Is it our turn in America to learn this painful lesson?

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"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal." - Corinthians 13:1

Why is it that so many men and women who believe themselves disciples of Christianity are so errant in the very faith that they profess? Why have so many died - and suffered - at the hands of evangelists for Christianity because they would not convert or were thought heretics?

The Tea Party followers and Republican fundamentalists are "resounding gongs and clanging cymbals" because they have replaced the inclusion that comes of love for humanity with the hate of exclusionary religious vanity and a restrictive personal vision of a God.

An Islamic fundamentalist and a Christian fundamentalist share the same power of hate that betrays "the tongues of men (women) and of angels." It is the error of pride and the easy, lazy path of feeling redeemed by feeling chosen - and others being damned. It is couch-potato religion because it requires no responsibility other than to hate other humans who choose a different route through the perilous path of life.

Democracy embraces diversity; it doesn't try and compress it into a narrow tunnel of bile and arrogance. The Constitution ensures the separation of church and state because true freedom comes only with the right to choose one's religion - or to not believe in a God at all. What is the difference between a tyrannical government of any ideology and the cultist Christianity that a Sarah Palin would impose on us? None.

Without a love for the spark that ignites the glories of the human spirit, there is only a grim, spiteful self-indulgence wrapped in the harsh din of claims to knowledge of the divine. Human history has paid dearly for such selfish religious shackles. Is it our turn in America to learn this painful lesson?

Mark Karlin
Editor, BuzzFlash at Truthout

Harry Reid: How Can We Get Back to Creating Jobs?

AOL News - How Can We Get Back to Creating Jobs? "We asked Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his rival for the Nevada Senate seat, Sharron Angle, for their plans to turn this around."

Sharron Angle (R) did not respond to invitations to write an op-ed on this topic.

Harry Reid: Putting Nevadans Back to Work

(Oct. 7) -- After eight years of failed Bush economic policies, families in Nevada and across the nation are struggling. I know what that's like. I grew up in a home with no indoor toilet. That's why I've been working hard to help put Nevadans back to work and turn our state's economy around. While our economic recovery isn't moving as quickly as we would like, we've done a lot to help struggling Nevadans.

Nevada's economy is suffering so much largely because of the national economy. As that improves, so will things in Nevada. Tourism is our state's leading industry, and when it suffers our entire state suffers. To ease the impact I am working to build yet another industry in Nevada, clean energy. While the Recovery Act did important things, like cut taxes for 98 percent of Nevadans, it also made significant investments in clean energy. The Recovery Act delivered more than $300 million for Nevada's clean energy industry. This included financing for an energy transmission line between White Pine and Clark Counties to create a thousand new clean energy jobs.

However, because there's no better place to visit and spend money than Nevada, I'm also doing everything I can to strengthen our tourism industry. That's why when the state's largest employer, MGM, was having trouble finishing CityCenter, I stepped in and did what I could to save 22,000 jobs, and get the project completed. It was the right thing to do for those 22,000 people and Nevada's economy. I also led passage of the Travel Promotion Act, which will create as many as 6,000 jobs in Nevada and bring foreign tourists to Las Vegas, Reno, and Lake Tahoe.

We also passed the HIRE Act, which is giving tax breaks to small businesses to incentivize hiring and encourage employee retention. Because of this bill, 69,000 new hires in Nevada alone qualified for tax breaks, and Expedia recently announced they were hiring 130 employees in Nevada because of the HIRE Act.

I delivered $83 million in emergency education funding to protect 1,400 Nevada education jobs, solar tax credits that will create as many as 41,000 Nevada jobs, and helped secure a wind turbine factory in Southern Nevada that will create 1,000 permanent jobs and hundreds of construction jobs.

We also passed tax credits for small businesses to allow them to provide their employees with health insurance and use their savings to invest in their business and hire more employees.

We have a lot more work to do to create jobs and turn our economy around, and I'm confident that as we have in the past, Nevada will emerge stronger than ever.

I wake up each morning with the struggle of everyday Nevadans on my mind, and will never stop working to ensure that every Nevadan who wants a job can get one.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the majority leader of the U.S. Senate, is running against Republican Sharron Angle in the 2010 elections.

Editor's note: Sharron Angle did not respond to repeated invitations to write an op-ed on this topic for AOL News.

Obama and Democrats Indeed Ended the Bush Republican Recession

As we all know, many are in denial.

