Cynthia Nixon at the May 25, 2010 Designing Women Awards (by Peter Kramer for AP)

For years now, gay rights activists have been making the case that gay is not a “lifestyle choice,” but a biological condition. They consider it essential to the movement for the biology to be accepted as the root cause of homosexuality. The thinking is simple – if being gay is not a choice, then discriminating against people who are gay is unconstitutional.

The movement is basically so dug in to the idea that “lifestyle choice” threatens gay rights that they are attacking actress Cynthia Nixon for saying that for her, at least, it was a choice.

Nixon, best known for the role of Miranda in Sex and the City, spent fifteen years in a committed relationship with a man, bearing him two children during that time. For the past eight years, she has been in a relationship with a woman, to whom she is engaged.

In an interview with The New York Times Magazine, Nixon said, “I understand that for many people it’s not, but for me it’s a choice, and you don’t get to define my gayness for me. A certain section of our community is very concerned that it not be seen as a choice, because if it’s a choice, then we could opt out. I say it doesn’t matter if we flew here or we swam here, it matter that we are here and we are one group and let us stop trying to make a litmus test for who is considered gay and who is not.”

Wayne Besen, of Truth Wins Out, is one of Nixon’s critics, saying “Cynthia did not put adequate thought into the ramifications of her words, and it is going to be used when some kid comes out and their parents force them into some ex-gay camp while she’s off drinking cocktails at fancy parties. When people say it’s a choice, they are green-lighting an enormous amount of abuse because if it’s a choice, people will try to influence and guide young people to what they perceive as the right choice.”

Wow – in one statement Besen just dismissed one-fourth of the movement.

Nixon is bi-sexual by biology even if she refuses to define herself as bi-sexual, and at different times in her life has made two distinct choices about her commitment to a partner. That does not change the biology of purely gay or lesbian people or the complexities of transgenderism. It just sets the record straight about bi-sexuality. There is a choice involved for bi-sexual persons when it comes to commitments.

The “movement” is called LGBT, as in “Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual, Transgender.” One of those four is not like the others. One of those four has more options and more choices to make. That does not change the fact that the one different group needs just as much in the way of rights protections as the other three. They should not be forced to take cover in a straight relationship to prevent being discriminated against. And Nixon’s statements are not going to change anything for a teenager who is stuck with parents who would demand “cure the gay” therapy. As long as there are so-called professionals like Marcus Bachmann willing to “cure the gay” there will be parents who force their kids into it.

The problem is not in converting the parents. Trust me, this country is full of people who cannot see facts for their own bigotry. The problem is in allowing these “cure the gay” therapists to do business. Until laws are written that define what therapy is and who can practice it, and punish those who practice without proper training or certification, this situation will continue. The laws can be written to encompass alternative medicine and still protect kids from the intentional malpractice of “cure the gay” therapists.

Welcome to the problem every rights movement in history has had. A movement is perceived as being weakened if it is not totally unified in a way that makes conformity more important than individual rights.

One of the things that has haunted the Scott family of Atlanta is the possibility that W. A. Scott was not murdered by white supremacists, but by African American extremists who could not accept a moderate view in the pre-World War II civil rights movement. The feminist movement was fatally damaged by a leadership that said women could not choose to be homemakers and full-time mothers, forcing those who wanted that choice to seek refuge among the anti-feminists. It took guts to stand up to the extremists in the feminist movement and say “If this is about choice, why can’t you respect mine?” It took courage to be full-time homemakers and teach our children they had the right to make their own decisions.

Then, there is the issue of “allies” – an important part of any civil rights movement. The civil rights movement for African Americans needed white allies. Without them, nothing would have happened. A minority cannot change laws all by itself. When extremists in the African American community started lashing out at the allies, the movement suffered set-backs that are really coming to fruition this year in restrictions in voting rights, rights that were more reformed by white allies than they were impacted by black activists. There is a part of the LGBT community that lashes out at those who have not been subjected to discrimination within their own families. That’s a really great way to lose allies.

Cynthia Nixon is a bi-sexual who has made her choice. She has chosen the lesbian side of her sexuality and made her commitment within that decision. She is hardly alone in that. The movement has decided to define women like Meredith Baxter according to the movement’s preferences. She must have been a deeply repressed lesbian who finally threw off her shackles and found herself. But what if Meredith Baxter is in fact a bi-sexual? What if she wasn’t faking it when she was attracted to men? Her description of her relationship with ex-husband David Birney was about his controlling and emotionally abusive treatment of her, not about sexual compatibility. What if Baxter has made a choice about committed relationships more than a choice about coming out of the closet? Is the movement denying Baxter the right to define herself the way they want to force their definition on Nixon?

One last thought, from a straight woman..Nixon is far more threatening to homophobic men than a biological lesbian is. Nixon is saying it’s not about the equipment, it’s about the quality of the relationship. Ever seen those t-shirts that say “the more I know about men, the more I love my dog”? Nixon’s message is a multi-layered one. She is saying, with her own personal history, that two women can forge a sexually satisfying relationship and an emotionally satisfying relationship without being totally immune to a biological attraction to men. And since most women are already aware of the fact that it is much easier to get one’s emotional needs met by other women, her message is a real threat to men’s belief that women cannot get sexual satisfaction without a penis being involved.  (If you are comedy deprived and have never seen the British series Coupling, I recommend Series 2, Episode 2, “My Dinner In Hell.”  The background joke is that Patrick is a tripod.)

The best way to destroy a movement is by insisting that everyone within it conform to a single set of criteria. If the movement cannot accept diversity within itself, it dooms itself.

Related articles

• Cynthia Nixon Won’t Call Herself Bisexual Because ‘Nobody Likes The Bisexuals’ (towleroad.com)
• Cynthia Nixon’s ‘choice’ remarks to New York Times land her in hot water with some gay activists (miamiherald.typepad.com)
• Cynthia Nixon’s remarks on gay ‘choice’ worry activists (ctv.ca)
• Actress’ gay-by-choice claim riles activists (cbsnews.com)
• Actress’ claim to be gay by choice riles activists (pbpulse.com)
• Actress’ gay-by-choice claim riles activists (kayceeweezy.wordpress.com)

MP Birgitta Jonsdottir

A Court has granted the Justice Department’s request for access to the Twitter account of former WikiLeaks member Birgitta Jonsdottir. Jonsdottir, along with American Jacob Applebaum, have been the primary subjects of the DoJ investigation. Jonsdottir is a member of the Icelandic parliament, and therefore, her involvement in the acquisition and publication of classified American documents is technically espionage. Applebaum, as an American citizen, may be prosecutable for his involvement, on treason charges. No charges or extradition has been filed against either of these people.

Twitter has been co-operating with the DoJ in this investigation.

The 44-year-old Jonsdottir has been almost as off-the-wall about the United States as Julian Assange. She has whined about being a parliamentarian, as though that gave her some kind of immunity from investigation, and is now calling the court’s ruling “a huge blow for everybody that uses social media.” She has never grasped the fact that as a parliamentarian, her actions in receiving and disseminating another country’s classified documents violated her own country’s laws and treaties. She doesn’t understand that her involvement in WikiLeaks not only embarrassed Iceland, but compromised its status in NATO and its various treaties with the nations that were discussed in those documents. Screeching about privacy rights on social media is pretty pathetic for someone who has not regard for anyone else’s privacy or rights.

Ms. Jonsdottir should consider herself lucky, even with the exposure of her Twitter account. The State Department would have been within its rights to request that Iceland demand her resignation from Parliament and arrest her, based on little more than her admissions that she participated in the data receipt and publication.

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• Icelandic MP Birgitta Jonsdottir: US court verdict to open my Twitter account ‘huge blow’ to privacy (nextlevelofnews.com)
• US court verdict ‘huge blow’ to privacy, says former WikiLeaks aide | World news | guardian.co.uk (mbcalyn.com)
• via ” A Call to the People of the World to Support Iceland… (underpaidgenius.com)
• Twitter WikiLeaks Subpoenas of the Day (geeks.thedailywh.at)
• Judge rules Feds can have WikiLeaks associates’ Twitter data (arstechnica.com)
• Judge Rules Feds Can Have WikiLeaks Associates’ Twitter Data (wired.com)
• Feds Can Get Twitter Users’ Data Without Warrant, Judge Says (blogs.wsj.com)

Julian Assange by Bob Rand, 2011

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has lost his latest appeal of the extradition warrant issued by the Swedish government. Britain’s High Court has told Assange it’s time to go.

Assange’s attorneys have tried every imaginable avenue to get the British government to reject Sweden’s extradition request. They’ve claimed that the extradition is a means for neutral Sweden to hand Assange over to America for transportation to Guantanamo or summary execution, claimed the two women who filed the sexual misconduct charges against Assange are liars and agents of the United States, claimed the Swedish government doesn’t have the right to demand his extradition, and claimed that there was no crime committed according to British law, so Swedish law should be ignored. Their biggest mistake, from a legal perspective, has been treating the warrant as though it were an arrest warrant to force Assange to stand trial. It isn’t. Assange was in the middle of the investigation of these allegations, asked the Swedish authorities to allow him to go to England on business, promised to return to continue the investigation and dug in in England. The warrant is to compel him to return and answer questions, not to stand trial. No criminal charges have as yet been filed.

Julian Assange - now, who's he holding hands with? photo from El Pais

Assange, of course, refuses as always to believe that facts are facts. He prefers his paranoid version of alternative reality. The judge’s ruling stated that the Swedish warrant could not “be said to be disproportionate” to the allegations as they are “serious sexual offenses.” To permit extradition, the judge had to find the warrant valid, not hear any defense of the accusations. Assange has always demanded that the case be heard and judged by British courts, which have no jurisdiction even if a charge had been filed against him. Assange is very unhappy with the results, saying as he left the Old Bailey, that he “lamented that the terms of the arrest warrant [sic] do not allow me to argue extradition based on the substance of the case. We will be considering our next step. No doubt there will be many attempts made to try to spin these proceedings as they occurred today, but they were merely technical. So, please go to swedenversusassange.com if you wish to know what is really going on in this case.”

The website takes a new tack in the Assange versus the rational world journey. According to him, Swedish feminism is responsible for his plight. He claims that prosecutor Marianne Ny is “biased against men” and “a well-known radical feminist.” He paints Sweden as the “Saudi Arabia of feminism,” and says that “a significant interest group, which can be broadly described as feminists, has gained prominence in Sweden since the 1980′s. it is arguably more defining – almost as an ideology – in today’s Sweden than its (now unrecognizable) model of social democracy.”

This is actually rather amusing. Assange has had the support of many on the progressive left, including filmmaker Michael Moore, but crying “FemiNazis!” like a deranged Limbaugh fan is not going to win him any friends on right. It may even cost him support among those who have been there for him during this eleven-month circus, particularly Biana Jagger and Jemima Khan. Claiming that he is a victim of a massive international conspiracy to silence his arrogant, paranoid, reckless egomania garnered a lot of support among people who don’t pay attention to things like the impracticability of seizing any international celebrity and making him disappear or the fact that the United States government has already announced it doesn’t give a rat’s ass about Assange. Claiming that feminists are out to persecute him is just the kind of thing that could finally make people see what I’ve been writing about all along – the man is a sexist pig who should face the consequences of his actions. Coercing a woman into unprotected sex in this day and age, forcing himself on a sleeping woman, these the acts of a man who has no respect for the humanity of his sexual partners nor regard for their rights as people or as women.

Assange may try one last appeal in Britain, even though it has been made clear to him that he stands no chance whatsoever of even having the appeal accepted. The latest 43-page ruling can be summed in up five words: “The court dismissed his appeal.” The Supreme Court only hears cases of constitutional or national importance. No matter what Julian Assange thinks of himself, he doesn’t qualify.

Assange has fourteen days to request the appeal. If the Supreme Court rejects his appeal application, he will be extradited within ten days. He could be on a plane to Sweden on November 26^th.

In the past year, Assange has gone from top of world to bargain basement. His irresponsible handling of the United States State Department cables placed many people in jeopardy while not providing any real evidence of nefarious conduct on the part of this country. The United States is focused on prosecuting Bradley Manning, the young soldier who fed the Defense Department and State Department files to WikiLeaks, not on WikiLeaks itself, just as they were focused on Daniel Ellsberg and not on the people who published the Pentagon Papers. WikiLeaks donations have dried up, and though Assange likes to blame the credit card companies and America, the fact is there were other avenues for donating to WikiLeaks if people really wanted to. Julian Assange is of less interest to people than Princess Bea’ atrocious hat, and his ego can’t handle that. Assange made the mistake of believing that publishers are as important to the world as whistleblowers. Whistleblowers are the ones who risk everything to acquire information. In Bradley Manning’s case, he risked life in prison if not a firing squad. Daniel Ellsberg risked being shot on sight when he entered those offices to copy those documents. Whistleblowers have their lives and reputations and livelihoods destroyed by those they expose. Whistleblowers end up dead, by their own hands because so much has been taken from them, or by other’s hands. Compared to these people, Julian Assange is a whiny, sniveling little spoiled brat with delusions of importance.

Where can I send a contribution to his air fare to Stockholm?

Related articles

• WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange loses appeal against extradition to Sweden (thestar.com)
• Julian Assange loses extradition battle over sexual assault complaint (arstechnica.com)
• WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange loses appeal against extradition (theglobeandmail.com)
• WikiLeaks: Julian Assange prepares Supreme Court challenge in extradition battle (telegraph.co.uk)
• Assange loses appeal, will be extradited to Sweden (hotair.com)

Julian Assange (photo by Luke MacGregor, Reuters)

Claiming that the financial blockade by Visa, Mastercharge and PayPal have cost them 95% of their funding, Julian Assange announced on Monday, October 24, that WikiLeaks has ceased publication.

Assange, in a press conference in London, said that the blockade was an “existential threat” to WikiLeaks and unless it ended by the New Year’s, WikiLeaks would be”simply not able to continue.”

 The website was cut off from receiving donations through Bank of America, Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and Western Union last year after dumping United States diplomatic cables, an action Assange calls an “arbitrary and unlawful financial blockade. The blockade is outside of any accountable, public process. It is without democratic oversight or transparency.” Then, Assange went into paranoid mode. “The US government itself found that there were no lawful grounds to add WikiLeaks to a US financial blockade. But the blockade of WikiLeaks by politicized US finance companies continues regardless.” Yeah, right. The United States government strong-armed Bank of America into blocking payments to WikiLeaks. Our government can barely hold Bank of America accountable for their banking procedures and can’t get them to pay any taxes. How the hell does Assange think our government can tell BofA anything? He has never appreciated how dysfunctional our government really is, has he?

 Assange said that WikiLeaks was raking in about $138,360 (€100,000) a month in 2010, but dropped to $8,300 (€6,000) to $9,683 (€7,000) per month in 2011. He claimed the donation blockade had cost the company around $55.33 (€40 million) to $69.17 million (€50 million) this year, assuming no decrease in donations, which kind of proves that math isn’t his long suit. If they made $1,660,320 (€1.2 million) in 2010 and that was cut to $83,000 (€60,000) to date in 2011, that’s only a loss of $1,577,320(€1.14 million) this year. That’s about $67.59 million (€48.86 million) less than he’s claiming.

 At present, WikiLeaks is facing legal actions in Denmark, Iceland, the United Kingdom, Australia and the European Union. Assange personally is still fighting extradition from the UK to Sweden to answer questions concerning his sexual encounters with two young women. But, in Assange’s mind, all issues with WikiLeaks and his problems always come back to the United States, which isn’t on the list of nations that have pending legal actions against WikiLeaks and has stated that Assange is not a person of interest in the Bradley Manning/WikiLeaks case.

The cold hard facts are these – it is not hard to launder money. Any idiot who thinks about it long enough can figure out ways to process money that get past any blockade being monitored by computers. WikiLeaks’ supporters had the ability to solve their financial problems in totally legal ways. An eBay auction of lunch with Assange didn’t raise as much money as Princess Bea’s wedding hat. An auction of Assange’s personal belongings was even less successful. The tens of thousands of State Department cables that WikiLeaks gloatingly dumped without redacting have proven to be mostly uncontroversial and contained very little that did anything more than embarrass the State Department and compromise the safety of our contacts, informers and collaborators.

Julian Assange and WikiLeaks are not suffering from the blockade, but from the downside of the Andy Warhol syndrome – their fifteen minutes are over.

Related articles

• WikiLeaks Shuts Down as Financial ‘Blockade’ Threatens Its Existence (VIDEO) (blippitt.com)
• WikiLeaks Suspends Publishing To Fight Financial Blockade (paidcontent.org)
• Want more secrets? We need cash, WikiLeaks says (news.cnet.com)
• Financial woes may close WikiLeaks next year (ctv.ca)
• Assange Says “Mansion Arrest” Hampers WikiLeaks (lezgetreal.com)

If one is enrolled in Yahoo News and understands some basics about the internet, one can track the popularity of a news story by the disruptions and slowdowns in service. When a lot of people are clicking on to a story, it is normal for one’s attempt to be met with a “fail” message. If the story is getting a lot of comments, the voting cubes and reply options will not come up with the comments. It is common for an attempt to post a comment on a popular story to get an “Oops, try again” message. On a really bad day, when a few stories are extremely popular, even Yahoo can become overwhelmed and suffer a disruption of service. Conspiracy theorists will jump in and claim that Yahoo was hit with a “denial of service” attack – in Yahoo’s case hundreds of thousands of people would have to be intentionally logging on simultaneously to short-circuit the site. Unintentionally, it used to take only a few thousand people to do that to us. That’s why we’ve made so many changes in the past few months, to prevent being shut down just because people are interested in a particular story. A typical shut-down of service on Yahoo can run a couple of hours.

Anonymous, that loose confederation of people who consider themselves “hactivists,” called for their faithful followers to all log on to NYSE.com at 3:30 p.m.Monday to shut down that very public website. The flood of log-ons was intended to create a denial-of-service incident. Attacking the public site would not in any way disrupt the actual operation of the Stock Exchange, just be an annoyance. At 3:30 p.m. the site started slowing down and from 3:35 to 3:37 it was off-line. Wow, a whole 2 minutes of denial of service.

Anonymous’ intent was to show solidarity with Occupy Wall Street.

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• Anonymous takes down NYSE.com – for a minute (money.cnn.com)

Angelina Jolie meeting with Khamun Gul and her children in Kabul, Afghanistan

There are 2.7 million Afghans living as refugees in Pakistan and Iran. Pick a point in Afghanistan’s modern history and you can find people fleeing the seemingly neverending conflicts in that devastated land. The United Nations High Commission on Refugees has decided that the situation among Afghan refugees needs a special focus and special care. So, when a crisis arises in refugees, who you gonna call? Angelina Jolie, of course.

Jolie made an unscheduled appearance Monday evening at an event to honor a Yemeni aid group that has rescued thousands of Somali refugees. Miami-based Colombian pop singer Juanes performed “It’s Time to Change” and “Camisa Negra (Black Shirt),” and Norway’s Sivert Hoyem of the band Madrugada sang “Prisoner of the Road.” The next day, Jolie met with members of the High Commission Executive Committee in Geneva to discuss the new initiative for Afghani refugees. Antonio Guterres, the High Commissioner for Refugees, told them taht Jolie would become “our special envoy mainly for the most dramatic refugee situations that require a lot of advocacy.” help to mobilize international support and use her vision and insights to tackle “some of the most complex problems we face.”

At a subsequent press conference, Jolie declined to discuss details of the still-unformed plans to resettle the refugees in places where they could be assimilated into the native populations, saying only that “We are looking at a few countries in the world. We’re hoping to discuss it in the next few weeks, but we want to research it properly and do it well.” Jolie often downgrades her own input in the commission, telling people how she “never went to college,” and doesn’t have a decent education, but she has demonstrated in the past ten years that she has a very keen intelligence and absorbs knowledge from anyone she works with – whether it’s a refugee mother in Kenya or Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute. Testifying before Congress or meeting with the press, she combines her easy charm with mountains of facts and statistics, leaving her audiences reeling.

She told the press that “My personal experiences with UNHCR have been moving, sometimes heartbreaking, but always rewarding and unforgettable.” After discussing a few specific places and people, like Somali refugees who had made it to Libya only to be displaced again when that civil war broke out, she talked about her March visit to Afghanistan. In the village of Qala Gadu, north of Kabul, she visited a schools whose teachers and female students are frequently attacked. A girl named Sahira promised to make it to graduation if Jolie would help build a school. “It’s not hard to say ‘yes’ knowing that as an Afghan her word is her bond. An education is her basic human right and she should not be denied it any longer. Sahira is he future of Afghanistan. After decades of displacement and many years of war, we are entering a defining moment for Afghanistan.”

Jolie was referring to the September 20^th murder of Burhanuddin Rabbani, the Afghani peace negotiator who had been working on a cease fire with the Taliban.

Working on the problem of Afghan refugees in Iran would require a level of diplomatic access that Americans do not have in that country, unless that American is a major movie star and the Iranian film industry is very, very interested in making a movie with her. Iranian producer Ali Sartipi has said that he is in negotiations with Jolie’s managers. “We intend to get the okay from Angelina Jolie and then we want to enter negotiations with the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance (on whether or not she would be allowed to work there.)”

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45-47 Park Place, New York City

Centering around a exhibit of Danny Goldfield’s photographic essay of the multinational, multi-cultural scope of New York City’s children, the Park 51 Islamic Community Center has opened its doors to give the City a taste of things to come. A small orchestra of Middle Eastern musicians played in the background as people representing the breadth of New York’s ethnic mix mingled and admired the photographs.

Park 51 is located at 45-47 Park Place, two blocks north and a half block east of the northeastern corner of the land called Ground Zero. The existing buildings though technically separate were joined by a previous owner. It was severely damaged when it had a jet engine land on its roof on September 11, 2001, and is small by New York standards, a mere eleven stories. It used to be a Burlington Coat Factory and was abandoned for years and finally purchased at a reduced rate by the Cordoba Project, founded by Sufi Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his wife Daisy Khan, in partnership with real estate developer Sharif El-Gamal.. The Raufs have since left the project, allegedly because of differences with El-Gamal.

The “opening” is temporary. The buildings will be demolished and a new 15-story building put up in their place. Attempts to have the building declared historically important last year were rejected.

Yes, it is the infamous “Ground Zero Mosque,” which isn’t at Ground Zero, doesn’t overlook Ground Zero and isn’t planned as a mosque. Sharif El-Gamal is a 38-year-old Brooklynite with an Egyptian father and Polish-Catholic mother who happens to belong to the Jewish Community Center and has a wife who converted to Islam and two children. Welcome to New York, the whole world in five boroughs.

The site was not chosen for its proximity to Ground Zero, but for its combination of proximity to the revitalized and thriving Tribeca area of Manhattan and its bargain-basement price of $4.85 million. The neighborhood is fairly run-down and the Park 51 project is viewed as an important step to helping revive this small corner of the East Side. Well, it’s viewed that way by people who choose to see the larger picture of revitalization for those pockets of Manhattan that have been overlooked. To a lot of people who don’t even know where the hell Manhattan is, it’s a “victory mosque for terrorists” that “overlooks Ground Zero.” Well, maybe if one has x-ray vision and can see through two square blocks of buildings to look down at the site. On the other hand, if you can stand on the damaged roof and look up, you see the rising tower of the new World Trade Center looking down on Park 51. So, who has the “victory view” of whom?

El-Gamal says that the biggest mistake the center made was not involving the families of 9-11 in the project. It was not enough for the developers to know that they wanted a multi-cultural center for all residents of the area, they failed to explain that from the beginning. “We made incredible mistakes.” El-Gamal told the Associated Press in his Manhattan office. The new center will be modeled after the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan’s Upper West Side. El-Gamal explained that “I wanted my daiughter to learn how to swim, so I took her to the JCC, and when I walked in, I said, ‘Wow. This is great.’ The biggest mistake we made was not to include 9-11 families.” The center’s advisory board now includes a 9-11 family member. El-Gamal said that at first, “we didn’t understant that we had a responsibility to discuss our private project with family members that lost loved ones…..[we did not] really connect…..[now] we’re very committed to having them involved in our project. We’re really listening.” El-Gamal noted that the photographer being exhibited is Jewish.

If it follows the model of the Jewish Community Center, it will not be a religious facility, but a community center open to all. The plans call for exhibition space for artists, a theater, a gym, a pool, activities rooms, classrooms, a non-denominational prayer space and a 9-11 memorial. It would be a space where students could find something to do after school and seniors could find something to do during the day. It would provide a nearby space for office workers to work out on their lunch hours. As the project progresses, they will finalize the plans based on what the neighborhood will need as it hopefully moves forward from the porn shops and empty store fronts that surround it, as the street prostitutes move on to more friendly streets.

