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)

Gabrielle Giffords Kelley

The full statement from Rep. Gabrielle Giffords reads as follows: “Arizona is my home, always will be. A lot has happened over the past year. We need to not change that but I know on the issues we fought for we can change things for the better. We can do so much more by working together. I don’t remember much from that horrible day, but I will never forget the trust you placed in me to be your voice. Thank you for your prayers and for giving me time to recover. I have more work to do on my recovery and so to do what is best for Arizona, I will step down this week. I’m getting better every day. My spirit is high. I will return and we will work together for Arizona and this great country.”

Giffords had promised to make a decision about her Congressional seat in time for a new candidate to properly campaign. It had been hoped, before Giffords was shot last January, that she would be running to replace Senator Jon Kyl this year. In place of that, it was hoped that she would be sufficiently recovered to reclaim her place in Congress. Her district is solidly Democratic and her re-election was a slam-dunk. Now, she has opened the door for someone else to run in her place.

Gabrielle Giffords will be a hard act to follow, not because of the shooting, but because she was already much loved within her district, in part because of her constant interaction with her constituents at events like the Congress on Your Corner event where she was shot. Now, Giffords can concentrate on her recovery and fulfilling the dream that was sidetracked by Jared Loughner’s bullet – having a baby with husband Mark Kelley.

Related articles

• Tucson, One Year Later (lezgetreal.com)
• Gabrielle Giffords Returns to Tuscon One Year After Shooting (inquisitr.com)
• Man Wounded in Arizona Shooting Hates Gabrielle Giffords [Gabrielle Giffords] (jezebel.com)
• Mark Kelly Shares Giffords’ Progress a Year Later (abcnews.go.com)

Gabrielle Giffords and Mark Kelley, 2010

Church bells rang out over Tucson, Arizona, at 10:11 a.m. local time this morning to mark the first anniversary of the tragedy that wrenched the city when a lone gunman opened fire on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the constituents who had come to meet her in a supermarket parking lot. With his 33-round magazine in a 9 mm Glock, Jaren Loughner was able to put a single bullet through the skull of Ms. Giffords, kill six innocent people and injure 12 others. When Loughner was brought to ground, the dead were Federal Judge John Roll, Giffords aide Gabe Zimmerman, 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green, Dorothy Morris, 76, Phyllis Schneck, 79, and Dorwan Stoddard, 76.

Sunday was a day of commemorations, memories and pain for a city that, in the aftermath of the shooting, seemed more like a small town. A memorial service was attended by approximately 200 people at an Anglican church in norht Tucson, near the scene of the shooting. At St. Augustine Cathedral, the church attended by Judge Roll, about 300 attended a memorial mass. A memorial was also held at the University of Arizona’s Centennial Hall.

Giffords and her husband had announced earlier in the week that they were planning to come to Tucson to visit the new hiking trail dedicated to Zimmerman, but they made several surprise stops as well, including one at the Safeway store where the shooting occurred. They also visited with the University of Arizona Medical Center staff who treated her and the other victims.

A candlelight vigil was scheduled at the University which was expected to draw a crowd of thousands.

Giffords has made an amazing recovery from her injury. She has been making public appearances lately, and it seems that her cognitive abilities are intact. Her speech, however, is still impaired. She has to grope for words, but has improved since the days when she scrambled words and called former President George H. W. Bush and his wife Barbara chickens. Giffords has said that she would like to return to Congress, where she is on extended medical leave, but that decision will be made in the spring. She wants to have enough time to regain her abilities, but knows she must allow time for a full campaign by anyone who might have to stand for the office in her place. Giffords is currently living in Texas at Kelley’s home (he is a retired astronaut) because it is close to the specialized hospital where she has been receiving intensive therapy for most of the past year.

Jared Loughner has been declared unfit to stand trial and is being held in a hospital where he is being treated for paranoid schizophrenia.

Related articles

• Giffords comes home to mark Tucson shooting anniversary (vancouversun.com)
• Arizona remembers deadly shooting with bells, tears (mercurynews.com)
• Survivors move forward year after Giffords attack (ajc.com)
• Tucson Marks One-Year Anniversary Of Deadly Shooting (huffingtonpost.com)
• Gabrielle Giffords, victims mark rampage anniversary (cbc.ca)

Baroness Thatcher with P. M. Cameron, 2010

If U. K. Prime Minister David Cameron had his way, Meryl Streep’s new movie would be shelved for years. He doesn’t like the wrapping narrative, where former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is shown suffering from Alzheimer and recalling her years as PM with her late husband. Cameron’s take on the movie is “It is a film more about aging and elements of dementia rather than about an amazing prime minister, and my sort of sense was a great piece of acting, a really staggering piece of acting, but a film I wish they could have made another day.” He would have preferred that it be made after Thatcher, who is 86, was dead and buried.

My problem with The Iron Lady is that Thatcher is reasonably sane during those dementia scenes. Okay, so she’s talking to her dead husband, but she’s not cussing, not hitting people, not spitting her food at people, not walking around shoplifting, not fighting every attempt to help her, not grinning nastily while her aide changes her shitty diaper, not lying on her bed screaming for a long-dead grandmother. Like most portrayals of Alzheimers, her case is shown as being fairly benign.

My mother’s wasn’t. A nurse who took care of my mother thought that it might be able to predict how Alzheimers would effect people if we knew what their childhoods were like, since eventually, they will regress that far. One victim that we knew must have had the happiest childhood in history, judging from how happily she spent her time dressing her dolls, coloring, drawing, cutting out snowflakes, cuddling her stuffies. She didn’t have a bad day from the moment she entered that phase until her death. I’d have given anything for that. My mother spent the last six months of her life trapped in the worst days of her childhood, days of confusion, fear, pain and panic.

Alzheimers is a very difficult disease to explain because it impacts each patient differently. Possibly the only trait most Alzheimers patients share comes near the end of their lives, when the seem to sleep almost constantly. At that point, I think they are either trying to cope with not understanding anything around them or they have retreated into infancy. But too many people only know that Alzheimers robs people of memories, makes them forget the events of yesterday while remembering the events of ten years ago. But, when they begin to understand that they are not suffering from “senior moments” but actually losing memories, they panic, they lash out in anger, they are in pain. Alzheimers is more terrifying that cancer for seniors. Alzheimers means losing who they are.

I had a patient last year who had a massive stroke. She lost most of her memory because of it. One morning, she was crying because she couldn’t remember when her husband died. But, eventually, she did remember and she told me about it. She was surrounded by her possessions, in her own apartment, and those visual reminders helped her to bypass the damage in her brain and remember things. That doesn’t happen in Alzheimers. There is no recovery of memories. And it goes far beyond simply forgetting. Many Alzheimers patients literally go back in time. In their minds, they are living at some point in their past. An incident with my mother made we realize that we may be misinterpreting the wandering of Alzheimers patients. I’m not sure they wander off because of confusion. I think it’s possible they wander off because they are trying to get to wherever it is they think they are still living, some home they had in the past. My mother was determined to get to her old house across town. She didn’t live in this other place. She had to get home to make dinner for my father. Dad had been dead for over 25 years.

If The Iron Lady is accurate about Alzheimers, it shows Maggie Thatcher walking into a room and telling “Dennis” about her day, just as she did when she was Prime Minister. She would not be relating things in her past, but reliving those days as though he were still there to listen to her complain about her job.

The Reagan family went into major denial over Ronnie’s Alzheimers. They still are to an extent. Ron Reagan’s admission that maybe his father had it in office is partial denial. President Reagan needed a seating chart to conduct Cabinet meetings, according to those who were there. We don’t need denial. We don’t need movies that deny the worst things that Alzheimers can do. Our population is aging – ask me, I’m a true post-war baby boomer. As bad as the numbers are now for Alzheimers, mostly because our population is living longer, it is about to get much worse. We need to show that dirty old men are not a joke, but many times they are Alzheimers victims who think they are 30-year-old studs again. They don’t perceive themselves as fat old men covered with liver spots. They see themselves the way they were.

Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher

In David Cameron’s mind, the movie might be an embarrassment to Maggie Thatcher. I deeply doubt that. I doubt she’s aware of it, and even if she sees it, she probably won’t associate it with herself. I also think that if she were capable, just for one day, to step out of her condition and comment on the film, I think she would approve. I think every Alzheimers patient would approve if films could educate the general public about what these people are going through and lift the myths, expose the horrors, make friends and relatives understand. The Iron Lady does not take away from who Margaret Thatcher was and what she accomplished. It will not make her detractors love her or make her fans hate her. It might make some people more sympathetic toward her, but that’s as far as the impact would go. She will always be the first female Prime Minister, the person with her name on an era of British history, the person credited with or blamed for the greatest peace-time shift in British culture and economics ever. It is not wrong for her in her last years to also be someone who helps educate the public about Alzheimers. Not many of us get to make a contribution to society when we can’t remember how to put on our knickers.

Related articles

• David Cameron: The Iron Lady should have been delayed (telegraph.co.uk)
• UK PM David Cameron criticizes ‘The Iron Lady’ (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• David Cameron blasts Margaret Thatcher film The Iron Lady (dailymail.co.uk)
• Iron Lady film made too soon, says David Cameron (independent.co.uk)
• British PM criticizes timing of The Iron Lady (cbc.ca)

Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry

What on earth can MSNBC do with one of the few people in America who thinks The Help was a really bad movie? Give her her own show, that’s what.

Tulane University professor Melissa Harris-Perry first came to our attention as a contributor on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, when she was Melissa Perry-Lacewell and wore her own hair. She is every rightwingnut’s worst nightmare – an articulate, educated, beautiful, black single mother with a successful career as a college professor and author, and a truly wicked sense of humor. Ms. Perry-Lacewell became Ms. Harris-Perry last year when she finally gave up her singleness and not only got married, but moved to New Orleans and got a head full of braided extensions.

Melissa was born in 1973, daughter of William M. Harris, Sr., the dean of Afro-American affairs at the University of Virginia and Diana Gray, a white community college professor and activist who worked for non-profits that assisted poor communities. Melissa has said of her heritage, “I’ve never thought of myself as biracial. I’m black.” Perhaps her next book might look at the psychology and life choices of biracial persons in America, given both her attitudes and the problems of our President. Melissa took her bachelor’s in English at Wake Forest in 1994 and her PhD in political science at Duke in 1999. She also has an honorary doctorate from Meadville Lombard Theological School. She is a member of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority.

From 1999 to 2005, she taught political science at the University of Chicago and from 2006 to 2010 was on the faculty of Princeton University.

Melissa’s first book, Barbershops, Bibles and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought won the W.E.B. DuBois Book Award and the Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association. Her second book provided the distaff view of black American political development, Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes and Black Women in America. She is also a contributor to The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, Crain’s Chicago Business, and Newsday, as well as a regular column in The Nation called “Sister Citizen.”

From 1999 to 2005, Melissa Harris was married to Dennis Lacewell, with whom she has a daughter. Last year, she married James Perry, a 2010 candidate for mayor in New Orleans. That is when she transferred from Princeton to Tulane.

