time workers.  In fact, since ObamaCare passed in March 2010, over 90% of the gain in employment has been full-time positions.

Still, we know that companies that can afford to provide health insurance to their workers and yet fail to do so off-set the costs of care onto the rest of us ­ whether the cost of emergency room treatment that gets passed on to other consumers, or Medicaid coverage that we pay for as taxpayers. 

In Florida alone , more than 50,000 workers at companies like McDonald's and Burger King are on the state's Medicaid rolls.  Especially with tax credits available to small businesses, there is no excuse for companies to pass the buck.  And 75% of Americans support this element of ObamaCare.

5.  ACA provides subsidies to help individuals afford coverage

Many of the 45 million Americans who lack health insurance simply don't have enough money to afford coverage.  ObamaCare will lower the cost of premiums but also provide subsidies to help low- and middle-income Americans purchase insurance.

Americans who earn $45,000 per year (about 400% of the federal poverty level) will qualify for some form of subsidy.  The amount of the subsidy will be based on income as well as the cost of health coverage in a particular state but, for instance, according to a subsidy calculator created by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a 27-year-old living in Houston, Texas, who earns just $15,000 a year could sign-up for a mid-level plan for about $300 per year with the help of subsidies.  Without subsidies, that plan would cost $2,400 per year. 

The few Americans who think subsidizing care is a bad idea should, again, note that we already subsidize health care to a far greater degree in the form of Medicaid and also when the uninsured rely on free emergency room care and pass those astronomical costs on to the rest of us.  But most Americans ­ 76% to be exact ­ support the individual subsidy.  That includes 61% of Republicans.

There's even more aspects of ObamaCare that the American people already support ­ including the employer mandate, the increased Medicare payroll tax on higher-income Americans and the expansion of Medicaid.  

And then, starting October 1, here's one more:

6.  State-based health insurance exchanges

Americans of all political stripes like choice and competition, which is precisely what the ObamaCare health insurance exchanges will create.  So it's no wonder that 80% of Americans ­ including 72% of Republicans ­ support the health insurance exchange program in ObamaCare.  And that's even before the exchanges have taken effect! 

Plus, a new report shows that health insurance premiums will be even lower under ObamaCare than originally projected. 

Personally, as someone who pays through the nose for individual insurance in New York State ­ a state where, historically, few individual insurance options have even been available ­ I can't wait to enroll in ObamaCare and see my premiums plummet, as they are expected to by at least 50%. 

Again, all this is why Republicans are in such a desperate rush to try and defund ObamaCare before October 1 ­ even if it means holding our economy hostage and even if most voters, including Republicans, oppose the repeated and wasteful defunding attempts. 

After all, the law is already popular when it's not fully in effect and most people haven't felt its benefits.  We all know what will happen when ObamaCare takes effect ­ and works!

Republicans who are throwing temper tantrums over sour grapes need to grow up. 

Congress passed the Affordable Care Act, President Obama signed it into law and the Supreme Court upheld its constitutionality. 

The cost of doing nothing on health care reform was too great and the cost of repeatedly refighting the political battles of the past is obscene.  But then again, it makes perfect sense why Republicans refuse to just give up and shut up ­ because the minute they do, there will be no more distractions from all the good things about ObamaCare. 

Sally Kohn is a Fox News contributor and writer.  You can find her online at http://sallykohn.com or on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sallykohn .
 

ANS -- Wall Street Predators Launch Secret War on American Retirements

Here is an inflammatory-sounding article on more shenanigans by the Banksters and Wall St.  Wall St. needs to be disbanded.  this might even convince you.  It's moderately short. 
Bad word warning.
Find it here:  http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/320-80/19647-wall-street-predators-launch-secret-war-on-american-retirements  
--Kim

Wall Street Predators Launch Secret War on American Retirements

By Lynn Stuart Parramore, AlterNet

30 September 13

 

Financiers are lying their way to another giant theft of public money.

ips are smacking on Wall Street. Today's tasty treat? The pensions of hard-working people across America. Financial hustlers have been working overtime to convince the population that we are in the midst of an "unfunded liability crisis" in which states and cities can no longer afford to pay pensions to public workers. Here's the truth: Wall Street predators have had their hands in the pension cookie jar for decades, and now they're poised to gobble up the retirements of teachers and firefighters in yet another orgy of greed.

Unknown to much of the public, Wall Street has been soaking state and municipal coffers with derivatives schemes and various frauds for years. As Alexander Arapoglou and Jerri-Lynn Scofield have explained, not only have Wall Street banks screwed public finances with fancy credit default swaps and other "innovative" financial products that blow up in the faces of cities and states, they have also been engaged in widespread frauds that squeeze pension yields. This happened in the LIBOR rate-rigging scandal, in which big banks were found to be manipulating interest rates, which has resulted in lower returns on pension fund investments and has caused shortfalls in pension plans. The lack of actions from authorities means this kind of hustling will surely continue.

Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi has just published an article outlining how this gigantic heist is going down. While Wall Street has been on its scam-a-licious rampage, no-good politicians have been taking taxpayer money meant for pensions and spending it on whatever they wanted, depleting funds. (This is actually securities fraud, but the nearly toothless SEC has barely lifted a finger to address it.) Even so, pensions were still in fairly decent shape when the crash of 2008 came and wrecked budgets across America. The Wall Street-driven financial crisis crushed state and local revenues, and the financiers decided this was the perfect moment to dive in for yet another helping of public money by seizing control of public pensions.

