Mike Huckabee can f*** my dog (but not really because I love my dog)

Mike Huckabee may be a good person inside, but I will not rest one day until I am absolutely certain that he will not be the next president of the United States of America. This is for a few reasons:

First, Mike Huckabee is a socially conservative Republican. Thanks to Bush, Republicans are on the downturn. Conservatism is on the downturn. Truly Conservative policies are becoming more and more scarce in the world as a whole. Socially "Conservative" parties in most first-world countries are desperately trying to take up the centre, rather than continue on a path to the right. I like this. I want to see the end of true, not centre, but true right-wing conservative parties. This is just my personal opinion, so don't bother arguing with me about it. And for everyone's information, the British Conservative Party is, in my opinion, more of a centre-centre-right party under David Cameron, and so it doesn't fall under my category of parties I want to see extinct.

Second, Mike Huckabee is a Baptist Minister with a very religious attitude toward his politics.
For one very good reason, this does not sit well with me. Church and state should, on the practical level (ie, House of Commons, as opposed to House of Lords) be completely and utterly separated. No amount of "good faith" and "moral, religious views" will ever sway my opinion of this. Unfortunately, in the nation that should be the most secular of all, Religion is on the uprise in daily life AND politics. I won't say anything about people's personal lives, but their religious beliefs should mean nothing when they run for public office.
In a TV commercial advocating his candidacy, Mike Huckabee described himself as a "Christian leader" and in a more recent ad, wished the American public "Merry Christmas". What a do*che bag! There are millions of non-Christians in America who will not be having a "Merry Christmas" due to the fact that they don't celebrate it!

Third, his positions on various issues COMPLETELY disagree with my own. This, in itself, may not mean much, but, in case you don't know Mr Huckabee's opinion of things, have a look:
Mr Huckabee...
-is against Abortion, Civil Unions, and Same-Sex Marriages. MH: "There's never been a civilisation that has rewritten what marriage and family means and survived."
-believes in the Death Penalty
-is an advocate of the War in Iraq and supports the troop surge.
-believed (in 1992, when nearly as much was known about HIV/AIDS as is known now) that AIDS patients should be isolated from the general population. From an uncredited source (I know it's bad to not cite sources, but hey, this is just a blog), 'In a 1992 statement, Huckabee advocated isolating AIDS patients from the general population. In 2007, Huckabee no longer advocates such an isolation, but he stands by his earlier view, saying that in 1992 "there was still a great deal of, I think, uncertainty about just how widespread AIDS was, how it could be transmitted. So we know more now than we did in 1992, all of us do -- hopefully." However, by 1992 it was well known that HIV/AIDS could not be spread by casual contact. In the same statement, Huckabee also opposed increasing federal funding for HIV/AIDS research and suggested that Hollywood celebrities should provide additional funds instead. Huckabee now supports additional funding for HIV/AIDS research.'
-is a denier of evolution and believes in creationism. Creationism
-believes that "homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle, and we now know it can pose a dangerous public health risk."
LAST BUT CERTAINLY NOT LEAST....
Mr Huckabee has credited DIVINE INTERVENTION for his success in the polls. DIVINE INTERVENTION for Christ's sake! He's doing well in the polls because the polls reflect a minority of Evangelical Christians throughout the Bible Belt. When the polls reach the important states *ahem California*, he definitely will NOT be doing well in the polls. Maybe Divine Withdrawal will be responsible for that.

I hate Mike Huckabee. I want him to disappear from the media after this presidential campaign just so that I don't have to hear about him ever again.
BUT, if he does become president, I might just go join Al-Qaeda. : )
(just kidding - I would never do that)

The Truth About Religion (Part 1)

This day has been waiting to come... and now it's here.
I've been trying to decide how best to approach the issue of religion. I think now I've got it.

Religion is simple: it's something created by people to explain what happens to their loved ones when they die. Nothing more, nothing less. In most cases, religion involves some sort of "Supreme Being", but not all do. Some religions involve reincarnation, and the belief that all souls undergo a cycle of different lives, as different animals, before being allowed into the afterlife. Others are based around the idea that each person's soul has one life on earth to live before being judged worthy to enter the afterlife.

The former is fairer, the latter not so much so.
The reason being that a person's soul reincarnates until the karma is good enough for them to go to the afterlife, regardless of what gender or anything else that that person is in one life. In the other, you only live once, and you are what God has made you. Some monotheistic religions even discriminate against women, and I believe all of them discriminate against homosexuals.
Which brings me to my point.

