The Election Primary results so far: In the four caucus states where both parties have caucused, Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz have won them all. Those caucus states are Kansas, Maine, Idaho, and Utah.
Marco Rubio dropped out. He gathered 3,168,147 votes but did not win or come in second in any primaries.
The result of popular voting in the twenty states where both parties have voted is as follows:
Hillary Clinton……9 wins; 6 seconds
Donald Trump…….5 wins; 9 seconds Bernie Sanders…..4 wins; 3 seconds
Ted Cruz…………..1 win; 2 seconds
John Kasich……….1 win; 0 second
These popular vote win totals don’t include the four victories in caucus states, which both Sanders and Cruz won in their respective parties. It’s not clear who took the most popular votes in those caucus states, because the popular votes aren’t usually published. All that can be said for certain: Bernie Sanders has won 4 for 4 in Democratic caucus states. Ted Cruz’s results in GOP caucus states are exactly the same.
Four of the next five Democratic primaries will be caucuses, where Bernie has yet to lose a single contest to Hillary. During the next few weeks we will be hearing about how well Sanders is doing as he wins (presumably) these caucus states. The Republicans won’t be caucusing as much from now on — and many of their primaries will be winner-take-all; winner-take-all primary elections are something the Democrats don’t do.
So the narrative in the media during the next month will be how well Sanders is doing; will he catch Hillary? The narrative about Trump will be: what an awesome juggernaut this Batman from Gotham City has become; can he save us from the dreaded terrorists who hide under every bed in our beloved country? Will Trump rise in triumph to save us from all the bad people?
Here are some worrying statistics, depending on your point of view. The GOP popular vote turn-out is running 25% higher than the Democrat’s. Of the 33 million-plus votes cast thus far, Hillary Clinton has received 26%; Donald Trump, 22.5%. The bottom-line is this: a large majority of GOP voters are casting their ballots against Trump.
In a general election between the two candidates, some of the GOP primary voters who don’t like Trump are going to have to break for Clinton in order for her to win the general election. Trump’s high negatives in recent polls, if they continue, will make her win inevitable. Based on the current trends in the electorate, if Sander’s voters go to Clinton and 10% of GOP voters stay home (or if 5% cross-over to vote for Hillary), she will win the popular vote in the general election.
What is going to happen is this: Trump and Clinton will win their party nominations (barring any violence of the kind that plagued our elections in 1968), and Hillary Clinton will go on to win the election in one of the most lop-sided landslides since the Goldwater debacle in 1964. The extent of the landslide will depend on how many GOP voters stay home or cross-over to vote for Hillary. If the cross-over exceeds 10%, it’s possible she will carry all but a handful of states. If it exceeds 15%, she might very well carry every state.
History has a way of repeating itself. We have seen this movie before, but never with a highly qualified female candidate opposing a thrice-married seventy-year old businessman with no political experience. The election is going to get interesting.
Billy Lee
EDITORS NOTE: (2 Feb 2017) Hillary won the popular contest by 5.5 million votes. Trump received 3 million votes less. Jill Stein and Bernie Sanders siphoned 2.5 million votes. Hillary carried 88 of the 100 most populated districts. Only one person has ever received more votes in an American election: Barack Obama.
Hillary lost the popular vote in three traditionally Democrat-voting states: Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania — by less than one-hundred-thousand votes out of thirteen-million total votes cast. The margin was tiny — about one-half percentage point.
The GOP successfully stopped or prevented recounts and vote audits in all three states. Had the recounts and audits gone forward, The Editorial Board believes Clinton would have carried the three states; she would have won the Electoral College and become our first female president.
Despite serious statistical anomalies, Russian meddling, systemic voter suppression, and an unusually heavy influx of volunteer evangelical poll workers, the Republican guardians of our democracy saw no reason to make sure we got the vote right.
We wonder how they would have behaved had the shoe been on the other foot. Based on their history during the Al Gore debacle in Florida in 2000, we believe that some of their extremist followers were prepared to start an armed and violent revolution.
Civil war is the worst possible outcome, if we judge by the carnage of the last one. Barring a financial collapse or a world war, maybe Hillary losing was the best outcome for our beloved country — even if someday we learn that thugs in dark suits and shiny shoes really did steal our election.
Time and God will provide the answer.
The Editorial Board
Vote totals do not include Alaska and Colorado, where only one party voted.