The open house was a quiet success in sharp contrast to the vicious street demonstrations that plagued this building last year. It showed the community a small look into the future of this project, complete with a deeply profound reminder of what makes New York City unique in this nation. As Hillary Rodham Clinton famously said, it’s the only place in American where one can be told to “go home” in every language on the planet.

These a two of the pictures from Huffington Post’s New York edition slide show…..

Attendees at the Park 51 exhibitSikhs at the exhibition

Related articles

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• Islamic Center Near Ground Zero Opens (time.com)
• The Side-eye: After All The Anger, Controversy, And Rah-Rah Park51 The “Ground Zero Mosque” Opens Without Protest Or Incident in NYC (bossip.com)

Okay, if Assange didn’t want to go through with it, all he had to do was return the rumored $1,459,790 advance for the book. Then his lawyers and Canongate’s lawyers could hash it out. Little tiny problem, however. Assange had spent all the advance money, supposedly on his legal fees fighting extradition to answer questions in two sexual assault cases being investigated in Sweden. That was another case of Assange making a promise and changing his mind. He promised the Swedish prosecutors that, if they just let him make a fast business trip to England, he’d come right back so they could complete the investigation. That was a year ago. The Swedish authorities finally got tired of waiting and issued a warrant for his extradition in December, 2010.

Canongate got tired of waiting as well. They are publishing the first draft. Well, they need to do something to re-coup their $1,459,790, don’t they? It’s not like Assange can pay the money back. The book is being released tomorrow, under strict security to prevent Assange from doing anything to stop it, though the only thing he possibly could do is release the book himself on WikiLeaks, which would sort of undermine the whole thing.

The BBC, which was given an advance copy, said that the book tells of Assange’s life growing up in Australia, how he became involved with computers and with hacking. In relating the beginnings of WikiLeaks, Assange presented his view of what he does. He says he does not oppose privacy, but opposes secrecy by institutions “to protect themselves against the truth of the evil they have done.” He claims that “disclosure is my business, but we don’t deal in gossip.” So, what “evil” was the American embassy in Rome involved in when discussing Prime Minister Berlusconi’s sexual hijinks and why wasn’t that “gossip”? Most of the published State Department cables were little more than local gossip about political figures in various countries.

The book contains attacks against “the mainstream media” in general and his former publishing partner, the Guardian newspaper which Assange said “double-crossed” him.

It also relates what Assange refuses to discuss with Swedish prosecutors – his version of the two sexual encounters that led to the charges against him. He claims that the relationship (only one is mentioned in the report) was consensual, and he can’t see how anything that happened could be considered rape. In his opinion, the reason for the accusation is malice, entrapment or a misunderstanding. In one case, he is accused of entering a woman while she slept, and in the other of coercing sex without a condom. Assange said “I may be a chauvinist pig of some sort, but I am no rapist.” That’s sort of up to the laws of Sweden, which define both of those acts a rape. Sweden does have some of the broadest rape laws in the world.

This has really not been Assange’s best month. First, his hoard of State Department cables was “leaked” onto the net, now his unfinished autobiography is being “leaked” to bookstores around the world. There is nothing worse for a leaker than being leaked. And I promise not to take that sentence where the imagery wants to take me……

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• Julian Assange publishers to release autobiography without his consent (guardian.co.uk)
• WikiLeaks Chief Memoir Published, Against His Will (abcnews.go.com)
• English publisher releasing Julian Assange’s memoir without his approval (theglobeandmail.com)
• WikiLeaks Founder Loses Control of His Memoir (wired.com)
• Mycaptain: Unauthorised Julian Assange autobiography due out (bbc.co.uk)
• How Much Would You Pay For British Prison Coffee? (lezgetreal.com)

Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) paid $1,400 in October for several staff members to attend a pro-transit conference in Portland, Oregon, called Rail-Volution. Rep. Rick Larsen (D-Wash.) paid $400 for a social worker to do a crisis-management seminar during his “biennial office retreat.” Roll Call did not report how much the retreat cost or where it was held. But it’s the most recent “training” expense that is really raising eyebrows.

Republican Representatives Larry Bucshon, Dan Burton and Todd Young paid $500 each for one staffer and Rep. Todd Rokita paid $1,000 for two staffers to attend an April training course called Hoosier Congressional Policy Leadership Series run by the Indaina Family Institute, an affiliate of the Family Research Council. This seminar dealt with the “problem” of same sex marriage.

The Indiana Family Institute is a political action committee. They helped fund an ad campaign attacking Rep. Joe Donnelly because he voted for Obamacare. The ad called it, “the biggest expansion of abortion in decades,” which is a total lie.

It is a violation of House rules for taxpayer funds to be used for political purposes. The House Administration Committee’s “member Handbook,” however, says that “ordinary and necessary expenses for Members or employees to attend conference, seminars, briefings, professional training, and informational programs related to the official and representational duties to the district from which elected.” And Josh Gillespie, Rep. Burton’s communications director, says the training is done by the IFI’s non-profit arm, not their PAC. That allows Gillespie to say that “any money coming from our office is not going to any political activity.”

The IFI describes their Hoosier Congressional Policy Leadership Series as monthly classes to “advance conservative policy and faith-based servant leadership principles” in Indiana “community leaders.” They meet monthly from April to November.

It’s those words “faith-based servant leadership principles” that are truly troubling. How is a faith-based servant a leader? Whose servant? The word “servant” denotes being subservient to someone, doesn’t it? And if this servant is “faith-based” does that indicate that the “leader” is actually a servant of God or Jesus Christ? Just how does one get orders from God? Don’t most of us consider it a sign of mental illness for someone to hear voices? If those orders come from someone else, what gives that person the authority to speak for God? Isn’t taking orders from a cleric….well….isn’t that one of the things we are supposed sending our young people overseas to fight – a theocracy in the Middle East?

We have a Republican majority in the House and a Republican minority in the Senate who are demanding that we cut billions out of our social programs, scrap Medicaid and Social Security and Medicare, cut off funding for the arts, for scientific research, for space exploration, for everything that they hate. But those same people are abusing their expense accounts to send staffers off to learn how to propagandize and abusing their positions to live in their offices with us picking up the tabs for their utilities and added security.

John Boehner has said that Congress is making major cuts to their budget. The cuts allegedly equal firing one staffer each. They aren’t deep enough. They need to be evicted from their offices so the taxpayer can save some money on those four office buildings and they need to have their “seminar and conference” allowance cut. They want their staffers to learn about an issue? Teach them to Google. At least that’s free.

Related articles

• Servant-Leadership (injesus.wordpress.com)
• How Real Servants Act (lls70.wordpress.com)
• What Is Servant Leadership? An Interview with Pastor Dino Rizzo (shawnsblogspot.wordpress.com)
• Genuine Service or Self-Serving Theatrics (instrument-rated-theology.com)
• Doulos (gracecommunities.wordpress.com)

posted 9/2/11

Three days. That is all it took for this to happen. Goddess, it boggles the mind. If you want to help in Vermont, follow the link to these folks’ website.

About Us

As a result of Tropical Storm Irene, Vermont has experienced the worst natural disaster since 1927. Across the state of Vermont, there has been a huge outpouring of support from community members looking to volunteer throughout the state. Sarah Waterman and the Reality Venture Capital team has taken on the challenge of bridging the communication gap between volunteers and those in need.

In the hours following the storm, Sarah, with the help, resources, and support of co-workers Matt Sisto and Katy Kent at Reality VC, set up vtresponse.com. The goal of the website is to be an informational resource for volunteers ready to help, listing the who, what, when, where and how of everything related to this natural disaster. The Reality VC team has been in communication with town clerks offices, hundreds of people across the state and even Governor Peter Shumlin.

Spearheading the project, Sarah’s experience in disaster relief comes from her work in Biloxi, MS after Hurricane Katrina… Sarah holds a Master of Public Administration degree from UNC, with a concentration in Public Health. Her master’s research focused on disaster preparedness and response…

Safety has been a major concern during this undertaking. It is understood that although people have been ready to volunteer, time needs to be given for professionals to go in and assess any damages and insure the safety of roads, structures, etc.

Social media has played a huge role in the relief effort. The hashtag #VTresponse quickly became popular Monday morning on Twitter, and real-time updates of the situation across the state have been prevalent. Even Governor Shumlin has continuously updated his Twitter account throughout the storm and aftermath. By Monday evening, vtresponse.com had over 8,000 visits to the site. Two days later the site had received over 5,000 emails and 95,000 page views.

A true grassroots effort, vtresponse.com has been largely successful due to the overwhelming desire of Vermonters to help their fellow Vermonters during this difficult time, something that is not surprising at all to residents state wide. In the wake of such a terrible disaster, a strong sense of community has risen and given validation that Vermont will come out of this on top.

From their website.

Two human beings are dead because of aggressive actions by the Bay Area Rapid Transit police, Oscar Grant on January 1, 2009 and Charles Blair Hill on July 3 of this year. Is Anonymous protesting those deaths? No. Anonymous is protesting BART directors decision to cut cell phone service inside their stations in advance of a planned protest.

The Bay Area Rapid Transit Police are a 296 member force, 206 of whom are fully accredited California police officers with the ability to act anywhere in the state. Their primary responsibility is the 104 miles and 44 stations of the San Francisco subway system and its heavy rail connections to cities on the east side of San Franisco Bay. BART served over 300,000 passengers daily. In May, 2004, BART became the first transit system in America to offer cell phone service access to all the major carriers, and in 2008, added access to a local carrier. This isn’t a right (just ask anyone who rides any other city’s rapid transit system), it’s an accommodation for the convenience of BART’s passengers and which involved the installation of underground cell towers and contracts with the carriers.

The first victim, Oscar Grant was part of a rowdy group celebrating New Year’s and was shot in the back while on the ground and restrained. The BART officer who shot him, Johannes Mehserle, claimed that he thought he had taken out his Taser and thought that Grant was reaching for a weapon. On July 8, 2010, a jury found Mehserle guilty of involuntary manslaughter and was sentenced to two years, minus time served. He served his sentence in a private cell in Los Angeles and was released on parole on June 13, 2011. There is a civil lawsuit for wrongful death pending as well as a Federal Justice Department investigation for possible charges under the Civil Rights Act. (That’s how the Feds get involved in a controversial case without putting the defendant into double jeopardy.)

Twenty days after Mehserle’s release, BART police shot and killed Charles Blair Hill, homeless and intoxicated. The officers claimed Hill was lunging at them with a knife. Eye witnesses claim Hill, who they agree was wielding a broken bottle, could have been subdued with a Taser and the officers were in contact with Hill for less than a minute before shooting him. One of the officers, James Crowell, had been accepted to the FBI and was working his last few days on BART. He is now training for his new position. Crowell was not the officer who shot Hill. That officer has only been on the force for 18 months.

In response to the public uproar over the shooting, BART’s Chief of Police Kenton Rainey released the 911 call made by station personnel as well as the security camera video of the incident. However, the video camera angle did not include Hill. There were around 40 witnesses on the platform at the time.

And there has been public uproar. Every newspaper in the Bay Area has editorialized on the excesses of the BART police. Blogs and newspapers around the country have weighed in on this. The criticisms are nearly universal. And then, there was the protest on July 11.

July 11 BART protest

One of the least safe places in the world to hold a protest is an underground rail station, particularly when those protests involve climbing on trains, jamming other people into cars, pushing, shoving and generally threatening the safety of innocent passengers, including children. The protests presented a real danger of real injury to the innocent. The protesters were not content to picket the station entrances or the headquarters buildings. They took the protests into the station. All BART service was suspended for thirty minutes. Have you seen those Toshiba commercials – if we don’t include the built-in wi-fi an army of zombies will be created? A hundred thousand people were delayed that evening. The potentials are limitless – someone didn’t make it to the pharmacy before it closed and couldn’t pick up a vital medication, some child was dropped off by a car pool and his/her parents weren’t home. There are real lives and real deadlines and real schedules that were impacted. BART didn’t suffer from the delay, unless they had to pay overtime to employees, it was those 100,000 or more passengers who suffered in small and potentially large ways.

When a second protest was announced for last Thursday, BART’s executives shut down cell phone service in the stations to prevent communication between potential protesters. The organizers said they would send out instructions in text messages and on social networks about where to gather.

Civic Center station protest

That is what Anonymous is protesting – not the human lives, not the justice system, not the lack of progress on the Hill investigation, but the shut-down of a service that is provided as a convenience to passengers. No one has a right to that service. It is provided purely at BART’s discretion. The shut-down is being investigated as possibly illegal.

So, what did the boys and girls at Anonymous do to protest the shut-down of this convenience – last week they hacked into BART’s customer service site, which has 55,000 registered users, removed the private information of 2,000 customers and published that information online. Two thousand customers. Not BART employees, nor anyone involved in either shooting. Once again, to protest one thing, they attacked bystanders, they created collateral damage.

Wednesday, they hacked into the BART police union and then published the personal information of BART police officers. They did not attack the people responsible for shutting down the cell service, BART chief spokesman Linton Johnson, who suggested the shut-diown, and the police leadership and BART’s interim general manager Sherwood Wakeman, who approved the action.

Union president Jesse Sekhon told San Francisco’s KGO-TV that “I can’t believe that this type of criminal act happened.” Interim General Manager Sherwood Wakeman issued a statement in which he condemned the “attack on the working men and women of BART. We are deeply concerned about the safety and security of our employees and their families.”

The protesters and others have compared the shut-down of internet service in the stations to the shut-downs ordered by Hosni Mubarak during the January/February uprising that took down his regime in Egypt. They are insisting this is a free speech issue.

London’s riots are proof that there is a dividing line between civil disobedience and criminal anarchy. When that line is crossed, as it was in the BART station protest, when innocent lives are impacted or endangered, the protest loses its power. Mahatma Gandhi didn’t take down British colonial rule in India by having people pushed off subway platforms. And the citizen journalists and computer geniuses who kept the uprising going in Egypt didn’t endanger the wives and children of security officers or policemen. They kept the networks alive. They proved that no one can stop the signal. Had they exposed the families of government lackeys, they would have been no better than the regime they were fighting to take down. They fought to protect the innocent, not harm them.

Anonymous keeps proving that they don’t know how to disrupt productively, don’t know how to spread their messages or target their protests. All they know how to do is hack and dump the personal information of people who have no responsibility for what they are protesting.

Who knows? Maybe they don’t have a message or a goal or an ideology. Maybe all they have is an ability and they are so intoxicated by the power that they just latch on to anything that takes their interest for the moment. The only difference between “anonymous” and “annoyance” is four letters.

Related articles

• Anonymous BART Protests of the Day (geeks.thedailywh.at)
• Hackers strike at BART again, release data on police officers (digitaltrends.com)
• Hackers release BART cops’ personal info (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• What the Bart protests have in common with Tahrir Square | Amy Goodman (guardian.co.uk)
• Hackers again target Bart website (bbc.co.uk)

Via Twitter, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi announced the final three members of the “super committee” charged with coming up with an additional $1.2 trillion in budget cuts by Thanksgiving. The committee consists of three each from the two parties and the two chambers of Congress.

Rep. James E. Clyburn

Pelosi has chosen South Carolina Representative James E. Clyburn, whose district includes the cities of Florence and Sumter and portions of Columbia and Charleston. Clyburn has served in the House since 1993 and was House Majority Whip under Pelosi when she was Speaker. He is currently the third-ranking Democrat in the House, and one of the top ranking African Americans in Congress. He is considered a liberal, and ranks 77^th most liberal member with a National Journal score of 81, based on his votes. That means his voting record shows that 81% of the Congress is to is right. He has strong positions on health care, education, organized labor and environmental issues. Clyburn, like the other two men named by Pelosi, is a frequent guest on television programs discussing Congressional activities.

Rep. Chris VanHollen

Chris VanHollen has been representing Maryland’s 8^th district since 2003. His district borders the District of Columbia on it north and is one of the most educated and affluent districts in America. The primary employers of his constituents are the government and government contractors. He is the ranking Democrat on the Budget Committee and is also involved in environmental issues.

Rep. Xavier Becerra

Xavier Becerra has also been serving since 2003, representing California’s 31^st district, which anchors in Los Angeles, then spreads west to Hollywood and south to Alameda. If you have ever seen the movie Volcano with Tommy Lee Jones, well Becerra’s district wraps around the primary location of the eruption. It is a socio-economically and racially diverse district. Becerra’s appearances on television have shown a man a bit more to the progressive end of the spectrum, but not ravingly ideological. Becerra’s parents were working-class immigrants.

The inclusion of Clyburn and Becerra help the committee avoid the appearance of being a ‘white man’s club” with a token woman. Now, of the twelve, we have one woman, one African-American and one Hispanic to go along with those 9 white guys. To be representative of our nation, the committee would have to have been 6 women and 6 men, with two African-Americans, two Hispanics and one Asian among them.

All the nominees are veteran lawmakers, and though Pat Toomey had Tea Party support, none are known as ideological hardliners. The hard line is between the two parties. The Republicans insist that all budget negotiations can only include cuts, while the Democrats insist that we need tax reform and an increase in revenues. The Tea Partiers who have made the media rounds have said that they favor elimination of tax breaks with a lower of rates, which happens to be President Obama’s position.

Senator Dick Durbin, who was a member of the Gang of Six, said the if the super committee would begin with what his group negotiated, then all they would need to do is tweak. If they try to start from scratch, they will never make the deadline.

What do most Americans want? The polls that have been conducted over the course of the seven months since the Republicans took control of the House have all pretty much said the same thing….we want jobs, not spending cuts. We want a fair tax system. We understand that some reform is needed in the entitlement programs, but we don’t want privatization. With a committee made up of so many moderate and veteran lawmakers, maybe we have a chance at a rational resolution to this nonsense.

Related articles

• Here Are Nancy Pelosi’s Picks For The “Super-Committee” (businessinsider.com)
• Pelosi Chooses Clyburn, Van Hollen, Becerra For Deficits Super Panel (npr.org)

Speaker John Boehner

Nine down, three to go for the “super committee” to create a budget policy for the next ten year and whose constitutionality is being challenged. Let’s see, the House and Senate are supposed to reconcile bills after they are written and passed, and anything that they pass is only valid for the two years this particular Congress is in session and can be repealed, overturned, or has no force of law after the next biennial election. I think that covers the constitutional issues.

So, ignoring the constitutionality of this “super committee,” Speaker John Boehner has named Representatives Jeb

Hensarling of Texas, Dave Camp and Fred Upton both of Michigan to represent the Republican majority in the House. House Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has named Senators John Kyl of Arizona, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Robert Portman of Ohio to represent the Republican minority in the Senate. They are joining Senators Patty Murray of Washington, Max Baucus of Montana and John Kerry of Massachusetts who were named by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Still to go are House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s three picks, the House’s Democratic minority members.

What? No Paul Ryan? No Eric Cantor? No Jason Chaffetz? I’m positively gobsmacked.

Sen. Pat Toomey

Okay, Toomey won his seat with Tea Party support, but he’s the only person named so far who voted against the recent debt ceiling bill, and for the damnedest reason – he was “concerned that the long-term cuts over the next decade will not materialize. All Congress has to do to override this bill’s spending restraints in the future is pass another law that overrides them. If Congress is truly serious about cutting spending, it would mandate serious spending cuts in next year’s budget — the only year in which cuts are actually guaranteed.” OMG! A Congressman who understands the law. What a concept! Or, a Congressman who understands that the whole shebang was just political theater to damage President Obama and the Democrats and wasn’t worth buttkiss, except that it caused our credit rating to be downgraded. Toomey, by the way, was a three-term congressman who lost his first Senate bid against Arlen Specter in 2004 and then beat Joe Sestak in 2010 by a mere 2.02%.

Sen. Jon Kyl

Jon Kyl, Senate Minority Whip, has already announced that he is retiring next year, so he really can’t be bullied into any ideological position other than his own. It’s pointless to threaten him with a Tea Party primary, but he’s a staunch conservative, most recently noticed for his “mis-statement” that 90% of Planned Parenthood’s business was abortions. Kyl tends to shoot his mouth first and then find out the facts.

Sen. Robert Portman

Robert Portman is a strange choice. He held two cabinet positions under George W. Bush, U. S. Trade Representative and Director of the Office of Management and Budget, but as a Congressman, his record was almost Democratic – he authored or co-authored bills to trade Costa Rica’s debt for preservation of the rain forests, reform the Internal Revenue Service, curb unfunded mandates (like Bush’s Medicare drug program), expand pensions and IRAs for small businesses and create Cincinnati’s National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, eliminate capital gains taxes on most homes, promoted drug prevention and education programs and a bill to help prisoners reenter society.

The House appointments are just as far off the Tea Party.

Rep. Dave Camp

Dave Camp represents Michigan’s 4^th district, which is a sprawling piece of northern Michigan with only four cities of any appreciable size. Michigan right now is one of those states in the claws of a Republican majority in both houses and the governorship where holy hell is breaking loose over the Republican agenda, particularly the governor’s power to dissolve local governments and appoint emergency managers. Camp is Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee – the guys who decide where the money goes.

Rep. Fred Upton

Fred Upton has been representing the Michigan 6^th district since 1987, and his district includes Kalamazoo, Portage and the town of Benton Harbor, the one that made history with the appointment of a financial manager who was in cahoots with the people who want to take over their public beach for an exclusive, expensive development. He is Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling

Jeb Hensarling is a five-termer from Texas and the chairman of the House Republican Conference. He is expected to counter-weight the Democratic co-chair, Senator Patty Murray, who is the chairman of the Senate Democratic Campaign committee. They are the two expected to protect the political positions of their parties.  Hensarling and Murray will be co-chairing the committee.

Former Senator Alan Simpson had only one thing to say about the people appointed to this “super committee” – where are the Gang of Six? As he pointed out, they have been working on this for the past six months and know what is needed and possible. Leaving them out is ridiculous in his view because the members of this super-committee will have to be educated before they can do anything intelligent (he also had nothing complimentary to say about Max Baucus who was a member of the Simpson-Bowles commission.)

The super committee has until Thanksgiving weekend to come up with $1.2 trillion in cuts over the next ten years, none of which will really have any impact because they can be undone in 2013 when the new Congress is sworn in. If they don’t come up with a plan, the back-up kicks in and automatic cuts will be imposed.

The chances that the “Super Committee” will come up with something viable, intelligent, effective, job creating, fair, balanced, and lacking in ideology? Nil, none, nada, never happen, at least that’s the assessment of all the pundits and most Americans. The Republicans have done too good a job convincing people that government in any form is bad for them to be able to participate in the fine art of governance. Their goal, first, last and every since 2000 has been the creation of a single-party state, the “permanent majority,” you know, like Syria.

　          

 

Related articles

• Six Republicans named to ‘super committee’ (marketwatch.com)
• Murray: All is on table in debt “super committee” (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• McConnell, Boehner Make ‘Super Congress’ Appointments (huffingtonpost.com)
• Debt ‘super-committee’ takes form (bbc.co.uk)
• Baucus added to debt super committee – msnbc.com (news.google.com)

This election will not be over for some time, because of Waukasha County’s portion of Senate District 8. At 11:30 p.m. Central Time, the one remaining of the six recall elections was not going to be decided until Wednesday. An investigation into Waukasha County has already been called for.

The Republicans have held three of the recalled seats and the Democrats have gained two.

To recap….the Wisconsin state senate consists of 33 districts. Nineteen were held by Republicans and 14 by Democrats. After the Walker anti-collective bargaining law was shoved through the Senate in violation of the state’s open meeting law, recall petitions were circulated. Recalls in Wisconsin can only be called on legislators who have been in office more than one year, and the state elects only half the Senate every other year. Six Republicans and 3 Democrats were recalled. August 9, was D-Day for the recall elections for the Republicans. Democrats needed to take three senate seats to gain control of the Wisconsin Senate and break the one-party rule of Governor Scott Walker, Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald and Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald (Scott’s baby brother).

Polls in the larger communities didn’t close until 9 p.m. Central time because Wisconsin polls don’t close until everyone who was in line at 8 p.m. has had an opportunity to vote. Turnout in the recall elections was very heavy, matching if not exceeding the turnouts for presidential races. The Senate districts in Wisconsin were established by a Republican state Senate ten years ago to be Republican districts. They have been solidly Republican districts ever since.

The decided races and the results follow, incumbent Republicans are listed first:

2^nd district, Robert Cowles v. Nancy Nusbaum, was called for Republican Cowles at 9:18 p.m. Central (10:18 Eastern). This was not a surprise, the 2^nd is a very rural district.