I was raised Catholic. My dad being the Catholic one and my mum raised without religion, due to bad things that happened to my grandmother when she was a child. My mum did convert to Catholicism, though, and so now I am part of a family of Catholics, except for my mum's side of the family (minus my mum, of course). So now I'm enrolled in a confirmation class that supposed to prepare me for the sacrament of Confirmation in two years.
Unfortunately for my dad's Catholic side of the family, however, I have no plans to be confirmed.

My qualms with Catholicism began two years ago, mostly because of the horrible molestation cases that were rampant in the news. A year later, I read Elie Wiesel's Night, which was an amazing novel. It brought the horrors of Hitler's Nazi Germany and the labour/extermination camps home. It also made me wonder why an all-loving God would put his people through such a horrible life just for so that they might be in Heaven. Catholics preach "free will" and all that, but how free is "free will" if it means one person is free to take away every freedom known to man from millions of innocent people? Catholics and Christians preach that the freedom to be evil is necessary, and only really causes one to lose their own chance of going to Heaven, and doesn't affect others' chance of going to the Promised Land. But it really does. From evil spawns evil. Maybe, in the end, God really does know best. But history says otherwise.

Following this little run-in with God, I made my arguments to my mother, and she consented to putting me through Confirmation for one year, rather than two, before I had to make my choice about whether or not to continue this path to a life of religion (She has since "forgotten" that she said I would only have to do it for one year, and has been telling me that I'll have to go through the second year, too. This, I can assure you, will never happen). However, everything I said made no impact on my mother's own beliefs. It made me realise that I need charisma classes.

The real turning point in my revelations about God and religion came a few months ago, when I read something out of the Bible that nearly made my heart stop.
I had been raised with the belief that God loved all his wee human creations, no matter how they had been made. 1 Corinthians 6, 9-12, told me otherwise.
From that selection....
"Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral . . . nor practising homosexuals . . . will inherit the kingdom of God."
That was like a slap in the face.
I had been doubting God for some time, but it still shook me terribly on the inside.
Everything sacred I had grown up with was a lie.

That was pretty distressing.
After a while, though, new thoughts came into my mind.
What kind of an all-loving God is He that He automatically, from birth, decides that a select few of his followers will be excluded from His kingdom, regardless of the quality and fullness and goodness of the lives they had led? If God is all-loving, however, and this book is the fallacy, that still throws the entire religion and system of beliefs into question, simply because they are all based on that one book. Therefore, the God who wrote it can either not exist, or his religion can not portray him correctly. If the latter is the case, then that makes one wonder if he exists at all. In the end, we come back to the same conclusion: that God as we know him does not exist.
If he does, he is not God, but another supreme entity.

Well there goes Catholicism out the door, but what about other monotheistic religions? Judaism doesn't work because Jews believe in the same God. Islam doesn't work because it is exceptionally discriminatory and I don't align myself with any Islamic beliefs.

Where does that leave me?
With this conclusion:
Religion in all forms discriminates against certain minorities of the population, whether it intends to or not.
God as we know him does not exist.
Religion as we know it is a lie.
What we can look for after our life on this earth is only for Time to tell.

My mother brought this point to light maybe a year ago:
If we have no God or Heaven to look forward to after this life, and if we have no reason to believe that we'll see our loved ones again, what reason do we have to be good or loving? What reason do we have to love?

Although I could not answer that at the time, I can answer it now. My answer is that there isn't an answer. We are good because it is right. I am rejecting my previously-held beliefs about God, religion, and Heaven in favour of a more open approach to life and death, and I am content to be good in the hope that a universally accepting afterlife awaits me after I die.

With this approach, I do not need to believe in God to be good. I need to believe that whatever awaits me will have a just conscience, and judge me based on how I treated those around me, with kindness, patience, love, and empathy (as much as a human can), rather than what gender, sexuality or ethnicity I am.

People should be good because they know it's right, not because they fear the consequences (Hell, namely) of not being so.
Humans need to embrace themselves with an open mind and an open heart, and, while adhering to whatever beliefs they may, accept the idea that all people are born inherently free of evil, no matter what beliefs or lifestyles others may follow.