Results do include, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, and Virginia. These are mostly southern states, where the GOP traditionally dominates.
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders won the popular vote in seven of ten states where both Democrats and Republicans participated on Super Tuesday March 1, 2016
Hillary Clinton crushed Super Tuesday. She gathered the most votes in Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, and Virginia.
Bernie Sanders got the most votes in Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Vermont.
Trump took the most votes in Alabama and Tennessee. That’s it. These are Confederate states, people.
Ted Cruz got the most votes in Texas.
So: Hillary Clinton won the popular vote against all the other candidates, both Democratic and Republican, in four states; Bernie Sanders won three; Donald Trump won two; Ted Cruz won one.
The media would make us think Donald Trump is unstoppable. Don’t believe it.
They would tell us Marco Rubio can be a contender. Don’t believe it. He placed a distant fifth, and he failed to win the popular vote in any state, though he won the GOP vote in Minnesota, where Bernie Sanders smothered him by garnering three times his vote total.
In this conservative GOP leaning group of ten states, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders combined to win almost half the total votes cast. This total includes the votes of all the candidates, even Kasich and Carson, as well as several others. The bottom line is this: Hillary received 1.2 million more votes than did Trump in the most politically conservative region of the United States.
She came in second in Texas behind Ted Cruz, where she collected a million votes. Trump fell to a distant third. In fact, in those states that Hillary didn’t win outright, she placed second in every single one except Vermont, where Bernie Sanders got 86% of the vote.
The GOP is in serious trouble. Either Clinton or Sanders (the two Democrats) won the popular vote in seven of the ten states.
Donald Trump is dis-assembling the GOP before our very eyes. This take-down is historic. When it’s over, some say, the GOP will be gone and a new third party will emerge. Billionaires, like New York State’s Michael Bloomberg, have already predicted it. The meltdown of a major political party like the GOP hasn’t happened in any of our lifetimes. History suggests that any third party will be weaker than the party it replaces.
We are going to have a lot of angry people on the right, who are armed to the teeth. History suggests violence is possible. I really hope people will remember that we live in a constitutional republic with democratic elections. Because we are free and brave, violence has no place in our decision-making process.
Billy Lee
Post Script:Click on this link to review Super Tuesday election results. The Editorial Board.
Results of the 2016 New Hampshire Primary Election.
Total votes cast: 534,860.
Independent candidates Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump (who are running as Democrat and Republican, ostensibly) gathered 47% of the total vote in New Hampshire on Tuesday. Add in the votes for the life-long Democrat, Hillary Clinton, and the total reaches 65%.
What’s the point? Think about it. Less than 35% of the vote went to traditional GOP candidates.
In 2012, Barack Obama received 49,080 votes in the New Hampshire Primary. Mitt Romney, the Republican winner, got 97,591.
Consider this: in the 2012 New Hampshire Primary, voters cast 309,000 ballots — less than 58% of this year’s total (535,000). In that earlier primary Mitt Romney received 31.6% of the votes; Barack Obama, just 15.9%.
Here’s another way to make the point: back in 2012 over 80% of the ballots cast fell to traditional Republican candidates.
Historically, the New Hampshire Primary doesn’t do well predicting the eventual presidential winner, but it can be viewed as a canary in the coal mine for national trends in the electorate. Yesterday, a canary fell off its perch. The GOP is in trouble.
In the New Hampshire primary where less than 20% of the voters cast ballots for Democrats in 2012, nearly half did so in 2016. The increase in turnout for Democrats was astounding.
The Billy Lee Pontificator Editorial Board endorses Hillary Clinton for president.
Faithful readers of the Billy Lee Pontificator should find it no surprise that its Editorial Board — in a unanimous decision — agreed to endorse Hillary Clinton to be the next president of the United States.
Hillary Clinton’s opponents are ideologues, every single one of them. They seem to be blind to the immensity, complexity, and diversity that is the United States of America. Their ideological filters drive them to say things that appear foolish, even crazy, to the many people who don’t live inside their own bubbles.
Rigid thinkers can really screw-up a country like the United States. Look at what the Bush family did to America. Every last one of them loves our country. But they are wealthy conservative-activists who during the past forty years pushed our intelligence community toward a strategy designed to make the world safer for billionaires and their friends. They seem to have forgotten about everyone else. It has been an unmitigated disaster.