Melissa has substituted for Rachel Maddow many times, which is the new way at MSNBC to get your own show. It used to be that Keith Olbermann’s subs did the jump to permanent positions, as Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell did. Melissa will be the second Maddow sub to get a weekend show. Up With Chris Hayes premiered a couple of months ago, runs from 8 to 10 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Melissa’s show, which starts February 4, will hold the 10 a.m. to 12 noon slot and be followed by Weekends with Alex Witt from noon to 2 p.m. MSNBC has run for years without a weekend line up of substance. They had relied on a sort of headline news show and showing Meet the Press, which ran on the parent network, NBC, and filled the rest of their time, from 10 p.m. Friday night to 6 a.m. Monday morning with their prison shows. Both CNN and Fox had a range of weekend programs, from special reports to Sunday review and analysis shows. MSNBC is slowly expanding its lineup to compete. All three networks have pulled out of the true 24/7 reporting that CNN pioneered, showing repeats with headline updates during the night. This has proven to be a bad choice as events in the Middle East and Asia happen during our nighttime, and Americans have to wait for 6 a.m. to find out what’s really going on in any depth.

Melissa Harris-Perry is a delightful lady. It is very rare for her to get angry or indignant in her conversations, preferring humor and a light touch to make her points.

I have only one complaint….the extensions. They make Melissa look like she needs Rogaine, way too much scalp. I’ve never understood them any more than I’ve understood young black women who dye their hair turquoise or magenta. It’s a holdover from my 1960s hippie days. I think women are beautiful in their natural state, no matter what that might be. I look at those extensions and see bald spots in the future, like the late actress Patricia Morrison, whose extremely long hair was always pulled up in a pony tail. She ended up with a tonsure from the weight of the pony tail.

There is one thing I would like to see from MSNBC as the year progresses – that they get more of their commentators and correspondents out of the studio. Both Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz have done reports from the real world, Maddow in Iraq and Schultz in Wisconsin. But the left needs more. We need people to see the real stories out in our country, the reality of welfare and unemployment and homelessness, the real barriers facing young people looking for work that matches their very expensive college loans. We need to see the truth about illegal immigrants and the work they do, more than what Steven Colbert did last year. We need a successor to Edward R. Murrow’s Harvest of Shame and the NBC White Papers of my youth – exposure of facts to counter the propaganda that people choose to be unemployed or on welfare or are taking American jobs. MSNBC identifies itself as the opposite of Fox. Well, it’s not doing a very good job of that if they don’t get out of the studio and prove it.

Related articles

• Melissa Harris-Perry (theobamacrat.com)
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• Melissa Harris-Perry Snags MSNBC Weekend Show, Will You Be Watching? (clutchmagonline.com)
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Our "most admired man."

Not good news for Republicans in this year’s poll. Democrats rule.

President Obama led the men’s list with 17% of the votes, with George W. Bush pulling a dismal 3% for second place. Bill Clinton, Warren Buffett and Rev. Billy Graham tied at 2%. Newt Gingrich, Donald Trump, Pope Benedict, Bill Gates and Mormon leader Thomas Monson finished the field at 1% each. That only adds up to 31% of the responses, and those were the top 10. The rest of the 69% were 1% or lower. This has been the pattern with the Gallup “Most Admired” for years now – no one scores really high and no group of people add up to close to 50%. This poll acts more as a measure of how diverse the American public is than anything else.

Our "most admired woman."

Among the women, it was Hillary Clinton in the top position again. She’s done that a total of 16 times since 1992. She also pulled 17%, followed by Oprah Winfrey at 7% and Michelle Obama at 5%. Sarah Palin dropped to fourth place with 4% and Condaleeza Rice re-emerged with 3%. At 2% each were Laura Bush, Margaret Thatcher, Ellen DeGeneres, Queen Elizabeth and Michele Bachmann. Women were stronger, with the top ten polling a total of 46% of the respondents, and higher overall marks for than the men received.

For the men, it was four politicians, three religious leaders and three business leaders, though you could cross categories with the Donald into politician/business man/entertainer and Buffett, Gates and Clinton as philanthropists.

Ellen DeGeneres at the Emmys (Creative Commons)

The women were a little harder to categorize – what do you call Sarah Palin, Laura Bush and Condaleeza Rice? Or even Queen Elizabeth for that matter? She’s not a politician. So, let’s just say there were three entertainers and the rest were or are in service to their nations.

Ellen DeGeneres – that is so cool. It must have Michele Bachmann’s knickers in a twist to score the same admiration rating as a barbarian.

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First Lady's rear view

Many years ago, there was a bookmaker and sports commentator named Jimmy “the Greek” Snyder. In January, 1988, he was fired by CBS Sports for making an observation about black athletes’ physical advantages. The remark drew attention to the fact that there is a genetic trait that is visible in some black football players because of the tight uniform. It is a long muscle connection between the back of the thighs and the lower back and provides a certain degree of advantage when running. It’s something you can actually see in some black football players. The remark was deemed racist and Jimmy was fired.

With all due respect, there are genetic traits in all of us that relate to our ancestors – whether it’s the color of our hair or the shape of our bodies. It’s just part of the genetic crap shoot. In all the conversations and debates about the late Karen Carpenter’s anorexia, one factor kept being overlooked. Her genes made her very bottom heavy. It was like she had two bodies spliced together – the top half was a size 1 and the bottom half was a size 16. I have never doubted that trying to cope with that imbalance was responsible in part for her obsession with dieting that morphed into anorexia.

Michelle Obama also inherited a tendency to have a disproportionate body, though more localized than Carpenter’s. She’s got a big ass. Though it’s a genetic tendency that shows up more in black women than white, it’s not exclusive to black women. Jennifer Lopez has the same problem. There are just some women who are condemned to have broad beams. They can starve themselves, and the imbalance will still exist.

But, Michelle Obama is the First Lady, and in the tradition of First Ladies, at least since Jackie Kennedy, Mrs. Obama has chosen a personal campaign. It’s not planting wildflowers on highway medians, it’s the American diet. She wants to see our children eating more healthy foods. It is a campaign that hits at more than just the issue of the fat level at McDonalds, but also at the issues of poverty and culture. Poor people do tend to be fat, not because food stamps buy too much food, but because starches are cheaper than fresh vegetables and processed foods are easier for working poor mothers to throw together.

Rush Limbaugh

Well, Mrs. Obama’s wide load is a target of insults from the right. Rush Limbaugh, who is the last person on earth who should criticize someone else’s size, loves to attack Mrs. Obama’s bottom, calling it a matter of enlightening the public to the absurdity of a woman with a large bottom advocating healthy eating. The right wing still rants about a single incident a couple of years ago when Mrs. Obama ordered ribs in a restaurant, though any diet expert can tell you that an occasional indulgence keeps people on their diets. Limbaugh’s latest was a fake introduction of the First Lady – “here at our microphone” – followed by the playing of a rap song praising black women’s big asses.

That’s Limbaugh, the man who should never, ever bounce up and down in time with his applause. That clip from his appearance at a Republican Party event was the best human representation of a bowl of jell-o in history. We can ignore Limbaugh.

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner

But a member of the House of Representatives should have more respect for the First Lady. One of Wisconsin’s finest, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, was overheard in Reagan National Airport telling someone about an incident that took place at an Episcopal church auction three weeks ago. A woman came up to him at the action and was praising Mrs. Obama. He told the woman that Michelle “…lectures us on eating right while she has a large posterior herself.” He was supposedly talking to a staff member about requests for a comment about the incident, but he characterized the criticism as “liberal media bias” and “stands by his remarks.” This is another man who is pulling a “pot calling the kettle black” over body size. The man is a self-confessed Cheetos addict.

Rep. Sensenbrenner has issued an apology, sort of. He doesn’t approve of the First Lady’s healthy food initiative. He probably prefers First Lady’s to stick to wildflower planting and redecorating the White House and telling people to “just say no” to drugs. God forbid a First Lady should take an interest in the welfare of our children in the fattest nation on earth. God forbid that a First Lady should address the explosion in cases of diabetes and other obesity-related diseases, when they have been shown to be precipitated in childhood. Schools all over the country have cut out recess and cut back on phys ed because of budget cuts. Our kids can’t safely play out-of-doors in too many communities. Gone are the days when kids could start a game of stickball in the street and spend an hour running around the “bases.” Mrs. Obama’s initiative includes cheap ways for kids to get up off the couch, put down the game controller and move their bodies.

The First Lady’s initiative is not dissimilar to one started years ago by former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. It’s okay for a Republican governor to do this, but not a Democratic First Lady. That’s been the bitch ever since Barack Obama was elected. No matter what he or his family do, it will be wrong in the eyes of Republicans. I’m still waiting for a single one of these bigots to cite just one thing the President has done that is Marxist, socialist, communist or fascist. The last time we had a President who was blindly hated this much, Tim McVeigh blew up the Murrah building. The scary part is, it doesn’t matter how many people die, the right wing will not stop spreading the hate.

Our ugly-butt First Lady, Michelle Obama (Vogue magazine)

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• Rush Limbaugh Calls First Lady ‘Uppity’, Slams Her Security Measures (lezgetreal.com)
• Large Republican Insults Michelle Obama’s Posterior (alan.com)
• Limbaugh: Michelle Obama Guilty Of ‘Uppity-Ism’ (huffingtonpost.com)
• Marshmallow Man Thinks Michelle Obama Is Fat (freethoughtblogs.com)
• Michelle Obama Lead Youth in World Record Number of Jumping Jacks (indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com)
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Mark Meckler at Capital, Nov. 2, 2010 (Getty Images)

Mark Meckler, co-founder ad chariman of the Tea Party Patriots, was arrested in New York’s LaGuardia Airport for trying to check in for a flight with a gun and ammunition in his luggage. According to Meckler’s attorney, this whole thing is improper. Meckler, “legally declared his possession of the firearm in his checked baggage at the ticket counter as required by law and in a manner approved by the TSA and the airline, yet was arrested by the port authority for said possession.”

Let us review, complements of the TSA website:

–Travelers must declare all firearms to the airline during the ticket counter check in process.      –The firearm must be unloaded.                                                                                                                                   –The firearm must be in a hard-sided container                                                                                                     –The container must be locked. A locked container is defined as one taht completely secures the firearm from being accessed. Locked cases that can be pulled open with little effort cannot be brought aboard the aircraft.                                                                                                                                           –If firearms are not properly declared or packaged, TSA will provide the bag to law enforcement for resolution with the airline. If the issue is resolved, law enforcement will release the bag to TSA so screening may be completed.

(There are several sentences concerning the resolution of firearms that are not secured and set off alarms.)

–Travelers must securely pack any ammunition in fiber (such as cardboard), wood or metal boxes or other packaging specifically designed to carry small amount of ammuniti                            –Firearm magazines and ammunition clips must be securely boxed or included with a hard-sided case containing an unloaded firearm.                                                                                                                         –Small arms ammunition, including ammunition not exceeding .75 caliber for rifle or pistol and shotgun shells of any gauge, may be carried in the same hard-sided case as the firearm, as long as it follows the packing guidelines described above.                                                                                                  –TSA prohibits black powder or percussion caps used with black-powder.