10^th district, Sheila Harsdorf v. Shelly Moore, called for Republican Harsdorf at 9:23 p.m. Central (10:23 Eastern), also not a surprise, also a rural district.

 14^th district, Luther Olsen v. Fred Clark, called for Republican Olson at 10:00 p.m. Central (11 Eastern), again, a very rural district, but Olson won by only 4%.

Senator-elect Jessica King

18^th district, Randy Hopper v. Jessica King. Hopper led in this race for most of the evening, but never by more than 500 votes, and without the results from the city of Oshkosh which was King’s strongest base. At 97% of the results in, King’s lead broke to 1,200 votes. Called for Democrat King at 10:39 p.m. Central (11:39 Eastern) to roaring cheers from the crowd in Madison who were at MSNBC’s broadcast site.

Senator-elect Jennifer Shilling

32^nd district Dan Kapanke v. Jennifer Shilling. Shilling led right out of the post in this one. Democrat Shilling was declared the winner at 10:08 p.m. Central (11:08 Eastern). The votes in the city of LaCrosse tipped the balance in this one.

This election has probably set records for money. Alberta Darling raised $1.5 million, but received $6.5 million from Super PACs, and the majority of that money came from the Koch brothers’ groups. It is estimated that over $30 million was spent on this election.

MSNBC’s Ed Schultz reported live from Madison in a crowd of Democrats, union members, farmers, teachers, firefighters, police officers. The Wisconsinites Ed talked with spoke of cuts to schools amounting to one-third of the staff in small towns. They told of policies that favor agribusiness over small family farms. They also talked about the next 15 months, and the overriding strategy of the Democrats in Wisconsin, how they will stay on the ground and engaging voters on a personal level because they know the money will be behind the Republicans.

The big problem is the 8^th district, Alberta Darling v. Sandy Pasch. Darling led substantially in the early returns, but after an hour, Pasch overtook Darling. This was considered the bellweather district on Walker’s policies. Darling has been a rubber stamp for Walker. She has also been referred to as the “Sharron Angle of Wisconsin,” because every time she speaks, factcheck.org goes into overdrive.

Then, Waukasha County threw a monkey wrench into the works This is where County Clerk Kathy Nicholas misplaced 14,000 votes in the Supreme Court election in April for two days, stripping Democrat Joanne Kloppenberg of her win with the only district to go 3 to 1 for Prosser. There were accusations out of Waukasha County that bags of paper ballots were opened, something that should not have happened unless and until those paper ballots were needed for a verified recount.

Initially, the clerk’s office told Think Progress that their results couldn’t possibly be ready before midnight local time. By 12:30, they were saying the results wouldn’t be ready until Wednesday. Waukasha uses the same election machines as the rest of the state and is a suburban district, not a city like Oshkosh which got its votes in in just two hours and forty minutes. Wisconsin State Senator Lena Taylor did tell Ed Schultz that there were a lot of absentee ballots involved in the Darling-Pasch race, so there is a possibility that Waukasha has one person with an abacus counting the absentee ballots.

Democratic Representative Tammy Baldwin asked in April for a Federal Justice Department investigation into Waukasha County and Kathy Nicholas. We are still waiting. The investigation should have started long before this critical election in Wisconsin. Nicholas should never have been placed in the position of determining any election ever again, no less one that will determine the majority in the State Senate.

McAfee, the global computer security, has identified 72 companies, governments and organizations that have been systematically hacked over the past five years, all in a manner that eluded detection because the hacks were the equivalent of sleeper-cell spies. In the case of the United Nations, the hackers entered the secretariat in Geneva and simply sat inside the computers collecting data for over two years.

It is suspected that the perpetrators are the Chinese, though the “state actor” has not been formally identified.

Among the hackees were the governments of the United States, Taiwan, India, South Korea, Vietnam and Canada; the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the World Anti-Doping Agency; along with companies ranging from defense contractors to tech companies.

In a 14-page report, McAfee vice president of threat research, Dmitiri Alperovitch, wrote, “Even we were surprised by the enormous diversity of the victim organizations and were taken aback by the audacity of the perpetrators. What is happening to all this data…is largely still an open question. However, if even a fraction of it is used to build better competing products or beat a competitor at a key negotiation (due to having stolen the other team’s playbook), the loss represents a massive economic threat.”

The extent of the hacking was discovered in March when researchers were reviewing the logs of a “command and control” server that they had discovered in 2009 while investigating breaches at defense companies. The attacks have been named “Operation Shady RAT (remote access tool)” and the earliest dates to 2006. Some attacks lasted only a month, while the attack on the Olympic Committee of one Asian nation went on for 28 months.

Alperovitch told Reuters News Service, “Companies and government agencies are getting raped and pillaged every day. They are losing economic advantage and national secrets to unscrupulous competitors. This is the biggest transfer of wealth in terms of intellectual property in history. The scale at which this is occurring is really, really frightening.” All 72 victims have been notified and the attacks are under investigation by law enforcement agencies around the world.

The circumstantial evidence points to China. The Olympic Committee hacks were done just before the 2008 Beijing Games. Taiwan has been a PR problem for China since the anti-communists removed themselves to the island after the post-World War II civil war. Taiwan’s economy flourished in the first few decades while China floundered under communist rule. Though Russia is a possible suspect, the targets are of more interest to China.

Vijay Mukhi, an Indian cyber-expert, told Reuters that some Asian governments like India are very vulnerable to hacking from China. “I’m not surprised because that’s what China does. They are gradually dominating the cyberworld. I would call it child’s play (for a hacker to get access to Indian government data)…I would say we’re in the stone age.”

But Hwang Mi-kyung, of the leading South Korean cyber security company Ahnlab, said it is too soon to assume that China is the sole perpetrator. “I think we’re beyond the stage where we should be focusing on the technical aspect of addressing individual attacks and instead we should think more in terms of what we can do policywise. For that, the involvement of the Chinese government is very important.”

On Wednesday, Black Hat, the conference of security professionals, convened in Las Vegas. Though the hacks by Anonymous and LulzSec are on the agenda, Operation Shady RAT is far more dangerous. Anonymous and LulzSec have actually done very little operational damage to the companies and organizations they have attacked, but Operation Shady RAT gathers information and accesses operational systems that allow damage at the core of these victims.

Alperovitch noted in his report, “I am convinced that every company in every conceivable industry with significant size and valuable intellectual property and trade secrets has been compromised (or will be shortly), with the great majority of victims rarely discovering the intrusion or its impact. In fact, I divide the entire set of Fortune Global 2000 firms into two categories: those who know they’ve been compromised and those that don’t yet know.”

Related articles

• Operation Shady RAT hacking campaign stealing data worldwide (electronista.com)
• Biggest-ever series of cyber- attacks uncovered, UN hit (vanguardngr.com)
• McAfee Uncovers Hacking of 72 Companies (linearfix.wordpress.com)
• Biggest-ever series of cyber attacks revealed (business.financialpost.com)
• You: Cyber-hacking: prolonged series of attacks by one country uncovered (guardian.co.uk)
• State actor seen behind “enormous” wave of cyber attacks (reuters.com)
• Massive cyber attack hit Canadian targets (theprovince.com)

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords

At 7:04 p.m. Eastern Time, the House of Representatives passed the debt ceiling bill. The final vote two minutes later was 269 in favor, 161 opposed and 3 not voting. The ayes were 174 Republicans and 95 Democrats.  When the vote passed the 216 mark, applause broke out.  Speaker Boehner was wielding the gavel himself for this vote.

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords flew in from Houston, where she is still receiving treatment for the bullet that passed through her head last January, to cast her vote.  Rep. Giffords’ presence was the primary reason for all the applause.

The bill will now go to the Senate for a vote tomorrow.

It turns out that last night we only had half the information on the debt ceiling/deficit deal. Here is the full picture…..

Immediately, we have a $900 billion increase in the debt ceiling and an equal amount in cuts. The $900 billion increase in the debt ceiling will actually come in two stages, $400 billion today and $500 billion after a vote of “no opposition.” There will be a bi-partisan, bi-cameral 12-member committee established to determine where more cuts will be made, but there is no restriction on revenues or where the cuts would be made. The committee will consist of three member-groups nominated by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker John Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. By November, that committiee must present a comprehensive plan with either an additional $1.5 trillion in cuts or a balanced budget amendment. The debt ceiling will be raise $1.2 trillion in November, no matter what happens with the commission, but failure to agree to cuts will result in an automatic $1.2 trillion across the board cut in Federal Executive Branch spending. The bi-partisan, bi-cameral “super committee” will be the third or fourth such committee to try to find the best ways to bring our government spending under control.

There is a possibility, if John Boehner and Mitch McConnell have enough balls, that the committee will not include the most extreme members of their caucuses. Reid will definitely choose moderates from the Senate and Pelosi might throw in one Progressive, but she is also more likely to go for the middle of her caucus rather than the extremists. Both parties have learned, we hope, in the past few weeks that the majority of Americans are not members of either extreme and we want balanced, fair, moderate governance instead of extreme ideology.

The first $900 billion in cuts will come from “security” funds – defense, Homeland Security, veterans’ benefits, the State Department. Before anyone goes ballistic about reducing Homeland Security spending, far too much of it has been a huge waste. For the first eight years, there was a major flaw in Homeland Security plans. Dick Cheney, in an excess of paranoia, refused to allow inter-connectedness between jurisdictions. Homeland Security was just behind the two wars and the unfunded Medicare drug program as a giant sucking sound at the Treasury.

Of the $900 billion in immediate cuts, $350 billion will come directly from the Defense Department. If the “trigger” that cuts $1.2 trillion ends up happening in November, most of those cuts will come from the Defense Department. Defense is 20% of our budget, equal to Social Security and Medicare and as much money as is spent by the rest of the world combined. We could lose 87% of the Defense budget and still spend more than China.

It’s a lot of “what ifs” and speculation and targets. Now comes the hard part. Working out the “balanced approach” to bringing our government’s spending under control.

The key part of this deal is the fact that nothing is off the table in the committee, and that includes making changes to our revenue process. Now, we get to drag out all those video clips of all those Tea Partiers saying that they support gutting the special interest tax breaks, loopholes and credits in exchange for a lower set of tax rates. Now, we get to force them to put our money where their mouths were. The Bush tax cuts are due to expire in January, and if there is as much disarray over those as there was over this deal, we could see them automatically end with an increase in $3.9 trillion in revenue as a consequence. At the very least, the companies that are showing record profits have until December to start producing jobs or their sob-story excuse of “don’t tax job creators” goes right out the window, along with their tax cuts.

This may still not be enough to keep us from being downgraded. Standards and Poors was demanding a $4 trillion spending cut in 10 years. That was actually what the President offered in the negotiations – the “plan” he allegedly never offered according to the Republican talking points.

On the positive side, the cuts do not impact the things we most desperately need to restore the economy, the funds for investment and education.

The first vote on the plan is tentatively set for this afternoon in the Senate.

This deal still does not represent anything that remotely resembles rational governance. Everyone agrees on the end point – lower government spending, stimulus to create jobs. What is not agreed upon is the how. History says that not taxing the rich does not create jobs. History says the government must spend money to build our way out of a recession or depression. But as long as a small part of the Republican Party has as its goal the dismantling of the Federal government, this deadlock will continue. The Tea Party goal is not to solve the problems, but to return us to the failed Articles of Confederation and 50 independent governments with only joint defense as glue. We rejected that idea in Iraq when all they wanted were three independent states. Why should be accept the idea of 17 times as much division?

Related articles

• Debt deal: Obama, Hill leaders break through (politico.com)
• Congress Must Trim Deficit to Avoid Broader Cuts (nytimes.com)
• Debt ceiling: What they’ll be voting on (money.cnn.com)
• Sen. Lee inclined not to support debt-limit deal (thehill.com)
• A Few Thoughts on the Debt Limit Deal (news.firedoglake.com)
• A Tea Party Triumph (online.wsj.com)

There are very few reasons for a people to revolt against their government. Many times, the causes overlap, but there are some identifiable categories.

The most obvious one is a people revolting against a foreign occupier. As long as there have been men with imperial ambitions, there have been local populations willing to fight and die to evict the foreigners. In modern times, this includes Vietnam, Algeria, Zimbabwe, India, and because of our stupidity, Iraq and Afghanistan. Reality is, the so-called “insurgents” are fighting a foreign occupying army.

Majority populations revolt against minority rulers. These usually overlap into other causes. The majority/minority line can be drawn by race, ethnicity or religion.

The rarest of all revolutions is political. The American colonies didn’t revolt because they were occupied. We were the occupiers. We revolted because we were denied representation in our own republic. The one most important thing we are not taught about Great Britain before 1776 is that there had been two political revolutions there before ours and they had established, for all time, that the rights of a free people are greater than the divine rights of kings. Our battle cry was not “dump the king!” It was “no taxation without representation!”

But the greatest underlying reason for revolution is and always has been economics. The French kept returning to monarchies after their revolutions because they were never about monarchy but about the intolerable income gap between the aristocracy and the poor. The Arab Spring is about economics, with the occasional majority/minority overlap like Syrian and Bahrain. The electoral revolution that put Juan Peron in power was economic, as was the one that removed him. The revolutions that ended communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were partly political, partly foreign-occupation but mostly economic. It wasn’t the calls to freedom of Radio Free Europe that inspired them. It was, according to friends we had in Russia, the unstoppable influence of West German television and its images of consumerism and wealth that took down the communist governments.

What does this have to do with us, here, now and in the future? Real unemployment and underemployment are sitting at over 20% of working age, able-bodied Americans. The income loss in minorities has topped 50%, while for whites it’s a 16% loss of real income. Millions of us have lost our homes while the people who bought our packaged mortgages made billions. Millions more are on track to be foreclosed. Seventy-three percent of us say that the economy is getting worse. That’s up 11% in the Gallup Daily tracking poll just since July 6. At the same time, the Economic Confidence Index fell to minus 46, down 16 points. Americans are learning a new word “oligarch” – and it is gaining in the rankings of bad things, alongside fascist, communist and socialist. The right wing did such a great job of blurring what “fascist” means, that the left had to find a new way to explain what this economic situation is all about. An oligarchy is government of, by and for the rich without the hereditary element of aristocracy.

Even if we don’t know who contributes to 501(c) accounts to create attacks ads, we do know who contributes directly to sitting Congressmen. In an oligarchy, the contributors are the very rich, and that is who is contributing to John Boehner’s campaign chest. It’s stupid to claim you are fighting for working class Americans when you are accepting campaign contributions from hedge fund manager John Paulson, #20 on the Forbes 400 list, a man worth over $136 billion, a man who pays only 15% capital gains rate on his commissions instead of the 36% top income tax rate.

We are not stupid out here. We have seen the direct line between the oligarchs and the governors who are cutting our services to give tax breaks to the rich. We were just informed by one of those oligarchs, Steve Wynn, that he prefers making his billions in communist countries. We have finally had something happen, England’s phone hacking scandal, that has made us question the principle source of right wing propaganda. We can see the real history of taxation, job creation and the triple failure of trickle-down economics. The battle cry of the left is not “kill the oligarchs!” it’s “look it up.” That’s what we tell those who try to repeat to us the talking points of Fox News and the Republican Party. Look it up…learn the truth. For the truth shall set you free.

John Boehner likes to say that “The American People Have Spoken,” referring to the 25% of eligible voters who handed him the Speaker’s gavel. No, Mr. Boehner, we really haven’t, and you don’t want us to. The hacking attacks of Anonymous against massive corporations are only the smallest part of what can and will happen if you and your party continue to lie to yourselves and not hear what we are still trying to say peacefully.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt looked at the rise of the Communist Party in the early days of the Great Depression and realized that the only way to save this nation was to save our economy before the message of “kill the oligarchs” took hold. He understood that a limited amount of socialism not only did not limit the possibilities of capitalism, but saved a whole lot of capitalist ass. That is what the Republican Party does not comprehend today. This is class warfare, and they are on the wrong side of it.

Right now, we want fairness and balance. We want the thousands of special tax breaks for the wealthiest eliminated and the tax rates lowered. We want real small businesses to get the breaks, not “tax code small businesses” like Cargill and Koch Industries. We want jobs, not sweatshops and part-time work that leaves us begging for food stamps and Medicaid for our children. We want our houses back – the ones that were taken from us because greedy mortgage holders used the adjustable rates to drive us out of them. We could afford our homes at the rates we originally had. We could not afford them when those rates were jacked up month after month for no reason but greed. We don’t want handouts – we want a chance to share in the wealth of this nation, to restore the wealth of this nation, to stop shipping the wealth of this nation overseas.

Most of all, we want the Republican Party to stop lying to itself and to us. And if they had their heads out of their donors’ butts, they would understand the dangers.

Revolutions are usually about economics.

Related articles

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• Oligarchy and the Debt Ceiling (drumsnwhistles.com)
• How Washington’s favorite pundits explain why we’re doomed (salon.com)

This morning, a few more Republican lawmakers got in front the of the cameras and whined that they support eliminating tax loopholes as long as there is a lowering of tax rates. It’s the latest grand Republican spin.

This is what most Americans want to see. And it is what President Obama asked for in January in his State of the Union Speech. It is the best way to raise revenues, share the sacrifice and make us more competitive in the global marketplace. It is the best way to lower our deficits, avoid more debt and put people to work. But what the Republicans are doing is beyond disingenuous. It is lying.

They have had six months to bring this idea to fruition. They have had six months to correct the nightmare of our burdensome tax code. They have refused to even mention the idea until it became the one Americans want and they need to cover their asses. They could not under any circumstances agree to anything that President Obama suggested, no matter how good it was for the country. They relied on their propaganda machine to make sure that almost half the people in this country didn’t remember any part of the State of the Union and are now being convinced that it the Republicans who brought forth this wonderful idea.

THEY ARE LYING. Tell them so. Tell them loudly and often. Tell them they can get their rich donors to pay their salaries because we don’t have the money to. Tell them they can get their freeloading butts out of our office buildings. Tell them we want PRESIDENT OBAMA’s plan for fair taxes and they should stop taking credit for something they did not propose.  Tell them to grow up and admit they are trying to steal the credit like some school bully taking credit for a good homework paper they stole.

Find your voice. Please.

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• VIDEO: President Obama US debt speech (bbc.co.uk)

Speaker John Boehner has given his response to the President’s press conference. He says that the talks broke down on two points.

First, there was an agreement to lower and flatten the tax rates, remove some of the special interest tax breaks and increase revenues in that manner. Boehner said that the President then suddenly asked for an additional $400 billion in revenues. In other words, it was the number, not the method that was at issue.

Second, the President’s plan did not cut enough from entitlements. The Republicans want the bulk of the cuts to come from Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The President wants them to come from discretionary spending and the military first and entitlements second.

Speaker Boehner says he does trust the President as a negotiator.

Boehner was disingenuous on one critical point. He claims that the President wants to raise taxes on “the American people.” That’s not accurate. When Boehner talks about “the American people” he’s talking about the rich and corporations that aren’t paying taxes right now. He keeps calling them “job creators” when they haven’t created jobs no matter how low their taxes have been dropped. It was the President’s demand that the Bush tax cuts on the highest earners be allowed to expire. That’s where the $400 billion was. Those highest earners have gotten a $40 billion a year break because of the Bush tax cuts just with a 4% increase in their tax rate.

Boehner says it’s the president who killed the deal because of that $400 billion over 10 years. Take your pick – both General Electric and Bank of America paid no taxes last year. The hedge fund manager tax dodge means that the 103 hedge fund and money managers on the Forbes 400 pay only 15% on their incomes, instead of the 32% that ordinary millionaires pay. They can make an argument that they need to protect small businessmen, but only if there is a redefinition of small business. A small business in the tax code should not be Cargill, with over 100,000 employees. It should not be Koch Industries or Walmarts. It should not be how a company is owned that qualifies it as a small business, but how big the business is. Boehner saying that he’s trying to protect “small businesses” is just more Republican nonsense. The guy who owns Clem’s Restaurant in my downtown is a small businessman, not David Koch.

Boehner said that he will be meeting with Congressional colleagues tonight to work out a deal, which they will then present to the President tomorrow. We will then find out who is willing to protect the middle class and the most vulnerable of us and who is trying to protect the super-rich and small businesses that aren’t small by any rational definition.

Republicans wanted to push the changes to the tax code to 2013 (in other words, don’t raise any revenues until after the election, but cut spending now) and be tied to killing the individual mandate in the health care law. That’s another case of the Republicans doing a kitchen-sink plan that mixes issues to blackmail the Democrats into whatever the Republicans want.

The bottom line is without a rational, logical, balanced deal, Moodys and Standards and Poors will cut our credit rating. That’s what they have told us, flat out. And they have made it very clear that any deal that does not include rational increases in revenue just won’t fly with the people we really have to get approval from. They will not accept a short term deal.

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President Obama took to the airwaves at 6 p.m. Eastern time to tell the American public that Speaker Boehner walked out of the debt ceiling negotiations and refused to take the President’s phone calls. The negotiations ground to a halt with Boehner saying once again that the President didn’t have a plan. Well, the President told us all what the plan was, what the offer was, and how the Republicans are willing to destroy the country’s economy and possibly the world’s rather than raise revenues in any way.

Fox News actually carried the whole press conference live, a move that comes as a shock to those who have watched them consistently deny their viewers the President’s words. Attempts to access the Speaker’s website, speaker.gov met with the message “server is too busy.”

The President made it clear that we cannot simply raise the debt ceiling. Our national credit rating is also dependent, to those who determine our credit rating, that we have a plan to reduce our debt and deficits.

“That’s all the American people want – fairness.” The President has responded to that with his offer. It’s a broad plan that both cuts spending and raises revenues without raising any tax rates. He admits that this plan could cost Democrats support, and that Democrats are willing to do that for the good of the nation.

Watching Fox News after the press conference was interesting. No matter what Chris Wallace tried to do, there was no way to spin this other than to say that the President took a shot at Republicans and laid the blame for the collapse of the negotiations on them. Wallace said that the Republicans have alleged that the President moved the goalposts on revenues, which the President denied in the press conference. Repubs say he demanded more revenues than the Gang of Six, but the President said the revenues requested were less than that. The Fox analysts are still saying the President hasn’t put forth any particulars of a plan, but neither have the Republicans in terms of these negotiations. Their idea of a detailed plan is the Ryan budget plan that is shorter than some papers I wrote in college, and the “cut, cap and balance” bill that didn’t lay out any details either, just a demand to slash spending, cap all government spending at 18% of GDP and pass a balanced budget amendment. Where are the details of spending cuts in that?

The President offered $1.65 trillion in cuts and asked for $1.3 trillion in new revenues. He refuses to put all these cuts on the backs of those who are most vulnerable. The right wing wants details? The Federal budget every year runs to hundreds of pages. Those are details. Agree to a target for cuts and then let the budget writers determine where. That is how this could have been handled if the budget had been debated in the same manner it has been for generations, instead of with this scorched earth attitude among House Republicans.

The President has “summoned” (Charles Krauthammer said that was “disgraceful”) to the White House at 11 a.m. Eastern on Saturday.

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House Majority Leader Eric Cantor

Journalist, television commentator and author Jonathan Alter published a book in 2010 called The Promise: President Obama, Year One. In it, he explained that Barack Obama is not a man prone to temper tantrums or even raising his voice. His staff has learned that the quieter he is, the more dangerous the situation is.

Someone needs to smack Eric Cantor up the side of the head with the book. Then, maybe he would understand just how far out in the danger zone he has put himself. Cantor walked out of last night’s meeting and beelined it to the press to whine about how the President had thrown a tantrum and stormed out of the meeting. Did not happen. President Obama doesn’t throw temper tantrums. When pushed far enough, he simply strikes as quietly and as focused as a raptor diving out of the sky. The woodchuck never knows that hawk is coming.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has been posturing and demagoging in these negotiations. He’s been using the time to establish his own power as the leader of the Republican caucus in the House. He’s jockeying to call a caucus meeting and replace John Boehner as Speaker. Last night, he launched into one of his pointless speeches in the meeting before anyone had a chance to even look at the proposals laid out before them. And he kept talking and talking and not letting anyone get any real work done. Finally, as the meeting was being wrapped up, and instructions were being given, Cantor started again. The President allegedly said, “Eric, don’t call my bluff. I’m going to the American people on this.” No yelling, no temper tantrum, just a simple statement – “Don’t call my bluff.”