To get their way they seem to have encouraged citizens to adopt patterns of rigid thinking — both on the left and the right — because somewhere someone convinced them — maybe in the intelligence community (who knows?) — that ideologues are easier to manipulate.
Whatever is fanning the flames of extremism on both sides of the nearly perfect 50/50 political divide, it hasn’t worked out so well, certainly not for regular folks. We need leadership with an appropriate vision of what’s fair and right in a democracy.
At the Billy Lee Pontificator we are mixed-economy advocates; we believe in Capitalism and Socialism competing side by side to provide best-in-class solutions for people’s aspirations.
It is well-known that we support limits to personal incomes as well as caps on the size of family estates, because quite simply, if we don’t have limits — and they can be very high limits and do no harm — a handful of families end up owning and running everything, like they already seem to do.
Without International limits — until the world agrees to make excessive possession of wealth a felony (not only in the United States, but everywhere) — billionaires will continue to pour their resources into their own families and bases of power; they will continue to distort and corrupt our democratic institutions and make life for average people a living hell, especially during recessions, which billionaires survive quite well, thank you.
Average people like myself and almost everyone I know expect to live in democracy and freedom; we expect a good living; we are endowed with inalienable rights by our Creator, the Declaration of Independence tells us. It’s why we cooperate to build a society, a country, a system that doesn’t emulate the jungle — where our ancestors lived, by the way, and didn’t do well.
Socialism by itself demoralizes innovators, some have said. It might be true (billionaires seem to work overtime to make it appear true), but (will anyone admit it?) Capitalism can diminish the lives of average, less capable people by humiliating them; it can drive them into un-gated neighborhoods, even ghettoes, and exclude them from educational and recreational opportunities and almost every other advantage of living that civilized society is supposed to provide.
Poor people have a tough time under the high-heels of Capitalism; most of the poor are children, who have no responsibility for their lack of the things which mark the lives of the privileged.
If anyone wants to understand the difference between the rich and the poor, they might abandon their comfort zone for a day to visit an elementary school in an impoverished neighborhood; then visit a school in a wealthy neighborhood. The difference will bring tears to the eyes of any human who has a loving heart beating inside them.
Let’s face facts. Most people in America are poor and below average. Even among the middle-class and the above-average almost no one can run a four-minute mile or invent the Internet or manage a company. Most people struggle to balance their budgets or even to understand how their government works. It has been this way in every civilized country since the beginning of civilization, and it always will be.
Despite our efforts to shield ourselves from the truth, the facts are that a huge number of people endure physical, mental, and emotional limitations that prevent them from securing a safe and comfortable life inside the United States. Don’t look around too carefully. People have stopped coming here.
More people are leaving the USA than are coming — at least from Mexico — according to the PEW Research Center. That WALL Trump wants to build might be used someday to keep people from fleeing. It could someday turn the USA into the world’s biggest prison.
Smart, energetic people earn rewards in every country in the world. The difference in America is that the advantaged live in an invisible world hidden behind walls and gates where anyone who is poor and disadvantaged and stupid enough to try to visit will find themselves blocked and disgraced; possibly even arrested.
The United States deserves to elect leaders who want to make America both fair and free; to make it a place where the advantages of being clever are good, but not excessive to the point of absurdity; where the disadvantages of powerlessness do not lead to humiliation and despair.
And let’s not close our eyes to the canary in the coal mine of New Hampshire. This past Tuesday Hillary Rodham Clinton received 57% more votes than the total of all Democrats combined four years ago. She received 95,252 votes in 2016; all Democrats in 2012: 60,659.
Another factor to consider, and some may find it disappointing: Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump cannot win a national election. Why?
Bernie is a self-proclaimed socialist. Some young people embrace socialism it seems, but it’s a bridge too far for many, probably most Americans. It’s a bridge too far for me and my Editorial Board.
We embrace social-medicine, yes, and other socialized programs like fire and police protection, water and sewer services; public schools; libraries and on and so on.
Certainly our financial system has become a sink-hole for the wealthy, who are known to have swallowed whole the earnings and retirement savings of many unsuspecting people unawares. Maybe reducing the risk to the public from the banking sector by setting up an honest system of public administration is a good way to go.
But we also know in our hearts that people like Bill Gates and the late Steve Jobs and Elon Musk can add excitement to our lives through innovation, advocacy of new technologies, and their fearless acceptance of personal risk. We defend the rights of exceptional individuals to create and sustain their businesses within the reasonable limits we advocate, which help average people to avoid becoming prey.