Yes, many Republicans and Tea Party more specifically. Many independents suffer from collective amnesia, as Bill Clinton so eloquently stated it. And many Democrats are sort of infected with the apathy virus.

However, facts are facts, it does not matter if you like it or not. Obama and Democrats took the mess inherited from the Republicans under their Bush administration and have turned things around FOR THE BEST. The collapse of the economy has finally stopped and jobs are being added. But yes, jobs are not being added at the pace we all want, but this crisis was not baked in a few months either. It took years of Republican administration to get us into this mess and it will take years of Democratic administration to get us out of it.

The question is who do you trust to do the job: the ones who created the mess or the ones who have worked, even under constant obstruction, and have achieved the great tasks of stopping the GREAT RECESSION, turning the economy around for the best and started adding jobs.

Yes, on November 2010, YOU DECIDE!

Below private sector jobs chart since the beginning of the recession to August 2010. Feel free to run your own data file at http://www.bls.gov/data/

Powerful words from Alan Grayson on extension of unemployment benefits

Well, we did it. We got some help for Americans who are living in their cars, and Americans who are eating cat food out of a can. Americans who have been out of work for almost two years, and then saw the right wing block their unemployment insurance payments for months.

We didn't get sidetracked by Dan Gainor's assault threat on Tuesday, or Mr. Anonymous' assassination threat on Wednesday. 

Call them out.
Make them squirm.
Don't let them bully us.
Don't back down. 

That's how we do it. 

And it's working. Because in the House vote, 30 of the 179 Republicans peeled off from the all-powerful No Caucus, and voted to release the unemployment insurance funds. For the first time, they got that funny feeling that you get when you exercise a muscle that you didn't even know you had. That funny feeling the Republicans experienced was . . . a pang of conscience. 

Evidently, 30 out of 179 Republicans in the House now have a functioning conscience. It's a start. 

Truth, 

Rep. Alan Grayson

It is beyond NAACP vs Tea Party, it is really NAACP vs GOP

NAACP asks Tea Party to remove Racists elements and their spokesman Mark Williams denies the Tea Party is Racists by posting a Racist statement on its blog. Now Mark Williams removed the racists blog post and the Tea Party fires Mark Williams to save face.

So does this mean the KKK won't be present anymore in Tea Party events or planning meetings?

It is naive to believe that Racists will just pack their bags and rot and die into a corner. Tea Party gave them a platform to express their hate against the first black president and they will continue to be a big constituency of the Tea Party (if not most).

Many may have forgotten the craziness after Obama was elected. The insults, the death threats, spit at black lawmakers, he vandalism, the signs, the effigies, etc. The Tea Party and the GOP are more than happy that people forget. A recent poll showing an almost perfect match between the Tea Party and the Republican Base gives you an idea of the Real GOP.

Make no mistake. Tea Party racism is GOP racism

Real questions for the Chamber Commerce's 'Jobs Summit'

Taken from Campaign For America's Future's Progressive Breakfast

James Parks has some real questions for the Chamber Commerce's 'Jobs Summit': "Here are three questions the AFL-CIO and working people would like to ask the Chamber: 1. Big corporations and Wall Street had their way for eight years under the Bush administration and we’re just beginning to undo the damage. Which corporation is the model to show there is too much government regulation? The Wall Street firms that tanked the economy? Massey Energy mining, whose long record of safety violations led to miners being killed? BP, whose long record of violations led to workers being killed and is still destroying the Gulf of Mexico? 2. Why are there no unemployed workers at your event? Millions of Americans are out of work and have lost their benefits. But according to the agenda, there is not a single one of them represented at this event. This shows the real purpose of their event. Not to create jobs for people, but to keep the status quo for Big Business and their profits. 3. If you think there’s too much government regulation, can we continue to expect statements from Chamber President Tom Donohue that taxpayers should be responsible for corporate bad actions like he said about BP?"

If deficit is important there can't be sacred cows anymore

So the heartless Republicans and corporate Democrats "don't mind helping the unemployed and the states, as long as the measures are paid for" and I am sure that for the "paid for" part they meant cutting social programs to screw even more people.

What about the bloted, outdated cold war era defense budget? We spend more on "defense" that the rest of the world combined and a good chunk goes to defense contractors that keep running up the cost of the projects and we just keep paying because they are "sacred cows".

Well, if the deficit is so important that the nation can't even help its own people because of it, then there can't be sacred cows anymore.

Everything must be on the table, starting with the DoD budget. Let's see what the "fiscal conservatives" have to say about that.