In Taibbi's colorful words: "This is the third act in an improbable triple-fucking of ordinary people that Wall Street is seeking to pull off as a shocker epilogue to the crisis era."

Wall Street has plenty of politicians in its pockets to grease the wheels. Taibbi hones in on the notorious example of Rhode Island treasurer Gina Raimondo, a former venture capitalist who made the war against pensions her raison d'etre and handed over a billion in pension funds to hedge funds that could charge the strapped state boatloads of hidden fees to manage them. Firms like Goldman Sachs and Bain Capital, along with predators like billionaire John Arnolds, formerly of Enron, are overwhelmed with joy and have filled Raimondo's coffers for a 2014 gubernatorial run. They know a good thing when they see it.

Wall Street's PR message? The country's financial woes were the fault of hard-working elementary school teachers and cops. It's an audacious, shockingly cynical lie, but with enough money thrown behind it, the lie has spread like a cancer through the media and the political world. Rapacious bankers have successfully pitted private sector workers who have been losing their pensions against public sector folks who were still hanging on to theirs-a tried and true divide-and-conquer tactic that means big money for criminal banksters.

The villains who have helped spread this lie include the folks at Pew Charitable Trusts, an organization known for its centrism and number-crunching. Starting in 2007, Pew started rolling out studies suggesting that pensions were unsustainable, and found an eager accomplice in the form of noxious billionaire John Arnold, a right-winger and former Enron commodities trader who, as Taibbi reports, was "helping himself to an $8 million bonus while the company's pension fund was vaporizing."

Arnold created a foundation named after himself to focus on "reforming" pensions, and got some big-name Republicans and Tea Partiers, like Dick Armey and Orrin Hatch, to get the game going. "Arnold and Pew struck up a relationship," writes Taibbi, "and both have since been proselytizing pension reform all over America, including California, Florida, Kansas, Arizona, Kentucky and Montana." Over and over, they cited an "unfunded liability crisis" conveniently overlooking the glaring fact that the financial crisis and various Wall Street investment schemes are the reason states and cities are having a hard time paying workers what they were owed. They pretend the problem is that worker pensions are too expensive-a big fat whopper that blames the victims of Wall Street's own shenanigans.

Meanwhile, hedge funds continue to take over state pension funds with guarantees that their fees and hustling will be kept hidden from the public, all the while delivering underperforming returns on shitty investments. (Now it becomes clear why Wall Street had a massive freak-out at the idea that Eliot Spitzer, who understands their tricks, was nearly put in charge of managing New York City's pensions in his recent run for comptroller.)

As Taibbi correctly concludes, the "unfunded liability" is largely a fiction. There are legitimate issues with pensions, "but the idea that these benefit packages are causing the fiscal crises in our states is almost entirely a fabrication crafted by the very people who actually caused the problem."

And let's just add a final twist to this tortuous story: Even if you're not a public sector worker, Wall Street is determined to get its hands on your retirement, too, and it has got politicians in Washington, including President Obama, talking about cuts to Social Security in the name of a phony debt ceiling crisis. It's the wet dream of Wall Street to weaken Social Security and take hold of American retirement money so that scam artists can charge outrageous fees and continue their rampage of thievery against people who work hard serving their communities and simply want to retire with some modicum of dignity.

Clearly, Obama should keep Social Security off the table in any budget negotiations. His proposal to change the annual cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) from the present Consumer Price Index (CPI) to a Chained Consumer Price Index is effectively a cut, and it would represent a betrayal of the American people that should not be tolerated. Americans are facing an oncoming retirement crisis the likes of which has not been seen in living memory, and the idea of further exacerbating it by cutting Social Security payments is both irresponsible and nonsensical. Social Security has very little to do with the federal deficit, as economists not beholden to Wall Street and Washington have explained repeatedly, and poll after poll shows that the American people overwhelmingly reject the idea of cutting it.

While we're on the subject of Washington, let's take a moment to ask what Congress is doing about Wall Street's raid on the security that millions of workers pay into. Here is a list of the people on the Senate banking committe, and here is a list of those on the House financial services committee. Every single one of them should be held accountable for this horrific betrayal of people whose only crime is to work for a living.

ANS -- What Hemp Legalization Means for California

This is a short article saying that we (California) have just passed a law making it legal to grow industrial hemp as soon as the Federal government okays it.  Sort of. 
find it here:  http://www.care2.com/causes/what-hemp-legalization-means-for-california.html    
--Kim

What Hemp Legalization Means for California

• by Beth Buczynski
• September 30, 2013
• 4:00 pm

 


Although not quite as groundbreaking as recreational marijuana legalization, a big victory has been won for hemp advocates in California. Governor Jerry Brown officially signed SB 566, the California Industrial Hemp Farming Act into law, making it legal for farmers to cultivate industrial hemp as a commercial crop without fear of fines or arrest.

Just to be clear, hemp is completely different from the recreational drug that was recently legalized in Colorado and Washington. Though a close cousin of marijuana, hemp has none of the psychoactive qualities: ingest it any way you can, and you still won't get "high."

Sadly, hemp was lumped in with marijuana when the government decided to launch the long and unproductive war on drugs, something the founding fathers would have found most shocking.