We need people who are willing to fight the frustrations posed by complex bureaucracies to build the modern structures of our cities, like Donald Trump says he does; or put IPhones into the hands of every citizen, like Steve Jobs once did.
But these innovators don’t build their businesses by themselves without securing a lot of help, both from government and the public. We don’t want these entrepreneurs to rule over us like feudal-lords. No way.
2016 can’t be about which Kings & Queens will rule us.
It can’t be all about the innovators. It just can’t be. It can’t be all about the owners who tell us when to work and when to punch-out and go home; who tell us when to eat and when to use the bathroom; or when we can use our cell-phones at work or what sites we can visit on the Internet.
It can’t be all about the owners, who tell us how to dress and behave; who monitor our every keystroke; who eavesdrop on every conversation. It can’t be about just our owners, who decide how small will be our paychecks and how meager our benefits; who decide how few will be our sick days and how short our vacations.
It can’t be about the very same people who force employees to sign non-compete agreements and non-disclosure promises in order to work; who demand that people relinquish their rights to intellectual property; who demand that their “subjects” surrender their rights to every idea and invention they come up with during their employment and for years after their employment ends.
We might as well be ruled by Kings and Queens, by Oligarchs and Dictators. We might as well be living in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, or in Korea under Kim Jong-Un.
North Korea is a beautiful country, if you live in the right neighborhoods. So was Saddam’s Iraq. So is the United States. We can do better than those two countries, where wealthy families ruled and still rule. We can do better than Iraq and North Korea.
Hillary Clinton is the most qualified person to run for president of the USA during the past twenty-five years.
Hillary Clinton — the only viable candidate who actually grew up poor; who is not and never will be a billionaire — is fully capable of leading the way, if we let her.
Civil Rights hero and Georgia Congressman John Lewis reminded Americans that Hillary Clinton stood with the poor and disadvantaged from her first day in politics.
Our votes shouldn’t entrench the power of the truly wealthy — the billionaires — who most ordinary people understand by now don’t really care about us.
A brave and free people do not have any good reason to increase the power and privilege of billionaires; not in this election; not this time, not ever.
NOTE: (November 11, 2016)On 11-9 news outlets declared Donald Trump the winner of the 2016 presidential election. Hillary Clinton won the popular contest by three million votes over Trump. Trump lost the popular contest by 11 million votes overall due to third-party candidates who drew away votes that might have changed the outcome.
Jill Stein and Bernie Sanders siphoned 2.5 million votes. To win, Hillary needed 55% of the white female vote in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin; she got 53% according to exit polls.
Who knows?
What is certain: had Hillary received 100 thousand more votes in those three democratic-leaning states where voters cast 13 million ballots; had she gathered another one-half percent of the combined total in the three states, the electoral college would have tipped in her favor; she would be the president-elect.
With a multitude of third-party candidates staying in the race, Clinton couldn’t win in the electoral college. Trump, for his part, received 11 million votes less than Hillary and third-party candidates combined.
The election result is unfair and debilitating to the ideals of government we hold dear. Billy Lee believes that the result will prove to be catastrophic to the country we love; to the country many have given their lives to protect and defend. It is a sad end to democracy as we know it.
The good news is that people don’t seem to care — so no harm done; at least not yet. Does it matter to anyone at all that the USA may soon collapse; that our citizens may have voted in the last somewhat fair election?
Most informed people understand that no way exists to hold fair elections. Elections that approach fairness are possible when candidates follow the rules. Collaborating with foreign governments like Russia and Israel is not only unfair, it’s illegal.
So what difference does it make this time around? Statistical analysis points to tampering in some districts. Recounts were stopped by the GOP in every state. Is it possible that our most recent election was not fairly counted?
We may never know.
Reality Winner, NSA whistle blower.
9 Sept 2018
NSA employee Reality Winner is now serving 5 years in federal prison for providing the press with NSA documents that confirmed vote-counting fraud.
The Editors
From our lofty vantage point, it looks like nothing really matters. Life goes on, as it always does in a world that has never been truly free or democratic and may never be.
Brave women got hurt again by powerful men. It’s not new.