My money’s on the method of packing. Though Meckler’s attorney has declared that the weapon was declared, he has not also said that it was properly packed.

Meckler is charged with criminal possession of a weapon, which is a class C felony with a maximum 15-year sentence. Meckler’s Glock 27 pistol is registered in California, but not in New York. Prosecutors say that since the weapon isn’t illegal, and Meckler is licensed in his home state, he will probably only get a fine. He will, however, lose the Glock. It has been seized and will be destroyed.

Meckler, by the way, says he carries the Glock when he travels because he “recieves threats.”

Related articles

• Tea Party Honcho Busted For Gun At LaGuardia Airport (huffingtonpost.com)
• Tea Party member arrested on gun charge at NY airport (cnn.com)
• Tea-party leader shocked by arrest on gun charges(NY) (gunnyg.wordpress.com)
• Tea Party Leader Mark Meckler Arrested For Trying To Board Flight With A Gun (mediaite.com)
• Tea Party Patriots Co-Founder Mark Meckler Arrested – Charged With Gun Possession At LaGuardia Airport (yubanet.com)

Pfc. Jessica Lynch

It’s a perfect end parentheses for the Iraq War. Tonight, Jessica Lynch will slowly walk across the stage on damaged legs that still pain her at West Virginia University in Parkersburg to receive her teaching degree.

Lynch became the unwilling poster girl of the war when she was rescued from Iraqi forces who had held her for nine days after attacking her convoy on March 23, 2003, three days into the war. Eleven members of her 507^th Maintenance Company had died in the attack. Lynch and five others were captured. She was 19 years old when we saw her being carried on a stretcher by other soldiers, a broken little girl who had joined the Army to pay for a college education.

Pfc. Lori Ann Piestewa of Arizona died because of that attack, the only woman lost in the ground war. Lynch suffered spinal fractures, crushed legs, nerve damage and a shattered right arm. She says, “It’s tough to walk, but I look at it as, ‘As least I’m walking,’ At least I have my legs. They may not work. I have no feeling in the left one. But it’s attached, at least….At least I’m alive.” She also talks about her friend Lori Ann, “Knowing she died right beside me, and that could fairly well have been me, brings a whole new perspective. You’re just thankful for what you’ve been given, even it it’s not what you wanted.”

The Bush administration wove a giant lie around the pretty, blue-eyed blonde Lynch, ignoring Native American Lori Ann Piestewa and African American Shoshana Johnson. The administration’s version of the attack had Lynch going down with guns blazing. In actuality, her gun had jammed. Lynch was taken to a separate location from Piestewa, who died in an Iraqi civilian hospital, and separated from the remaining five captives, Pfc. Patrick Miller, Spc. Edgar Hernandez, Spc. Joseph Hudson, Sgt. James Riley and Johnson, who had suffered a crushed foot. Lynch denounced the hype, insisting that Americans didn’t need phony heroes when there were more than enough real ones. Her honesty got her a lot of hate mail. In 2003, with author Rick Bragg, Lynch published her side of the story, I Am a Soldier Too: The Jessica Lynch Story.

Jessica Lynch and daughter Dakota Ann

Lynch and her long-time partner Wes Robinson are the parents of 5-year-old Dakota, named in honor of Lori Ann’s heritage. Someday, maybe, they will get around to getting married. Right now, her plans include taking some time off as Dakota starts school and then pursuing her Master’s Degree in communications. She makes personal appearances and asks audiences for donations to Jessi’s Pals, a group which provides blankets and stuffed animals to patients at West Virginia University’s Children’s Hospital.

The attack on the 507^th Maintenance Company occurred at the start of the Iraq War. Jessica Lynch’s graduation came on the day that we have formally ended the war. Quite inadvertently, Jessica Lynch is the alpha and omega of that war.

Spc. Shoshana Johnson, center, with Command Sgt. Mjr. Michele Jones and NAACP President Kweisi Mfume

As for Shoshana Johnson, she had originally planned on an Army career, a perfect way to support her daughter. Her crushed foot ended those plans, along with plans to transform her military experience in food service into an eventual civilian career as a chef. She gives speeches, as Lynch does, and published I’m Still Standing: From Captive U. S. Soldier to Free Citizen – My Journey Home in February, 2010.

Related articles

• Former POW Jessica Lynch finishing degree (usnews.msnbc.msn.com)
• Former POW Jessica Lynch finishing teaching degree (ctv.ca)
• Whatever Happened To Jessica Lynch? (huffingtonpost.com)
• Lori Piestewa National Native American Games (indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com)
• Former POW fights military myths about capture (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

Her Majesty, Elizabeth, by the grace of God, Queen

This as a preview of next year’s Royal news. Charles, Prince of Wales, and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, will be on a Royal tour next year as part of the 60^th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth’s ascension to the throne. Prince William and Princess Catherine, Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, will also be on tour next year as part of the anniversary celebrations.

The Queen’s actual anniversary is February 6, 2012, the anniversary of her father’s death. Her coronation took place on June 2, 1953, and the 60^th anniversary celebration will span the whole 17 months. Her Majesty, who is 85, and Prince Phillip, who is 91, will limit their travel to within the British Isles.

People were very interested in Will and Kate’s tour of Canada this year, and I had fun reporting on it. I like Canada and Canadians and welcomed the opportunity to write about the country and its people. Next year, it will be Charles and Camilla in Canada and I fully intend to cover their tour. Will and Kate will be doing the Asian part of the Royal Progress – Malaysia, Singapore, the Solomons and Tuvalu. It will be an opportunity to learn more about those nations. During the 17 months, the two couples will visit all of the Commonwealth nations and the countries which still recognize the Queen as their monarch. Prince Harry has been recruited for tours of Belize, Jamaica and the Bahamas. Charles and Camilla will also do the Antipodes – Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea.

Queen Elizabeth is the second longest serving British monarch, having beaten out George III this past year. It will be 2015 before she replaces Queen Victoria as longest reigning.

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• The Royals Plan Global Tour for the Queen’s Jubilee (maboulette.wordpress.com)

Dorothy Ebersbach

My Dad had a favorite maxim: “You can take over the world with a clipboard and an air of authority.” He had two stories from World War II to illustrate that. The short one involves female pilots in the U. S. Army Air Corps.

Male pilots had a way to empty their bladders in flight, an adaptation of the method used by railroad motormen. Female pilots did not. The Corps used female pilots to move planes from base to base, among other things, and when they landed, the usually had their knees pressed together and were desperate for the nearest john. While stationed in Texas where he was teaching new recruits how to use their rifles, Dad and his buddies would meet the pilots with their clipboards, ask a bunch of dumb questions and watch the women’s eyeballs float. He though it was very funny. I hope those of who have joined him on the other side have extracted payment for that, all 775 of them.

Last month, one of those WASPs passed away at the age of 96. Dorothy Ebersbach became a nurse after the war and she combined those two loves into an endowment for a school for flight nurses at Case Western Reserve University. Her $2 million will be used to establish the Dorothy Ebersbach Academic Center for Flight Nursing at the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing, where Ebersbach earned her degree in 1954.

The school has an Advanced Practice Flight Nurse Program, which will be expanded through this endowment. The program’s mission is to train graduate-level nursing students to provide on-site care during emergencies and man planes and helicopters used to transport patients. The program is the only one of this type at an American nursing school. Fourteen students have graduated, eight are in the program this semester and they have provided summer school training to an additional 250.

Ebersbach’s death was unexpected. She arranged for the gift to Case Western and the school was planning to fly her from her home in Florida for the announcement. Christopher Manacci, clinical director of the program, said of Ebersbach, “Separate elements of her life have merged to continue her legacy of flight and nursing. This will help perpetuate this program for decades.”

Dorothy Ebersbach during World War II

Ebersbach, who grew up in Pomeroy, Ohio, went to work for her father’s construction company in Tampa, Florida, after graduating from Ohio University in 1936. The job required her to fly planes, so she trained at the University of Tampa. After Pearl Harbor, she applied for admission into the WASP group. The U. S. Air Force National Museum says that 25,000 women applied for flight training, 1,830 were accepted, 1,074 graduated and 900 were still in the program when it ended in December, 1944, as men started returning from the European theater. Ebersbach served doing test flights and towing targets for gunnery practice in Arizona and Texas….yes, Texas. Give my Dad hell, Dorothy.

After the war, Ebersbach wanted to continue flying, but the job market was flooded with male veterans, so she pursued a nursing degree. Ebersbach worked as a public health nurse in Hillsborough County, Florida (that’s Tampa) until her retirement in 1975. In 1977, WASPs were given military veteran status, even though they were civilians contracted to the military. In March, 2010, the 300 remaining WASPs were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honor awarded to a civilian by Congress. Ebersbach received hers in Tampa in April, 2010. She never married and she lived in the house her parents had bought in 1935.

It may seem that there should be no issues with being a nurse in flight, but my mother worked for a while escorting patients between cities. She worked entirely on commercial airplanes, but even there the issues included turbulence and banking of the plane, adjustments for altitude, movement of the patient, and potential side effects of air travel, like popped ears and motion sickness. Helicopters, which are used extensively in emergency transportation, present even more problems with motion in the air and keeping the patient stabilized. It really is a specialization within nursing. A certified flight nurse would also have to be a certified trauma nurse, trained in the unique needs of treating trauma patients. The degrees received at Case Western

The endowment helps fill a need in the medical community and the school will be a permanent reminder to young women of how special the women of World War II were – how they had survived the Great Depression, how they fought for college educations, how they contributed to the war in factories and in the military. My Aunt Lydia was in the Marines stationed at Pearl Harbor. My mother and her older sister Kathy were both in Army nursing corps training when the war ended. Women’s contributions to the war effort is something I grew up with, even if it wasn’t as talked about as much as the war stories of my male relatives and their friends. You can visit the WASP, Women Airforce Service Pilots of WWII webpage at www.wingsacrossamerica.us.

Thank you for your service, Dorothy Ebersbach, and for guaranteeing the future of flight nursing training.

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Gabrielle Giffords and Capt. Mark Kelly at his White House retirement ceremony (photo by David Lienemann)

During the course of her recovery and rehabilitation, Mark Kelly made sure that everything that could be videotaped was. He wanted that record of where his wife started, to show her how far she came.

“Gabrielle Giffords is too tough to let this beat her.” That is what Mark Kelly had told Diane Sawyer just after his wife was shot. He was right.

The first days of tapes are hard to watch. The animation of her injury is scary. As Kelly explains, a tiny bit one way or another, Giffords would have died or been paralyzed or turned into a vegetable. A different angle, a different path for that bullet…..

But what lay ahead of them was a daily battle for tiny steps of improvement, tiny signs that Giffords would come back. Kelly nightly made a bargain with God, all he wanted was for Gabby to talk and smile again, even if she could never walk.