A few historical facts about hemp via Hemp History Week:

• Industrial hemp has been grown in the U.S. since the first European settlers arrived in early 1600 s.
• The Declaration of Independence was drafted on hemp paper.
• George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams all grew hemp and actively advocated for commercial hemp production.
• More than 150,000 acres of hemp were cultivated as a part of the USDA's "Hemp for Victory" program during WWII.

With social opinions about marijuana changing daily (medical marijuana is now legal in 20 states and the District of Columbia), hemp is also experiencing a long overdue renaissance.

"The California Industrial Hemp Farming Act will establish a framework for farming the oil seed and fiber varieties of the plant, which are used in a myriad of everyday consumer products, including food, body care, clothing, paper, auto parts, composites, building materials, and bio-fuels. Enforcement and oversight of hemp production would be conducted in concert with the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) and county agricultural commissioners, as is done with other crops," reports the Sacramento Bee.

Of course, cultivating hemp for commercial purposes is still illegal in the eyes of the federal government. But with the government's recent announcement that it wouldn't challenge state medical or recreational marijuana legalization, hemp supporters are confident that they can proceed without interruption.

"With the signing of this bill, California is poised to grow industrial hemp when the federal government gives states the green light," said Senator Leno, D-San Francisco, the author of SB 566, in a statement. "In the past year, the conversation to legalize the cultivation of hemp has gained momentum at the federal level, and it is only a matter of time before a farmer's right to grow hemp is restored. Hemp, which is already found in hundreds of consumer products manufactured in our state, is a perfect crop for California. It has great potential to revitalize family farms, create new jobs and stimulate the economy."

The hemp bill drew support from the California State Sheriffs' Association, individual county sheriffs, family and organic farmers, environmental organizations, labor unions and businesses statewide.

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/what-hemp-legalization-means-for-california.html#ixzz2gWoR2VEB

ANS -- Is religion broken?

This is a really provocative idea.  I don't know how useful it is though.  Given that it's from UU World, the comments are well-thought out and non-combative. 
It's about the purpose of religion and how it can fulfill that purpose without insisting you believe something you aren't comfortable with. 
Find it here:  http://www.uuworld.org/ideas/articles/290289.shtml?utm_source=n   
--Kim

Is religion broken?

There's a movement that attracts millions of people and encourages them to become their best selves­but it's not a church.
By Doug Muder
9.23.13


It provides awe-inducing experiences for its participants and creates environments in which they can "become the best version of [themselves], the most likely to help at a moment's notice, the most likely to stick with a problem as long as it takes, to get back up after failure and try again." It encourages them to reorient "toward intrinsic reward" rather than the "global hedonic treadmill" of "money, fame, and beauty," and provides them opportunities to meet and form relationships with others who share these values in order to cooperate on projects of enormous scale.

If only my church could do all that!

And if we're talking salvation-by-character, again I feel outshone. Those who pursue this path diligently­and tens of millions do, clocking more than 20 hours of participation a week­become "super-empowered hopeful individuals" by developing these four "superpowers":

• Urgent optimism, "the desire to act immediately to tackle an obstacle, combined with the belief that we have a reasonable hope of success."
• Tight social fabric. The group activities promote trust "that [other participants] will spend their time with us, they will play by the same rules, value the same goals" with the result that participants "build up bonds and trust and cooperation."
• Blissful productivity. "We know . . . that we're actually happier working hard than we are relaxing or hanging out. We know that we are optimized as human beings to do hard and meaningful work."
• Epic meaning. "[We] love to be attached to awe-inspiring missions, to planetary-scale stories."

If you're not envious yet, consider who this movement is attracting: predominantly (but not exclusively) the young, precisely that "none-of-the-above" generation that every religion seems to have a problem with. The teens and 20-somethings you're not seeing in your pews may well be participating in this movement on Sunday mornings, and many of the children in your religious education programs­maybe even your own children­are wishing they could be.

---

If you can't imagine what I might be talking about, and you're wondering how you missed such a widespread faith that generates so much participation, you're looking in the wrong direction. I'm quoting game designer Jane McGonigal, author of Reality Is Broken, whose TED talks have been viewed by millions. She's not promoting a church, she's describing the culture of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) like World of Warcraft, Halo, or Guild Wars, and detailing what lessons physical institutions can learn from their popularity.

Computer-generated virtual worlds are so attractive, McGonigal explains, because reality is broken.

The truth is this: in today's society, computer and video games are fulfilling genuine human needs that the real world is currently unable to satisfy. Games are providing rewards that reality is not. They are teaching and inspiring and engaging us in ways that reality is not. They are bringing us together in ways that reality is not.

Fulfilling human needs, teaching, inspiring, engaging, bringing people together­that's what churches are supposed to do, isn't it?

Religion is conspicuously absent from Reality is Broken­it has no index entry, and I don't remember seeing the word at all. But as religion and popular culture scholar Rachel Wagner put it:

[McGonigal] refers only occasionally to religion, but the main interest here is how she suggests, without saying so directly, that gaming can work like religion today, and may already be doing so.

In the chapter "Becoming Part of Something Bigger Than Ourselves," McGonigal discusses meaning ("the belief that our actions matter beyond our own individual lives"), awe ("what we feel when we recognize that we're in the presence of something bigger than ourselves"; such an emotion "doesn't just feel good, it inspiresus to do good" and is "a call to collective action"), service ("every effort by one player must ultimately benefit all the other players"), and reverence ("the expression of profound awe, respect and love, or veneration").