The Editorial Board
Hillary Clinton is going to be the Democratic nominee for president in 2016. Does anyone think it can be otherwise? Donald Trump will run against her. Does anyone imagine that this billionaire standard-bearer for the new Confederacy is going to abandon politics and flee peacefully into the night? Of course not. Hitler didn’t.
The war of the alpha-male verses the diminutive-submissive-female has waged for tens-of-thousands of years and the outcome is always the same: men start and fight wars; men write laws; men write scripture; men dominate and abuse women. The women who object; who say no; who stand their ground, men label witches; they burn them at the phallic stake.
Taylor Swift wrote — in her song, Blank Space — “Boys only want love if it’s torture.” Really. The history of male-female relationships on planet Earth is sickening. It’s disgusting.
Men demand compliant females, and they use their intellect and imagination to invent sadistic systems of social intercourse to push women and girls into the most precarious and perilous predicaments of powerlessness imaginable. (Are there too many p’s and s’s in the last sentence? Am I starting to rant?)
I’m fed up. I’m fed up with myself and my own personal history with women and girls. I’m fed up with the alpha-males who trash the planet and destroy lives — all because they like to play with gunpowder and rockets and bombs and hi-tech weapons for a thrill they get, apparently, from testosterone-gone-wild. (I am ranting; forgive me.)
We have reached the place in our history as a species when violent, well-meaning but pumped-up men are going to get us all killed — while they poison the planet to extinction — if we don’t change a few things. Time is running out; it’s time for changes, right now.
Hollywood gave us a vision of a man and a woman working as partners to survive against overwhelming odds in a hostile environment designed, it seemed, to utterly destroy them. From the 1951 classic film, African Queen.
OK. I’m going to calm down. I guess I got emotional, because I hate how they hurt Obama; and I know they are going to hurt Hillary. It’s hard to watch the bullies and the haters spew their venom day after day, because they believe — way down deep in their carnivorous second-amendment-loving souls — that if it ain’t white and male, it’s un-American.
Does Hillary Clinton have the sense to protect herself by appointing a female running-mate? Selecting a progressive like Elizabeth Warren could help diminish a temptation some men might feel to make a violent adjustment to the voice of the electorate; an electorate that may already be completely ready to approve a bi-female ticket; most likely in a landslide of epic proportions.
Six years ago, Jimmy Carter, our thirty-ninth president, got fed up and wrote a letter — to a journal most folks never heard of — about the abuse of women in the church and in the world. It was ignored at the time. A few months ago, in April 2015, the letter resurfaced, passed into cyberspace and went viral.
The Pontificator is reprinting it here for readers who didn’t see it in 2009 or don’t remember it. It has provided a link to the original opinion-piece at the end of this essay, because in this version the Editorial Board redacted a few words to protect sensitive readers; mostly children.
What we reproduce below is Jimmy Carter’s explanation of the reasons why he resigned his affiliation with the Southern Baptist Convention — an organization where for years he played a prominent role. He shares his painful experience to give courage to those who dare to stand up for others who are devalued, shunned and excluded from prominent roles, because God made them female; because the alpha-males in the SBC who exercised authority interpreted Scripture to maximize male-privilege.
President Carter writes that the SBC adopted policies that devalued women and excluded them from leadership — no exceptions permitted. No one has to agree with all of the former president’s reasons — or any of them, for that matter. The Billy Lee Pontificator Editorial Board most certainly does not agree with everything he wrote.
I am reprinting his article, because I have always admired Mr. Carter; even before he became president. Jimmy Carter is the only president we’ve ever had who never killed anyone or ordered anyone killed. Correct me, if anyone can prove me wrong. No one can.
Jimmy Carter’s feat of non-violent pacifism is as spectacular an achievement as any human being can accomplish who directs a country as militarized and corrupt as our own.
In 2002, former President Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize, because, among other accomplishments, he established in 1982 the Carter Center, which became a powerful catalyst for the world-wide advancement of human rights and the alleviation of human suffering.
Someday, probably sooner than later, Jimmy Carter will die. It’s because he’s old. He’s ninety-one. Aging presents a person with a lot of challenges, some of which are difficult to articulate; difficult to explain. Getting old changes us. Some discover a clarity of thought and moral insight they never dreamed possible in their youth.
Getting old has it’s downside, too. No one likes it. But as my dear dad used to say when he was alive, Old age sure beats the alternative.