We can see in these videos how much there was for Gabby to relearn – how to sigh, how to nod, how to pucker up for a kiss. Words were scrambled – spoon for chair, chicken for jacket and for President George W. H. Bush and First Lady Barbara Bush. The struggle for ever word, and emotional highs and deep lows as fought for every word, every phrase, every thought.

The videos show the power music has in recovery from brain injury. We all learned the alphabet with a song. We learned many things with music. If you are old enough you learned how to spell encyclopedia and Oklahoma with a song, or the Pythagorean theorem. Yes, Danny Kaye is responsible for a bunch of people who learned “the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the two adjacent sides.” And music played a huge part in Gabby’s recovery, providing her with cues for words and a rhythm for relearning how to walk.

Gabrielle Giffords did not recover because she is rich or because she’s a Congresswoman or because she had access to something the rest of us couldn’t. So much of her recovery is a matter of people – her husband, her mother, her friends, not just the professionals, but the love and optimism and belief in her ability to come back to them.

The interview itself can be viewed as a half-full glass, how far Gabby has come or how far she still has to go. Full sentences are still difficult, but the words are clear and correct, even if they sometimes need translation for Diane Sawyer. What does Gabby remember of the night before the shooting? Toy. Toy was the name of a favorite waitress at the restaurant where Gabby dined on January 7, and she had died since Gabby’s last visit. The best part of the show is learning that Gabby’s intellect is intact, her ability to reason and think is still there. The barrier now is communicating what she is thinking.

It is the man who obviously adores her who capsulized the essence of the past ten months of Gabrielle Giffords’ astounding story….”You can’t have too much hope.” – Mark Kelly.

If you missed the show, please go to abcnews.com to watch it. The honesty and openness of this story is an inspiration for everyone who suffers a head injury, and we have had far too many of those in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for those who love and would assist the injured. There is a companion show to the Giffords/Kelly interview that is also worth watching. On Nightline, Diane Sawyer was joined by Bob Woodruff, the ABC reporter who suffered a severe head injury in Iraq and has also made a remarkable recovery.

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Chelsea Clinton campaigning for her mother, Madison, Wisconsin, 2008

Shortly after 9-11, then-New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s only child wrote a free-lance op-ed about the events of that day. Chelsea Clinton was living in lower Manhattan at the time, a fact we learned later when members of Sen. Clinton’s staff told reporters how their boss had been trying to deal with the public requirements of the day while unable to get in touch with her child. The op-ed began with Chelsea describing how she had been walking down a street with a friend, discussing Bush policies, and in one moment, the world turned on its side.

The right wing went ballistic over that op-ed…how dare she be discussing the Bush administration! Who the hell did she think she was?!? Those were the milder comments newpapers received. Who was she? A witness to history, an intelligent, articulate young woman who managed to sort through the horrors and write about them.

The op-ed showed that Chelsea had an innate talent for writing and reporting that made me question her college major and apparent career choice, something in public health. She had spent her life being silently in the background, always there with one or the other or both of her parents, but never putting herself forward. That is about to change.

Chelsea has been hired by NBC News as a special correspondent for NBC Nightly News and Brian Williams’ new program Rock Center. She is joining fellow political daughters Jenna Bush Hager and Meghan McCain at the network. Meghan McCain provides political and social commentary on MSNBC’s principally commentary programs and Jenna Bush Hager works the morning gig on Today. Chelsea Clinton is limiting her scope to the “Making a Difference” segments on Williams’ shows. They are human interest stories about people who privately impact other people’s lives.

Clinton released the following statement, “I hope telling stories through ‘Making a Difference’ — as in my academic work and nonprofit work — will help me to live my grandmother’s adage of ‘Life is not about what happens to you, but about what you do with what happens to you.’”

She received her Master’s Degree in public health from University College, Oxford, and Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. She is currently working on her doctorate at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University and again tying it in with course work at Oxford. Brian Williams, in announcing the decision to hire Clinton, said “Chelsea Clinton has led a remarkable life. She possesses an uncommon understanding of humanity – on city streets, across this country and around the globe. We are so excited she’s joining us to tell the stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things.”

Clinton has traveled extensively with her father as part of his global initiative work, and seen some of the remarkable effects that small changes can make in people’s lives. She also traveled with her mother to war zones and famine-hit nations while Mrs. Clinton was First Lady, as well as hob-nobbing with world leaders at the White House.

The “Making a Difference” series airs on Friday nights on the NBC Nightly News, and Rock Center airs on Mondays at 10 p.m. Eastern. In addition to the television airings, both programs are available for viewing on MSNBC.com (just in case you have some other commitment on Mondays at 10, like, say, Castle, Hawaii 5-O or Rizzoli and Isles – don’t the networks understand there are seven days in the week??)

As for all those hysterical right wingers posting on the news stories that someone with real qualifications didn’t get this job because Chelsea Clinton’s parents pulled strings – there was no job. NBC didn’t post on Monster that they wanted a journalist for human interest stories. Chelsea didn’t apply for a “job” anymore than Meghan McCain or Jenna Bush Hager did (though I’ve never understood how Jenna ended up on NBC instead of Fox). This was definitely a matter of who she is, not what her qualifications were (other than a life involved in public service and her degrees in public health) and no aspiring journalist was rejected in her favor.

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• Chelsea Clinton is hired by NBC News (boston.com)
• Chelsea Clinton Hired by NBC News (nytimes.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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• via ” A Call to the People of the World to Support Iceland… (underpaidgenius.com)
• Twitter WikiLeaks Subpoenas of the Day (geeks.thedailywh.at)
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Gabrielle Giffords and Mark Kelly, 2010

Editor’s Note:

Here is our story about the interview

• Gabrielle Giffords’ First Interview (With Video)

The memoir has been released. She’s on the cover of People. So, the interview had to be next. On Monday night’s edition of 20/20, Diane Sawyer will be interviewing Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, retired astronaut Mark Kelly.

Since being shot in the head on January 8 in Tucson by Jared Loughner (who shot 19 people and killed 6 that day) Giffords’ recovery has been characterized as “miraculous.” It may not seem so to those watching the interview. Giffords still has difficulty speaking and has some residual paralysis on her right side. The miracle is in what might have been her fate. The bullet passed through the left side of her brain. It could have exploded inside her head, turning half her brain to soup. It could have shattered her skull more extensively than it did, filling her brain with bone shards. It could have left her in a vegetative state or severely brain damaged. It could have destroyed her motor functions, leaving her in a wheelchair or a hospital bed for life. It didn’t. That was the first miracle. The injury could be overcome. She could learn to talk and walk again and function at or near her pre-shooting levels.

That is what people need to see when they watch on Monday, not how far she still has to go, but how far she has come from lying comatose, head wrapped in bandages, face swollen and bruised, plugged in to a dozen tubes to sustain her life a mere 11 months ago.

The Arizona Democratic Party is holding her place for her, not putting forth an alternative candidate for her House seat. Giffords has said she will make the decision on whether or not to run in this year’s election by mid-spring. In the meantime, friends like New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand are making sure that there will be enough money for Giffords to run if she chooses to. One potential Republican rival has already learned the hard way that the one thing no one should use when campaigning against Giffords is her physical condition. The people of Tucson will not tolerate it.

Check you local listings for time and channel for 20/20 on ABC.

The Crystal Cathedral

The Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California, is one of the most famous of the mega-churches, its fame spread by Rev. Robert H. Schuller’s television show, Hour of Power, which premiered in 1970. Schuller was then conducting services in his Garden Grove Sommunity Drive-In church which was completed in 1961. The Crystal Cathedral was dedicated in 1980. The original church cost $3 million to construct, the Cathedral $18 million.

Somewhere along the line in the last 30 years, the church fell on hard times. Last month, they filed for bankruptcy. In the lawsuit filed by their creditors, it was alleged that the founders of the church, Robert H. Schuller and Arvella Schuller, and their family had “borrowed” $10 million from the church’s endowment fund and used it for salaries and expenses. The suit charged that “R. H. Schuller used his control and infuence to cause the [cathedral] to enter into the agreements that benefitted himself and his family, to the detriment of the creditors and in breach of his fiduciary duties” to the church.

Rev. Robert H. Schuller

Imagine the congregation’s surprise when they received an e-mail solicitation for donations of meals for the Schullers. The solicitation would have been bad enough, but the directions that came with the solicitation was a bit over the top.

The church’s administrators wrote that Schuller and his wife “would appreciate meals over the next three to four weeks. They are to be sent to the church to be transported to Arvella. The limo drivers could pick up the dinners or meet in the Tower Lobby around 4:30 p.m.”

LIMO DRIVERS????

And as if that weren’t insulting enough, it seems Arvella Schuller is suffering from pneumonia, so the congregants were asked if they could please pack food that is low in sodium, and include fruit, meat, soup and eggs in their meal donations.

LIMO DRIVERS????

John Charles, spokesman for the church said the solicitation was part of the church’s commitment to Christian charity. “As Dr. Schuller always says, ‘Find a need and fill it.’ I think that’s what we’re trying to do here.”

One church member, Bob Canfield, seems to feel they’ve already had enough Christian charity, and told the Orange County Register, “They’ve completely depleted the church’s funds, but they have absolutely no remorse for what they’ve done. They’re still being chauffeured around in limos. We, the congregants, have nothing. These are millionaires who have limos and chauffeurs. Why in God’s name would they want the congregants to deliver meals? It’s ludicrous.”

Limo drivers? That takes meals-on-wheels to a whole new level.

Related articles

• Crystal Cathedral email asks for food donations for Arvella Schuller (latimesblogs.latimes.com)
• Leader of Bankrupt Church Won’t Give up His Limo [The Rich] (gawker.com)
• Mrs. Schuller has pneumonia and a lot of gall (1minionsopinion.wordpress.com)
• Crystal Cathedral’s supporters are still praying for a miracle (latimesblogs.latimes.com)
• -Crystal Cathedral Updates: Chapman U. Increases Its Offer (answersforthefaith.com)
• Crystal Cathedral board reinstates founder as voting member (latimesblogs.latimes.com)
• -Catholic Church Sues For Crystal Cathedral (answersforthefaith.com)
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Goldline CEO Scott Carter, from Facebook

Somewhere in the back of my mind is the memory of a radio announcer who used to say “And the hits just keep coming….” That’s the way this day has gone. First Julian Assange, then Ann Coulter and now Glenn Beck. How sweet can a day get?

It reached a point on Fox News where so many advertisers had pulled out of Glenn Beck’s show – even going so far as to refusing to have their ads run on other shows if Beck was on them – that Beck’s main advertiser was a company called Goldline. Well, today Goldline International is in the news.

A year ago, ABC News reported that officials in Santa Monica, California, were launching an investigation into Goldline’s business practices because of complaints from dissatisfied customers. City Attorney’s Office spokesman Adam Radinsky said at the time that “There are two main types of complaints we’re seeing. One is that customers say that they were lied to and misled in entering into the purchases of gold coins, and the other group is saying that they received something different from what they had ordered.”

