With all the back and forth nonsense about President Obama’s speech to kids, this morning, read it now. Then decide.

Now, I ask you: Why wouldn’t you want your kids to hear this? I’ve read the speech, and I just can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t want their child(ren) to hear it. Well, yes I can. The same people who don’t believe that President Obama was born in the United States, and those who believe that health care reform means euthanasia for the elderly and infirm. And the people behind the scenes who egg them on. The fear-mongers. They don’t want children to be inspired by the first black president of the United States. There. I’ve said it out loud.

Glen Beck called him a racist and Sarah Palin called him a communist. I really hoped these denizens of the dark would skulk back into their caves after the election. I really hoped that the politics of fear would be replaced by civil discourse and exchange of opinions and ideas with the mutual vision of a better future for all.

We are a nation of freaking sheep, and I guess I’ve been watching too much Star Trek again.

*p.s.* Recipe Monday (on Tuesday) appears below.

I’m blogging about Politics, Religion, and Abortion today. If the topics make you queasy, come back tomorrow. Maybe I’ll have another recipe.

I have no patience for extremists of any stripe. Period. If you can only see the world in terms of black and white, “right” and “wrong”, you have no place in my personal universe. Please don’t cry.

The cold-blooded murder of Dr. George Tiller in church last Sunday in Kansas, at the hands of a so-called “Christian“, pushed me over the edge. Dr. Tiller, in case you hadn’t heard, was one of like 3 doctors in the country who would perform late-term (last trimester) abortions. I have no children and I’ve never had an abortion, so why should I care? Because I’m a woman. Because I’m an American.

Because abortion is legal in this country and unless you’re a pregnant woman, it’s none of anyone’s business. Any woman who sought Dr. Tiller’s help was already in desperate straits, and should not have been subjected to the terrorist methods of abortion opponents. You have no right to interfere in private medical decisions between a woman and her doctor. You have no right to terrorize medical people in the performance of their obligations to their patients. You don’t know the inner turmoil of a woman in that position. You don’t know her mind, or her medical condition. And by God, you have no right to kill a man because you don’t like his profession and call it “God’s Will”.

The hypocrisy in this is a stench not to be tolerated. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. If men got pregnant and had to carry children in their bodies for 9 months, this wouldn’t be an issue. Religions run by men have never been friends to women. Women are either subjugated and treated like chattel, or raised on pedestals so high the air is too thin to breathe. In either case, women are considered incapable of making their own decisions.

It is historical fact that the Christian New Testament was assembled by the pagan Emperor Constantine in 325 CE and the “Council of Nicea” in an effort to keep the burgeoning faithful from killing each other over conflicting dogma and destabilizing the empire. Many texts and “gospels” written by other apostles and leaders of different sects were tossed out and destroyed as “divisive”. This was when the concepts of Jesus as “God” and Mary as “Virgin Mother of God” were canonized. By a bunch of guys sitting around a table, half of whom didn’t believe it themselves. You base your faith and “moral authority” on this.

You say that you’re protecting life. I’m sorry, that should be Life, with a capital L. Really? I have never met a “Right to Lifer” that wasn’t also in favor of the death penalty. So you take another life as retribution? That’s when you choose the Old Testament “eye for an eye” thing, right? I do not respect your position, and can not until you pick one. Either all Life is sacred, or it isn’t. Guess what? You don’t get to choose. We are a nation of laws. You don’t like the law? Protest. Not at women’s health centers, but at your legislators’ doors.

I’ll repeat myself yet again: If every single one of you who believes that you are saving children’s lives by this kind of emotional and physical violence commits to adopting each and every one of the babies you “save” – regardless of color, health issues, mental and physical deformities, and handicaps, I might change my mind. But you won’t.

You people are a dichotomy of hypocrisy: Government should stay out of our business, but legislate morality. Support our Troops, but bully mourners at their funerals declaring their deaths are punishment for U.S. tolerance of homosexuality. Get out of our lives, but monitor our bedrooms.

No one wants an abortion. It is a painful and intensely personal decision. But it’s not your decision to make. Once you threaten, harass, bomb and kill law-abiding fellow citizens – and encourage others to do so – you’ve lost the “moral high ground”. You are nothing more than religious terrorists, seeking to impose your beliefs and will on the rest of us. You are our very own Al Qaeda.