Though most polls show people do not understand the actual facts about the debt ceiling and oppose raising it, the latest Quinnipiac poll shows Americans trust the President more than they trust the Republicans in Congress to fix the economy and they blame President Bush for the economy, not President Obama. One poll showed over half of all Americans divide the blame between Bush and the Republican House, with less than 10% blaming Obama. All polls show American support raising taxes on the rich by majorities that range from 70% to 80%. All polls, and the results of off-term elections are showing how little support the Republicans have for privatizing Medicare and cutting Social Security. The Republicans have lost the support of the AARP, which has always been a solid voter base for conservative positions. Wall Street and business leaders have told the Republicans to raise the debt ceiling. Every time the Republicans open their mouths, they cut off some part of their electorate. The Bachmann-King-Gohmert bill would pay the military first, pay our debt obligations second and leave most of the the recipients of those 70 million checks the government cuts every month out in the cold. That’s Social Security recipients, the disabled, medical providers and pensioners. Bachmann, King and Gohmert acknowledge that the government only receives revenues equal to 58% of its bills every month and cannot figure out what that means.

Listen to the “debate” between Republicans and Democrats for a while and you wonder just how stupid the Republicans think we are. They are still trying to sell “trickle down economics” when we all know that Carter and Clinton balanced the budget during their terms, the economy flourished under Clinton, and Reagan and Bush43 doubled and then quadrupled our national debt. What makes them think we believe those policies will magically work this time when they have failed so miserably in the past? The vast, overwhelming majority of us are not Glenn Beck fans brainwashed enough to believe that the economic policies of Calvin Coolidge did anything other than drive us into the Great Depression.

President Obama did not throw any kind of temper tantrum Wednesday evening. He quietly and emphatically informed Eric Cantor that it is time to compromise or lose the whole game. Without a clean increase in the debt ceiling, on August 2^nd the President will have to choose between paying our obligations on the national debt or cutting the paltry subsistence checks that the elderly, the disabled, the unemployed and the working poor (who are poor because of the hiring practices of the very rich) use to keep a roof over their heads and food in their bellies. Either way, the consequences for the Republicans will be horrific. They will either destroy the very people who fund their campaigns and their media outlets or they will destroy the 70 million people and institutions that rely on those checks for survival.

Go ahead, Mr. Cantor, make our year – force the President to choose who you and your caucus will destroy. The President didn’t throw a tantrum, he gave you a warning.

Related articles

• Cantor says Obama walked out of meeting (marketwatch.com)
• Eric Cantor Emerges as GOP Leader in Debt Ceiling Debate (socyberty.com)
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• Wednesday Debt Talks End On Tense Note As Obama Walks Out “Abruptly” (outsidethebeltway.com)
• Late Night: Moody’s Reviewing Downgrade of U.S. Credit Rating; Obama Slaps Down Eric Cantor. (skydancingblog.com)
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Prince William being teased about his artisitic "talent"

From shaking hands with movie stars to pressing their hands in clay, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge saw both extremes of life in Los Angeles.

The words “Skid Row” have long been used to mean the worst part of a city, but in Los Angeles, it is a real place, an area of the city with one of the largest concentrations of homeless in America and a persistent, generational poverty that decades of social programs has not been able to crack. It’s an area easily forgotten by those who can spend more on one dress than these people see in a lifetime.

The day began for the couple with a private brunch with actress Reese Witherspoon and Disney executive Bob Iger and others to raise awareness of Tusk, an African wildlife conservation charity. Then, they were driven to the Inner-City Arts Academy, a refuge for children who live in Skid Row. Along the way, they received a private tour of the slum and were told of the impact of the global recession on single mothers and their children.

Princess Catherine displayed a sense of place today, choosing to leave her $2,000 to $3,000 dresses at the Consul-General’s home and wearing a navy lace blouse and white pleated skirt from Britain’s Whistles retail chain, which only sell for around $330 according to their website. Not exactly K-Mart, but better than wearing Alexander McQueen.

Six elementary school students held up a banner welcoming the couple to the Arts Academy, while a small crowd of 150 cheered, waving both American and British flags. They met first with Academy director Chynthia Harnisch, who explained to them the nature of the community and the unique challenges of working there. After, they were escorted to a visual arts studio where the Duchess donned a smock to paint a snail with some student, then they worked in clay, making hand impressions in tablets and helped create a turtle. Kate worked on the shell while William helped with the body. The turtle parts will be fired, glazed and assembled this week before taking its place in the community garden.

The teenage dance class at the academy performed a routine for the royals that they have been rehearsing for six weeks. Iliana Samaniego, a member of the dance troupe, said they had noticed when the prince gave them a double-thumbs-up during the performance and was thrilled when he told them how “brilliant” they had been. “Just seeing the smile on Catherine, it was great.”

Enjoying the dance recital

Following their visit to Skid Row, they went to Studio 15 on the Sony Pictures Studio lot in Culver City for a meeting with ServiceNation: Mission Serve, a group that helps veterans find jobs when they muster out. This is an enormous problem right now, when even National Guardsmen and Guardswomen aren’t able to return to their jobs because of the recession. Though Prince William is guaranteed a job when he leaves the Royal Air Force, he is keenly aware of the problem of reducing military enlistments with the end of a war and how the global recession is effecting career prospects for the men and women he works with. Much of their tour of Canada was aimed at connecting with the Canadian forces who have served besides the British in so many conflicts. The couple rent a farmhouse near his base in Anglesey, Wales, where Kate is very much a part of the military wife community, even foregoing the usual royal staff to do her own grocery shopping. (Sometimes in the Royal family, rational choices skip a generation. Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, was kept in London while Prince Andrew was deployed and serving on naval vessels. Perhaps if she had been allowed to become part of the life and community of the Royal Navy, their lives would have turned out differently. Queen Elizabeth spent part of her early marriage, before becoming Queen, at the military base at Gibralter when Prince Philip was stationed there.)

Prince William is getting really good at speech-making, telling the families assembled at the event that “All the companies and employers taking part today are providing opportunities which mean something very immediate and personal to us. Catherine and I both have friends back in Britain who could benefit from a brilliant initiative like this.” Among the employers present were Mattel, Walmart, Warner Brothers and CBS. Ross Cohen, Mission Serve’s director said that all the employers attending the event must have jobs available. Cohen, a former army paratrooper who served in Afghanistan, said the such events are crucial for returning vets, with unemployment rates for young vets and their spouses reaching as high as 25%.

One Air Force veteran, 23-year-old Kelly York, was impressed that the royal couple had come to the job fair, saying “I’m sure that they had 50 million places they could go and see. The fact that they even take five minutes to stop here and say something to the veterans, that’s huge.” William and Kate helped prepare gift packages for children of deployed service members.

This was their final stop on their first overseas tour as a couple, and Princess Catherine’s first trip to North America. They boarded their flight home around 6:30 Eastern time.

Prince William’s previous trips abroad have been less high-profile, usually involving his charity work in Africa and groups that train or work in the wilderness. They have been more blue jeans and hiking boots than black tie. Princess Catherine has proven herself to be a perfect mix of regal, elegant and accessible. Her spur-of-the-moment decision in Canada to linger outside Sainte-Justine hospital and wave to the protesters instead of being whisked inside was an utterly brilliant gesture that acknowledged them and defanged them simultaneously.

There is a scene in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Scandal in Bohemia when the King of Bohemia, gazing on a portrait of American-born opera singer Irene Adler, tells Sherlock Holmes, “Would she not have made an admirable queen? It is a pity that she was not on my level.” How fortunate for the United Kingdom that social “levels” are no longer the measure of royal bride.

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It’s not a honeymoon trip, in spite of the timing. Prince Albert and Princess Charlene of Monaco will be arriving in Durban, South Africa, on Tuesday for a combination hometown wedding party and an International Olympic Committee meeting of monumental importance.

Prince Albert is a member of the International Olympic Committee which on Wednesday will announce the winner of the competition to host the 2018 Olympics. The three sites that have applied to host the 2018 Winter Olympics are Annecy, France, Munich, Germany and Pyeongchang, South Korea. Annecy is a small city on the French side of the Alps near the Swiss border, whose town center is charmingly medieval. Some events would take place at the venues built for the 1968 Olympics in nearby Grenoble. Pyeongchang is in the Taebaek Mountains of South Korea and is famous for its winter sports venues. Munich is in the southern Bavarian region of Germany, close to the Austrian border. Munich was the site of the 1972 Summer Olympics during which a group of Palestinian terrorists killed 11 Israeli athletes. Some events would be scheduled for the 1936 Winter Olympic venues at Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Both sites would like an opportunity to create new Olympic memories to fade the old ones. The 1936 Winter Olympics, which made an international star of a Norwegian skater named Sonja Henie, were overshadowed by the infamous 1936 Summer Games at Berlin, hosted by Adolf Hitler.

Princess Charlene’s native country is extremely proud of her marriage and the wedding services and celebrations were carried live on South African television. There are plans for a huge party in Durban in honor of the royal couple. In addition to the inclusion of a South African singer at the religious wedding on Saturday, Princess Charlene has vowed to introduce Monaco to the tradition of South Africa barbeque. It’s an interesting idea to contemplate – billionaires, Michelin three-and-four-star chefs, BBQ bibs and dripping ribs.

There has been no announcement of a honeymoon trip for the royal couple. Like Prince William and Princess Catherine, who also lived together before the wedding, a “honeymoon” no longer has the significance it used to. The relevant question these days about a royal “honeymoon” is where the heck do they go when they’ve already been so many places?

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Speaker John Boehner

Remember how John Boehner promised that THIS Congess was going to be fiscally responsible, transparent and ethical? That promise has gone the way of the one about concentrating on jobs, jobs, jobs.

The Daily Beast has reviewed the travel records for Congress, and the results are even worse than they were during the days when conservatives were falsely accusing Speaker Nancy Pelosi of using a government plane to fly to California every weekend.

Legally, lawmakers can travel at taxpayers’ expense or at the expense of others to attend meetings held by academic institutions and think tanks. That’s how 20 lawmakers from both parties spent a nice weekend in a 5-star hotel in Vienna for a conference on nuclear proliferation. The trip cost $11,250 per lawmaker and was paid for by the Aspen Institute, an international, non-partisan think tank founded in 1950.

So far this year, lawmakers have taken more than 200 trips paid for by outside groups at a total price tag of more than $1 million. That is almost double that spent in the same period in 2010.

Nine lawmakers and eight family members visited Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in April to meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu and visit the Gaza Strip border area. The trip, paid for by the American Israel Education Foundation, also included visits to religious tourist sites and museums. The total cost of the trip for the 17 Americans was $160,000.

The Turquoise Council of Americans and Eurasians paid for Republican Representatives Ted Poe of Texas and Scott Garrett of New Jersey to visit Turkey with their wives. Poe defends the trip, which hit pretty much all the biggest tourist attractions in Turkey, by pointing out that he is a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Turkey is in “a region that is in turmoil.” That one cost $21,000.

In February, it was the Aspen Institute again, spending $64,000 to send 13 lawmakers to Puerto Rico for talks about energy policy. In March, the American Enterprise Institute sent five Senators to Sea Island, Georgia, four a conference about “various federal issues.” Great golf course and fabulous accommodations, by the way. Bush held a G-8 there and it was a favorite vacation site of Eisenhower.

The Aspen Institute is the leader in funding Congressional travel at more than $6 million since 2001, with the American Israel Education Foundation coming in second at more than $3 million.

Then, there’s the trips paid for by the taxpayers. Six members of Congress went on the “Offshore Energy Tour” last month to the Gulf of Mexico to visit an offshore rig, a meet with oil industry representatives after Congress had voted to accelerate offshore drilling. Most of the trip’s costs were paid by the taxpayers, though Chevron paid for the helicopter to fly the six (five Repubs and 1 Dem) to the rig.

In addition to too many trips by too many people to Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as Egypt after the revolution and a couple to Benghazi, Libya, recently, there are numerous trips to such essential foreign sites as Brussels, London and Istanbul. In the first quarter of 2011, the Senate Foreign Relations Committe spent $326,000 on lawmaker and staff trips and the Senate Armed Services Committe spent $210,000.

House members are on track to spend 35% more than the House did last year on trips. The Senate isn’t quite up to that speed, with it looking like they will may only spend only half a million more than 2010 in 2011. But the year is only half over, and they have six months to catch up.

Remember how John Boehner promised, promised that the House would reduce costs in these financially troubling times. Promises, promises…….

Related articles

• Exclusive: Congressional Travel Spikes, Despite Vows of Austerity (thedailybeast.com)
• What Travel Austerity? Congress Globe-Trots in 2011 (newser.com)
• Will Members of Congress Get Paid in a Shutdown? (thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com)

President Bill Clinton (photo by USAToday)

For the full text of President Bill Clinton’s ideas for getting 14 million Americans back to work, you need to go to Newsweek’s website. In his article, President Clinton offers all the explanations and rationales for his proposals.

The Clinton Global Initiative has been a very successful agent of change in other countries. It has focused on community-based changes like incredibly small business loans co-signed by a group instead of national projects. Next week, the Initiative is convening its first conference in America to deal with America’s problems. Preliminary to that, President Clinton has put forward some of his ideas for speeding up a recovery. It’s a very good blend of “this is what has worked in the past” with “this is what we can do now.” There is only one thing missing – instructions on how to get legislators to care more about the people they supposedly work for than for the people who donate to their campaigns. As long as both sides keep saying they speak for The American People when neither side is listening to the American people, it doesn’t matter how many good ideas are put out there, they won’t be implemented.

Is there a reason to listen to President Clinton? Yes. He balanced the budget and left us with a surplus. He didn’t destroy the economy with any “socialist” agenda, but he did try to change the way health care is paid for. He fulfilled 77% of his campaign promises in his first two years, until the Republicans took over the House under Newt Gingrich. That 23% that he never delivered were all related to health care.

President Clinton ends his article with the acknowledgment that he had to go on the assumption that there will be no more stimulus money or tax incentives. He should have started with that statement and its follow-up paragraph about analyzing our situation realistically instead of trying to shove ideological square pegs into the round holes. Here, in brief, is what President Clinton suggests:

1. Speed up the process. A lot of people insist they saw nothing out of the stimulus funds. Well, most didn’t notice their tax breaks or see where their states used the money to plug budget holes. President Clinton focused on the time problem with gettting “shovel ready” project started. According to him, rebuilding an existing bridge should not require the same regulatory process as building a new bridge in virgin territory. Implementing this would require a co-operative process between state and federal regulators. He missed an essential ingredient at the state level. Vermont has the second-toughest environmental laws in the country, yet we put the stimulus funds into operation almost immediately. Like most states, we had a waiting list – projects that were already approved and just waiting for funding. Those projects could be started immediately. With the exception of the sudden need to replace a major bridge over Lake Champlain, nothing that has received stimulus funding in Vermont was a “new” project.

2. Cash for Startups: I have never understood why anyone thought a tax credit was beneficial. To get a $400 reduction in income taxes due in April, one had to spend around $2,000 the previous year installing a pellet stove. Having the $400 to apply to the stove would have been better. That is the essential problem with tax credits. One has to spend a lot of money to get a small decrease in next year’s taxes. President Clinton is proposing trading next year’s tax break for this year’s cash. Whatever a new company would receive as a tax incentive would be handed out right now to help meet the costs of starting business.

3. Jobs Galore In Energy: Everyone who is anyone in economics has been saying this for years – America’s future lies in getting ahead of the global curve in energy innovation. The economic history of the world is very simple actually. Nations go through the evolution of agriculture to trade to manufacturing to services. If they cannot maintain sufficient bases in all of the evolutionary stages, the economy collapses. We cannot return to the type of manufacturing we did twenty years ago. Those industries have moved on to less developed nations. We need new manufacturing options to plug the holes we left in our economy in our evolutionary short-sightedness.

5. Get The Utilities In On The Action: This initiative involves energy savings projects in homes and the way they could create jobs in an ever-expanding spiral from the savings realized on making buildings more energy efficient. There are a couple of caveats that need to be added his idea. You must have energy companies willing to forego raising their rates to compensate for any reduction in overall income. And you must have a community with a deep-seated belief that saving older properties is better than building new ones. There is a crisis in affordable housing in this country that cannot and will not be solved by putting up new housing developments. But rescuing older neighborhoods, upgrading and renovating buildings is more cost effective. There was a surprising discovery in the aftermath of a couple of hurricanes that hit the Carolinas several years ago. The older homes survived while the newer ones ended up in Tennessee.

6. State-by State Solutions: This is one point on which I will disagree with President Clinton. He is right that states can and do offer all kinds of incentives to attract businesses, but that competition between states is destructive. Large corporations have no morality, so they have no problem blackmailing states into passing favorable legislation to retain factories or to get incentive packages to locate there. These competitive incentive packages benefit no one, firstly because the price states pay for this corporate largesse is a loss of tax revenue. They are also responsible for something we saw during the fights over Wisconsin’s public sector unions. These incentive packages, the passage of right-to-work laws and loopholes in state employment laws that leave so many people without basic benefits, have drastically reduced what Americans think they deserve from their employers while increasing executive salaries to one of the highest income gaps in the world.

8. Paint ‘Em White: This one is getting a lot of laughs. President Clinton suggests that we can have a very simple, very cost effective reduction in cooling costs if we will just paint our flat, black-tar roofs white. He doesn’t mention what that will do to heating costs in winter. This is flat roofs on multi-story buildings only. Mayor Bloomberg of New York has this program and uses it for job training for young people.

9. Deals To Make Things: This section of President Clinton’s proposals is his view of what went wrong, where we have failed to properly explain things to the public and how great the problem is in getting everyone to address the problems realistically. It’s a nice analysis, with no instructions on how to achieve responsible behavior out of our representatives.

10. Train On The Job: We have known since before Bill Clinton was elected that the lack of apprenticeship programs in American industry was a major gap in our economy. Part of our present jobs crisis is an inability for people to find jobs in fields that they have trained for but that have dried up. Which goes hand-in-hand with

11. Teach Skills We Need: HE’s trying to figure out why our education system isn’t turning out people with the proper skill sets? Here’s a clue – our education systems suck. There is no cohesiveness with 50 states and thousands of school districts all marching to their own out-of-tune bands. We have put too much time and money into constantly trying to revise our education system and not enough into building on the superior system we once had. We should have been focusing on the gaps instead of changing what worked to conform to the latest fad in education.

12. Cut Corporate Taxes: Gee, President Obama’s idea – reduce the corporate tax rate, which is the second-highest in the world, but only in conjunction with eliminating the sweet tax deals that keep most large companies from paying anywhere near that rate. We’ve heard this one already. The Republicans will not defy Grover Norquist to do the right thing.

13. Enforce Trade Laws: Part of the reason the economy did so well, and our nation balanced its budget, was the way President Clinton handled things like off-shore holdings and trade agreements. President Obama has been trying to forge new deals. They are needed, along with international co-operation to end tax-sheltering.

Most of these ideas are not new. The basic problem is that no matter how many times they are proposed, they die in the arena of the next election. President Clinton left out the most important one – getting the attention of the American public and teaching them the facts about our economy and our future. If it were possible for rational voices to be heard over the propaganda, six million people would never have died in the Nazi gas chambers.

Angelina Jolie (photo by Gage Skidmore)

Seventy miles northwest Tunisia is the 7.8 square mile island of Lampedusa, the southern-most portion of Italy. The normal population of the island is around 4,500 souls who mostly survive on fishing the relatively shallow waters between the island and the north coast of Africa. Historically, the island has been a stop-over point for navies and air forces as far back as ships have sailed the Mediterranean.

Unfortunately, as the nearest foreign soil to North Africa, it is also a favorite destination for people fleeing persecution and revolution. It is closer to Tunisia than Cuba is to Florida and a lot safer to sail to. When the Tunisian revolution began last December, Lampedusa was the refuge of choice for foreign workers fleeing Tunisia. Then, when the Libyan rebellion began, Lampedusa was simply overwhelmed.

On Sunday, the head of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, arrived on Lampedusa and was joined a few hours later by UNHCR envoy Angelina Jolie. Jolie had spent the weekend visiting camps set up in Turkey for Syrian refugees.

Guterres thanked the people of Lampedusa, for whom being a transfer point for tens of thousands fleeing North Africa in the past six months has been an arduous task. He then offered a few observations about the political climate in Europe, where debates are raging over the high number of immigrants that have entered the continent from the Muslim world. He said that the number of migrants who have arrived in Europe “doesn’t correspond to the reality” of the number who have acutally gone elsewhere. In the past six months, the greatest number of refugees have been men and women who had contracted to work in Tunisia and Libya from countries all over the globe. What they have needed most is a means of returning to their homes. Many have arrived in sites like Lampedusa without proper documents for crossing international borders. Lampedusa is only one landing point for the tens of thousands who have evacuated Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Syria. Turkey is barely keeping track of the thousands who are fleeing the Assad regime’s brutal crackdown on protesters. Coping with the flood of humans arriving with nothing but what they carry has become a major crisis across the Mediterranean.

As a UNHCR envoy, Jolie has been closer in activity to George Clooney than to the kind of celebrity advocates for third world causes who fly in for photo ops and leave. Usually accompanied by no one other than a translator, Jolie visits the women and children in camps and on the road, climbing up the outside of buses if necessary, learns their stories and returns to the West to speak for them. And she is a powerful and eloquent speaker on their behalf, testifying in Congress, addressing the Washington press corps, bringing these stories to life with a natural ability at storytelling. She has also visited small villages in Africa with poverty advocate Jeffrey Sachs to learn what is really needed in these countries instead of hand-outs and charity trucks. With her partner, Brad Pitt, she has donated millions to recovery efforts in the United States after natural disasters and to these countries she has visited for the United Nations.

In spite of her insistence that she is an interested amateur who never went to college, Jolie is a very intelligent woman who has learned quickly and well, and become very good at assessing the situation on the ground and passing on to authorities her evaluations of what is needed to ease the suffering in refugee camps. Jolie doesn’t lecture the people she meets. She listens. Her choice to enter these camps dressed in local garb and her ability to connect with other mothers has proven to be her strength in this work, breaking down the cultural barriers that often keep women from telling their stories and having their voices heard on the international stage.

Related articles

• Angelina Jolie: Syrian Refugee Camp Visit (justjared.buzznet.com)
• Angelina Jolie to visit Syria refugees in Turkey (cbsnews.com)
• Actress Angelina Jolie to visit Syria refugees on Turkey’s border (theglobeandmail.com)
• More refugees fleeing Libya, Tunisia arrive in Italy (cnn.com)
• Angelina Jolie Video For World Refugee Day (popsugar.com)

First it was our own criminals and mental patients. They discovered that gun shows don’t do background checks, so they started buying guns at gun shows.

Then, it was the Mexican drug cartels. They figured out that the easiest way to get guns that were illegal in Mexico was to send some money to someone in America with instructions to go to gun shows. Since all the attention at the border is on those coming into the United States, not those going out, the smuggling was fairly easy.

Now, it’s al Qaida who have figured out the gun show loophole to what little the United States has in the way of gun control.

As far back as October of 2009, in a story in USA Today, the alarms have been going off about the gun show loophole – the way gun show sellers are not required to do background checks or are too lazy to be bothered even if the computer terminals for instant checks are available. Many don’t even bother to check identifications at all, or limit the amount of guns sold. Why should they? It’s not their responsibility to limit anyone’s second amendment rights.

Mayors Against Illegal Guns is a group of big city mayor trying to get the loophole closed because it is the method by which people acquire guns that are illegal in their cities. They have been conducting a sting operation at gun shows around the country to expose the danger. Their hidden camera tapes show people buying guns even after telling the sellers that they probably couldn’t pass a background check. The mayors’ efforts are echoed by the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. The television networks have highlighted the problem as has the editorial pages of scores of newspapers. The issue was brought up again after the Tucson tragedy.

There have been several attempts in congress to close the loophole. Naturally, the National Rifle Association has opposed it and pressured the legislators that it has contributed to to quash the bills. There is need for additional legislation to address a gaping hole in the background check system which is in place and used by licensed dealers. People who are on the terrorist watch lists – those who cannot get on an airplane – are not on the background check list. An Associated Press investigation showed that more than 200 people on the watch list legally bought guns last year. Representative Mike Quigley of Illinois tried to get an amendment closing that loophole onto the recently re-authorized Patriot Act, but it was voted down. The NRA opposed that one as well.

Now, the proponents of closing the loopholes have a new friend – al Qaida.

A videotape has been released for North America’s aspiring jihadis in which Adam Gadahn tells them how easy it is to obtain guns. Gadahn tells them “America is absolutely awash with easily obtainable firearms. You can go down to a gun show at the local convention center and come away with a fully automatic assault rifle, without a background check, and most likely without having to show an identification card. So, what are you waiting for?”