Goldline responded to those accusations by saying that complaints were rare and dealt with immediately and the company had a top rating from the Better Business Bureau. Scott Carter, Goldine’s executive vice president at the time, wrote to ABC News “When we learn that customers have not recieved the experience they deserve, we investigate and take action.”

That was last year. Now, the Santa Monica City Attorney’s Office has filed a 19-count criminal complaint against the company. The charges include theft by false pretenses, false advertising and conspiracy, running a “bait and switch operation in which customers, seeking to invest in gold bullion, are switched to highly overpriced coins by using false and misleading claims,” and the complaint specifies charges against former CEO Mark Albarian, executives Robert Fazio and Luis Beeli, salespersons Charles Boratgis and Stephanie Howard for defrauding customers. Current CEO Scott Carter is accused of making false or misleading statements, specifically “disseminat[ing] an untrue or misleading statement in connection with the sale of goods or services.”. Each charge carries a maximum penalty of one year in jail and fines between $1,000 and $10,000 per offense. The complaint went on to the specifics of how these transactions were conducted, how the salespeople were trained and how to mask the mark-up on the gold coins.

Apparently, their commercial spokesperson Glenn Beck is not included in the complaint, in spite of the amount of personal endorsement he gave this company on both television and radio.

Goldline executives told ABC on Wednesday that they will fight the criminal charges, saying the allegations are “without merit” and “preposterous.” Brian Crumbaker, Executive Vice President e-mailed a statement to ABC News saying that “The company will vigorously contest the allegations. We believe Goldline has industry best practices in customer disclosures enabling the most informed decisions.” He said that the criminal complaint has numerous errors, “A core allegation of the complaint cites the company for ‘offering Bullion for sale on Goldline’s website with no intention of selling it.’ The so-called bait and switch allegation is preposterous because bullion accounts for more that 40% of the ounces of gold sold by the company during the past year.”

And while we’re on the subject of Glenn Beck…remember his rally in Washington last year? Remember how he told people to donate to the Special Ops Wounded Warriors Fund to provide scholarships to the children of fallen Special Ops soldiers? Remember the teeny, tiny fine print on his website that said that SOWWF would receive any money that was left over after the expenses of the rally had been paid? Well, it has now been 14 months since that rally. Has anyone anywhere ever seen an accounting of how much money the SOWWF actually received?

Did I mention I bought lottery tickets today?

Related articles

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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?

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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.

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Sen. Marco Rubio at 2010 C-PAC (photo by Gage Skidmore)

The Washington Post’s Manuel Roig-Franzia has reported that the Golden Boy of Florida Republicans, Cuban-American Senator Marco Rubio, has a little problem with telling the truth. He tells a wonderful story about how his family came to America to escape Fidel Castro’s violent, brutal regime. The facts tell a different story. Rubio’s parents and older brother arrived in Florida more than two-and-a-half years before Castro took power in Cuba. Both parents traveled between the United States and Cuba several times from their arrival here in 1956 and 1961.

According to Maria Cristina Garcia, an expert on Cuban immigration at Cornell University, “The vast majority of people who emigrated in the 50s went for economic reasons, not for political reasons.” An interesting statement since the Batista regime that Castro overthrew was incredibly corrupt.

Now that his parents’ immigration and naturalization records have come to light, Rubio has changed his heart-wrenching story to claim that, in spite of stating on their immigration papers that they wanted permanent status, they always dreamed of returning to their beloved island. They did, individually, make several trips back to Cuba, and Rubio now says that these trips were undertaken to see if they could return, what life was like there, but they ultimately came back to the United States, completely bereft over the fate of their homeland.

Marco Rubio is very, very good at speechmaking. He’d probably be a very good actor. But this first crack in his image needs to be taken seriously by the Republican Party leadership.

Rubio has a strong following among Cuban-Americans in Florida, but he has been lying to those Cuban-Americans, most of whom either did come to escape Castro or whose parents or grandparents escaped Castro, that is not going to float well in the Cuban-American community. No one who feels that he is part of a special group likes a pretender. As word spreads of the truth of Rubio’s family, as it becomes clear that his parents not only left Cuba before Castro, but were able to freely travel between the two countries for two years after Castro took power, those Cuban-Americans who risked their lives on the open seas, who lost family members to Castro’s secret police, who lost everything, well, they are going to feel that Rubio lied for votes and isn’t really one of them.

Rubio is also being touted as one of the Republicans’ rising Hispanic stars, a person who can help turn the Hispanic vote to the party. That’s a massive WRONG!

As much as El Salvadorans hate being confused with Mexicans, that’s nothing compared to how much Central and South Americans hate Cubans. For 60 years, it didn’t matter how genocidal a regime was, as long as they said they were pro-America and not communist, their people could not get refugee status to enter America. Being a refugee does more than bypass immigration quotas. It places the entire generosity of the American social safety net at the feet of the refugees. At a time when Republicans are going psycho over allegations that illegal immigrants are voting and collecting welfare and every other benefit program out there, the Hispanics are looking at Cubans and seeing the only people who came here speaking Spanish who did get all those programs. While the right wing is pushing English only laws and trying to make certain that Hispanics don’t overrun “white” neighborhoods to create barrios and don’t speak Spanish anywhere in earshot of a true-blue American, Cubans who have been here for 50 years are excused for not speaking English and the Cuban communities of Florida are as firmly entrenched as the Amish.

Marco Rubio just went from Golden Boy of the Republican Party to a double-whammy liability – a wannabe pretender to the real Cuban refugees and a man who cannot give up that fake “escaped Castro” line to connect with the people who immigrated for economic reasons just as his parents did.

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Half-Gov. Sarah Palin, by Donkey Hotey/Bruce Tuten, Flickr

Well, now we know that Chris Christie was getting too much attention. Sarah Palin just had to jump on the social media and let the world know that “Hey, I’m not running for President, either!”

Palin sent out a letter on Wednesday, that was first picked up by ABC News. It started with the usual invocation of God’s place in her decisions, “After much prayer and serious consideration…..” And let’s not forget “…my family comes first…” Except when she continues with “When we serve, we devote ourselves to God, family and country. My decision maintains this order.”

Or maybe, just maybe, someone managed to finally get it through the fog that seems to surround her brain that if you can’t get the name of another candidate straight, can’t keep North and South Korea straight, think that Paul Revere warned the British and praise a chain store as “real New York pizza,” you don’t belong on the same stage with real contenders.

So, finally, 35 months after not becoming vice-president, 26½ months after quitting as governor, Sarah Palin is…..

It’s really too much to hope that she’s actually going to go away, isn’t it?

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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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Julian Assange leaving The Old Bailey

On Tuesday, WikiLeaks published e-mails and transcripts of phone conversations involving Julian Assange, his literary agent, his lawyers and the independent publishing house Canongate of Edinburgh, Scotland. Assange has his tighty-whities in a twist over Canongate’s decision to release the first draft of his autobiography after Assange decided to cash the check and not fulfill his contract to produce it.

Following the convoluted string of communication and finances, one sees what Bill Keller of the New York Times described in his January 26^th essay about trying to work with Assange – a man swinging wildly between a Messiah complex and paranoia. Canongate, probably to its eternal regret, signed the contracts with Assange in December, before the New York Times, the Guardian and Assange’s former associate Daniel Domscheit-Berg published their warnings.

Just take one statement by Assange, from a phone conversation with a Canongate executive in early June: “At least until the Swedish case ends, that’s how my life is – full of constant struggles and interventions. I can’t not respond to these things that put me and the organization in jeopardy.” No, he could end the things that put the organization in jeopardy simply by boarding a plane and returning to Stockholm to conclude the investigation into the allegations of sexual misconduct brought against him by two women. His life of “constant struggles” has been nine months living in luxury at Vaughan Smith’s country estate (albeit wearing an ankle bracelet and having strict restrictions on his movement) and getting a major-league make-over to transform him from smelly, stringy-haired street dweller to sartorially impeccable business executive.

According to the disclosures in WikiLeaks, the deal Assange cut with Canongate was befitting a man of his self-anointed stature. The $390,312 advance he received, however, was transferred “wholly without my consent” to the law firm of Finers Stephens Innocent, which represented him in the extradition case. In a September 12 letter, Assange’s lawyers state that the contract called for him to receive an additional $351,281 upon completion of the autobiography and $273,218 upon publication for a total of $1,014, 811. Not bad for a man who was crashing on friends’ couches and living out of a rucksack a year ago. Finers etc. must be one hell of a law firm if they bill nearly $400,000 for a few court appearances to put on their black robes and funny wigs and spout all that nonsense about how Assange is being persecuted and the rape charges are a cover for an elaborate plot to rendition him to America. Mark Stephens, the attorney in question, declined any comment on the allegation that Assange’s money was seized by the firm. If the money was taken from Assange without his consent, then Assange’s new attorneys should be filing charges against his old attorneys and whoever it was who made the transfer.

The money figures do not include any clarification of whether or not the payments included payments for his ghost writer Andrew O’Hagan, or an advance from the American publisher Knopf, who was partnering this deal. There were additional funds anticipated as Canongate negotiated translation and printing deals with 38 international publishers.

The deal started to fall apart in March, when the first draft of the autobiography was presented to Assange. Nick Davies, Canongate’s publishing director, explained that Assange “felt it was and is too personal.” Assange himself said, “All memoir is prostitution.”

Canongate listened to Assange’s complaints and tried to negotiate a rewrite that would satisfy him. But then, Assange claimed that he had lost all the rewrite through a computer glitch, and given Assange’s reputation as a master hacker, that explanation set off a clarion of warning bells for the publisher.

In early August, Canongate gave Assange one last chance to produce the contracted book, present them with a “new vision and timeline” for publication. And they warned Assange that if he did not co-operate, they would publish the first draft in its rough form and the devil take the hindmost. Assange’s promised injunction to block the publication never happened, and last week, the unauthorized autobiography of Julian Assange hit British bookstores with an earth-shattering, resounding THUD!

In the first three days, the book sold 644 copies. That puts this monumental work, which Assange “meant to be about my life struggle for justice through knowledge,” in the same class as Christine O’Donnell’s memoirs and Sarah Palin’s biographical documentary.

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Sarah Palin addressing Republican National Convention

Excuse me, but when did dropping “g” off the end of a word become inherently “black”? Would someone care to explain that one to Sarah Palin?

One of the missed stories of the 2008 campaign was a showing of Sarah Palin’s gubernatorial debates. No one in the media outside of Alaska paid attention to the fact that in those debates, Palin pronounced the “g” at the end of words. One Alaska blogger referred to her national oratory style as a “fake Minnesota accent.” But no one suggested that dropping that “g” was an effort to appeal to black voters. The closest Palin ever came to trying to appeal to blacks was video of her being “blessed” to protect her from witches by an African minister.