The British National Party (sickens me, but it's here, and it has something to say)

I am, of course, sickened by Nick Griffin and his moral policies, but, at the same time, his party has touched on a few, but not many, key issues that the current government is ignoring (whether it's due to incompetence or a full plate, we may never know). For example, exponential population growth is a real and unavoidable issue. The house-building boom cannot go on forever, and, at the moment, it is continuing largely due to immigration.

I, unlike the BNP, however, am not targeting Britain's immigrants as the centre of all British woes. I, unlike the BNP, do not support deporting immigrants who do not pass scrupulously examined legitimacy tests. I simply want to see Britain's fast-growing population slowed by the introduction of some much-needed immigration control policies. That would not entail preventing truly desperate asylum-seekers from seeing a new life in the UK come true. In fact, I believe that all asylum-seekers to any country should be granted a basic, five-year-minimum leave of residence before any question of their legitimacy is brought up. When it is, they should be given a fair interview and all aspects of their reason for seeking asylum should be examined. Private security firms should be removed from the job of deporting failed asylum-seekers because, as the media has quite plainly unveiled, they are doing a horrible job.

Another point that the BNP manifesto for this year points out is the much-reduced educational standards that are still declining - and not just in Britain. The United States is, and has been experiencing for some time, this decline. Of course, being a National party, the BNP unfairly targets immigrants as the cause of this decline.
Immigrants from poor (or poorer) countries typically have lower standards for education, so, when the immigrate to a rich country in large numbers, their expectations for schooling are lower than those of people who have been living in rich countries for multiple generations. HOWEVER, this does not inherently bring down the standards. If citizens of rich Western countries, who have been enjoying high educational standards for many years, decide to lower those standards in the name of fairness to all, they are only hurting themselves. Standards can be kept up - it only gives those lower-standards immigrants reason to catch up. If drop-out numbers increase because of this, then individual programmes within individual schools can find ways to give those certain kids with lower standards incentives to stay in school and complete their secondary and post-secondary education.
And again, most immigrants are not poor, especially since they are choosing Britain to live in. With its exceptionally strong pound sterling and high cost of living, someone moving from a poor country with a weak currency would logically most likely not choose to make a permanent or long-term move to the UK. Therefore, the immigrants that Britain does see (although, of course, people from poor countries do move to the UK; I'm not saying they don't, but...) are not at the bottom of the world financial pyramid. I don't believe that all, or even most, immigrants have low standards of education, and it's the fact that their children have to grow up in poor neighbourhoods in bad areas that causes them to lose all focus in school, and in doing so, bring down education standards simply to keep those miscreants in school.
Closing borders and deporting millions of people will not cause Britain to improve, only its people can do that [cause Britain to improve], and bringing back "O" level exams and grammar schools will keep standards up while giving parents more choice in where to have their children educated. The government's current practice of ending the grammar-school tradition that Britain has long enjoyed will not make, and is not making, parents happy when their only choice for their children's schooling is a crowded, government-run secondary school (by crowded I mean 30+ kids per classroom).

If you're reading this, saying to yourself, "This guy is a looney. He's saying exactly what the BNP wants him to say. They've just seeded another follower", think again.
Recall (or maybe you have read that post, so don't recall) that I am gay. How could a gay person, even a gay white boy, possibly play into the hands of the hard-right? They don't even want to recognise that I'm a person, so how could I possibly feel any inclination to support them?
I don't support the BNP or the National Front, or any racist, constitutionally discriminatory political parties anywhere. My point here is that certain elements of the BNP manifesto for this year highlights items that should be more visible in Western (mostly British, since I feel that the US is doomed to collapse... or at least partially) politics, such as educational reform, immigration control (but not the end of immigration), greater focus on the environment (because this earth is all that we have, and anyone standing in the way of modernised nuclear power is a dumbshit), reform of public services, including NHS reform, decongestion of airports, and reduced building of houses in hazardous places, such as flood plains, and places where the natural beauty of the land would be destroyed.

Worrying about "losing British identity" and sub-standard immigrants should not be any British Government's main concern, or even a concern at all. What the Government needs to do is see where the country needs help, and fix it. Not for the sake of re-election or politics, but for the greater good of the nation as a whole. A government represents its people and their best interests, not itself or its electability. If a government can truly better a country, they should not need to worry about whether or not they will be re-elected.

All People Are Created Equal

It is supposed to be a basic belief held by members of today's Western society. That all people are created equal. Of course, this belief is not respected in the Middle East or parts of Asia, but that's the way that society was built up. With the belief that people are not all created equal. It's a sad fact of life.