What follows below are the words of our thirty-ninth president, Jimmy Carter:
Wife Rosalynn Carter and his mother Lillian apply Jimmy Carter’s officer insignia bars at the U.S. Naval Academy. Thirty years later he ran successfully for president of the United States (1977-1981). He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. (AP Photo)
I have been a practicing Christian all my life and a deacon and Bible teacher for many years. My faith is a source of strength and comfort to me, as religious beliefs are to hundreds of millions of people around the world. So my decision to sever my ties with the Southern Baptist Convention, after six decades, was painful and difficult. It was, however, an unavoidable decision when the convention’s leaders, quoting a few carefully selected Bible verses and claiming that Eve was created second to Adam and was responsible for original sin, ordained that women must be “subservient” to their husbands and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service.
This view that women are somehow inferior to men is not restricted to one religion or belief. Women are prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths. Nor, tragically, does its influence stop at the walls of the church, mosque, synagogue or temple. This discrimination, unjustifiably attributed to a Higher Authority, has provided a reason or excuse for the deprivation of women’s equal rights across the world for centuries.
At its most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, [REDACTED] and national laws that omit [REDACTED] as a crime. But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities.
The impact of these religious beliefs touches every aspect of our lives. They help explain why in many countries boys are educated before girls; why girls are told when and whom they must marry; and why many face enormous and unacceptable risks in pregnancy and childbirth because their basic health needs are not met.
In some Islamic nations, women are restricted in their movements, punished for permitting the exposure of an arm or ankle, deprived of education, prohibited from driving a car or competing with men for a job. If a woman is [REDACTED], she is often most severely punished as the guilty party in the crime.
The same discriminatory thinking lies behind the continuing gender gap in pay and why there are still so few women in office in the West. The root of this prejudice lies deep in our histories, but its impact is felt every day. It is not women and girls alone who suffer. It damages all of us. The evidence shows that investing in women and girls delivers major benefits for society. An educated woman has healthier children. She is more likely to send them to school. She earns more and invests what she earns in her family.
It is simply self-defeating for any community to discriminate against half its population. We need to challenge these self-serving and outdated attitudes and practices — as we are seeing in Iran where women are at the forefront of the battle for democracy and freedom.
I understand, however, why many political leaders can be reluctant about stepping into this minefield. Religion, and tradition, are powerful and sensitive areas to challenge. But my fellow Elders and I, who come from many faiths and backgrounds, no longer need to worry about winning votes or avoiding controversy — and we are deeply committed to challenging injustice wherever we see it.
The Elders are an independent group of eminent global leaders, brought together by former South African president Nelson Mandela, who offer their influence and experience to support peace building, help address major causes of human suffering and promote the shared interests of humanity. We have decided to draw particular attention to the responsibility of religious and traditional leaders in ensuring equality and human rights and have recently published a statement that declares: “The justification of discrimination against women and girls on grounds of religion or tradition, as if it were prescribed by a Higher Authority, is unacceptable.”
We are calling on all leaders to challenge and change the harmful teachings and practices, no matter how ingrained, which justify discrimination against women. We ask, in particular, that leaders of all religions have the courage to acknowledge and emphasize the positive messages of dignity and equality that all the world’s major faiths share.
The carefully selected verses found in the to justify the superiority of men owe more to time and place — and the determination of male leaders to hold onto their influence — than eternal truths. Similar biblical excerpts could be found to support the approval of slavery and the timid acquiescence to oppressive rulers.
I am also familiar with vivid descriptions in the same Scriptures in which women are revered as pre-eminent leaders. During the years of the early Christian church women served as deacons, priests, bishops, apostles, teachers and prophets. It wasn’t until the fourth century that dominant Christian leaders, all men, twisted and distorted Holy Scriptures to perpetuate their ascendant positions within the religious hierarchy.
The truth is that male religious leaders have had — and still have — an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter. Their continuing choice provides the foundation or justification for much of the pervasive persecution and abuse of women throughout the world. This is in clear violation not just of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but also the teachings of Jesus Christ, the Apostle Paul, Moses and the prophets, Muhammad, and founders of other great religions — all of whom have called for proper and equitable treatment of all the children of God. It is time we had the courage to challenge these views.
Jimmy Carter
39th president of the United States
Note to readers:In college, Jimmy Carter competed on the Naval Academy’s track-team with fellow athlete Wesley Brown — the first African-American midshipman to graduate from our country’s most elite military college. They became friends.