The National Instant Criminal Background Check System has stopped the sale of guns to almost 1.8 million criminals and others who are prohibited from buying guns. It has a deterrent factor and makes people who shouldn’t buy guns less likely to try to buy them from legitimate sources. But only 60% of all gun sales in America are conducted in licensed gun shops. The other 40% are private home sales and gun shows.

A recent investigation showed that those who are purchasing guns for Mexican cartels are walking away from gun shows with dozens of weapons at a time. If the people running these sales and selling these weapons had an ounce of common sense, they’d know these are not people buying guns for their own use. Who the hell needs a dozen automatic weapons?

Only six states (California, Colorado, Illinois, New York, Oregon and Rhode Island) have closed the loophole at gun shows. Connecticut, Maryland and Pennsylvania require background checks on handguns at gun shows. Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina and Nebraska require permits and a background check before a handgun sale. Florida does it on a county by county basis. Thirty-three states have no laws about background checks at gun shows. (Okay, my Vermont lege is recessed for the year. This will have to wait until next session. Honestly, this is an stupid oversight on our part because we know there are other things about this state that attract criminals from the flatlands.)

I’m not opposed to gun ownership, hunting or target shooting. I’m actually a crack shot, trained by my Dad, who taught riflery during World War II. I agree with my former governor Howard Dean, gun control has to be a local decision based on the local culture. But there are some parts of it that need to be national, and background checks to prevent criminals and the mentally ill from acquiring weapons, a better system for getting people on the no-sale list for mental reasons, banning guns and magazines that serve no purpose except to kill people, limiting the number of guns that can be purchased at one location at one time – all these things have to be national.

The National Rifle Association has draped itself in the Second Amendment for years, no matter what tragedies have occurred. It has managed to divert attention from the fact that it sanctions the sale of weapons by people who have no conscience or morality about who they sell to or how the weapons will be used.. It should be interesting seeing how the NRA manages the PR on supporting the unfettered sale of weapons to terrorists.

Related articles

• Watch NRA heads explode: Al Qaeda spokesman urges terrorists to buy lots of guns at gun shows (crooksandliars.com)
• Al-Qaeda Boosts Bloomberg’s Antigun Campaign (peregrine5700.wordpress.com)
• Al Qaeda Uses Lax ‘Gun Show’ Laws to Arm Terrorists (zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com)
• Dennis A. Henigan: The President on Guns: What Does it Mean? (huffingtonpost.com)
• New Al Qaeda Video: American Muslims Should Buy Guns, Start Shooting People (atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com)
• Why the NRA won’t talk gun control with Obama (cnn.com)

The political map

For about as long as I can remember, every little issue has created its own activist group. An umbrella like women’s rights has spawned dozens of groups focusing on specific aspects of the rights of women, often overlapping and competing with each other for our attention and our donations. Name the issue – abortion, LGBT, immigration, wildlife, the environment, children, the poor, the homeless, labor rights, alternative energy, topless beaches, save Firefly – it spawns a group. The time for splintered groups dividing the effort is over. We need a different view of activisim.

No matter what issue we believe in, if it is in any way, shape, manner or form remotely “leftist” we need to come together and stop just fighting for ourselves. That covers most of the issues that matter to most of us. Anything that promotes an individual right, from voting to divorce to same sex marriage to abortion, falls into this category. Anything that seeks to protect those who need to be protected – children, the disabled, the undereducated, the poor, the elderly, migrant workers, immigrants, prisoners – are in this category. Anything that demands respect for those who are different from the narrow range of what conservatives call “real Americans” – minorities, gays, lesbians, transgendered persons, the blind, the deaf, the developmentally delayed – all fall into that category. In the past couple of decades, we have developed a common enemy.

At its core, that enemy is being financed by a group of people whose only interest is in increasing their billions of dollars of personal wealth. They have funded conservative “think tanks” to add legitimacy to their positions and utilize a vast network of media sources to spread their messages. They have callously used the religious beliefs of a core of conservative Christians to bolster support for ideas that have nothing to do with Christianity. They fund the political campaigns of not just the mainstream Republican Party, but of the Tea Party as well, while creating a patina of “grassroots” organization for that splinter of the Republicans.

They have names – the Koch brothers, the Waltons, Rupert Murdoch, Erik Prince, a large percentage of the Forbes 400 wealthiest Americans. They have funded the Heritage Foundation, ALEC, Americans for Prosperity, Patients United Now, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Center for Public Intergrity, the Cato Institute, the Federalsit Society, Mercatus Center, Institute for Humane Studies, Institute for Justice, Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, Institute for Energy Research, Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, Manhattan Institute, George C. Marshall Institute, Reason Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, the Aspen Institute. Many have names that sound so very American, so positive, but their agenda isn’t.

This has all been a very long time in coming, going all the way back into the 1970′s with barricades to a national school curriculum. It was absolutely essential to prevent any attempts to standardize American education and eliminate the American mythology. During the Carter administration it was necessary to demonize a President who believed in universal human rights because he threatened those “pro-American” dictators who let American industry exploit the natural resources of third-world countries.

Glenn Beck gave away a lot of it, possibly by accident. He started praising the presidency of Calvin Coolidge. In his warped version of American history, the Coolidge era and the time that preceded it were the golden age of America – the years before creeping socialism started taking over our country. Beck talked about free markets and no taxation and no entitlements and what a great country we were back then. It’s a very popular version of the American myth….the world of Pollyanna and Meet Me In St. Louis. The world where no one looks behind the curtain at the realities in that orphanage or where the servants came from or what conditions were like in the mills and factories that existed in that free market economy. All that anyone sees in this myth is the upper middle class in their nice Victorian houses, not the tenements, the disease, the social problems. This is the world that the moneyed elite want us to return to – when only the right people could vote, when the poor and the elderly were left to die young, many from the effects of working for those very wealthy elite in their gated estates.

In the past few months, giddy with victory, Republican state legislatures have pushed laws that limit labor rights, limit access to medical care for the poor, limit voting rights, limit abortion, limit funding for education in the public sector, limit funding for hospitals and municipal services, limit funding for police to patrol our streets, limit funding for firefighters to save our humble homes. They are taking funds that were used for these purposes to give even more tax breaks to corporations and individuals who already don’t pay their fair share and telling their brainwashed followers that eliminating taxes on the rich will create jobs for those who have none. They claim they want to “save” our entitlement programs that provide minimal support for those who most desperately need it, by privatizing those systems, turning them over to Wall Street and the insurance industry who don’t give a rat’s ass if people starve to death as long as they have our money to play with. “Trickle down economics” gave us the Great Depression, the Reagan recession and the Bush recession. It has only taken thirty years to convince millions of Americans that somehow, someway, the policies that collapsed our economy three times will actually have a different result this time.

And all the time, they blur the definitions of “socialism” and “communism” so that their followers will believe that social programs lead to totalitarian despotic rule. They have convinced millions that our president wasn’t just born in Kenya, he’s a Muslim Maoist dictator seeking to take away our basic rights. That one took convincing the easily duped that the single greatest accomplishment of their beloved Ronald Reagan – the death of global communism – never happened.

Right now, the AFL-CIO is ticked off because they haven’t gotten enough “support” from Washington Democrats in their state-by-state battles for labor rights. LGBT groups are ticked off because there hasn’t been enough movement against DADT and DOMA. Women’s groups are ticked off because it hasn’t been possible to stop the anti-abortion and anti-Planned Parenthood laws. Immigration rights groups are ticked off over “papers please” laws and the demonizing of Hispanics. Too many are threatening to withdraw support from the Democratic Party because they have their noses out of joint and refuse to accept the idea that the Republicans found a way, with filibusters in the last congress and a majority in this congress and in state legislatures to push their agenda and thwart ours. Lashing out at the Democrats is not going to solve anything.

We need to stop nursing our individual grudges and sulking over our individual losses and set-backs. We need to stop looking at the world through our tunneled vision of what needs to be done for our cause and see how interrelated we all are. We have one shot and one shot only to save our nation – the 2012 election. We must keep President Obama in the White House (at the rate the Repubs are coming up with candidates, that shouldn’t be too hard), get a more-than 60 member majority in the Senate to prevent filibustering and a clear 235 majority in the House to counter those conservative Democrats who can’t be counted on to do the right thing. To do that, we need to speak with one voice for all the discarded, the disenfranchised, the marginalized.

We cannot keep putting down their supporters as being stupid or bigoted. Many of them have very real beliefs that need to be addressed rationally and respectfully. The facts are available and support our position that the Republican agenda has failed repeatedly in the past and cannot succeed now. We must keep exposing where the money is coming from and who is dictating the Republican agenda. We must make people understand that our rights do not infringe on theirs.

We need to co-ordinate our efforts. Groups that have individually registered new voters can work together, not just to register voters but to assist registered voters in obtaining those photo ID’s that are now being required. Many will need assistance in purchasing those and will need transportation to the places where they are issued. It will not be enough this time to hand out voter registration cards at supermarkets. Some states are pushing laws that will demand a birth certificate for registration to vote. People will need help obtaining them. They can cost up to $30. The effort will have go far beyond what we have done in the past to prevent the disenfranchisement of our fellow citizens. The legal battles that have gone into fighting anti-gay and anti-abortion legislation need to see how they are related to the fight against anti-Muslim legislation. It’s all of a piece – legislation that violates our First Amendment right from establishment of civil laws based on religion and imposition of limits on our religious freedom. We also need lawyers to start fighting the propaganda with defamation suits. It ‘s not enough for us to say that Planned Parenthood is being lied about – we need the liars to be sued for their lies. Every lawmaker who gets up and says that Planned Parenthood’s business is 90% abortions should be sued. Every media personality who defames a liberal should be sued. We have courts for a reason, and it is time we stopped playing the “I won’t dignify that with a response” game.

They have used the Supreme Court to create a way to fund Republican campaigns without accountability. States are trying to cut off labor union funds for Democrats. But they cannot prevent funding the Democrats. We have the power here, not them. We put hundreds of millions of dollars into the campaign coffers of Barack Obama, one little donation at a time. We need to do the same for the DNC. It will mean a sacrifice for our individual activist groups, because we can’t afford to do both. But it will benefit those groups in the long term. There is no point in giving money to save the whales if we don’t have the political power to save them.

For the next 17 months, we need to put aside our individual causes and fight for a single purpose – to preserve and expand everything we gained in the second half of the twentieth century and put our nation on the right path to into the twenty-first. We got rid of those parts of the Constitution that favored the elite. No individual has rights unless we all do. That’s the true meaning of those founding documents – We the people….All people are endowed… Those words are our power.

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• Critic of Boehner’s Catholic cred faces tough questions of his own (catholicnewsagency.com)
• American Winter: The Right’s War on Birth Control and Education (firedoglake.com)
• Court nominee withdraws in wake of filibuster (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Late Clash on Abortion Shows Conservatives Sway (nytimes.com)
• Politics in Education: An Examination Racial Discrimination and Its Impact on Student Education (socyberty.com)
• Digital Illiteracy Still Plagues Law Makers – Severe Focus on Abortion Rights Proves It – Is This Where Our Lawmaking Knowledge Leaves Off or Even Begins? Scary… (ducknetweb.blogspot.com)
• Against the real enemy: why organized labor should join with entrepreneurs (washingtonmonthly.com)
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In the early afternoon of May 17, 2011, without much fanfare, People For The American Way’s Right Wing Watch posted an expose of an little group called ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. The story was picked up last night by Lawrence O’Donnell. Television news channels lack the format time for a full story of ALEC’s activities. For the full story go to pfaw.org, just before you go to alec.org and get a look at Mitch Daniels on their home page.

ALEC’s banner reads “Limited Government, Free Markets, Federalism” They do not mean the federalism we learned about in civics and history classes – an evolving relationship between the state governments and the federal government that James Madison asserted were “in fact but different agents and trustees of the people, constituted with different powers,” or that Alexander Hamilton said would balance each other because if the people’s rights “are invaded by either, they can make use of the other as the instrument of redress.” No. This federalism is actually the “New Federalsim” of Ronald Reagan – a devolution of the federal government. It used to be called “states’ rights” but that term conjures up visions of Jim Crow laws and a unacceptable imbalance of civil rights from one state or region to another. States’ rights is also the South’s preferred explanation for the Civil War. That’s intended to draw attention away from the fact that the “states’ right” they were fighting for was slavery.

The basic concept behind this New Federalism is that all citizens of the United States are not entitled to the same protections and rights in each of the fifty states, the District of Columbia and our numerous possessions abroad. Hence, it is acceptable in the mind of the New Federalist that people in one state have to present their birth certificates (if they can settle on which one is the legal one) in order to register to vote, but in another state all one needs is proof of residence. It is acceptable in their minds that some states will allow same-sex marriage, but other states don’t even have to recognize the legality of marriages performed in those states. As far as a New Federalist is concerned, we need to reverse every Supreme Court decision since Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected in 1932, through the appointment of John Roberts as Chief Justice.

You know those block grants that Paul Ryan wants to put in the federal budget instead of directed money to the states to fulfill federal programs? That’s a core tenet of the New Federalism. It was Ronald Reagan’s brainchild and it was a brat to the nth degree. Every state in the country had to raise its taxes to compensate for the loss of enough funding to cover federally mandated programs. They like to quote Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis for this one, in his dissent in New State Ice Co. V. Liebmann: “It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.” The funny thing is, this is exactly what Bill Clinton did in reforming welfare. Any state that had a really good idea for containing costs and improving services had a carte blanche to do so. Tommy Thompson, a Republican by the way, as governor of Wisconsin did an outstanding job with this one. Under Bush 43, the whole thing slid backwards. That’s the dichotomy of the New Federalists. The most successful use of their core value was under Clinton. The worst was under Reagan and Bush 43. Returning power to the states should not be done in such a way as it bankrupts the states.

So, there is this group called ALEC and it writes legislation that it then hands over to sympathetic state legislators who rally Republicans around it. Their power is based on a long series of lies – unions destroy jobs, the rich will trickle down their wealth to the rest of us, some group who aren’t “us” are responsible for all of America’s problems, the unemployed choose to be unemployed, America was founded as a Christian nation. But the reality is they believe in just one thing – “The business of America is business.” They like to forget that the man who said that, Calvin Coolidge, set in place the policies that resulted, just seven months after he left office, in The Great Depression. Then again, they really, really love to forget that it was Republicans who were in office in the periods leading up to our worst economic crises.

ALEC’s legislative agenda is very simple. It consists of repealing and/or defunding health care reform and blocking any attempts to create nationalized health; increasing corporate power while under cutting workers’ rights; a tax policy that relieves corporations, businesses and the wealthy of tax obligations; a voucher system for private schools so the state can pay for their kids’ educations; restricting voting rights by requiring photo ID’s and birth certificates and denying voting rights to students at out-of-state colleges; obstruction of environmental protections; punishing illegal workers and not punishing their employers. You will find these principles on the agendas of every state that has a Republican governor with Republican control of at least one house of the legislature.

Who funded the formation of ALEC? Three guesses and the first two Kochs don’t count. Yup, Charles Koch. Along with ExxonMobil, the Scaife family (banking, oil, Forbes 400), the Coors family (beer), the Bradley family (old self-sustaining foundation) and the Olin family (disbanded foundation).

And who runs ALEC? The board of directors includes representatives from Altria, AT&T, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Koch Industries, Kraft, PhRMA, Wal-Mart, Peabody Energy, and State Farm Insurance. ALEC has around 300 corporate partners and over 80% of their financing comes from corporations. The American Association for Justice says that the work is handled by the corporate defense law firm of Shook, Hardy & Bacon. They are the firm corporations go to when they need to be defended from lawsuits that claim their practices or products hurt people.

During the Clinton impeachment fiasco, Hillary said that there was a “vast right-wing conspiracy.” Most of us laughed at her. We couldn’t believe that such a thing existed. We should have listened to her. Hillary was right and we had better be paying attention now. This conspiracy has managed to convince a whole lot of fools that “take back our country” means restoring the America of the 1950′s – all apple pie and nuclear families and everyone going to church on Sunday and blue birds in the clear skies while Daddy mowed that manicured lawn. In reality, the country that the people paying for all this legislative activity want to take us back to is the one that Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover were running – just before they collapsed the world’s economies.

Never forget that just after promising to never raise taxes on the rich at the Economic Club of New York, John Boehner shook hands with David Koch.

Related articles

• “Open records (and “ALEC”) in Wisconsin” and related posts (prairieweather.typepad.com)
• Yes, Prof. Cronon, Let’s Talk About ALEC (bigthink.com)
• Another Secret Corporate Sponsored Organization: ALEC (iflizwerequeen.com)
• What’s the source of these anti-union measures? Meet ALEC, a right-wing group that writes state laws for Republicans (americablog.com)
• Conservative Group Drafts, Promotes Anti-EPA Bills in State Legislatures (nytimes.com)
• New Hampshire GOP Seeks to Suppress Student Voters — Since They “Vote Their Feelings” (crooksandliars.com)
• SAVE Dade, Ros-Lehtinen reach out to lesbian, gay, bisexual & transgender Republicans (miamiherald.typepad.com)
• Wisconsin Is Part of a Nation of Laws (lezgetreal.com)
• Thank You, Scott Walker (lezgetreal.com)

The Ugandan Message of Hate

The Ugandan Parliament is about to debate the Kill The Gays Bill, (see below) which could literally execute LGBT Ugandans and imprison their friends, families, doctors, priests/pastors, etc. The Bill is currently completed its Committee hearing and is up for public comment. Now IS the time to comment.

It may pass it in the NEXT DAY OR TWO.

GetEQUAL says: – We need to let Uganda know that they cannot write the genocide of its LGBT citizens into law under the cover of darkness. The whole world is watching, the whole world is justifiably outraged, and the whole world will hold them accountable for their actions.

PROTEST
Tuesday, May 10 · 4:00pm – 6:00pm

Embassy of the Republic of Uganda -
5911 16th Street, NW

Please bring signs, banners, and your best protest chants Tuesday afternoon to the Ugandan Embassy as we let Uganda know that we stand in solidarity LGBT Ugandans, their families and friends, and we will not sit idly by while Members of Parliament debate whether to imprison or kill them.

IF YOU CANNOT BE THERE IN PERSON, YOU CAN STILL HELP!

Please call, write and fax the Ugandan Ambassador to the United States:

His Excellency Professor Perezi K. Kamunanwire
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Tel: (202) 726 4758
Fax: (202) 726 1727
pkamunanwire@ugandaembassyus.org

Call, write or fax ANY TIME beginning RIGHT NOW and continuing until you hear that the bill has been dropped! Tell the Ambassador that the United States and the world are watching the developments in his country, and will not sit idly by while Uganda commits genocide against its lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender citizens and their families, friends, and supporters. Tell him you don’t know how America could possibly justify maintaining diplomatic relations or providing any aid whatsoever to a country intent upon murdering its own LGBT citizens. Remind him that civilized people all around the world will shun any country that threatens to put to death its LGBT citizens.

Added by Melanie: Tell him if the Bill Passes we expect that President Museveni will Veto it in the economic interests of the Country and in the interests of the Countries viability in the Global context.

http://lezgetreal.com/2011/05/uganda-the-insanity-of-the-anti-homosexuality-bill/

THE ANTI-HOMOSEXUALITY BILL, 2009;
On the 14th of October 2009, David  Bahati tabled the  Anti-Homosexuality Bill in the Ugandan Parliament. The Bill is currently before the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee.

The objective of the Bill is ” to establish a comprehensive consolidated legislation to protect the traditional family by prohibiting:-
(i) any form of sexual relations between persons of the same sex; and
(ii) the promotion or recognition of such sexual relations in public institutions and other places through or with the support of any Government entity in Uganda or any non governmental organization inside or outside the country “.

Amongst other aims, the Bill seeks to prohibit all marriages except those between man and woman, to prevent and penalize homosexual behavior, including a death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality”, to prohibit ratification of any international treaties, conventions, protocols, agreements and declarations which are contrary or inconsistent with the provisions of this Act, and to prohibit the licensing of organizations which promote homosexuality. Read the Bill !!

On a critical analysis, the Bill covers much more than the title alone proclaims. A much better title for this Bill would have been the “The Anti Civil Society Bill”, the “Anti Public Health Bill”, or the “Anti-Constitution Bill”. We, the various member organizations of the Uganda Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights and Constitutional Law see many unconstitutional and Human Rights violating implications of the Bill. As a matter of fact, this Bill represents one of the most serious attacks to date on the 1995 Constitution and on the key human rights protections enshrined in the Constitution including:

• Article 20: Fundamental rights and freedoms are inherent and not granted by the State
• Article 21: Right to Equality and Freedom from discrimination
• Article 22: The Right to Life (the death penalty provisions)
• Article 27: The Right to Privacy
• Article 29: Right to freedom of conscience, expression, movement, religion, assembly and association (this includes freedom of speech, Academic freedom and media freedom)
• Article 30: Right to Education
• Article 32: Affirmative Action in favor of marginalisd groups and
• Article 36 on the Rights of Minorities

The Bill has serious implications for instance Parents, Teachers, Lawyers, Medical Personnel, Counselors, or Landlords who do not report homosexual behavior of their child, pupil, client or tenant. They can be fined 5 million Uganda shillings, or put away for three to seven years in prison. Furthermore, it puts at serious risk any civil society leader or religious leader trying to work with homosexuals, resulting in closing down his or her organization, or punishing him or her accordingly. In short, this Bill targets everybody, and involves everybody: it cannot be implemented without making every citizen spy on his or her neighbors.

For more comments on the Bill by our coalition, click HERE

PLEASE send Press releases and Statement here to LGR re your condemnation of the BILL – time is of  the essence.. LGR@privatecourts.com

all articles are located at :- http://lezgetreal.com/?s=Uganda%2C+Bahati.

SIGN THE PETITION – TELLING PRESIDENT MUSEVENI TO VETO THE ANTI-HOMOSEXUALITY BILL http://www.allout.org/petition/uganda

LISTEN TO OUR MAY 07, 2011 – Swirl Radio INTERVIEW WITH BAHATI – Michelle Meow and Melanie Nathan spoke to David Bahati on Swirl Radio, aired yesterday – and here the podcast can be found by clicking here: First the News, then Bahati- http://swirlradio.com/

READ ARTICLES ON UGANDAN Kill THE GAYS BILL – all articles are located at :- http://lezgetreal.com/?s=Uganda%2C+.

______________________________________________________________________________

By Melanie Nathan
nathan@privatecourts.com
Facebook Melanie
twitter @oblogdeeoblogda

Barclays Bank Building San Francisco - See you there soon!!!

If Uganda’s parliamentary members  enact the Anti-gay bill this week, as predicted by a good many Ugandan sources, including its author, David Bahati,  it must either be willing to  isolate itself or the representatives of the people have their heads deep in the ground! In my many conversations with David Bahati, he has said he is not concerned with what the international community thinks – and he is seated in the belief that the World does not give a damn about LGBTI human rights.

I know that corporate America is constantly seeking the multi billion pink dollar  – gay and lesbian (LGBTI) dollars have enormous clout  as well as in Europe and the UK. These banks also hire and promote LGBTI people as part of their diversity programs or just because gays and lesbians and their families  are a part of all our communities -a simple fact.

Barclays Bank has a large presence in Uganda and I am currently researching the rest of the banks on the list below and beyond…

They also have the following byline on their website:

Diversity and our People

Talented people are the foundation of our success, whatever their style, personality, age, race, gender, sexual orientation, or disability…..

Barclays Bank – must come out now and speak out against Uganda’s Kill the Gays Bill – or we will call for an International Boycott. How can any international corporation,  with diversity programs – and which employ gays and lesbians, many providing  benefits to same-sex couples, continue to sit back and watch this legislation happen – knowing that we as a community will be calling upon these corporations to depart Uganda the minute that Bill passes this next week.

The bank is primarily involved in meeting the banking needs of individuals, small and medium businesses (SMEs), as well as large corporations. Prior to 2006, the bank focused on meeting the banking needs of large corporations and high networth individuals. That focus was loosened to include SMEs and regular customers. As of December 2010, Barclays Bank (Uganda) was the third largest commercial bank in Uganda, with assets in excess of US$476.4 million (UGX:1,100 billion)

Barclays Bank (Uganda) opened for business in Uganda in 1927, with two branches in the capital city, Kampala and one in Jinja, the country’s second commercial centre. In February 2007, Barclays Bank completed the acquisition of Nile Bank Uganda Limited, strengthening its presence in the country. As of July 2009, Barclays Bank (Uganda) employs more than 1,000 colleagues, has fifty three (53) branches and eighty (80) ATMs in service.