In her 2012 TED talk, she tells a personal story of healing from the lingering effects of a concussion. The constant headaches and fogginess left her unable to do any of the things that had made her life enjoyable, until she bottomed out with the thought: "I am either going to kill myself, or I'm going to turn this into a game." The result was SuperBetter, a simple game to create a context for recovery and to engage herself and her loved ones in a narrative of progress.

Within a few days of starting to play, that fog of depression and anxiety went away. It just vanished. It felt like a miracle. Now, it wasn't a miracle cure for the headaches, for the cognitive symptoms; that lasted more than a year and it was the hardest year of my life by far. But even when I still had the symptoms, even while I was still in pain, I stopped suffering.

Again, the language of religion: miracle, and the sermon-worthy distinction between pain and suffering.

Reality is Broken may not have been written as an overt critique of contemporary religion, but the dots are easy to connect. If large numbers of young people (and many of their elders) are going to virtual worlds to find meaning, awe, service, reverence, and miracles, and if the corresponding online communities are where they feel most empowered to become the best versions of themselves, then religion is broken.

Scattered through McGonigal's book are fourteen "fixes"­lessons that real institutions and organizations can learn from games. They are easy to find and not hard to translate into a church context. Fix #1 builds on a definition of game as "the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles" and says, "Compared to games, reality is too easy." This corresponds to the frequently-cited observation that churches can gain loyalty by demanding more of their members rather than less.

---

Rather than go through McGonigal's fixes one-by-one, I'll take a step back and ask a larger question. On the surface it may seem absurd that online gaming could rival religion, because the two don't even belong to the same category. But if online gaming actually does compete with religion, have we misconceived what religion is and does?

Traditional religion presents itself as a description of an objective reality invisible to the five senses. Particularly in fundamentalism, the actuality of the teachings is paramount: God is real, Heaven is real, and something objectively real is happening in rituals and sacraments. Believing in this unseen reality is the core of the faith. Conversely, disbelieving that unseen reality is the core message of fundamentalism's most vociferous enemies, militant atheists like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. They agree that the debate is about reality, and that religion is done for if its reality claims can be defeated.

By contrast, everyone knows that World of Warcraft is made up. The avatars you meet there may represent real people, and the adventures you have with those people are intersubjective­they have reality within the game and to the people who were "there," in other words­but no such place as Azeroth exists, and whatever treasures you gain or wounds you suffer there don't follow you back to your real life.

You could imagine meeting a Warcraft fundamentalist, who believes the game provides a window into an alternate dimension as real as this one. Perhaps that belief would make his experience of the game more intense, but it seems like unnecessary baggage; for the vast majority, the game works fine without it. The fundamentalist's opposite, a Dawkins-style unbeliever, would convince no one to leave the game, because the reality of Azeroth has never been the point. Azeroth functions quite well as a virtual world, a setting for groups of people to test their abilities and have memorable experiences together. Its reality is irrelevant.

If games can rival religions, then you have to wonder to what extent heaven and hell have been functioning as virtual worlds all along. Perhaps they are best understood as the setting for Christianity's backstory, the cosmic war for souls that gives the quests of present-day believers their epic scope. If that's so, then arguments against their reality are not going to convince anyone to stop playing the game.

Those who find such comparisons offensive may imagine that I am being flippant or unserious. So let me apply these ideas to the most serious subject I can think of: death.

In the past four years, I have seen both of my parents decline and die, and my wife has survived a life-threatening illness. Both my parents believed in heaven. After Mom died, Dad took comfort in the belief that they would be together again someday, and was correspondingly disturbed at the idea that, given my lack of belief, I might not join them.

During this time I have been highly motivated to re-examine my beliefs about death and an afterlife. The longer I considered the topic (some of which has played out in previous essays for UU World) the more my attention flowed away from questions of the reality of an afterlife (where there is so little evidence there's not much to think about) and towards the human needs that visions of the afterlife serve. What was terrifying about death, I realized, wasn't the possibility that I might cease to exist. Instead, the terror came from the possibility that the looming presence of death might suck all the meaning out of the stories that animate my life here and now.

In other words, what I missed from the belief system my parents had taught me as a child wasn't the reality of heaven, but the virtuality of it. I needed to replace the role it had played in the stories I tell about my life. (I've discussed that re-narration process in detail elsewhere.)

So in addition to all the specific fixes our religious institutions can borrow from game designers, competition from computer games can help us reframe what religion does: we are not competing with science (or other religions) to describe reality. We are trying to give our members the best possible platforms on which to construct the stories of their lives. We "win" when members envision their lives in ways that are fulfilling, meaningful, and engaging. Everyone wins when our members are challenged and inspired to become their best selves.

Maybe that's what religion has been about (or should have been about) all along.

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• Share   getz • 5 days ago
  It hinges on people actually believing what they're told. While the literal beliefs of individuals may differ, the only people who don't literally believe any religious claims are the ones who literally aren't religious.
  You can promote a philosophy of helping people envision fulfilling, meaningful and engaging lives, but if it disregards the connection to reality, the only association it has to religion is equivocal. If the literal beliefs are kept with the notion that they help provide meaningful and engaging lives, then it's just rationalizing deception. The only people who would give credit to any religious phenomena would be those who were deceived.
  
  http://us.battle.net/wow/en/fo...
  
  http://terranova.blogs.com/ter...
  