Another sad fact of life is the lie that people live through their entire lives.
The Church says that "all people are equal in the eyes of God", the US says that "all men were created equally", and it is now defined by most of the world as a crime against humanity when certain groups of people are targeted for discrimination or persecution. If all people are created equally, however, why are people not all equal in the eyes of legislation and holy scripture?

From Corinthians 1, 6-9: "Neither the sexually immoral . . . nor practising homosexuals . . . will inherit the kingdom of God."
Clearly God is not all-loving.

In the United States, Massachusetts is the only state to have granted same-sex couples the legal right to marry, as opposed to the civil-union status granted in California, Connecticut, Hawai'i, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Vermont, Washington state, and the District of Columbia. That's 9 states (and one district) out of 50. That's pathetic, especially in the face of the United States Constitution, which says that all people were created equal.

Most of the original European Union members states have granted same-sex unions, and a few, such as Spain, The Netherlands and Belgium, have granted marital status. Canada and South Africa join them with legislation granting the legality of same-sex marriages.

But, not only is gay marriage not legal in most of the US, gay members of the Armed Forces are not allowed to be openly gay without having their military status terminated. The Pentagon says that this is because it will "break down the solid battalion structure of the Army". Contradictingly enough, the United Kingdom allows gay people to be open in their Armed Forces, and, to date, there have been no intra-squad or battalion issues that have had to be dealt with.

To get the the essence of this post, I'm going to say that although our society would like us to believe that we believe that all people are created equally, it is evident that we don't believe that

The Melting Pot (Part 2)

And now, the brighter side of the Melting Pot story (that I hate so very very much).

If Americans could just come to the realisation that there is more to the world than the United States and Washington, DC, then it could be a much better country.

If Americans would more readily acknowledge their ancestry and heritage, their country would be more diverse and open-minded.
[ I don't know if I've told the story of my grandmother yet. She hates the fact that her ancestors came to the United States a generation after her husband, my grandfather. She thinks it makes him "more American" than her. I HATE PEOPLE LIKE THAT. ]

By accepting differences in culture... by accepting culture for that matter... America can open its eyes to the world and see how multiculturalism actually benefits the nations in which it is allowed to take place. Here, people who want to uphold their culture were forced to live in ghettos with people of similar background by the pressures of American society. That is wrong.

Even now, in the 21st century, people who are different are treated differently. Not with respect, but as outcasts. In a city of whites and Asians (mostly Chinese), people who are black or Hispanic are treated differently. Not in a cruel way... San Marino is above that... but jokingly. Joking discrimination is still discrimination. I've faced it from Asians, and they weren't joking...........
On a plane to Boston, I sat next to a Chinese boy who was part of a large group of Chinese kids taking a tour of the US. We talked for a while, and he wasn't mean or anything, but when I tried to convert centimetres to feet and inches, having forgotten the decimal conversion, I employed trial-and-error to compare our heights, since he was clearly not fluent enough in English to understand what I was trying to do. Seeing me doing random math problems that ended up just barely incorrect each time, he told me plainly that "white people don't know how to do math ha ha ha". I can tell you right now how much it pissed me off. IT PISSED ME OFF. I'm in Honours Geometry. Last year I was in Accelerated Algebra, Honours Pre-Algebra the year before that, and I was in the Honours programme for the past three years as well. Being told by some Chinese kid that I could barely understand that "white people don't know how to do math" made me want to punch him in the face.

That's way off topic, but the point is, America needs to embrace diversity, not bury it away under the false identity of the Melting Pot.

Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium

Yes, I know it's rated G, but since when have high schoolers not been allowed to see G-rated movies? Last night, Lauren and her gay best friend (me) went to Old Town Pasadena to see just that, a G-rated movie, at the Laemmle's there. We missed the first five or ten minutes of it, which sucks, since that also meant we missed the previews. It started off weird, but that's, again, because we missed the first few minutes. I gotta say, it was a good movie. Dustin Hoffman and Natalie Portman played their parts well, as did the little kid who played Eric (I don't know his name). Basically, if there's ever a time where you're hanging out with your (gay or otherwise) best friend and you're bored and you wanna see a film, head down to your nearest Laemmle's and see Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium (but don't really. The only reason we saw it was because we're not old enough to see R-rated ones and the rest looked especially crappy. But it was all good because Mr Magorium's was a great movie.)