Perhaps these corporations do not realize the seriousness of this. In a world where countries have moved toward same-sex relationship acceptance – beyond mere tolerance – such as Barclays’ home turf – the United Kingdom- where same-sex gays and lesbians can legally marry (civil unions) – such companies cannot continue to serve their clients in good faith if they remain silent and /or do not leave the Ugandan market.

OH and by the way – This is just a tip of the iceberg- or should I say a spark off the Volcano?

SO here is a list of Banks – in Uganda – and we shall be going industry by industry – as time goes by in the next couple of weeks – looking into who is doing what in Uganda.  I invite other bloggers to join in the SLAM!

P.S. WHO DOES DAVID BAHATI BANK WITH?

This is a list of commercial banks in Uganda^[

1. ABC Capital Bank
2. Bank of Africa^[2]
3. Bank of Baroda
4. Barclays Bank
5. Cairo International Bank
6. Centenary Bank
7. Citibank Uganda Limited
8. Crane Bank
9. DFCU Bank
10. Diamond Trust Bank
11. Ecobank
12. Equity Bank
13. Fina Bank
14. Global Trust Bank
15. Housing Finance Bank
16. Imperial Bank Uganda^[3]
17. Kenya Commercial Bank
18. National Bank of Commerce
19. Orient Bank
20. Stanbic Bank
21. Standard Chartered Bank
22. Tropical Bank
    

______________________________________________________________________________________

all articles are located at :- http://lezgetreal.com/?s=Uganda%2C+Bahati.

______________________________________________________________________________________

MAY 07, 2011 Broadcast

LISTEN TO MY INTERVIEW WITH BAHATI

Michelle Meow and Melanie Nathan spoke to David Bahati on Swirl Radio, aired yesterday – and here the podcast can be found by clicking here: First the News, then Bahati- http://swirlradio.com/

_______________________________________________________________________________________

By Melanie Nathan
nathan@privatecourts.com
Facebook Melanie
twitter @oblogdeeoblogda

Thank you Paul Canning for the Inspiration!

Time To Hit UGANDA Hard – there is not much to lose at this point.  Some activists from within Uganda are reporting that if  the AHB makes it to  a vote it will probably pass in this current 8th Parliament. It will be heard in committee tomorrow, Monday 9th  for a second day. Parliament sessions end for 8thy Parliament on May 12, 2011.

Grassroots and LGBTI Organizations worldwide it is time to mobilize; to protest  outside buildings of prominence.  Call on President Museveni to stop LGBTI persecution through street savagery and now impending legislation.   Call on Museveni to Stop killing and torturing all Ugandans.   Do Not allow the LGBT community of Uganda to be scapegoated – that is why we must mention all oppression in Uganda when we speak of this Bill.

South Africa GLAAD is the first such organization to condemn the Uganda Government and call for Sanctions by the UN.

SA GLAAD condemns the Kill-the-Gays Bill’s new momentum.

The South African Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (SA GLAAD) condemns in the strongest possible terms the Ugandan parliamentary hearings on the Anti-homosexuality Bill of 2009.

Recently it seemed that the Bill was to be shelved and declared officially dead, but new Parliamentary hearings appear to be a fast-tracking mechanism to pass this heinous piece of legislation, whose existence is an affront to human rights values – as well as the “family values” Bahati and his associates claim to represent. The right thing to do in this case would be to permanently shelve this odious and morally reprehensible bill and to place it in a museum of Crimes Against Humanity where it could join reminders of past horrors such as the Holocaust, and the Rwandan and Baltic genocides of the 1990′s.

Mr Bahati carps that “the gays recruit our children” and considers being gay a “lifestyle choice”, thereby perpetuating what has by now become a stereotype which denotes how ignorant and out of touch with reality those are who hate some people so much that they demand they be killed for who they are, while simultaneously denying their humanity and individual worth.

Gay people do not recruit children. Mr Bahati displays his contempt for gay people by fabricating claims so absurd that any right-minded individual who has taken the trouble to read up on these topics would see right through it. There are reams of studies conducted by numerous authorities to completely disprove this insulting and totally false accusation. There is also a vast difference between pedophilia and homosexuality – pedophilia is the sexual attraction of an adult to a child and is non-consensual abuse, not a loving consenting adult relationship – and to confuse the two is to confirm to the world their ignorance and to lay bare this hate mongering propaganda for what it is.

Being gay is not a lifestyle choice as Mr Bahati claims, it never was. So much research has been conducted on this issue over the past 30 years, delivering so much substantiating evidence that only brute stupidity, willful ignorance and blatantly malicious bigotry would sound such blind judgment. The only driving force behind this bill is pure, unadulterated hatred driven by personal discomfort and religious fundamentalist fervor. Which is precisely why so much of the information and tactics employed in the Ugandan campaign is akin to the tactics employed by the likes of the Nazis.

We call on the government and parliament of Uganda to stop this legislative process before any more harm is done to the lives of the citizens of Uganda. We call on the judiciary of Uganda to stand firm against such draconian legislation. We call on the people of Uganda to hold their government to account and to demand the basic human rights of all Ugandans. The right to equality is not a privilege and sole preserve for those who happen to have been born straight.

SA GLAAD calls on the governments of the free world, including the South African government to decisively condemn this action by the Ugandan parliament. We expect South Africa to do more than talk. We expect South Africa to live up to our Constitution and to intervene and also to immediately recall the homophobic High Commissioner, Jon Qwelane – regardless of any pressure brought to bear by the Ugandan government or demagogues like Bahati or Martin Ssempe.

We call on multinational companies and South African companies to divest and withdraw from Uganda if this abhorrent legislation is passed. We understand that businesses and investors need to make money, and that South Africa clearly would like to extend our assistance to fellow African states in the spirit of ubuntu – but money made at the cost of human rights, human dignity and human lives is blood money that will stain their hands for all time.

We call for UN sanctions and the toughest measures possible to be implemented. This debate around the implementation of the state-sanctioned oppression and murder of the Pink Community in Uganda has raged now for almost 2 years with no end in sight, and little action if any taken against the country. It is time to put this issue to bed.

SA GLAAD sees the Bahati-bill for what it is, a ploy. A scapegoat mechanism to detract attention from the civil unrest currently manifesting in Uganda.

ABOUT SA GLAAD:

The South African Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation – fighting for the rights of the entire LGBTIQ community
Follow us on Twitter: @saglaad

The SA Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (SA GLAAD) is an equal civil rights advocacy group that documents and responds to homophobia and heterosexism in the South African popular media and society. Responses to defamation range from letter writing campaigns to direct action activism and protests.The goal of SA GLAAD is the elimination of anti gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered and intersex bias in reporting, television and film.

Uniting the LGBTIQ community Unity in diversity An injury to one is an injury to all Silence gives consent Anything less is not equal Right Wing Watch of South Africa Fighting the reparative therapy fraud Political lobbying Protection and expansion of civil rights.

By Melanie Nathan
nathan@privatecourts.com
Facebook Melanie
twitter @oblogdeeoblogda

U. S. Navy SEALS insignia

Citing their “new rules” about not issuing any of the traditional congratulatory resolutions that they say clogged up the House floor, the House Republican leadership has decided not to follow the Senate in honoring the accomplishment of the Senate in passing a resolution to honor the “men and women of the United States Armed Forces and the United States intelligence community for the tremendous commitment, perseverance, professionalism and sacrifice they displayed in bringing Osama bin Lade to justice.” The Senate resoution, which passed on a 97-0 vote, also praised President George W. Bush, commended President Obama and renewed America’s commitment “to disrupting, dismantling and defeating al Qaeda.”

The new House rules prohibit any measure that “expresses appreciation, commends, congratulates, celebrates, recognizes the accomplishments of, or celebrates the anniversary of, an entity, event, group, individual, institution, team or government program; or acknowledges or recognizes a period of time for such purposes.” Is it just me or are the words “military action” missing from that rule?

The House’s new rules have been a bit controversial. They include a highly touted rule that all bills must show their Constitutional authority, even though all bills always did have to do that. These rules were supposed to make the House leaner and meaner, and included a rule that they would shut down business at noon on Fridays, just like the British Parliament, so all the members could return to their districts and touch base with their constituents each and every weekend. Many of them didn’t even manage to touch base during a two-week Easter recess once they realized how much anger there was out there over the budget they didn’t really pass. .

While they have deemed congratulatory resolutions a “waste of time” they have no problem debating and passing multiple anti-abortion bills that don’t have a snowball’s chance in Hades of getting off the President’s desk, or holding up the budget until the last hour before the government shuts down, or trying to use one of those abortion bills to hold the debt ceiling increase hostage. They still may do that as the bill goes to the Senate. And while they waste time with all their social bills and non-binding budget resolutions, they have yet to come up with any proposal for jobs – the one issue they all ran on -that doesn’t amount to “trickle-down economics redux.”

U. S. Intelligence Community Seal

The intelligence community spent years running down tiny bits of information until they located bin Laden – not in a cave on the Pakistani-Afghan border but in a house in the Pakistani suburbs. Our Navy Seal Team 6 dropped into that compound with no knowledge of how many people were in the compound or how many weapons they had. They walked through that building not knowing if it was thoroughly booby-trapped or if the people they were encountering were wearing bomb vests. All they knew was that they were going in blind to a space occupied by people who had no compunction about ordering the deaths of thousands. Even if none of these people can ever stand on a dias in the White House and publicly receive medals for what they did, they deserve to be honored.

On Monday evening, the House approved measures naming a Texas courthouse for the two Presidents Bush and a post office for a U.S. soldier slain in Iraq. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s spokesperson, Laena Fallon, said the GOP rules scaled back but did not forbid the naming of post offices and federal buildings because establishing them is a constitutional duty. Under its new protocol, the House acts on those designations only one day a month. She also said the House would be expediting “consideration” of an intelligence authorization bill next week.

Related articles

• The Navy SEAL Team 6 Weapons and Gadgets That Brought Down Osama bin Laden (uwtreasures.wordpress.com)
• “Gallup Poll: Americans Approve of Military Action that Killed Osama Bin Laden & Give Credit to US NAVY Seal Team 6 and CIA” and related posts (scaredmonkeys.com)
• Thankyou Navy Seal Team 6 (jroycroft.wordpress.com)
• Osama Bin Laden Dead: Navy SEAL Team 6 Responsible for Getting Terrorist – ABC News (rajcairnsreport.wordpress.com)
• Another success for Navy’s fabled SEAL Team 6 (capitolhillblue.com)

Surely, If President Obama could swoop into a mansion in a foreign country and put a bullet between the eyes of one Osama Bin Laden – he can find a way to keep our US LGBT families in tact; STOP THE DEPORTATIONS !!!!

While the country focuses on recent international events, this Friday a married bi-national couple may be ripped apart from one another by the U.S. government. Josh is an American citizen. Henry is from Venezuela. They married in Connecticut in August 2010. But because of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), Josh can’t sponsor Henry for a green card like any heterosexual American can. SDGLN -

Because of DOMA, Henry risks being deported THIS FRIDAY.

On February 23, the Obama Administration announced that it would no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in court, believing it to be unconstitutional.  One month later, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that it would put a hold on all deportation proceedings of bi-national same-sex couples, since the constitutionality of DOMA was in question.

Forty Eight hours later the reprieve was over!  USCIS announced that it would begin processing those deportation proceedings once again, throwing the lives of these couples into turmoil yet again.

Now plans by the Obama administration to deport Henry Velandia will likely move forward. Henry is in a same-sex marriage. His marriage is legal.  However he will deported back to Venezuela, having to leave behind  his beloved husband, Josh Vandiver of Colorado.

Henry will have a hearing before a Judge of the United States. This week  in Newark, New Jersey, his fate will be decided and he is just one of many who are going through similar hell. The Judge is not empowered to  offer mercy – to take cognizance of  Henry’s love for his partner. The Judge mill ignore his legal marriage, his love, and he will be deported and  banned ifrom the United States forever.

Lest we forget Josh, the American spouse. What about him? Josh has no standing before the immigration court.  He is an American who has no legal right to sponsor his husband for a green card – in parity with different gender Americans who marry a foreigner.  The greatest tragedy here is that our American spouses – like Josh – are being forced into exile.

Exile is when you leave your own country because you are compelled to do so – unwillingly yet voluntarily. Gina Caprio is one such American citizen. Gina has been forced to leave the USA for the United Kingdom so she can be with her wife. Despite years of trying to find a legal way for her spouse, and being active in the out4immigration community, Gina, ran out of options.

In her partner’s case, they kept up a relationship literally traveling between continents and keeping Visa alive and legal.  They did not get into a situation where Gina’s wife would be deported.  Either way – this is a great great wrong to Americans and their families and its being perpetrated on President Obama’s watch.

In  a framework where the  Defense of Marriage Act, that in essence bars same-sex couples from green card sponsorship via marriage,  has been acknowledged by the Administration as unconstitutional,  that piece of legislation is in Congressional limbo, and hence so are LGBT families.

GetEQUAL: “While many LGBT couples are wrestling with what repeal of DOMA would mean for them, bi-national same-sex couples are seeing the impact of DOMA’s continued reign each day — and many are being torn apart from one another in the meantime. ”

We don’t have time to wait on Congress to make things right — we need you to show courage now stop the deportations that are tearing apart our families. USCIS halted deportations of bi-national couples for 48 hours — we need to halt these deportations permanently!”

President Obama has the power to stop these deportations,  he did it for 48 hours; He can use unusual means to stop this degrading and discriminatory debacle.

There are solutions  such as a special visa process for same-sex spouses – to issue an executive order, or  for a Senator  to  introduce a Private Bill via Congress that would pend all deportations of  same-sex couples who can provide marriage certification from any Jurisdiction. The beauty of such Bill would be that its mere introduction could pend all such deportations, without in effect having to be voted upon during this Congress. This is a temporary solution- and can be done in a similar fashion to Senator Feinstein’s  Private Bill Number 867 – introduced for Shirley Tan, back in April 2009.  Such Bill would not have to be voted upon it would simply have to languish in Congress for the duration of this 11th Congress – by them perhaps we can get DOMA repealed in the next Democratic Congress.  The Private Bill could operate for a class of persons therein described.

SIGN PETITION AT:-

see http://www.change.org/petitions/special-visa-for-binational-lgbt-spouse-perma-partners#comments

Article: http://lezgetreal.com/?p=24121

So this is the quest – to support Josh and Henry and others in exile or to be deported:

JOIN THE RALLY -  PROTEST (FaceBOOK)

Time: Friday, May 6 · 11:00am – 12:00pm
Location

Department of Homeland Security/Newark Immigration Court:
– Peter Rodino Federal Building
970 Broad Street
Newark, NJ

TRAVEL:
It’s very easy to get to the Court from Newark Penn Station, which is on the NJTransit line between NYC and Princeton. Coming from Newark Penn Station, walk 2 blocks up Market St., turn left at Broad St. and go 4 short blocks. There is also ample street parking near the Court.

WHY:

You have asked how you can help us STOP the deportation of Henry. Now is the time you can help. We have to stand up together and force the Obama administration to immediately STOP DEPORTING the spouses of gay and lesbian Americans. We are fighting for all couples like us.  Together, we have to stop Henry’s deportation!  We are rallying on Friday in front of the courthouse where Henry’s fate will be decided later that day and want to make sure that everyone inside knows that Henry has community support.

Please join us on Friday and bring friends — we’ll have signs there, but please feel free to make and bring your own!
- Josh & Henry

Sponsored/supported by: Stop The Deportations, All Out, Courage Campaign, Garden State Equality, GetEQUAL,  Marriage Equality USA, Out4Immigration, and the Princeton Equality Project

WRITE at Contact@JoshAndHenry.com to let us know you are coming! We can answer questions and help you get to the rally!

Surely, If President could swoop into a mansion in a foreign country and put a bullet between the eyes of one Osama Bin Laden – he can find a way to keep our US LGBT families in tact!!!!

By Melanie Nathan
nathan@privatecourts.com
Facebook Melanie
twitter @oblogdeeoblogda

Portland, Oregon (compliments of the ISGP)

Portland residents could have gathered at Pioneer Courthouse Square Monday evening, but it was made painfully clear to the Islamic Society of Greater Portland that their idea for a multi-cultural gathering to celebrate an enemy of humanity was not welcome. They had to cancel the event after receiving hate-filled, racist, violent, threatening e-mails.

Osama bin Laden ordered and organized the killing of more Muslims than non-Muslims. His followers killed women and children. Of the 223 people killed in the embassy bombings, only 12 were Americans. There were Muslims among those killed on 9-11. There were Muslims killed in Madrid, London and Indonesia. Attacks by al Qaida inside Iraq and Afghanistan have targeted Muslims, not foreign soldiers. Sura IV, verse 92 is explicit “Never should a Believer kill a Believer.” Verse 93 “If a man kills a Believer intentionally, his recompense is Hell, to abide therein forever and the wrath and te curse of God are upon him, and a dreadful penality is prepared for him.” Bin Laden excused his behavior by saying that anyone who wasn’t killing non-Muslims was an enemy of Islam, but that was not in any way acceptable within the tenets of Islam.

Muslims around the world have as much to gain from the death of bin Laden as non-Muslims. He was a carbuncle on their religion. He did more to damage the relationship between Muslims and the rest of humanity than any other person in history. And what those haters in Portland did was advance Osama bin Laden’s cause. They, not the Muslims of Portland, are the disciples of bin Laden, spreading hate and giving Muslims cause to fear non-Muslims.

Saba Ahmed, spokesperson for the Islamic Society of Greater Portland, said “I think right now it’s too soon. We don’t want to incite. [Pioneer Courthouse Square is] an open area. Muslims have always been fearful and bringing them out her at this time, it’s not the best choice for us.” So when would be? As long as men like Peter King, who had no compunctions about funding the murders of hundreds of innocents during the Northern Ireland Troubles, are directing the narrative about “radicalization” and “recruiting” there will be no peace for American Muslims. Saba Ahmed hopes that her society can hold a peaceful gathering on 9-11, but I sincerely doubt that. She is now headed to Washington to help lobby for what all Americans should want – a withdrawal from Afghanistan.

These are people whose great-grandparents, grandparents, parents, themselves have come here to escape the repressions of their home countries. They have come here for the same freedoms non-Muslims came here – to be free to determine their own fate, to be free to practice their own faith. They are as much Americans as the Huguenots who escaped France, the Catholics who escaped Salzberg, the Pilgrims who escaped England. They don’t deserve this shit.

The Republican Party decided a long time ago to feed people’s fear in order to get and retain power. They turned a blind eye to the extremists among their party. The last administration cranked up the terror alert level every time they were in a political quandary. They fed into and fed off the basest instincts of Americans to fear and then hate everyone who isn’t “like us” whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean. A long time ago, “not like us” meant the Irish, the Italians, the French. It has always meant the African and the Native American. It meant the Chinese and the Japanese. It meant Buddhists and Pagans. It is as unacceptable as ever. It is fear mongering for power, pure and simple. This fear and hate are being played out daily in anti-anybody laws in Republican states, laws which are complete denials of what our Constitution and our Declaration of Independence say about the rights of ALL men and women. The Republicans have nurtured this and it is bloody time they denounced it before they go down in history as the spiritual descendants of other regimes that cleansed their “pure” societies of the unacceptable minorities.

All the Islamic Society of Greater Portland wanted to do was bring together people from all over Portland to honor those who lost their lives because of the monster known as Osama bin Laden. They were denied their chance to join in grief and resolve and celebration with their neighbors just as the planners of the Park51 project are being denied an opportunity to create a community center for all of the residents of lower Manhattan.

Would someone please put a cover over Emma Lazarus’ poem and turn out the lights at the Statue of Liberty because we no longer deserve either of those monuments to our unique and exceptional history as a nation of immigrants.

The Islamic Society of Greater Portland

—-Big, freaky, scary, victory “mosque” isn’t it?  Oooooh, it’s so “foreign.”  This is the reality of Islam in America – it’s just as American as the neighborhood Bill O’Reilly and I grew up in on Long Island.  　

“The Islamic Society of Greater Portland is a non–profit organization with the following aims and objectives:

To promote closer understanding among all Muslims in the Greater Portland area and to strengthen bonds of friendship and brotherhood among them

To carry out activities and projects related to religious, social, charitable, and educational aspects of the life of the community.

To foster cordial relationships between Muslims and non-Muslims and to promote the understanding of Islam among non-Muslims.”

On their website today is the following Haddith: A bedouin came to the Prophet and saw him hug and kiss Al-Hasan bin Ali, one of this grandsons. The bedouin said, “By God, I have ten children and I have never hugged or kissed any of them.” The Prophet said, “He who does not love others will not be loved by others.”

They are on the web.  Look them up sometime.  And I thank them, and hope they do not mind my borrowing their images and words for this story.   They can introduce themselves better than I can.

Related articles

• Muslim event in Oregon canceled due to threats (cbsnews.com)
• Muslim-Americans: Good riddance to bin Laden (msnbc.msn.com)
• Local Muslims express relief, concern about backlash, in killing of bin Laden (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Why Must So Many Americans Become What they ‘Hate’? (zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com)
• Muslim event in Oregon canceled due to threats (thenewstribune.com)
• Osama Bin Laden’s Death: Is It a Reason for Muslims to Celebrate ? (lexiieva.wordpress.com)
• Hell Called, Your Place is Reserved: Muslim-country blogs react to Bin Laden death (leftfootforward.org)
• Members of Knoxville’s Muslim community cheer justice (knoxnews.com)
• Portland, Maine Mosque Vandalized In Suspected Hate Crime Following Bin Laden Death (alternet.org)

Image via Wikipedia

04/29/2011 – by Cynthia S. Wright

Earlier today, the only conservative group that represents gay conservatives and allies, GOProud announced their 2012 Presidential election efforts at the Ames Straw Poll in August of this year.

The Iowa Straw Poll is known as the traditional kickoff to the nominating process, and these GOP’ers have one mission on their mind: get Barack Obama out the White House.

Executive Director, Jimmy LaSalvia is fully behind GOProud’s efforts, “We look forward to the Iowa Straw Poll as the kickoff to this effort.”

Being that GOProud activists and supporters around the country will be traveling to Ames to participate in this straw poll, LaSalvia feels it is the perfect place for them to make their presence known by supporting the Iowa GOP.

“Barack Obama’s tenure in the White House has been an unmitigated disaster for all Americans, including gay and lesbian Americans. Defeating Barack Obama and putting a conservative in the White House should be the number one goal of every single person in the conservative movement. It is certainly the number one goal of this organization.”

The poll begins on August 11th with a Republican Presidential debate, ending with the straw poll on the 13th.

[Source]

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker

On January 30, 1933, German President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor. Hitler quickly pushed Hindenburg aside and eliminated the non-Nazis in his coalition government. The regime used excessive military spending to ease unemployment and create prosperity. They rode this prosperity to popularity, used the secret police to destroy liberal, socialist and communist opposition, destroyed labor unions and persecuted gays and Jews. They took control of the courts, local government and all civic organizations. All information was controlled and free speech was suppressed. Unswerving loyalty to the fatherland was the keystone of acceptance in a conformist society.

On January 20, 2001, George W. Bush was inaugurated President of the United States. He used two unfunded wars and limitless government spending to create prosperity. He deregulated the financial industries, making credit easy. He appointed Supreme Court Justices who shared his neo-conservative views. Unswerving loyalty to the homeland was encouraged to make America capable of fighting a vague and nebulous enemy. In the final year of his administration, the economy collapsed. His successor was America’s first black (actually half-black) President, and his differentness led to allegations he wasn’t a “real American.” He was portrayed in the conservative media as a terrifying liberal, communist, socialist, Maoist, Marxist, Nazi who would destroy America. By lumping Nazis in with their sworn enemies, the conservative media sought to deflect comparisons between their vision of America and Hitler’s Germany. This conservative media had had 14 years to persuade its viewers that only they spoke truthfully on issues, so that their viewers never questioned the facts when they started lying. Two years later, the Democrats had been unable to perform a miracle with the economy, so the conservative media helped propel into office a group of men and women who received massive amounts of financial support, both directly and indirectly, from a small group of ultra-rich businesspeople. At the state level, these politicians passed laws to destroy labor unions, persecute immigrants, gays and Muslims, and take control of local governments. Conservatives flooded internet comment sites, occasionally shutting them down, frequently slowing them to a crawl with excessive postings until they had pushed opposition voices off the sites.