  Anyways, religion doesn't leave gaming. People just come up with new in game superstitions that established religious organizations can't capitalize on. Kind of like how religions haven't capitalized on the repeated underwear use of athletes, so they settled for convincing people to pray before, during and after games. Which custom is older? The sacred article of clothing, or the gestures to sacred beings? Which will last longer? Chances are both have outlived plenty of religions and will still be around once the modern ones have been warped beyond recognition. The beliefs are still there, and in the same way the modern religions have outlived their old competition, in the future we might find people have traded strong feelings about visiting a certain place after death with strong feelings about who should enter a building before a raid. Maybe a new real world sect will emerge around that time, and the gamers will get to lament the fact that the silly beliefs that colored their entertainment experience are spilling out into the "real" world. see more
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    vinsb • 5 days ago
  I focus upon "We are trying to give our members the best possible platforms on which to construct the stories of [our lives]" I wonder whether "best possible platforms" does the job of describing our task. I am now close to 83 years old. I do not think that it was a platform that saved me from nihilism and atheism.
  I think that it was a model of Divinity whose purpose I could strive to be in harmony with. That model was provided by Alfred North Whitehead's process vision of Divinity. Here is a living God. A God who provides a lure for an embryonic event to shape its becoming and who - once the event has reached completion - prehends the best of that event to make it part of God's becoming.
  With this faith I know that my salvation is to be a co-creator with the best in the universe. Herbert F. Vetter - Minister at Large, 'Emeritus', First Parish in Cambridge, MA - ends the chapter on Whitehead in his 2007 book "Is God Necessary ?" with these words from Whitehead :
  ""God is in the the universe, or nowhere, creating continually in us and around us. This creative principle is everywhere, in animate and so-called inanimate matter, in the ether ,water, earth, human hearts.......In so far as we partake of this creative process do we partake of the divine, of God and that participation is our immortality ........Our true destiny as cocreator in the universe is our dignity and our grandeur ,"
  A number of times each day I pray that my becoming may be open to the Spirit. In addition after giving thanks at the end of the day, I pray that my children and again myself may be open to that Spirit.
  
  Vinson Bronson
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    DanielNoel • 5 days ago
  Do not forget the possibility that playing the game may have a spiritual meaning. After all, most religions, unlike Christianity, teach that non-human entities have spiritual connections to their souls. Many religions invite their adherents to adopt specific body positions or mindsets to establish some spiritual connection. It stands to reason that intensely playing some game may do that too. Maybe the 21st century is initiating a spiritual revival through machines. Go figure... Love,
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    Caleb Ewing • 2 days ago
  I agree. i can see how online-gaming supplies interest and meaning. I think it has to do with the scale of the created worlds and the significance of one's actions within them. I recently abandoned my UU congregation because it wasn't meeting these important needs...it was way too inward-focused and parochial. Not what I signed up for as a Unitarian.
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    shaktinah • 2 days ago
  As someone who plays online games I think the author is right in his characterization of how players behave online, but I don't know how applicable it is to the real world. The reason why I like these games is precisely because they're limited. It's a small world, only as big as the game developers have created, where I have the illusion of control. So even if the monster defeats you and/or you fail at a quest, you can get up and try again *knowing* full well that it *is* possible to triumph eventually, because the game is designed to allow you to do that. You know that it's possible for "good to overcome evil" if you only try. There are no such guarantees in the real world. That in itself will discourage "urgent optimism," I think. (Unless you believe in an omnipotent God who is playing the part of game developer, which most of us do not.)
  I believe the limited nature of online gaming also helps to promote "tight social fabric" and "blissful productivity." I real life I often get overwhelmed with the number of obligations impinging on me. So I retreat to a game where there are only a limited number of goals to achieve at any given time. In-world, the identities that separate us in this life - race, class, gender, nationality, religion, etc - do not matter. What matters is that players are the "good guys" and we're fighting the "bad guys." That shared identity bonds players so that they behave more selflessly. But it's not at all unusual to behave selflessly *for members within your perceived group.* And that feeling of unity only exists because of a common enemy provided by the game developers. Moreover, in the real world the "good guys" aren't always totally good and the "bad guys" aren't always totally bad. In the game, I do not stop to ponder whether the bad guys are really just "misunderstood" or how it is that they got to be how they are - monsters are just monsters to be slain - whereas that is something that I think about a lot in this world. Such moral ambiguities tend to dampen "epic meaning."
  We can try to reframe religion to more of a gamer's mentality, and I'm actually not against that - it might be a good thing to do - but there will always be these huge differences between the in-world of games and this world.
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    James A. Hobart • 2 days ago
  Emerson writes, "There is a crack in all that God has made." Yes, reality is broken. the religious community and all its people are broken, too. Nothing ever was without cracks.
  The purpose of games is to provide a virtual alternative reality in place of the cracked world. Is it too harsh to call this a life distraction?
  The purpose of the religious community is to bring people together to address the cracks in the world, including their own and their community's cracks.Its purpose again and yet again is to seek to re-create, re-form, and trans-form the cracked world, its cracked peoples, and their own cracked community toward serving deeper loving relationships, greater justice, and more compassion. James Luther Adams calls this "the holy thing in life."
  As a religious community this is our common covenant, discovered in our promises to one another, to others in the world, to our entire inter-related Earth community, and to the Fount from which all being arises and flows. This is no game!
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  Share › Guest James A. Hobart • 2 days ago
  James, you comment makes the most sense to me of all the comments. Thank you. Linda

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    Linda Hoffecker James A. Hobart • 2 days ago
  James, your comment makes the most sense to me of all the comments. Thank you. Linda

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Photograph (above): Abandoned rural church in Oregon, USA (© iStockPhoto.com/alptraum). See sidebar for links to related resources.