Now, the reason I'm posting right now is really because I have very little else to do. I'm printing photos of one of my friends playing football (American) to sell to his mom. Not what good friends usually do, but his mom would end up forcing the money upon me somehow, so why fight it?
I also want to bring to my own attention the fact that this blog is almost because a movie-review site. Now I've got Mr Magorium, the Martian Child, and something else that isn't coming to mind right away. But I must say, they were all great films. V for Vendetta, too. That's my favourite movie of all time. This year, unfortunately, I couldn't watch it on the fifth of November, so I watched a few days prior to make up for it.
Another great video (not full-length or anything; it's only 7 minutes long) is Viðrar Vel Til Loftárása (Good Weather For Airstrikes) by Sigur Rós. It's a music video that is not yet on iTunes (and may never be on iTunes) due to its controversiality. However, it's a beautiful video that can touch the heart of any sensitive human being. I hope. Some might find it offensive or un-Godly, but, if you do decide to do a YouTube search for it (and I can guarantee it'll come up), just keep and open mind and try, try, to be mature. That's something I hate above all. Immaturity. It pisses me off. Especially beer-belly, bald, Middle American white men who are in their forties or fifties and still haven't learned to grow up. It repulses me.

The Melting Pot (Part 1)

The truth of the matter is that Americanism promotes the idea and belief that immigrants should come together and cast off their national and ethnic heritage in favour of a "better", "more perfect" identity that is American.
Why, I ask, should people who choose to live in this country be pressured to do such a thing? My 8th grade history teacher has all the answers.

"America is a society where people come and live together, work together, associate. If conflicting beliefs and customs impede this, newcomers cannot assimilate and become part of the greater society."

Elizabeth Goldstein was a fanatic about not discriminating or prejudging. She pushed all of her already diverse and equal-minded students through a "Tolerance Unit" at the end of the year, which, in itself is not bad - in fact, it's wonderful - but her strongly voiced views about a better American society were ill-founded and stank terribly of the stereotypical (but almost typical) views of Americans, dating back to the end of American protectionism. My grandmother is the exact same way. Even in other countries, she naïvely tries to communicate in ways that best suit her, rather than trying to adapt to her surroundings. (I can't even begin to tell you some of the stories I have of her, from Germany to Japan). She has total, complete confidence in the establishment, and believes that it would have already failed if there was something wrong with it. In my eyes, it has failed.

Ms Goldstein would tell us how the prevalent "Melting Pot" theory of how America should be is the best one, and how Chinese immigrants, not willing to "melt" into society were targeted by anti-immigrant reformers to explain why the borders should be closed to middle-to-lower class Chinese. It worked. They did close the borders to Chinese, only to open them once more in the face of anti-discrimination protests.

I do feel that the Chinese can try inexplicably hard to stay away from other ways of life, and believe that, even in America, they must create ghettos for themselves in order to maintain their culture. I don't like this, or agree with it, but I feel that they did, in the past, have to do that for themselves, because they saw themselves presented with two choices: isolate yourselves, or assimilate. That's absurd and untrue, most of the time. I think that, maybe, if the Chinese immigrants in years past had been given a more welcome place in the United States, it wouldn't have been a problem. Unfortunately, I also believe that not assimilating is imbedded in the Chinese (or more broadly, Asian) mindset.

Before I continue, I want to point out that I live in San Marino, California, home to WASPs and Asians. My school is 70% Asian. I'm not writing this to show why Asians should all be targeted for murder and why they're inferior, but to make a point regarding the melting pot. I don't have anything against Asians in general; one of my best friends is Chinese. It's just that their mindset, to study at unreasonable levels the various maths and not learn to speak English is what drives me up a wall. In my honours geometry class, one of the students goes to see her tutor for 17 hours a week. And guess what? It's all math! Not one little bit of English, Science, or foreign language (other than Chinese). She's taken geometry at her tutor three times already. Another Chinese classmate of mine has already taken calculus.

I'm not saying it's inherently wrong to try and get ahead, but this is outrageous. It pushes the standards for everyone else up way too high, and creates an ultra-literal, super-competative learning environment, which is absolutely NOT GOOD.

I think that all of that could be avoided if these first and second generation Chinese immigrants would take the time to learn about the culture and learn the language of their new home (which, in Southern California, is increasingly becoming Spanish).

That's all for Part 1; Part 2, which is the brighter side of the story, is next.