In Saturday’s Forbes Magazine on-line politics page, writer Rick Unger, with a assist from Wisconsonite Doug Olson, showed how Governor Scott Walker is planning to introduce a bill into his highly co-operative legislature to give him virtually unlimited power to take over a local government. Michigan’s Gov. Rick Snyder already has that power. The trigger for the take-over would be Walker’s personal opinion that a locality is financially unfit. Since his budget cuts over $1 billion from local governments and forbids the raising of local taxes, he has created the circumstances by which he could seize every locality in the state, dismiss the locally elected officials, appoint a person or company to run the locality, end local services, and cancel local employment contracts.

Snyder has already taken over the city of Benton Harbor, Michigan, with the appointment of Emergency Financial Manager Joseph Harris, who issued an order taking away all the powers of the locally elected city officials.

Walker is having his legislation written by the largest law firm in Wisconsin, and probably the priciest, Foley & Lardner. Normally, legislation is written by the counsels for either the Senate or Assembly. Normal process is for a governor to discuss the outlines of a piece of legislation he would like with those elected bodies, and have them create the actual bills, since bills cannot originate in the governor’s office. (That’s assuming that Wisconsin doesn’t have the weirdest constitution in America and actually allows a governor to write law.)

So, exactly where are the similarities between the Nazi Party of Germany and the Republican-Tea Party of America?

Created prosperity through excessive military spending. Check.

Took control of the courts. Check.

Took control of local governments. Check.

Created popular support through propaganda. Check.

Destroyed labor unions. Check.

Demonized liberals and socialists. Check.

Persecuted gays and ethnic/religious minorities. Check.

Demanded unswerving loyalty to father/homeland and conformity. Check.

Always remember that it was George Walker Bush who said, “America is not a dictatorship. It will never be a dictatorship, unless I’m the dictator.” Bush may have missed his chance, but his successors are lining up in the wings.

It’s called “fascism” and contrary to Glenn Beck’s blackboard, it is the polar opposite of socialism, not its equal.

Related articles

• What do you know about hitler and the Nazi party during world war 2 (wiki.answers.com)
• Nazism, Alive and Well (alesbianphysician.wordpress.com)
• What did Hitler change after becoming a dictator (wiki.answers.com)
• Why did Adolf Hitler take these actions to kill the Jews (wiki.answers.com)

The Democratic Jackass, 1870, Thomas Nast

For the next 18 months, three Democrats will be leading the charge against Republicans for control of our government. They are the chairpersons of the three campaign committees.

Rep. Steve Israel

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair is Rep. Steve Israel of New York’s Second District on Long Island. His district lies next door to that of Rep. Peter King. Israel was born in Brooklyn, got his education at Nassau (Long Island) Community College and George Washington University, is married to Family Court Judge Marlene Budd Israel and the father of two daughters. Israel first won local office in 1993 and has been a member of the House of Representatives since 2001.

Israel is on the House Subcommittees for Energy and Water, State and Foreign Operations, and Military Construction and Veterans’ Affairs. He is the Assistant Democratic Whip. Party Whips managed the party’s legislative program and the Whip is second to the Majority or Minority Leader for a party. As Assistant Democratic Whip, Israel is the third-ranking member of the Democratic Party in the House.

In 2009, he came under attack from the right wing and supporters of Israel’s ruling Likud Party for participating in a Gala Dinner for the J Street organization, a group that supports a fair peace process in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The right wing accused Israel of being pro-terrorist, something incredibly ironic given their refusal to attach the same label to neighbor Peter King who openly supported and raised money for the IRA.

Israel has already been very successful in fund raising for the Democratic Party, raising over $19 million in the first three months of 2011 and cutting the DCCC’s debts in half.

Sen. Patty Murray

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chair is Senator Patty Murray of Washington. Murray is 61. She took her B.A. from Washington State and taught pre-school and parenting. She is married with a son and daughter. As a “Mom in tennis shoes” she ran for and won a seat on the Shoreline School Board in 1985, and won her Senate seat in 1992. This is Murray’s second term as the DSCC, having previously served from 2001 to 2003. She is currently a member of the Senate Budget and Appropriations committee and chair of the Tansportation, Housing and Urban Development committee.

Murray was front-and-center during the fight over the funding for Planned Parenthood last week. She opposed the invasion of Iraq, is pro-immigration reform, pro-environment and pro-women’s rights.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz

At the top of the party is the always vocal, always interesting, always passionate Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Schultz represents Florida’s 20^th Congressional District, which includes parts of Broward and Miami-Dade counties, and the cities of Fort Lauderdale and Miami Beach. Born on Long Island, New York, 45 years ago, Schultz took her B.A. and M.A. in political science from the University of Florida in Gainsville, with a certificate in political campaigning. After serving as an aid to Florida State Representative Peter Deutsch, in 1992, she ran to succeed him when he was running for a seat in the State Senate, becoming the youngest woman elected to the Florida House. Schultz is married with three children and a breast cancer survivor.

/wiki/Peter_DeutschSchultz is currently serving on the Budget and Judiciary committees in the House. She is pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro-gay rights, voted for the stimulus and is a supporter of U. S. aid to the Palestinian territories, in spite of being Jewish. She believes in a fair peace process for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Rep. Israel is positioned as a moderate Democrat. Sen. Murray is a liberal and Rep. Schultz is a progressive. They represent the three branches of the Democratic Party fairly well, providing both balance for the party and a good coverage of the broad range of people who consider themselves Democrats going into the 2012 election. Additionally, Israel and Murray are attractive to Independents, and we need all the help we can get in the looming class war the Republicans have declared on the majority of Americans.

As Shakespeare’s Henry V said:

Once more unto the breach my friends, once more!  Or close the wall up with our English dead!  In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man  As modest stillness and humility;  But when the blast of war blows in our ears,  Then imitate the action of the tiger;  Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood  Disguise fair nature with hard-favored rage.

Related articles

• LGBT Rights Advocate Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL) Tapped To Chair Democratic National Committee (joemygod.blogspot.com)
• Debbie Wasserman Schultz: ‘Shared Sacrifice Is Going To Be Necessary’ (VIDEO) (huffingtonpost.com)
• Debbie Wasserman Schultz to Chair DNC (towleroad.com)
• Debbie Wasserman-Schultz Is New DNC Chair (oliverwillis.com)
• Wasserman Schultz brings Jewish identity to top party role (jta.org)

San Francisco, CA – With a more than 300% increase in voting turnout this year, the San Francisco Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Pride Committee is pleased to present their 2011 Grand Marshals. Debuting their new online voting system back on March 26th, SF Pride saw an early and dramatic increase in total votes cast. Over the next fifteen days, 2,736 people made their choices known, surpassing a previous high count by more than 500 ballots cast.

The combined votes of the General Membership, Board of Directors, SF Pride Electoral College, and the community at large have elected the following:

Community Grand Marshals: Dr. Aaron Belkin (SFSU professor and key advocate for the repeal of DADT), Victoria Kolakowski (first openly elected transgender Superior Court judge), Christiana Remington (community activist and event producer), Terry Stewart (defense attorney, challenger of Prop. 8), Rev. Roland Stringfellow (builder of relationships between the LGBT and religious communities), and Graylin K. Thornton (Leather Community activist and past-board member for New Leaf Services).

Honorary Grand Marshals: Susie Bright (editor of first women’s magazine: On Our Backs, sexologist, activist), and Ron Wong (API activist, past-board member for SF Pride).

In a vote so close that there was just a 6-point lead, the vote for Local Organizational Grand Marshal goes to the GLBT Historical Society and History Museum.

In addition to the above, Bishop Yvette Flunder has been selected as the Lifetime Achievement Grand Marshal, and The Trevor Project has been named as the National Organizational Grand Marshal. A contingent of folks from The Trevor Project, the It Gets Better Project, and various other anti-bullying and anti-suicide organizations have been invited to lead off the 2011 Parade, behind the Dykes on Bikes contingent. This honor is given to a different faction or vital issue of the community each year.

When learning the news, Bishop Flunder commented, “As a native San Franciscan and an out leader in the faith community, I am honored and humbled to be recognized as the Lifetime Achievement Grand Marshal by my own community.“

Celebrity Grand Marshals confirmed to date are Chaz Bono, Olympia Dukakis, and Yigit Pura.

Finally, the Pink Brick Award Recipient — the one person who has done the most damage to the LGBT community and/or movement — is Lou Engle.

For full biographies of the grand marshals, and for more information about San Francisco LGBT Pride, please visit sfpride.org

About SF Pride

SF Pride is a nonprofit organization that produces the annual San Francisco LGBT Pride Parade and Celebration. With over 200 parade contingents, 300 exhibitors, and more than a dozen community-run stages and venues, the San Francisco LGBT Pride Parade and Celebration is the largest gathering of LGBT people and allies in the nation. Since 1997, SF Pride has granted over $1.4 million dollars from donations and proceeds received at the annual event, to local non-profit LGBT organizations and those organizations serving the HIV/AIDS and breast cancer communities. The annual budget is approximately $1.7 million. SF Pride is dedicated to education about the LGBT community, the commemoration of LGBT heritage, and the celebration of LGBT culture and liberation.

This Year Michelle Meow of Swirl Radio will host the Pride TV Program again and Yours truly – yes Mel Nathan -has been invited to join her on the live Interviews.

By Melanie Nathan
nathan@privatecourts.com
Facebook Melanie
twitter @oblogdeeoblogda
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Louis Marinelli, the NOM staffer who shut down the National Organization for Marriage FaceBook page, which hosted  290,000 ant- marriage equality members, and defected via a changed heart – to side with a pro marriage equality – says NOM offers incentives to members of a secret online propaganda team which handles stories and tasks the group does not want to engage in officially.

“As part of my job with NOM, I was instructed to create a point system to reward the propagandists. Everything they do will be tracked and NOM plans to reward them,” he writes. “In the future, when this team gets off the ground, NOM intends to use the technology behind Mr. [Brian] Brown’s ActRight conservative activism website to facilitate tracking, create a competitive atmosphere between the propagandists and allow them to redeem the points they earn in a variety of ways, including lunch with Mr. Brown himself.”

From Marinelli’s Blog Post today

OM’s secret online propaganda team which is currently in development.

As early as last year after the Summer for Marriage Tour, NOM had the idea of assembling a special team of particularly homophobic propogandist dedicated supporters, which I lightly touched upon discussing NOM’s illusion of support. The task of this team is to do the work NOM doesn’t want to do or officially engage in. Let me give an example.

A couple of months ago, Elton John publicly changed his opinion on same-sex marriage and came out supporting marriage equality. Naturally, NOM wanted to go after him for his change of heart but “due to Elton John supporters and various other reasons” NOM decided not “to push the story” officially.

However, NOM’s secret online propaganda team was instructed to “make [Elton John's change of heart] public in a more suitable way” to allow NOM to covertly attack the pop legend in a way that would officially leave them out of the fray. It was important to NOM to create the illusion that Elton John’s change of heart naturally spurred a public backlash when all the while it was NOM pulling the strings from above.

In exchange for their propaganda work, NOM is offering rewards.

As part of my job with NOM, I was instructed to create a point system to reward the propagandists. Everything they do will be tracked and NOM plans to reward them. In the future, when this team gets off the ground, NOM intends to use the technology behind Mr. Brown’s ActRight conservative activism website to facilitate tracking, create a competitive atmosphere between the propagandists and allow them to redeem the points they earn in a variety of ways, including lunch with Mr. Brown himself.

Far from grassroots operation if you’re rewarding them with prizes and an all-inclusive lunch with the President of the organization. It’s appropriate for NOM though, considering the fact that those who do support them and spew their hate and rhetoric are completely comfortable doing so through a computer screen.

When it comes to actually lifting a finger in the advancement of their cause or showing up somewhere publicly, their willingness to participate dwindles at Biblical proportions. (I just couldn’t resist that.) So this strategy offers NOM’s hollow supporters a way to fight against marriage equality and never show their faces.

A case in point is a woman whom I will identify only by her initials S.N. Most people involved with the social media network I grew for NOM know there is a particularly hateful NOM supporter who for a time helped me with moderating the page’s wall. She spends hours upon hours attacking gays and lesbians on a smaller scale but not much different from the way I used to.

However, when it came to showing up personally at our Summer for Marriage rally in Trenton, New Jersey (near her home), she was nowhere to be found.

Currently, NOM’s remaining social media team, managed under Opus Fidelis, is working to develop the technology they need to deploy this secret online propaganda team. Central to the idea is to develop a plan that will “keep [the team] motivated in the long-term,” and the project’s head, David Lejeune, emphasized that the team would have “to be filtered so there is no risk of a leak.”

They want to have this team up and running in time for the 2012 presidential election season.

By Melanie Nathan
nathan@privatecourts.com
Facebook Melanie
twitter @oblogdeeoblogda
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SAN FRANCISCO – AB 9 seeks to Create a Safer School Environment for California Students.  Today the California Assembly Education Committee passed Seth’s Law in a 7-3 vote. AB 9, also known as Seth’s Law, is a comprehensive bill that addresses school bullying by providing California schools with specific tools to prevent and address the pervasive problem in order to create a safe school environment for all students.

The bill is named “Seth’s Law” in memory of Seth Walsh, a 13 year-old gay student from Tehachapi, California, who took his life in September 2010, after facing years of relentless anti-gay harassment at school. Wendy Walsh, Seth’s mother, provided powerful testimony in support of the bill today.

“I can’t bring my son back,” said Wendy Walsh. “But the California legislature can make a difference today to protect young people across our state just like Seth, who are or are thought to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. Schools need to take harassment and bullying seriously when parents or students tell them about it, and when they see it and hear it on the school campus.”

The bill was authored by Assemblymember Tom Ammiano and co-sponsored by a coalition of organizations advancing LGBT equality and justice, including the National Center for Lesbian Rights, Equality California, the ACLU’s California Affiliates, and Gay-Straight Alliance Network.

“As a former teacher, I know how important it is for our students to feel safe at school. Each day throughout California, LGBT youth experience harassment. Seth’s Law will give schools the necessary tools to prevent any young person from being bullied, harassed or worse because of their sexual orientation or gender identity and expression,” said Ammiano.

AB 9 would ensure that every school in California implements updated anti-harassment and anti-discrimination policies and programs that include actual or perceived sexual orientation and gender identity and expression, as well as race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, disability, and religion. It would also empower students and parents to know what their rights are and how to advocate for them.

“Children should never experience fear each time they walk onto their school campuses, dreading harassment and bullying by others—yet, this is the reality for thousands of kids,” said National Center for Lesbian Rights Executive Director Kate Kendell. “Schools should be safe environments for children, and everyone should look forward to the day that Seth’s Law goes into effect, providing educators and parents the tools they need to establish a school-wide culture of respect.”

Schools often do not have the tools or knowledge to adequately protect lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students and others from bullying, which remains a serious issue across California and the rest of the nation. Students, parents, and school employees often don’t know what the rules are or what to do if bullying occurs.

“We thank Wendy Walsh for her courageous advocacy to make schools safer for all young people,” said Equality California Interim Executive Director Jim Carroll. “No child should ever fear for their safety at school simply because of who they are. Seth’s Law will ensure that all students and school officials have the knowledge and tools they need to protect against bullying, harassment, assault and intimidation. We commend the legislators who supported this vital piece of legislation.”

GSA Network reviewed the websites of every school district in California and found that only 34 percent post their Student Non-Discrimination Policy. Of those, only 84 percent include sexual orientation and only 4 percent include gender identity and gender expression. Furthermore, only 24 percent of school district websites in California provide information for students and parents on where and how to file a complaint.

“Public schools have tremendous power and responsibility to protect students from bullying and harassment,” said Elizabeth Gill, Staff Attorney with the California Affiliates of the American Civil Liberties Union. “Better school procedures and policies to prevent and address bullying will make a safer environment for students who are suffering, and can even save lives.”

In a recent national survey, nine out of 10 LGBT students reported being harassed at school. The problem persists in California as well, with LGBT students reporting significant harassment. The California Safe Schools Coalition reported in 2010 that 42 percent of California students who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual and 62 percent who identify as transgender reported being harassed at least once based on gender non-conformity.

What’s more, young people often face bullying and harassment based on what their peers perceive to be their sexual orientation, regardless of whether they identify as being LGBT. According to the most recent California Healthy Kids Survey 12 percent of 7th graders and 10 percent of 9th graders reported being harassed based on their actual or perceived sexual orientation.

The consequences of bullying and harassment can include falling grades, depression, and risk of suicide. LGBT youth are three times more likely than their heterosexual peers to seriously consider suicide.

Under Seth’s Law, every school district in the state would:

• Create strong and clear anti-harassment policies and programs, if they don’t have them already.
• Have a system in place to ensure that all reports of harassment are taken seriously, addressed quickly, and that parents and students understand the process of making these complaints.
• Explain the harmful impact of bullying and discrimination to students and staff.
• Provide ongoing professional development for teachers, school counselors and administrators about identifying and stopping harassment and discrimination and creating a school-wide culture of inclusion and respect for difference.

“Seth’s Law will ensure that students know their rights and schools understand their obligations to project youth from bullying and harassment,” said Gay-Straight Alliance Network Executive Director Carolyn Laub. “Student activists in Gay-Straight Alliance clubs across the state are working hard to make their schools safer for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students and lawmakers owe it to them to do their part by supporting Seth’s Law.”

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The National Center for Lesbian Rights is a national legal organization committed to advancing the human and civil rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community through litigation, public policy advocacy, and public education. www.NCLRrights.org

Equality California is the largest statewide lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights advocacy organization in California. Over the past decade, Equality California has strategically moved California from a state with extremely limited legal protections for LGBT individuals to a state with some of the most comprehensive civil rights protections in the nation. Equality California has passed more than 70 pieces of legislation and continues to advance equality through legislative advocacy, electoral work, public education and community empowerment. www.EQCA.org

The three California Affiliates of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) are part of the   nationwide, nonpartisan organization with more than 550,000 members dedicated to the defense and promotion of the guarantees of individual liberty secured by state and federal Constitutions and civil rights statutes. www.ACLU.org

Gay-Straight Alliance Network (GSA Network) is a national youth leadership organization that empowers youth activists to fight homophobia and transphobia in schools by training student leaders and supporting student-led Gay-Straight Alliance clubs throughout the country.  In California alone, we have brought GSA clubs to 53 percent of public high schools, impacting more than 1.1 million students at 850 schools.  GSA Network’s youth advocates have played a key role in changing laws and policies that impact youth at the local and state level.  GSA Network is also the founder of the Make It Better Project, which aims to stop bullying and prevent suicide.  www.GSANetwork.org

By Melanie Nathan
nathan@privatecourts.com
Facebook Melanie
twitter @oblogdeeoblogda

Washington D.C. – LGBT Advocates Protest National Insurance Conference,Targeti ng American National Property and Casualty (ANPAC) for Discriminatory Practices ; GetEQUAL Protests Injustices on Behalf of Lesbian Couple Denied Claim After Hate Crime Arson Fire.

Today, GetEQUAL — the national direct action and organizing group known for using nonviolent civil disobedience to drive lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) equality forward  — has called for a protest of the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America (IIABA) conference taking place in Washington, DC, on Thursday April 14. The National IIABA Conference — one of the largest insurance gatherings of the year — will be keynoted by current Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH).

The group is targeting the conference to put pressure on the discriminatory practices of one of the conference’s member companies, American National Property and Casualty (ANPAC).  After more than seven months, ANPAC — a company based in Springfield, Missouri — still refuses to pay out the homeowner’s policy of a lesbian couple whose house was destroyed in a hate-fueled, arson fire over Labor Day weekend last year.

What:
Protest of Insurance Agents and Brokers of America (IIABA) National Insurance Conference, targeting American National Property and Casualty (ANPAC) for their discriminatory practices against the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community
Who:
GetEQUAL, a national LGBT direct action and civil rights organization
Why:
Protest Injustices Against Lesbian Couple Laura and Carol Ann Stutte
When:
Thursday April 14, 7:00-8:00am, Grand Washington Hyatt (1000 H Street NW)

GetEQUAL is calling for this protest to pressure insurance giant American National Property and Casualty (ANPAC) after the insurance conglomerate refused to pay out a policy on a lesbian couple whose Tennessee home is located outside of Knoxville, TN. GetEQUAL began working with the Stuttes, whose home was burned to the ground and whose garage was spray-painted with the word “QUEERS,” shortly after the incident. Returning from an anniversary celebration weekend over seven months ago to find ashes of their former life, they have been fighting with their insurance company, American National Property and Casualty, simply to honor their homeowner’s policy and allow their family to move forward.

After the fire, the couple filed a claim with their insurance company — American National Property and Casualty (ANPAC), a subsidiary of the giant insurance firm American National Insurance Company, based in Galveston, Texas. To date, the company continues to make the couple’s life a living nightmare — refusing to pay their claim, insisting that they continue to pay on their policy, refusing to pay the couple’s living expenses as detailed in a policy rider, and continually insisting that their paperwork has been lost and must be sent in again and again.

“The lengths that this couple has gone to simply to ask ANPAC to honor their fully-paid insurance policy are horrifying,” said Heather Cronk, managing director of GetEQUAL. “No insurance company should treat people the way the Stuttes have been treated, and we’re asking ANPAC’s peers and colleagues to dissociate themselves from such a soul-less and discriminatory company.”

The couple, with the help of GetEQUAL, has been pressuring the company privately and publicly to honor their policy, while the local community has chipped in to help the couple make ends meet and to provide a new insulin pump for their diabetic daughter. They have created an online petition asking the insurance company to pay the claim, which has garnered close to 50,000 signatures from across the country. (The petition can be found at http://bit.ly/f8POvz.)

READ MORE ON LEZGETREAL

GetEQUAL is a national, direct action lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization. Emphasizing direct action and people power, the mission of GetEQUAL is to empower the LGBT community and its allies to take action to demand full legal and social equality, and to hold accountable those who stand in the way. For more information on GetEQUAL, please visit: http://www.getequal.org. You can follow GetEQUAL on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/getequal, on Facebook athttp://www.facebook.com/GetEQUAL, or on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/getequal.

By Melanie Nathan
nathan@privatecourts.com
Facebook Melanie
twitter @oblogdeeoblogda

The National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) will honor four trailblazers in the movement for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender equality at its 34th Anniversary Celebration on May 21, 2011 at the Metreon Cityview in San Francisco.

NCLR’s Anniversary Celebration is often called “the party of the year,” attracting a sell-out crowd of 1,700 people from across the country to celebrate victories in the movement for full LGBT equality, and to honor those who have become role models for thousands of people through their unfailing commitment to justice.

The Awards and Honorees this May will be:-

The Voice and Visibility Award: Country Music Star Chely Wright and her father Stan Wright

The Voice and Visibility Award honors an individual who has helped to give voice and visibility to LGBT people. This year’s award goes to country music star Chely Wright and her father Stan Wright. Chely has shown unwavering courage since coming out in 2010, at the height of her career in Nashville, as the first openly LGBT country music star. She became a role model for others by sharing the painful, inspiring, and moving story of the heartache she suffered by trying to live in the closet, and the despair that finally propelled her to choose between taking her own life or coming out.

Chely has used her fame to speak out about the terrible shame, pain, and harm that are inflicted on LGBT people—and especially on LGBT youth—by a culture that still views LGBT people as sinful and immoral.

Chely’s father, Stan Wright, has stood by her side through every step of her journey, showing his unconditional love—an example for LGBT children and adults who may fear losing their family’s loving support by living authentically. Chely and Stan continue to stand up and speak out as people of faith, unchanged by the fact that Chely is a lesbian.

Spirit Award: George Washington University Basketball Player Kye Allums

The Spirit Award honors an individual whose strength of character embodies and invigorates the spirit of the LGBT community. This year’s award goes to George Washington University basketball player Kye Allums. Kye is a pioneer in the world of intercollegiate sports. In November 2010, he became the first Division I basketball player to come out as transgender, demonstrating extraordinary bravery and character in living genuinely and unapologetically as a transgender man. Through his simple act of continuing to play the sport he loves as the man he is, he has helped to change the landscape for other athletes.

Justice Award: Former Belmont University Soccer Coach Lisa Howe

The Justice Award honors an individual who has shown the courage and perseverance to fight for justice and sacrificed to make broad social change for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community. This year’s award goes to former Belmont University soccer coach Lisa Howe. Howe stood strong in the face of ignorance and bigotry, becoming a role model for not only her players and students, but this country, by  living honestly and loving her family. She has put a face on the continued need to fight employment discrimination in Nashville, Tennessee, where Belmont University is located, and in every corner of this country. Lisa has helped to transform the hearts and minds of her community and colleagues, inspiring them to launch an unprecedented public discussion about the place of openly LGBT people in private Christian colleges and universities, and prompting Belmont to change its non-discrimination policy to include sexual orientation.

