The wacky religion

There once was this religion that was formed by a group of tribal leaders a long time ago when they were having trouble with retaining power and authority over other tribe members and their families.

The group of tribal leaders called themselves "the council" and began getting together regularly and in secret so they could get their stories straight, that way, if someone from one tribe met someone from a different tribe and asked a religious question, the answer would be the same and it would astonish the two peasants into assuming that because they are from two separate tribes yet have the same answer to the very same question, that what ever the answer was must be the truth.

Well the tribal council members though it was a good thing that they could trick their followers in such as way and it really worked!

As the years went by, the tribal council made all kinds of decisions about various things that began to make people suspicious.

They claimed the world was flat. But then sailors kept sailing until they discovered the world was not flat, in fact it is round.

Then they claimed the earth was the center of the universe, but a scientist who invented a telescope presented evidence that in fact the earth went around the sun instead. He was thrown in prison.

Another time they went marauding across the countryside with torture devices and terrified the peasants with such shows as burning people at the stake or suspending them in iron cages for not holding the same belief as the wacky religion.

Still another time they proclaimed that cats were evil so most cats were killed. Then the rat population exploded and caused the black plague because there were cats to catch the rodents.

At every turn the wacky religion fought scientific progress.

The wacky religion was against birth control, then one day a scientist developed a way for infertile women to get pregnant with the help of science through a process called "in-vitro fertilization" but the wacky religion was against that too.

So, the wacky religion was against artificial insemination, but the wacky religion was also for keeping someone alive by scientific means such as a feeding tube and a breathing device.

The wacky religion was so generous to the unquestioningly faithful that they nurtured a massively impoverished segment of the population that helped the wacky religion earn even more money by tugging on everyon elses heart-strings.

I hope you're in the wacky religion, becuase you would be hard-pressed to find a job otherwise.

The end.

Exodus averted for the unwashed masses.

In August 12, 2010, the U.S. State Department issued a global travel warning. It basically went ignored by the main-stream media until the first weekend in October. It then became a news story. Joe couldn't figure out why, but on Sunday, October 3, 2010, the story became an all day periodic report on the cable news channels with 24 hour news cycles.

October seemed to be a strange time of year to be issuing a travel warning. It's a month away from most U.S. holidays and travel was lighter than usual during the period between Labor Day and Thanksgiving weekend. It's actually the ideal time to travel comfortably with little interruption by other passengers. There are more frequently available first-class seats.

It suddenly dawned on Joe that it was the beginning of the 4th fiscal quarter. As long as the public was distracted by the new terror warnings, they might not see the stock market begin its slide into the darkness from which it will never recover. The distracted unwashed masses won't clamor to get onto the same planes the bankers and businessmen were using to finally escape with everyone elses cash.