ANS -- Finland’s People Make the Government Reconsider Same-Sex Marriage

Here is the latest news in same-sex marriage.  the People are for it.  Enjoy. 
Find it here:  http://www.care2.com/causes/finlands-people-make-the-government-reconsider-same-sex-marriage.html    
--Kim

Finland's People Make the Government Reconsider Same-Sex Marriage

• by Steve Williams
• September 23, 2013
• 10:00 am

 

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Finland's lawmakers will reconsider the issue of marriage equality after a public campaign garnered the highest number of petition signatures for a citizen's initiative in the country's history.

The petition needed only 50,000 signatures to prompt parliament to consider the initiative. It in fact secured more than 100,000 on its first day when it debuted in March, and as of writing has more than 164,000 signatures in favor of marriage equality.

This grassroots effort to have parliament reconsider marriage equality comes after the Finish Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee decided in February and by a narrow majority vote of 9-8 that it would not advance a bill to legalize same-sex marriage. Europhiles may remember this apparently prompted Finland's entry in the Eurovision Song Contest, singer Krista Siegfrids, to sing a song called "Marry Me" at the broadcast event and stage a same-sex kiss protest.

From the parliamentary vote there also sprung the "I Do 2013 project, designed to exploit an only recently minted citizen's initiative process and have parliament reconsider equal marriage rights.

The citizen's initiative process was only added to Finland's Constitution in March of 2012, and so marriage equality will be among the first crop of motions brought about by public mandate. In fact, the only other initiative to make it before lawmakers was a ban on fur farming, which was rejected by the legislature in early 2013 despite having 70,000 signatures.

Other initiatives currently making their way to parliament include a call for what is described as a "more reasonable" application of copyright law, and a vote of EU membership, though the latter bid appears to have floundered as it failed to reach the required signature total within the necessary time frame.

None of the above mentioned initiatives seem to have even close to the level of support demonstrated by the marriage equality citizen initiative, however.

Finland is the only Nordic country to not recognize marriage equality, with Norway and Sweden enacting equal marriage laws in 2009, Iceland in 2010, and Denmark in 2012. Still, Finland does provide some rights for its same-sex couples in the form of its 2002 registered partnerships law.

While the registered partnership law affords same-sex couples many of the important legal rights of marriage, including inheritance and tax rights and, as of 2009, the right to IVF for lesbian couples, several rights are still denied same-sex couples in Finland simply because they cannot access the legal definition of marriage.

These include being excluded from being able to jointly adopt and not automatically having the right to share family names for legal purposes. Moreover, the current partnership registry does not allow for gender change recognition despite Finland allowing for and legally recognizing the legitimacy of gender realignment in most other areas.

While parliament may have resisted marriage equality efforts in their most recent incarnation, it will be difficult to ignore the strength of public opinion this time around. While the citizen's initiative alone stands as a strong expression of backing, national polls have recently demonstrated strong majority support for marriage equality.

A January YouGov poll found support at 57%, with only 32% outright opposed, while a March survey by Taloustukimus logged that 58% of Finns support marriage equality. A poll reportedly released just last week by the "I Do 2013 campaign also found that 58% of Finns support the measure. While support for same-sex adoption is weaker, for instance at only 51% in the YouGov poll, it still regularly polls around the majority mark.

This is the first time in marriage equality's modern history that a country's lawmakers have been petitioned by such a sizable proportion of the national electorate and urged through a public initiative to (again) consider making marriage equality law.

The measure is now expected to be taken up by lawmakers in the next few months.

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/finlands-people-make-the-government-reconsider-same-sex-marriage.html#ixzz2fs1e7tYQ

ANS -- Elizabeth Warren's Consumer Watchdog Forces JPMorgan to Pay $329 Million

Here is a short article about fining one of the big banks that screwed up and screwed the people.  It's finally happening.  No arrests, though.  No corporate breakups either.  But, it's a start.....
Find it here:   http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/09/elizabeth-warren-cfpb-jpmorgan-customer-refund?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Motherjones%2Fmojoblog+%28MotherJones.com+|+MoJoBlog%29    
--Kim

Political MoJo

Elizabeth Warren's Consumer Watchdog Forces JPMorgan to Pay $329 Million

­By Erika Eichelberger
| Thu Sep. 19, 2013 1:10 PM PDT

64

  mdfriendofhillary/Flickr

During last year's Massachusetts Senate race, the banking giant JPMorgan Chase heaped more than $80,000 on Sen. Elizabeth Warren's opponent Scott Brown. And for good reason. The consumer watch dog agency that she conceived of and helped get running announced Thursday that it has ordered JPMorgan Chase to pay $309 million to more than 2.1 million Americans it scammed, plus a penalty of $20 million.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) found that between 2005 and 2012, Chase charged customers monthly fees ranging from $8 to $12 for services they didn't ask for and didn't receive. The bank collected money from customers for credit card products such as "identity theft protection" and "fraud monitoring," even when the consumer hadn't given consent.