Founder’s Award: The Honorable Donna Hitchens

The Founder’s Award acknowledges a person whose life embodies NCLR’s vision and values of equality and justice and who has demonstrated a lifelong commitment to activism on behalf of our communities. This year’s award goes to the Honorable Donna Hitchens, who, known as one of the nation’s most well-respected judges, retired from the San Francisco County Superior Court in November 2010. She has changed the lives of thousands of people through her commitment to justice, not only while serving on the San Francisco County Superior Court bench, but by founding the National Center for Lesbian Rights in 1977, where her vision of fighting for LGBT equality continues to change the nation’s legal landscape.

Special Guests

NCLR’s special guests at the 2011 Anniversary Celebration will be NCLR clients Desiree “Dez” Shelton and Sarah Lindstrom, out high school lesbians, who successfully challenged their Minnesota school district in January 2011 so they could walk together as part of the royal court of their school’s winter formal.

“Each and every one of these individuals is a hero,” said NCLR Executive Director Kate Kendell. “Their willingness and determination to standup for their beliefs have not only changed history, but will continue to improve the lives of thousands of LGBT people across the country for years to come—making them victors in our movement for equality and justice, and role models for each one of us.”

Founded in 1977, NCLR is a national legal organization devoted to advancing LGBT justice and equality through litigation, public policy, and public education. Since its start, NCLR—which helps more than 5,000 people each year—has embraced every aspect of the diverse LGBT community through its work, recognizing that the community comes from many different backgrounds and faces a wide range of issues.

The Anniversary Celebration is NCLR’s annual signature event that draws a sell-out crowd. Festivities begin at 8 p.m., with the well-known political humorist Kate Clinton returning for a command performance as emcee.

The Presenting Sponsor of the Anniversary Celebration is Wells Fargo. Our Gold Sponsors are AAA and American Airlines.

Learn more about the 2011 Anniversary Celebration.

NCLR Coverage by LezGetReal

SEE YOU THERE!!!
mel

Feature Picture : Kate Kendell By Melanie Nathan 2010 NCLR event —————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

By Melanie Nathan
nathan@privatecourts.com
Facebook Melanie
twitter @oblogdeeoblogda

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The National Center for Lesbian Rights is a national legal organization committed to advancing the human and civil rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community through litigation, public policy advocacy, and public education. www.NCLRights.org

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Equality California to Honor Judge Victoria Kolakowski,  and also Council-member Todd Gloria at San Diego Equality Awards – Equality California has  announced that it will be honoring Judge Victoria Kolakowski and San Diego City Councilmember Todd Gloria at the 2011 San Diego Equality Awards, presented by AT&T, set to take place on Saturday, April 30, 2011.

Kolakowski made history last year by becoming the nation’s first openly transgender judge. A trailblazing pioneer and inspiration to the LGBT community, Kolakowski has been a longtime advocate for LGBT equality, previously serving on the board of the Transgender Law Center and Equality California, where she was a founding board member.

LezGetReal interviewed the Judge at the EQCA awards in San Francisco. The event is highly recommended and the group must be supported for the amazing work they do in this State.

Gloria has worked tirelessly to increase protections and housing opportunities for LGBT people. Last year, Gloria introduced an equal benefits ordinance that requires city contractors to offer their employees domestic partner benefits, which the city council approved with unanimous support. The awards celebration will include an open-bar reception hosted by Blue Angel Vodka, silent auction, gourmet dinner and after party.

The event will be held at the San Diego Hall of Champions, Balboa Park, 2131 Pan American Plaza, San Diego.

Sponsors include Statewide Presenting Sponsor AT&T, Bank of America, Blue Angel Vodka, Sweet, State Farm Insurance, Joyce Rowland and Pam Morgan, Sempra Energy, Planned Parenthood of San Diego & Riverside Counties, Tom Maddox & Randy Clark, the BottomLine, Pulp Magazine, and Graphics Business Media.

Advance ticket purchase required. For event table and ticket information please visit www.eqca.org/sandiego. For sponsorship information, contact Kenny Cassady at 760-641-0082 or Kenny@eqca.org.

Equality California (EQCA) is the largest statewide lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights advocacy organization in California. Over the past decade, Equality California has strategically moved California from a state with extremely limited legal protections for LGBT individuals to a state with some of the most comprehensive civil rights protections in the nation. Equality California has passed more than 70 pieces of legislation and continues to advance equality through legislative advocacy, electoral work, public education and community empowerment. www.eqca.org

By Melanie Nathan
nathan@privatecourts.com
Facebook Melanie
twitter @oblogdeeoblogda

(New York) – Today, on the heels of the second anniversary of marriage equality in Iowa, Lambda Legal announced that Camilla Taylor, lead attorney on the Iowa marriage equality lawsuit, has been promoted to national Marriage Project Director.

“Camilla is the ideal person to take over the reins of our Marriage Project. She has done an extraordinary job fighting for the rights of LGBT and HIV-positive people in the Midwest and beyond for nearly nine years at Lambda Legal. She was the architect of our Varnum v. Brien case that won marriage equality in Iowa. She has become well known not only for her legal prowess, but also for her ability to passionately express to the public why same-sex couples deserve the freedom to marry,” said Legal Director for Lambda Legal, Jon Davidson.

“We’ve seen some extraordinary advances over the last few years for same-sex couples and their children as more and more states, counties, and cities have taken steps to respect their relationships and the right of same-sex couples to marry,” said Camilla Taylor, Marriage Project Director for Lambda Legal. “Lambda Legal has helped create this momentum, and I’m excited to work with a great team of colleagues and partners across the country to keep it going.”

During her tenure at Lambda Legal, Taylor was lead counsel in Lambda Legal’s four-year marriage equality lawsuit in Iowa, Varnum v. Brien, in which the Iowa Supreme Court, by unanimous decision, struck down Iowa’s marriage ban in April 2009. In Ohio and Michigan, she successfully litigated child custody cases at the appellate level including In re JDF, Morris v. Hawk, and Giancaspro v. Congelton, defending lesbian parents against efforts to deprive them of contact with their children based on now discredited arguments that the state’s antigay constitutional amendment invalidates same-sex couples’ adoption decrees or custody agreements.

Prior to joining Lambda Legal in 2002, Taylor was a staff attorney with the Criminal Appeals Bureau of the Legal Aid Society of New York City. She represented indigent defendants on appeal before the New York Appellate Divisions, First and Second Departments, and the New York Court of Appeals. Before her work with the Legal Aid Society of New York City, Taylor was a litigation associate with Shearman & Sterling. Taylor received her J.D. from Columbia Law School and her B.A. from Yale College. She is currently also an adjunct professor at Northwestern University School of Law.

Taylor fills the role recently vacated by Jennifer C. Pizer, who has become the Legal Director for the Williams Institute after 15 years of leadership at Lambda Legal.

http://www.lambdalegal.org

(San Francisco, CA, April 5, 2011)—A majority of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) older adults who answered a national online survey believe that staff of long-term care facilities would discriminate against an LGBT elder who was open about his or her sexual orientation, and more than half believe that staff or other residents would abuse or neglect an LGBT elder.

Released today, the groundbreaking report—LGBT Older Adults in Long-Term Care Facilities: Stories from the Field—utilizes survey results for the first glimpse into some of the issues faced by LGBT older adults in long-term care facilities. Of the 769 individuals who completed the survey, 328 people reported 853 instances of mistreatment in such facilities.

The survey, conducted from October 2009 through June 2010, did not use a representative or scientific sample, but includes hundreds of personal comments offered by the respondents, ranging from reports of staff harassment to staff refusals to provide basic services or care. Of the 769 individuals who completed the survey, 284 identified themselves as LGBT older adults. Others said they were family members, friends, social service providers, legal services providers, or other interested individuals.

The survey, website, and the report were prepared by the National Senior Citizens Law Center in collaboration with Lambda Legal, National Center for Lesbian Rights, National Center for Transgender Equality, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and Services & Advocacy for GLBT Elders (SAGE).

“Administrators and staff members at long-term care facilities should see this report as a wake-up call,” said National Center for Lesbian Rights Elder Law Project Fellow Daniel Redman, Esq. “An extraordinary 89 percent of respondents—from across the country, from a variety of backgrounds—assert that LGBT people cannot come out in a nursing home without risking their safety. Better policies, more comprehensive training, and an aggressive litigation strategy are all needed to bring the nursing home industry into the 21^st century. As the report asserts, “Good care is possible.” By following the report’s recommendations and taking affirmative steps to make facilities LGBT-inclusive, long-term care facilities can do a lot to make their services welcoming to all seniors.”

Said National Senior Citizens Law Center Executive Director Paul Nathanson: “Our hope is that this report provokes thought, raises critical questions, and compels future systematic research that can be used to dive deeper into the issues raised by these findings and the many personal stories we received.”

Some of the comments point to possible violations of federal nursing home law, while others signify that far more training and awareness by staff is needed, in addition to enhanced consumer awareness. The report also points to a wide array of policy remedies that could be enacted to support LGBT elders better and improve the facilities where they reside. The report’s recommendations are directed toward policymakers as well as long-term care providers.

“In SAGE’s experience, LGBT older adults often fear that they will encounter providers who might be uncomfortable with, or even hostile, towards them, untrained to work with them or unaware that they even exist,” said SAGE Executive Director Michael Adams. “Even when providers are supportive, fear of discrimination keeps many LGBT elders in the closet and prevents them from seeking the care they need. This speaks to a great need for training on cultural competency and LGBT aging issues, available through outlets such as the National Resource Center on LGBT Aging, for staff at long-term care facilities.”

Said Laurie young, a specialist on aging and the Director of Public Policy & Government Affairs at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force: “Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender elders remain a highly vulnerable and largely invisible aging population. We know that invisibility leads to greater social isolation, which can lead to increased vulnerability in many areas, such as the discrimination faced in long-term care institutions. This report highlights the issues faced by LGBT older adults in long-term care facilities and offers concrete recommendations on how aging advocates, policy makers, providers and social service agencies can meet them.”

Added Lambda Legal Deputy Legal Director Hayley Gorenberg: “Unfortunately, we are hearing far too frequently, all across the country, from LGBT seniors who are forced into isolation for fear of being out and vulnerable or older LGBT couples who are forced back in the closet when they visit their loved one in long-term care facilities. This report should shock our nation into action. As we continue to make great strides for equality, we cannot leave our elders behind.”

Survey results, comments and personal videos from LGBT older adults can be found, as well as profiles of the authors, at www.LGBTLongTermCare.org.

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The National Center for Lesbian Rights is a national legal organization committed to advancing the human and civil rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community through litigation, public policy advocacy, and public education. www.NCLRights.org

The National Senior Citizens Law Center is a non-profit organization whose principal mission is to protect the rights of low-income older adults. Through advocacy, litigation, and the education and counseling of local advocates, we seek to ensure the health and economic security of those with limited income and resources, and access to the courts for all. For more information, visit www.NSCLC.org.

Lambda Legal is a national organization committed to achieving full recognition of the civil rights of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people and those with HIV through impact litigation, education and public policy work. www.LambdaLegal.org

Services & Advocacy for GLBT Elders (SAGE) is the country’s largest and oldest organization dedicated to improving the lives of LGBT older adults. SAGE has pioneered programs and services for the aging LGBT community, provided technical assistance and training to expand opportunities for LGBT older people across the country, and provided a national voice on LGBT aging issues.  In 2005, SAGE became the first official LGBT delegate at the White House Conference on Aging.  In 2010, SAGE was awarded a three-year $900,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Administration on Aging to seed the creation of the nation’s only National Resource Center on LGBT Aging. Learn more at www.SAGEUSA.org and www.LGBTAgingCenter.org.

The National Center for Transgender Equality is a social justice organization dedicated to advancing the equality of transgender people through advocacy, collaboration and empowerment. www.TransEquality.org

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force builds the grassroots power of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community by training activists, equipping state and local organizations with the skills needed to organize campaigns to defeat anti-LGBT referenda and advance pro-LGBT legislation, and building the organizational capacity of the movement. As part of a broader social justice movement, the Task Force works to create a nation that respects the diversity of human expression and identity and creates opportunity for all. www.TheTaskForce.org

For several years now, China has had the 50 Cent Party, trolls who leave pro-government comments on blogs and forums. Russia is organizing one, advertising for people to leave up to 70 comments a day from up to 50 accounts on a single blog. Our State Department has used the services of the ten-member Digital Outreach Team since 2006 to post on foreign blogs. Their task is to correct misinformation being spread particularly in the Muslim world.

Now, the U. S. Central Command is putting together a $2.75 million initiative to combat violent extremism on-line. They have contracted the California company Ntrepid to create software that would let users manipulate conversations on social media sites. A single person would be able to manipulate ten avatars anywhere in the world. The target sites would be Arabic, Urdu and Persian, not America or English-language sites.

Last year, in the run-up to the election, trolls caused at least one complete shutdown of Yahoo’s news site. Every day, they slowed traffic to the point where posters simply became so frustrated, they dropped off the site. They targeted liberal comments, and thumbed them into “hidden” status with such efficiency that liberals were accusing Yahoo of censorship, while the same trolls were insisting they were being censored. They copied and re-posted long, elaborate explanations of what was wrong with America and with liberal-socialist-communist-Marxist-Maoist-fascists like President Obama. The only thing that showed up with more regularity than the list of taxes that didn’t exist 90 years ago was the “dating” site solicitations. “Find love with a guy/gal who is rich, taller, shorter, younger, older,” whatever your little sex-deprived body was looking for. Spamming and trolling are thriving cottage industries in America. The pay isn’t great, but you don’t have to get dressed in the morning.

I guess the $2.75 million is for trolls who are fluent in Arabic, Urdu or Persian. Fortunately, this is the Obama administration and DADT is on the way out. The Bush adminstration managed to dump most of our military’s great translators under DADT.

We have some real issues with our government and computers. A private can download massive amounts of classified documents to a CD. Hackers can get into our classified systems through P2P sites. There are no viable firewalls between government departments. Even our government has lost laptops filled with important data. CentComm is actually considering connecting government computers to blogs and forums in countries that don’t necessarily like us to do something they still haven’t worked out with extremists on those sites. Wouldn’t our $2.75 million be better spent finding and hiring a Penelope Garcia to analyze our government’s existing computer systems and plug its gaping holes?

I am by no stretch of the imagination a computer geek, but even I can see what an idiot idea this is until our government has fixed everything that is wrong with our government computer systems.

Related articles

• U.S. Military Program Creates Online Sock Puppets To Counter ‘Enemy Propaganda’ (crunchgear.com)
• U.S. Government Writes Software to Enable Squads of Propaganda Comment Trolls | Discoblog (blogs.discovermagazine.com)

(San Francisco, CA, March 31, 2011)— A groundbreaking report released today by the Institute of Medicine urges medical researchers to include the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities in health studies to gain a better understanding of their lives and unique health care needs at different stages of life.

Authored by leading experts on LGBT health, “The Health of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People: Building a Foundation for Understanding” concludes that the lack of sufficient health care data about LGBT people has resulted in an incomplete picture of the community’s overall health needs. The report is the first to comprehensively analyze the LGBT community’s health needs, providing a thorough compilation of existing data, and providing researchers with guidance about how to effectively continue to collect LGBT health data to fill in critical gaps.

One of the report authors, Family Acceptance Project Director Dr. Caitlin Ryan, a leading researcher on LGBT youth, has worked closely over the years with the National Center for Lesbian Rights and Equality California. She is a member of Equality California Institute’s LGBT Health and Human Services Network, and has been a vital part of the Network’s statewide efforts.

In discussing the report, Dr. Ryan said: “This report provides a roadmap for addressing the unmet health needs of LGBT people from childhood through later years. It legitimizes LGBT health research for the scientific community and academic institutions, and will change the way that LGBT health issues are talked about, taught about, studied and addressed in practice. It’s the key to open institutional closet doors to reduce serious health disparities and to promote the well-being of LGBT people.”

Said National Center for Lesbian Rights Executive Director Kate Kendell: “This groundbreaking report documents the urgent need for researchers to include LGBT people in all aspects of health care research. Without this data, our community will continue to face obstacles accessing health care and will continue to be under-served.”

In California, Senator Christine Kehoe (D-San Diego) has introduced the Survey Data Inclusion Act (SB 416), sponsored by Equality California, which would require the state to add questions about sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, domestic partnership status and the gender of a spouse as part of the voluntary demographics sections in California’s government surveys. Such data is already collected for other groups.

“We call on the California Health and Human Services Department to strengthen its efforts to eliminate health disparities for LGBT communities, and we applaud Senator Kehoe and the Institute of Medicine for their leadership in recognizing that investment in LGBT health is a crucial part of ensuring that LGBT people and families can contribute fully to our state’s future,” said Equality California Interim Executive Director Jim Carroll. “In a time of highly limited resources it is paramount that decision makers have relevant data to allocate those resources to achieve the greatest good. The lack of data about LGBT people and families continues to have a detrimental impact on the health of millions of people, particularly our most vulnerable community members whose unique health needs are invisible and literally uncounted in the state systems of care.”

Equality California Institute has launched a variety of initiatives to address LGBT community health needs, including the LGBT Health and Human Services Network, which focuses on LGBT inclusive health data and the Reducing Disparities Project, to assess the mental wellness needs of LGBT communities across the state.

Read the report.

The National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) is a national legal organization committed to advancing the human and civil rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community through litigation, public policy advocacy, and public education. www.NCLRights.org

Equality California (EQCA) is the largest statewide lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights advocacy organization in California. Over the past decade, Equality California has strategically moved California from a state with extremely limited legal protections for LGBT individuals to a state with some of the most comprehensive civil rights protections in the nation. Equality California has passed more than 70 pieces of legislation and continues to advance equality through legislative advocacy, electoral work, public education and community empowerment. www.EQCA.org

Pocahontas by Tali Shapiro

03-28-2011 by L. S. Carbonell

There is a line in the 1993 TV movie Death Train that has haunted me all these years. “A country is defined by its enemies.”

The idea being presented by the film’s protagonist is a simple one. From 1939 to 1945, the United States had the Nazis and Japan as an enemy. From 1945 until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, we had a formidable enemy in the U.S.S.R. Those enemies helped define our nation, made us the alternative great power in the world. Without them, the United States was just another country.
For ten years, the United States did not have a viable enemy. International terrorists were treated as criminals by the Clinton administration, and criminals aren’t a serious enemy. The al Qaida attack of 9-11-2001 could have provided us with a new enemy, but al Qaida is too nebulous. It doesn’t have the gravitas of a massive nation with a nuclear arsenal equal to our own. The Taliban fell too easily and the insurgents in Iraq were a difficult enemy to characterize – were they really enemies or were they defending their country from an outside invader. The attempts by the Bush administration to play the fear card were not really successful.

It is part of the conservative mindset that, as stated in that old movie, a country is defined by its enemies. The task facing the conservative part of our nation was creating a viable enemy to unite people behind their party. We all chuckled when Hillary Rodham Clinton said there was a “vast right wing conspiracy” that tried to destroy President Clinton. We’re not chuckling anymore.

The battle cry of the Tea Party, the phrase constantly repeated by people like Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin is “take back our country!” Take it back from whom? We haven’t been invaded by an enemy. We aren’t at war with anyone, really. “Take back our country!” are fighting words, war cries, the language of a defensive force in the face of an external invasion. Just who is it we are supposed to reclaim our country from?

The enemy that the “vast right wing conspiracy” has chosen is us. We are supposed to take back our country from ourselves. And if you think that doesn’t make any logical sense, you are absolutely right. There is no logical sense in incitement to war. All there is is passion. Find the button that will inflame the most number of people and hit it repeatedly.

It is how a handful of European aristocrats and church leaders, drooling over the riches of China, blocked from accessing them by the Muslim Caliphate, were able to convince tens of thousands of ordinary Europeans to march on the Holy Land in a half-dozen Crusades to save Christ’s homeland from the infidel Muslims. Religion is a really good way to enlist cannon fodder.

It is how a bunch of French intellectuals got tens of thousands of Frenchmen to rise up in revolt, not once, but also a half-dozen times, against the rich and powerful. Economic imbalance is also a great way to enlist cannon fodder.

The third favorite enlistment method is ethnic or racial divisions. “They” are not to be trusted. “They” don’t look like us. “They” don’t share our values. You know the litany.

The “vast right wing conspiracy” has had the past decade to build on the basic blocks of enlistment of cannon fodder. Now, they have an army ready to take back our country from ourselves.

They have portrayed Christians as being under attack by human secularists (or is that secular humanists), atheists, agnostics, Jews, Muslims, pagans and even Catholics in some of the more isolated enclaves of fundamentalism. Bill O’Reilly’s “War on Christmas” is part of this, as is the myth that this nation was founded as a Christian state. In spite of the fact that Christianity in all its forms is the majority religious affiliation of America, the right wing has managed to present Christians as a threatened minority.

The economic meltdown has been a godsend (no pun intended) for the right wing. In 1929, there was no attempt to prevent the failure of hundreds of banks because the Federal government did not have the mechanisms in place to do that. When Bush pushed through the TARP bill, he not only prevented the failure of banks, he diverted attention from the real cause of the economic collapse. The right wing stepped in and presented a few good villains to fill the gap – an alternate reality. The crisis was caused by too many people getting too much in “entitlements.” It was caused by out-of-control spending on such unnecessary things as teacher salaries and public workers. It was caused by too much government. The basic structure of this argument has been built up over time. It was assisted by the election of a Democratic President and Democratic majorities in the Congress because the right wing has had decades to paint the Democrats as “leftists,” “pinkos,” “socialists,” and un-American. You can go back into the archives of newspaper columns from the Clinton administration, written by men like Cal Thomas and George Will, and find these words being used to describe Democrats. “Tax and spend” Democrats became commies by use of words right out of the Cold War. This track of the right wing draws on the residual fears of the communist juggernaut of the U.S.S.R. and transplants it to America’s politics.

Finally, there are the ethnic and racial factors. Eleven million illegal immigrants, sweeping our floors, mowing our lawns, changing our kids’ shitty diapers, picking our crops did not take our decent, middle class jobs. But they make good targets for the anger. The “New World Order” – a conspiracy theory that has been around for about a thousand years – has been resurrected, in part by radio conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Since at its core, the New World Order myth is based in hatred for Jewish bankers, it has built a new anti-Semitism in America. And, of course, there are Muslims. Whatever little President Bush was able to accomplish in keeping the war on terrorism from becoming a war on Islam has been lost. And while they are at it, they are also attacking women (who took away men’s jobs? who receive most of the entitlements?) and the whole LGBT community, which they can get on both religious and civil rights issues.

There is only one way to fight the “vast right wing conspiracy” and that is to follow the money and expose the people who are funding it. ThinkProgress.com is leading the way on this, along with MSNBC as a broadcast method for spreading ThinkProgress’ stories. They proved that the bazillionaire Koch brothers funded the Tea Party Express and are continuing to fund Republican efforts to kill unions. They have linked the Walton family (Walmart) and other mega-billionaire families to the creation of legislation through the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. You can find a short list of these groups on People for the American Way. Short as in 60 organizations dedicated to directing public policy and spreading the propaganda.

Breaking through the barrier of Fox News’ and right wing radio’s control of the narrative is a formidable task. What is at stake here is the future of our nation. We seriously didn’t understand what was happening until it jumped up and bit us.

There is someone we must “take our country back” from – those who have sold our future to the tiny group of people who are controlling most of the wealth in this nation, who have shipped our jobs overseas to make a few extra bucks, who are trying to disenfranchise us and marginalize us in our own country. ThinkProgress needs to reach more people. That is where we can help.

We can also help by replacing whatever the Republicans manage to destroy in the next year in terms of funding and organization for Democratic candidates. We can raise money, in dollars and pennies if necessary. We can replace the people who went door-to-door and registered voters and drove voters to the polls. The Tea Party is not truly “grass roots.” It was directed and funded by billionaires. We can show them what true grass roots is.

We can save our country. We must save our country.

Related articles

• The vast right-wing conspiracy gets together for a meeting (washingtonmonthly.com)
• Donald Kaul: What’s at Stake in Wisconsin (huffingtonpost.com)
• The Koch Brothers and the Paranoid Style in Liberal Politics (biggovernment.com)
• Another Vast Right Wing Conspiracy (online.wsj.com)
• Fighting The Propaganda Machine, Part Three (lezgetreal.com)