On Chris Hayes’ MSNBC Sunday morning show, African-American author Karen Hunter complained that when the Associated Press transcribed President Obama’s speech at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s awards dinner in Washington, the reporter intentionally marked the transcript with a dropped “g” at the end of words, making the President appear to be speaking “black” to his audience. The AP version of the speech was printed as “Shake it off. Stop complainin’. Stop grumblin’. Stop cryin’. We have work to do.” Hunter called that “inherently racist,” while New Republic contributing editor and linguistics expert John McWhorter called it “actually the correct one,” and noted that part of the President’s 2008 victory was based on his ability to “switch into that [black] dialogue.”

Black? Really? We’re not talking about ebonics here, or the 17^th century grammar constructions of Southern African-Americans particularly in relation to the conjugation of “to be.” We’re talking about a dropped “g” – a swallowing of consonents that occurs in Cockney English, Boston and the Midwest – just about anywhere there is a regional accent some consonant is swallowed. The dropped “g” is more evidence of linguistic laziness than ethnicity.

There have been complaints for years about African-Americans seeing racism where it isn’t. This is one of those incidents. To call rendering the President’s speech accurately as “black” is to call every sentence that has come out of Sarah Palin’s mouth since 2008 “black” and that’s just plain ridiculous.

Mark Smith, the AP reporter at the center of this tempest-in-a-teacup, said that he felt the President was making a point in his speech. “Normally, I lean toward the clean-it-up school of quote transcribing – for everyone. But in this case, the President appeared to be making such a point of dropping “G’s” and doing so in a rhythmic fashion, that for me to insert them would run clearly counter to his meaning. I believe I was respecting his intent in this. Certainly, disrespect was the last thing I intended.” Okay, that puts it in a whole other category. In rhetoric, one of the most effective methods of conveying a message is the “triple repeat” – saying the same thing three times with different words. “…complainin’….grumblin’…cryin’…” was, in Smith’s view a rhetorical device to drive home the idea the President was going for – “pull on your big boy pants and get to work!” In that context, rendering the speech accurately was a very reasonable choice.

Sarah Palin didn’t use the dropped “g” for rhetorical effect. She used it to convey “down-hominess,” to establish a connection with people who don’t speak grammatical English. It was part of her “golly gee whiz” style that was intended to somehow make her sound like a native of The Andy Griffith Show instead of an allegedly educated woman who had spent most of her professional years as a television reporter speaking what the English call BBC-English – a perfect, accent-free neutral speech. She was talking down to her audiences. Before Ms. Hunter condemned the reporter, she should have polled the audience and found out how they felt about his speech – the one that was responded to with cheers and applause, and not with shocked sensibilities.

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Sean Maher

The explanation for why the “I don’t do LGBT stories” lady got this one is simple – I’m the only staff member who’s a devotee of Firefly.

For seventeen hours – a two-hour pilot, thirteen episodes and a feature film, we watched poor Kaylee pining away for the aloof Dr. Simon Tam. As she so graphically put it in the film, “It’s been nigh on six months since I had anything twixt my nethers weren’t run on batteries.” Kaylee may have finally gotten her man, in fact Jewel Staite got him again on an episode of Warehouse 13, but that’s fiction and in the real world, no woman darkens Sean Maher’s door.

Anyway, Sean Maher has finally, after 14 years in Hollywood, come out of the closet, just in time to really confuse people over his new role in the series Playboy Club.

Surprised? No, not really. Frankly, my dear, he’s too damned good looking to be straight. Lesson learned frm 1950′s heartthrobs like Richard Chamberlain and Tab Hunter. It’s part of why people thought Paul Rudd was gay – he’s too gorgeous to be straight.

Thirty-six year old Sean came out in an exclusive interview with Entertainment Weekly magazine given at Little Dom’s Italian bistro in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles where he lives with his partner of nine years, Paul, and their two children, Sophia Rose, 4, and Liam Xavier, 14 months. Now how the hell he kept that a secret in a town notorious for a media that turns rocks for fun is the real mystery.

Also not surprisingly, Sean is feeling very liberated right now. It has been standard advice in Hollywood since coming out became possible at all, that keeping gayness a secret helped fuel female fantasies and bolstered an actor’s acceptability. It’s the kind of advice that comes from male agents and publicists who don’t understand straight women. It doesn’t matter what a man is in real life, the fantasy is in the characters he plays. Real live men scratch in embarrassing places, belch at the wrong times, smell when they sweat and have advanced cases of selective hearing – as in they never hear what their women say. No one really adores Fabio, they adore the image of Fabio.

Jewel Staite and Sean Maher

So, congratulations to Sean Maher on his liberation. As much as I like him as an actor, and he’s a very good actor, I’m not planning on watching Playboy Club anymore than I’m going to watch Pan Am. I lived through those times. I don’t need to see them rewritten by someone who didn’t. But I will keep an eye out to see if Jewel Staite shows up because I like the chemistry between them.

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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

• Park51 Islamic Center Opens Its Doors Near Ground Zero (huffingtonpost.com)
• Developer: 9/11 families needed role in NYC mosque (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Ground Zero Mosque Opens without Incident (blippitt.com)
• 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……

Related articles

• 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)

Diane Sawyer

ABC News has been caught in a bit of an exaggeration. They have been promoting the November 14 Diana Sawyer special as an exclusive “sit down” interview with Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. That turns out to be not quite true. Kelly will be interviewed in connection with the release of the Giffords/Kelly joint memoir. Everything else is unsettled.

According to Giffords’ spokesman, Mark Kimble, “Congresswoman Giffords has not decided if she’s goint to conduct an on-camera interview.” Sawyer will “sit down and talk with Mark and Gabby,” off camera, but the decision about an on-camera conversation will be made “at some point, based on her progress” in rehabilitation.

Technically, ABC didn’t claim that Giffords would appear on camera. “In a landmark television event, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her husband Space Shuttle Commander Mark Kelly will share their remarkable story for the first time since the tragic shootings in Tucson, Arizona, on January 8, 2011.” Okay, ABC didn’t call it an interview. That was everyone else’s mistake. The “mistake” has given ABC even more publicity about the show then they were generating on their own, so as “mistakes” go, this one was beneficial to those who didn’t actually make it.

My apologies for making the same error most of the rest of the media made. We sincerely hope that Rep. Giffords will be up to an on-camera appearance 10 weeks from now. Though using her situation to attack her ability to represent the people of her district is reprehensible, we all need to remember that her recovery is more important than whether or not she can win the 2012 Congressional race.

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords

Last month, Republican Arizona State Senator Frank Antenori made Keith Olbermann’s Worst Person List by criticizing the way, in his view, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords has been kept from the press, avoiding questions of her ability to resume her Congressional duties. It is believed that Antenori is lusting after Gabby’s House seat and this was his opening salvo – raising doubts about her competence.

Well, he’s about to get his wish. On November 14, ABC News will broadcast an interview Gabby and her husband, retired astronaut Mark Kelly have granted Diane Sawyer. It is, of all things, a book tour interview. On November 15, their joint memoir will be released. The book is titled Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope.

Gabby has made a few public appearances since that horrific day in January when Jared Loughner walked up to her at a meet-and-greet at a Tucson supermarket and shot Gabby in the head before emptying his thirty-round clip, killing six and wounding 12. Gabby flew from her rehab facility in Houston, Texas, to attend her husband’s final shuttle launch, and she flew to Washington to cast her vote on raising the debt ceiling, getting a bi-partisan standing ovation from her colleagues.

Gabby’s recovery has been much better than originally predicted, but Antenori was picking nits over the very positive reports about her recovery and her continued treatment. He is trying to create the impression that the recovery reports have been lies or exaggerations, when the more accurate assessment should be, “she had a bullet pass front to back through the left side of her brain and she’s alive – that’s a miracle. She can talk – that’s a miracle. She can walk and talk- even bigger miracle.” Every step of her recovery has been a miracle because, all things considered, Gabby Giffords should have died on January 8.

Gabrielle Giffords and Mark Kelly, pre-shooting

In addition to the story of Gabby’s recovery, the interview will cover their romance and cross-continental marriage. Gabby worked in Washington and had a home in Tucson, going back to her district on a regular basis. Mark worked in Houston. She has been recovering at an exceptional rehabilitation facility in Houston, in part so that Mark could be close by. In June, she made a private trip back to Tucson. According to her staff, Gabby is now speaking in complete sentences, walking with a cane, and showing every indication that she has retained her mental abilities. Her skull was kept open for a couple of months after the shooting in case of brain swelling and has now been restored. Apart from her hair being it’s natural dark color, a slightly more pronounced indentation on the left side of her forehead (the skull shape demonstrates indentations on both sides) and a slight squint to her left eye, Gabby looks amazing.

It has only been nine months since the shooting. Arizona Democrats are assuming she will run for re-election and hoping that she will be sufficiently recovered to run for the Senate seat Jon Kyl is vacating by retiring. It is safe to say she has until next spring to decide what she will do, say, another six months or so, and she has indicated that her decision will be based completely on whether or not she feels she can perform her duties at the same level of energy she has exhibited in her first two terms.

Related articles

• Gabby Giffords District Republicans Raffle a Glock! (outsidethebeltway.com)
• Rep. Gabrielle Giffords Returns to Congress for Vote on Debt Deal: VIDEO (towleroad.com)
• Gabby Giffords’ Staff Carries on Despite Tragedy (pajamasmedia.com)
• Applause greets Gabby Giffords’ return to House (thegrio.com)
• Arizona Republican Weighs Possible Run For Giffords Seat In 2012 (huffingtonpost.com)
• Giffords’s Return Unifies a House Divided (lezgetreal.com)
• Thank you, Gabby Giffords.. (headlinebistro.com)
• NBCLA’S Robert Kovacik captures Rep. Gabby Giffords return to House floor with uplifting interviews from Congresswoman Grace Napolitano and Janice Hahn! (economy4abc.blogspot.com)

With 31.4 million viewers, President Obama’s jobs speech Thursday night drew 4.2 million more viewers than the Saints-Packers game which followed him. With the caveat that the President’s speech was carried on 11 networks, and the GOP debate was carried only on one enhanced-cable network, the Wednesday debate only drew 5.4 million viewers.

The jobs speech was not the President’s highest rated, though. That honor goes to the night he announced the death of Osama bin Laden, which 56 million watched. It did outdraw both his Libyan involvement speech and his end of the American combat mission in Iraq speech. He usually draws in the mid- to high-twenty million range.

Thirty-one million is only 13% of adults in this country. Only 13% of us cared enough about what our country was or was not going to do to resolve our economic crisis to watch the President for a half-hour. There is no way to determine how many others waited for someone to distill the speech for them, with or without spin and bias.

Thirty-one million viewers gave weight to actress Mila Kunis’ recent complaint to UK Stylist about how little attention Americans, her generation in particular, pay to politics. Commentators on the story about Ms. Kunis’ remarks basically said, “she’s a dumb, college-drop-out actress, so what does she know?” and a few blogs and pundits who picked up the story were even less polite. One went so far as to say that, as an immigrant from the Ukraine, Ms. Kunis should be able to recognize socialism when she sees it, and reject the President as a consequence. It never sank into that conservative’s brain that if Ms. Kunis doesn’t reject the President, maybe he’s not the Maoist/Marxist the rightwing says he is. The most virulent anti-Bushite I knew had spent her childhood dodging bombs in World War II England and her young adulthood as a spy in North Africa. I always believed her assessment that Bush’s administration was full of fascists.