The refund the CFPB ordered the bank to issue includes the total fraudulent fees charged, plus interest, and amounts to about $147 a person.

"At the core of our mission is a duty to identify and root out unfair, deceptive, and abusive practices in financial markets that harm consumers," CFPB director Richard Cordray said Thursday.

The bureau is also forcing the bank to send out the refund checks in a simple, convenient way, so that consumers don't have to take any additional action to get their money, and to submit to an independent audit of the refund process.

Thursday was not a good day for for JPMorgan. In a rare admission of fault, the bank was also fined some $920 million for a bad trade out of its London office last year that resulted in a $6.2 billion loss.
64

Erika Eichelberger

Reporting Fellow

Erika Eichelberger is a reporting fellow in Mother Jones' Washington bureau. She has also written for The Nation, The Brooklyn Rail, and TomDispatch. Email her at eeichelberger [at] motherjones [dot] com. RSS | Twitter

ANS -- It's not the morphine, it's the size of the cage: Rat Park experiment upturns conventional wisdom about addiction

This is a really interesting article about addiction.  Maybe it's just a result of a poverty-ridden life. 
Find it here:  http://sub.garrytan.com/its-not-the-morphine-its-the-size-of-the-cage-rat-park-experiment-upturns-conventional-wisdom-about-addiction?fb_action_ids=10100610983032145&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=other_multiline&action_object_map={%2210100610983032145%22%3A711601315520870}&action_type_map={%2210100610983032145%22%3A%22og.likes%22}&action_ref_map =   
--Kim


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Garry Tan

Cofounder, Posthaven.
Partner, Y Combinator.
Writes software, dreams.
Posted 5 days ago
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It's not the morphine, it's the size of the cage: Rat Park experiment upturns conventional wisdom about addiction

 

We all learned this in DARE class. About the rats in a cage who can self-administer morphine who get addicted to the stuff, and then just hit that lever until they die. A seemingly keystone argument in the war against drugs. Professor Avram Goldstein, the creator of that study, has said: "A rat addicted to heroin is not rebelling against society, is not a victim of socioeconomic circumstances, is not a product of a dysfunctional family, and is not a criminal. The rat's behavior is simply controlled by the action of heroin (actually morphine, to which heroin is converted in the body) on its brain." So, it's the drug, and its addictive control. Surely we must eradicate drugs as a result!

But there's another model out there by researcher Bruce Alexander of Simon Fraser University called Rat Park. From that wikipedia page:

Alexander's hypothesis was that drugs do not cause addiction, and that the apparent addiction to opiate drugs commonly observed in laboratory rats exposed to it is attributable to their living conditions, and not to any addictive property of the drug itself. He told the Canadian Senate in 2001 that prior experiments in which laboratory rats were kept isolated in cramped metal cages, tethered to a self-injection apparatus, show only that "severely distressed animals, like severely distressed people, will relieve their distress pharmacologically if they can."

To test his hypothesis, Alexander built Rat Park, an 8.8 m2 (95 sq ft) housing colony, 200 times the square footage of a standard laboratory cage. There were 16–20 rats of both sexes in residence, an abundance of food, balls and wheels for play, and enough space for mating and raising litters. The results of the experiment appeared to support his hypothesis. Rats who had been forced to consume morphine hydrochloride for 57 consecutive days were brought to Rat Park and given a choice between plain tap water and water laced with morphine. For the most part, they chose the plain water. "Nothing that we tried," Alexander wrote, "... produced anything that looked like addiction in rats that were housed in a reasonably normal environment." Control groups of rats isolated in small cages consumed much more morphine in this and several subsequent experiments.

And so rats that are born into extreme conditions in small cages are clearly more likely to self-medicate. Tom Stafford of the BBC writes:

The results are catastrophic for the simplistic idea that one use of a drug inevitably hooks the user by rewiring their brain. When Alexander's rats were given something better to do than sit in a bare cage they turned their noses up at morphine because they preferred playing with their friends and exploring their surroundings to getting high.

Further support for his emphasis on living conditions came from another set of tests his team carried out in which rats brought up in ordinary cages were forced to consume morphine for 57 days in a row. If anything should create the conditions for chemical rewiring of their brains, this should be it. But once these rats were moved to Rat Park they chose water over morphine when given the choice, although they did exhibit some minor withdrawal symptoms.

You can read more about Rat Park in the original scientific report. A good summary is in this comic by Stuart McMillen.

So, if Rat Park is to be believed, drug addiction is a situation that arises from poor socioeconomic conditions. From literally being a rat in a cage. If you're a rat in a park, you'd rather hang out with your friends and explore the world around you.

Perhaps it's time the war on drugs becomes a war on the existence of poverty? (edit: Poverty of our relationships to family, community, and nation too, not merely monetary. As commenters have pointed out, there are plenty of people who have plenty of money who may well be the most poverty-ridden in other respects.)