In 1958, Wesley Brown, by then an active-duty naval officer, and Billy Lee, then a fourth-grader, became neighbors; their families lived next door to each other in the Hoskins Park military housing complex (now Wickford Pointe, a private community) near the Naval Air Station at Quonset Point, Rhode Island.
Billy Lee’s childhood relationship with this extraordinary naval officer is the backdrop to his essay, Racism, which might interest some readers.
The Editorial Board
In a few days a baby named Immanuelwill be born in a refugee camp north of the Syrian border in southern Turkey. Another named Jesus will be born in the desert south of the Texas border-crossing in northern Mexico.
In the next two weeks babies will be born in every impoverished backwater over all the Earth, and some of them will be named after Jesus of the Bible — the ”savior of the world” prophesied by the ancients — a man tortured and executed because he enraged the religious leaders of his time.
Why did some of the most powerful rabbis in Jerusalem turn against Jesus and convince their Roman administrators to execute him? Wasn’t it because he told them they didn’t know what they were doing; that they didn’t know what they were talking about?
Two thousand years ago people living in the Roman territories of the Middle East didn’t challenge authorities, at least not to their faces. Brazen confrontation was something leaders weren’t used to and didn’t like.
Jesus claimed that despite impressive learning and years of study and prayer, some religious scholars knew less than they thought about Scripture and what it meant. They knew almost nothing about the nature of God and His plans for humankind. A few acted like instruments of Satan, he said. They lorded their power over common people and demanded respect, even as they supplicated themselves before their Roman rulers.
Billy Lee has offered a gold star to anyone who can find the word Jesus on a Christmas card sold at their local grocery. The Editorial Board
Anyway, one place where babies named Jesus won’t be born on Christmas day 2015 will likely be the Trump Towers. Folks who frequent locations like these have access to private rooms in the best hospitals. Some might choose to birth their children at home, yes, but their homes are palaces and luxury-suites — many with 24 hour on-site medical services, including doctors and nurses.
The homes and suites of billionaires can be busy places, probably, but they never smell like refugee camps. And it’s unusual inside the USA for billionaires to name their children Jesus.
Let’s not sugar-coat. The United States has a sordid history of doing bad things to good people. It has a record of murdering its best people: prophets like Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, for example. It has a record of ”bombing the s*** “ out of people (a.k.a. Donald Trump) — as the history of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Vietnam, the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and the bloody highway of death out of Kuwait reminds those who have been paying attention.
By remote control the USA recently unleashed Hellfire missiles on 700 occasions; sometimes on innocents — people with whom we are not at war — which have cooked by-standers alive with their ungodly heat.
Some modern, right-wing evangelical ”religious leaders” — if anyone can say the words with a straight face — enrich themselves with lucrative book deals. Some write crap to capitalize on the fears of common people who don’t have the sense to know they are being played.
Some fill their mega-churches with armed goons to protect their lucrative fiefdoms and the absurd sums of tax-free money they scam from congregants every single week.
Please note: I said, some.
Why go on?
Everyone knows it’s true.
Some who claim to be Christians have become almost useless to the building of a Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.
Do Christians live in America? Of course. Tens of thousands do; maybe hundreds of thousands. But not millions. No way. Not by the way we behave; not by the way we display our culture and values to the angels of the world who watch our every move; or to God who knows our hearts.
Did anyone watch the GOP debate last night? Did anyone watch that pantheon of the gods (as CNN visually-hyped it in their relentless and — can we admit? — ludicrous lead-up advertising) who fought each other tooth and nail to prove which of them would be the most heartless leader of them all?
It’s not insanity, people. It’s evil.
What does America require, an exorcism?
Because it seems to me as if our nation behaves at times like it’s possessed.
If you were Jesus, would you permit your name to appear on Christmas cards in a mega-store that treats Christmas as just another opportunity to make a lot of money? I don’t know if anyone would. During my Christmas shopping yesterday, I couldn’t find a single card with Jesus’s name on it. It surprised me.
Fortunately for us, God’s ways are not our ways, the Bible says. God is love. He has made a really simple request: love all people, including our enemies, as we love ourselves.
It’s a hard truth — that Jesus expects everyone to love unlovable people. I admit, I’m not good at it. No one is. But it’s something we can do to make a better world.
The Holy Spirit of Christ Jesus will help us to love others, Scripture promises. Together we can love others, especially at Christmas, when we try.