Related articles

• Obama’s jobs speech draws 31M viewers (thehill.com)
• More viewers watched the president’s jobs speech than the NFL opener (hotair.com)
• Media Decoder Blog: More Than 31 Million Tuned In to Obama’s Speech on Jobs (mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Mila Kunis still loves Obama (politico.com)
• Obama Is a Kenyan Sociali – Ooooo, Look! 20 Ways to Pleasure Your Man! (tbogg.firedoglake.com)

Ibraham Mothana

Ibraham Mothana is a young Yemeni activist, writer and community worker with a unique and important message for the world – he’s 22 years old and understands the real causes of the Arab Spring. He works for the Arab Thought Foundation and you can follow him on Twitter @imothanaYemen.

Mothana’s most recent posting is an explanation of the people who are behind the Arab Spring uprisings, what it was that inspired them. He speaks of the unity of spirit in the uprisings, and how so much of the movement has come out of young men and women like himself. The uprisings are more than the overthrow of entrenched dictators and despots. They are a generational change.

When King Abdullah II took power in Jordan in 1999 at the age of just 37, when King Mohammed VI ascended to the throne of Morocco the same year and a year younger, even when Bashar al Assad inherited the presidency of Syria in 2000 at just 35, it was hoped that a new generation of leaders would result in reforms in the region. It was not to be. They were saddled with entrenched old men, remnants of their fathers’ reigns, who thwarted every attempt at entering the 21^st century. Kings Abdullah and Mohammed needed what the Arab Spring has provided – the rise of young people demanding change – to finally be able to effect change, and they are doing so peacefully. Assad, unfortunately, chose or was pushed into repeating his father’s oppressions and violent repression of reform.

The very forces that have validated young kings is taking down old dictators, and Mothana, who travels extensively throughout the region, is an example of the kind of young person who is driving this revolution. He writes about the undercurrent within the movement of solidarity, putting aside millennia-old divisions, ethnic and tribal loyalties, to create a unity of purpose. If what he has seen among his fellow activists and rebels is nurtured and encouraged, it could within a generation bring about the most important change in Islam since the Fatimists split off to found Shia. They could put an end to the power struggle between Shiites and Sunnis and bring about a separation of religion and state.

These young people are connected in ways their elders never could be. They are aware of the world. They are informed and educated and ready to take their places in the leadership of their nations.

Too many voices in America see only the old guard in the Middle East. They think in terms of the terrorism that has been a primary form of protest since the 1920′s. They see only the old ways of thinking. They “warn” us of the presence of the Muslim Brotherhood or al Qaida as driving forces in the revolution. They go hysterical over the idea of Middle Eastern nations making their own choices, determining their own form of government. They are dyed-in-the-wool imperialists who believe that only white Europeans can lead the world and only through white Europeans can lesser people find democracy. Yeah, right. We’ve spent ten years seeing how well that thinking works.

To really understand what is going on in the Middle East, we need voices like Ibraham Mothana to help drown out the uninformed and frightened voices in the West. President Obama understands that democracy cannot be imposed but must grow organically from within a people. The writings of Ibraham Mothana reinforces our President’s message that we should be respecting those who are leading the Arab Spring instead of fearing them.

Related articles

• How Arab youth found its voice (cnn.com)
• Why the Arab Spring’s Success Depends on Jobs, Not Guns (curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com)

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)

The Real Tea Party, Boston Harbor

A New York Times op-ed is getting a lot of replay in the media today. It was written by David E. Campbell, Associate Professor of Political Science at Notre Dame, and Robert D. Putnam, Professor of Public Policy at Harvard, the co-authors of American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us. As Ezra Klein, Washington Post editor and MSNBC contributor, noted, the op-ed exposes the lie of the origins of the Tea Party movement.

The “official” story of the Tea Party is a completely grass roots movement, inspired and named after the Boston Tea Party of Revolutionary War fame, which blossomed unbidden out of the frustrations and fears over the recession. Campbell and Putnam say, that version is bunk. They know how the Tea Party got started because they have the survey results that predicted Tea Party involvement before there was a Tea Party.

The first study was conducted in 2006 as part of the research for their book on religion in America and the impact of religion on politics. They talked to 3,000 people on a variety of specific issues that all relate in major or minor ways to the relationship between religion and politics. This year, following the explosion of the Tea Party movement, they re-interviewed many of the same people.

The first Tea Party myth they expose is the idea that the driving forces behind the Tea Party are economic and outside the mainstream parties. The “origin myth” says that Tea Partiers were political babes-in-the-woods who were never involved in the scuzzy world of politics before. What they found was that the people in their original study who were hardcore conservative Republicans are the hardcore of the Tea Party, who were more likely to have engaged personally with some government official at some point. That ties remarkably with Ohio Governor John Kasich’s admission that he went after the public sector unions because of a bad encounter with a police officer.

The second unifying attribute was a desire to see more God in our government. This goes beyond the anti-abortion, anti-gay rights crowd. These are people who will insist that our nation was founded as a Christian state, no matter what Jefferson, Adams, Washington or any other founding father may have said on the subject. And that ties in to another definer of Tea Partiers. They really are bigots. They have a much higher rate of being anti-immigrant and anti-minority than even mainstream Republicans. (For those not old enough, the “Moral Majority” and the “Religious Right” were 1970′s and 1980/90′s movements for the creation of a theocracy in America.)

In a backhanded way, this goes back at least to 9-11 and its aftermath, and possibly to the millennium hysteria. No matter how hard the Bush administration tried, and they did try, to distance the war on terror from ordinary Muslims, there were plenty of voices out there insisting that Islam is a violent religion with a Qur’anic edict to eradicate Christians and Jews. There were plenty of preachers and speakers in churches calling the Prophet Mohammed a child molester and calling Allah a “monkey God.” (Wrong religion, the Monkey God is Chinese and he was only a demigod.) 9-11 gave these people a legitimate reason to scream for ending immigration and shutting the borders, reinforcing their anti-minority views. And, though I hate to sound like a regionalist, the Tea Party gained its greatest following in the areas of the country with the least diversified history of immigration – the South which was almost exclusively settled by people from the British Isles and the importation of slaves, and the Midwest with an overwhelming preponderance of Northern Europeans. Without a history of diversified immigration and a history of the cycle of anti-immigrant violence and laws, these people did not understand the true immigrant experience or the reality of bigotry in America.

So, what did Campbell and Putnam find were the characteristics of the people who evolved into Tea Partiers over the past five years? Highly partisan Republican, social conservative, deeply religious, white, solidly upper middle class, anti-immigrant, and anti-minority (pretty much anti-anyone-not-us).

It has been easy for the people who tapped this group to direct their anger. Being anti-Muslim is patriotic because of 9-11. If one tries to defend the rights of Muslims, one hears the “how can you forget 9-11?” accusation. Being anti-minority morphs into being opposed to those people most likely to be receiving some form of social safety net in their view. Though there are far more whites than any other group receiving welfare, they will tell you that whites are not on welfare. The portrayal of recipients of welfare and unemployment and Social Security disability as “lazy” actually weaves well with the belief that minorities are more prone to use those programs and the stereotype of the lazy black and lazy Mexican.

They also, being hardcore partisan Republicans, tend toward the whole imperial vision of America, the vision that took us into Iraq and Afghanistan, the vision that says it is not enough to be “first among equals” as President Clinton, but America must be first, period. So, it becomes very easy to twist that imperial view into a pretzel with lingering anti-communism. The way the Tea Partiers talk, one would think Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush had not overseen the death of global communism. In the right hands, Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, the lines between “socialist,” “communist,” and “fascist” were blurred. The Tea Party is a natural evolution out of the Bush era – the hyper patriotism, the “God and Country” mentality – that typifies fascism. Just don’t call the Bush government fascist or point out the parallels to Peron and Franco, or even insist on a correct definition of fascism.

What Campbell and Putnam do not explore is the way the Tea Party types were infiltrated and taken over by the money people who wanted to increase mainstream Republican power and increase the support of deregulation of business and elimination of taxes on the rich. The Koch brothers funded the Tea Party Express. That’s a proven fact. Old-time Republican operatives were recruited by Dick Armey to direct the Tea Party. When the money was brought into play, the public face of the Tea Party as a small government, anti-deficit, anti-regulation movement began.

Where did it all coalesce? In the person of Barack Obama. One could almost believe that Barack Obama was chosen by the Tea Party types to become president so as to energize the Tea Party types and grow the power of the Republican Party. Not only is our President half-African American, he chose an unacceptable number of Jews and minorities for his administration. His personal history, a Muslim African father, a childhood in a country most people can’t find on a map, these were gifts to the Tea Party, they made it easy to create the whole birther-secret Muslim nonsense.

But the more power the Tea Party has asserted, in states like Florida and Wisconsin and in Congress, the fewer people approve of their ideology. This is turning into a case of winning for losing – they gained national prominence, gained blackmail power in Congress, gained control of several states and so over-reached themselves that they exposed the worst of what they are to the majority of Americans who don’t believe in their far right ideology.

Campbell’s and Putnam’s conclusion is simple….the Tea Party has been so extreme that they have destroyed themselves, just as the extremists of the anti-Vietnam War era created the presidency of Ronald Reagan. A very basic, deeply ingrained belief in the true values of America and the moderate path is being brought out in the majority of Americans. And, as Martha Stewart would say, that’s a good thing.

Related articles

• The Tea Party Is a Religious Movement (usnews.com)
• Who Is Really Behind The Tea Party Movement? (businessinsider.com)
• Tea Party people less popular than many other hated minority groups (salon.com)
• Op-Ed Contributors: Crashing the Tea Party (nytimes.com)
• The Tea Party As A Christianist Force (andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com)
• Tea Party has become less popular than “atheists” and “Muslims” (politics.ie)

Jailhouse Rock

It was August 16, 1977, my niece’s third birthday. We were all putting on brave, happy faces for her party because her Daddy was a continent away fighting a raging forest fire in California. The phone rang and we all hoped against all hope and reason that it was my brother-in-law calling his little girl. Instead, it was my sister’s best friend, hysterical, sobbing, barely comprehensible – Elvis was dead!

So, here we are 34 years later. Someone in Michele Bachmann’s entourage had noted the news reports of “Elvis Week” in Memphis and assumed it must celebrate something, so they pipelined the info to Bachmann and she started off a campaign speech in South Carolina with a shout out of “Happy Birthday to Elvis Presley. We played you a little bit of ‘Promised Land’ when we pulled up. You can’t do better than Elvis Presley.”

Well, actually you can. I prefer Dwight Yoakum’s version of “Suspicious Minds,”even if it makes me want to scream ARTICULATE! at the radio.