It's not about the drugs. It's about the social environment in which we live.
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ANS -- The Woman Behind the New GMO-Free Meat Label

Here is some of what's happening in the new field of mindful foods.  Great stuff.  Make sure to read down to where they talk about dairy cows. 
Find it here:   http://civileats.com/2013/09/10/gmo-free-meat-maven/ 
--Kim

Civil Eats

About the Writer

Twilight Greenaway is an Oakland-based writer and editor. Her articles about food and farming have appeared in The New York Times, NPR.org, The Guardian, TakePart, and on Grist, where she served as the food editor from 2011-2012. More at TwilightGreenaway.com and @twyspy
Other Articles by Twilight

• Food Sovereignty: The Real World Food Prize
• The Summer's Top Bee Stories
• Cover Crop Comeback Might be Best Big Ag News in Months
• Tree Adoption Program Helps Eaters Support a Small Farm and Stock up on Summer Fruit
• Hold the Burgers, Hold the Fries! Make our Wages Super-Sized!

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Missing the Story on Golden Rice GMOs Civil Eats

The Woman Behind the New GMO-Free Meat Label

By Twilight Greenaway on September 10, 2013
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In June, Claire Herminjard, a purveyor of organic grassfed beef, received some great news. After nearly a year of making her way through red tape and government paperwork, and collaborating with several other food companies, the news broke that the U.S. Department of Agriculture had approved a new label for GMO-free meat. As a result, the owner of Northern California-based Mindful Meats could finally use the Non-GMO Project Verified label on her beef.

And while the news likely flew under consumers' radars, Herminjard was not alone in her rejoicing. Mary's Free Range Chicken and Hidden Villa Ranch, which distributes eggs nationally under the Horizon brand, are also be among the first round of producers to also carry the label.

"It was a huge win for meat producers, in general, because now there is a way to say that you're working outside the  genetically modified organism (GMO) system," Herminjard told Civil Eats recently. "It also allows us to make the connection between meat and GMOs."

What exactly is that connection? Well, on the surface, some might argue that organic brands don't technically need a second label, since the National Organic Standards do not allow genetically engineered ingredients in any food that is certified organic.

But the Non-GMO Project (and the resulting label) came about because not all organic products are tested for genetic contamination. The Non-GMO Project requires "ongoing testing of all at-risk ingredients, or any ingredient being grown commercially in GMO form."

In other words, the label serves as a way to inform eaters who either 1) want to be extra sure of the absence of genetically engineered food in their meals or 2) don't want to buy organic but still care about GMOs.

In the case of most meat, there are quite a few of those at-risk ingredients in play. Herminjard explains: "This way, all the animal's feed is known. If it contains a material that is at high risk for GMO contamination–say corn, soy, alfalfa or sugar beet pulp–every lot is tested to provide certificate analysis to ensure it is compliant with the non-GMO standards."

She believes the new label is best seen as a complement to organic, or "added security for people who want to know there is that extra check-and-balance in the supply chain."

In considering the best meat to sell, Herminjard–who left the tech sector to start a food business just a few years ago–prioritized a GMO-free, pasture-based product. But she also stumbled on an opportunity no one else had seized: A population of organic, grassfed dairy cows being sold as conventional meat once the animals stopped producing an adequate supply of milk.

"I looked at where I could create value," she says. Indeed, part of her goal to pay the local dairy farmers in Northern California, where the company is based, for a premium product.

When Herminjard started doing research about the possibility of selling milk cows for meat, she was told, repeatedly, it couldn't be done. "It just doesn't taste good enough," many seasoned ranchers told her.

"It still just seemed like a gigantic waste that cows raised so well were being sent into the conventional stream," she recalls. So, she decided she's sell it ground as hamburger meat. Soon, however, Herminjard was experimenting with other cuts of meat from cows that had been treated well, and raised on pasture. She took it to several Bay Area chefs and they loved it.

"If you have dairy cows coming out of a conventional, confined situation where they're over-milked and not living under very good conditions, then it goes without saying that they'll be pretty unfit to eat," she says. But if they've been treated well, and have what ranchers call "good body condition," that might not be the case.

Today, Herminjard has relationships with a number of organic, pasture-based dairies in the area, and her suppliers  alert her to cows they think will be good for her purposes. She then examines the animals and chooses them on a case-by case basis, harvesting around 10-15 a month.

This number, however, is soon likely to increase, as Mindful Meats just rolled out a 1-lb package of ground beef, adding 15 new grocery stores to the four retailer that had carried a range of cuts behind their counters to date. Herminjard says the goal is to work with more organic dairy farms in California and beyond, in hopes of taking advantage of their place as first to carry the non-GMO label. "But ultimately," she adds, "The more companies to come into this space the better."

In addition to her entrepreneurial goals, Herminjard is clearly building a business with the big picture in mind. Before launching Mindful Meats, she volunteered at a small-scale farm and in a Berkeley restaurant, where she learned to butcher whole animals. "I really encourage others to get their hands in the process. It will change your interaction with the meat on your plate," she says.

Herminjard says she's thankful for the life force that comes from the animals (and will ultimately go back into feeding the grass they eat one day). She hopes this awareness of the cycle of life comes through in the product: "We're trying to appreciate them fully and bring back a lot of the intention and care to the animal itself. "


- See more at: http://civileats.com/2013/09/10/gmo-free-meat-maven/#sthash.AQhYR8lM.I8npPrSh.dpuf