I have always assumed that Memphis made a big deal over the anniversary of Elvis’ death because even in Tennessee it’s freaking cold in January. I can’t see a lot of people doing a candlelight vigil in winter anywhere north of Atlanta, and even Atlanta might be a mite chilly.

Oh well, we’ve heard worse from her: Americorps is a re-education camp, Congress should be investigated for anti-Americanism, the Revolution started in New Hampshire, the Founding Fathers fought on until slavery was abolished – about half a century after the last one died. At least she didn’t pull this gaffe in Memphis – they’d have chased her down Beale with tar and feathers.

In the meantime, 9 p.m. Eastern on TNT tonight, season finale of Memphis Beat. If you haven’t caught this one yet, give it a try. There is no way this show, knowing in advance when it would be aired, will not do something about Elvis. The show tends to be quirky, eccentric and funny, with occasional moments of crime drama.

Related articles

• Bachmann gives Elvis birthday wishes on the anniversary of his death (politico.com)
• Michele Bachmann’s Elvis Birthday Message Comes On Anniversary Of ‘The King’s’ Death (VIDEO) (huffingtonpost.com)
• Elvis Presley PHOTOS: 12 Timeless Images Of The King To Remember Him By (huffingtonpost.com)
• All shook up: Bachmann flubs Elvis birthday (politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com)
• Michele Bachmann Confuses Elvis’ Birthday And Date Of Death, On Anniversary Of King’s Death (dekerivers.wordpress.com)

Things got a little exciting in the Cincinnati suburb of West Chester, Ohio, Sunday morning when police were called to deal with three briefcases left outside the district office of House Speaker John Boehner. Each briefcase had a one-word message attached to the outside – “Jobs,” “Oil,” and “Gas.”

The bomb squad robot moved the briefcases to a safe place and detonated them, filling the air with confetti. The briefcases had contained only papers. This time.

Boehner’s district office has been the site of protests over the past few weeks. Boehner’s spokeswoman, Brittany Bramell, said they appreciated the “vigilance and efforts” of the police, but did not discuss any details of the investigation.

The messages would have been more effective if the signs had said more – like “Mr. Boehner, where are the jobs?” or “Drill, Baby, Drill,” or “Bring Down Gas Prices.” As it was, they were too open to interpretation.

Related articles

• Briefcases cause scare at Boehner’s Ohio office (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

Warren Buffet

Warren Buffet is the second richest man in America (Bill Gates is #1). His investment company, Berkshire Hathaway, has built him a nest egg of $45 billion. Yes, billion, $45,000,000,000.00. He is an astute investor who has made a lot of money for the people whose money he handles, as well as for himself. He also challenged others in his billionaires’ club to give away half their net worth before they die. He also has some weird ideas about taxes….he thinks he should pay more.

In an opinion piece in The New York Times this morning, Buffet said the unthinkable. He doesn’t pay enough taxes. “Last year, my federal tax bill – the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf – was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4% of my taxable income – and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33% to 41% and averaged 36%.”

Forbes Magazine’s Tim Worstall immediately jumped on Buffet, making elaborate arguments to prove the Buffet was wrong and he doesn’t pay too little in taxes. Since Mr. Worstrall doesn’t have access to Mr. Buffet’s tax returns, I’m going with Mr. Buffet’s anaylsis. He pays too little in taxes.

Worstall was mixing apples and oranges – talking about corporate taxes instead of personal income taxes. That’s disingenuous. Buffet’s point in his opinion piece is that he personally, and others like him, get tax breaks, credits and loopholes that allow them to pay half the top tax rate. Buffet even included his FICA and Medicare taxes, something that Republicans ignore completely when talking about taxes. When they say half the country pays no taxes, they ignore those pesky payroll taxes that no one, no matter how small their income, is exempt from.

Warren Buffet (and Bill Gates for that matter) has never been the problem. Buffet has a very strong sense of fairness, not only as an individual but as an American. His company was not involved in the derivatives/mortgage bundling scam that tanked our economy. The problem with revenues in America lies in numbers four through nine in that Forbes list of America’s top billionaires….the Koch brothers and the second generation Waltons.

Look at the founders and supporters of the right wing think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute – the so-called experts that the Republican Party and right wing media quote all the time. You will find the Kochs on most of them, and the Waltons on a fair number of them. The Kochs want a world without regulations, labor laws and taxes. The Waltons want to continue banking their billions by shifting their employees’ children’s health care to Medicaid. It might make Alice Walton feel all warm and fuzzy to endow an art museum in the middle of nowhere, but because we don’t have enough revenue in this country, it costs $25 or more per person to get into most of our “public” museums these days.

The amount of money the Kochs have put into protecting their wealth, through supporting political campaigns, funding the Tea Party Express and funding these think tanks and right wing organizations is probably greater than fair taxes would have been. This is an ideological battle to them, an overwhelming obsession with dismantling government, and not an economic decision. Steve Wynn of Las Vegas, another anti-government right-winger, would rather do business in communist China, where he has access to enforced labor, than in America.

To read Buffet’s entire opinion piece, go to

              http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling-the-super-rich

We already knew, from the membership in Buffet’s and Gates’ charity pledge group, that not all billionaires are created equal. Some really believe those famous words by Thornton Wilder in his The Matchmaker: “Money is like manure, it’s not worth a thing unless it’s spread around encouraging young things to grow.” They understand that our nation is in trouble and they are part of the problem. They have, in Buffet’s words, been “coddled” by Congress and Republican administrations. Some, like Michael Bloomberg, take their billions and then dedicate their lives to public service, just as the Rockefellers, Roosevelts and Kennedys did in previous generations. The biggest criticism I have of Buffet’s pledge group is that they are looking for ways to feed a man a fish instead of teaching him to fish. Prince Charles’ Prince Trust Fund makes start-up grants for small businesses. Bill Clinton supports the creation of community banks which provide small loans for small businesses that regular banks wouldn’t touch. One of the most important initiatives in the third world has been in helping people get the legal paperwork that proves they own the land their families have occupied for generations.

Buffet has twenty employees. That’s all Berkshire Hathaway needs for what they do. How does that make him a “job creator” whose taxes must be cut? He understands that he will never hire more people than he needs, so the alleged purpose of his low taxes is a fraud. He also understands that a system that allows companies like General Electric to pay no taxes doesn’t create jobs either.

The one thing that hit me reading Buffet’s piece is how many Republicans will listen to Worstall instead of to Buffet. They will continue to make excuses for defending and protecting individual wealth that does nothing to generate growth. When President Obama spoke of “redistributing wealth” he was not talking about just Robin Hooding it – taking from the rich and handing the money out. He was talking about making it possible for all Americans to achieve personal wealth, to have the middle class incomes and assets that more than half our nation enjoyed when I was a child. That’s what Buffet is talking about….taking a fair share of taxes from the very wealthy and the corporations that reap the benefits our nation in order to invest in our nation’s future, in infrastructure and education.

Thank You, Mr. Buffet.

Related articles

• Warren Buffet: Stop Coddling the Super-Rich (americablog.com)
• “Stop Coddling the Super-Rich” (thewesternexperience.com)
• “So to paraphrase Warren Buffet, whose sterling, brick and mortar, brilliantly run, cash-rich company…” (davebc.net)
• Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (exceptionalinvestors.com)
• Buffet Gets Downgraded After Slamming S&p (pppkingdom.wordpress.com)
• Stop Coddling the Super-Rich (stevebeckow.com)
• Invest like a Girl! (thetosinteatime.com)
• A Crazy Protest Idea (lezgetreal.com)

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)

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.

Image via Wikipedia

08/09/11 by LGR World News Staff

Australia’s first openly gay federal cabinet member, Finance Minister Penny Wong, has announced that she and her partner are expecting a baby.

According to the Australian Associated Press, Wong released a statement on Tuesday revealing her long-term partner Sophie Allouache is expecting.

“Like any expecting parents, the prospect of welcoming this child into our lives fills us both with joy,” she said.

“We are extremely grateful to our IVF service and staff, and to our donor, for giving us the opportunity to raise a child together.

Wong added she had gone public with the pregnancy because  “as we understand there may be public interest due to my position.”

Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who has in the past said she believes that marriage should be limited to unions between men and women only and who has bucked her own Labour party to oppose the legalization of same-sex marriage in Australia, nevertheless, congratulated the Wong and her partner.

“I’m very pleased for Penny and her partner Sophie as they look forward to a new baby and the next phase of their lives,” Gillard told reporters in Canberra.

However, when was pressed on whether it bothered her that the child would have parents who could not marry under Australian law Gillard said, “Clearly there are strong views about same-sex marriage in the community, and we’ll have a debate at national conference about those strongly held views. I’ve made my views clear”.

Pressure has been building on Gillard, who is unmarried, but lives with her male partner in the prime minister’s official residence in Canberra, to get in step with many in her party who want the law changed.

A policy change will be voted on at the Labour Party’s annual national conference in December.

Related articles

• IVF baby joy for Penny Wong (heraldsun.com.au)
• Wong pregnancy sparks gay marriage debate (news.theage.com.au)
• Senator’s joy and nerves on baby role (theage.com.au)

The Tottenham Riot

Over the spring, protests, strikes and riots broke out in Europe because of austerity budgets, deficit reductions plans and debt crises. The unrest culminated this weekend in the worst rioting seen in England in decades. Over two dozen police officers were hospitalized and over 160 rioters were arrested.

The riot began in the Tottenham and Wood Green area with protests over the shooting death of a 29-year-old by police and descended into arson, looting, destroyed patrol cars, a torched double-decker bus and a rampage through a shopping mall. Former Metropolitan Police Commander John O’Connor told Sky News on Sunday, “This is just a glimpse into the abyss. Someone’s pulled the clock back and you can look and see what’s beneath the surface. And what with the Olympic Games coming up [next summer], this doesn’t bode very well for London.”

As residents picked through the damaged, two spoke with the press. Nadine Knight, who works for a planning and architecture firm, said “I’m completely and utterly disgusted by what the community has managed to do here.” Christian Macani, who works in environmental sciences asked, “What does this achieve?”

The riot was reminiscent of the 1985 riots in the same neighborhood, when one police officer died and 60 were injured. Then, as in this case, the flash point was the police response in the neighborhood. Journalist Rizwana Hamid, who covered the first riot, told the BBC, “The climate has changed, but very little of the issues have gone away,” issues like poverty, desperation, and a lack of communication between the police and the residents. No satisfactory explanation has been given for the shooting death of Mark Duggan, who was killed Thursday. The police have claimed that Duggan was armed and fired on an officer. His family denies it.

Though this riot was seemingly caused by a single incident, it is part of a broader pattern across Europe. It has been easy for Americans to shrug their shoulders and treat this as a European problem. After all, the French go on strike and French students take to the streets if the sun doesn’t shine the required number of hours in a day. It is not something we should be blase about.

Watts, Los Angeles, Aug. 12, 1965

How quickly we’ve forgotten Watts, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Los Angeles after the Rodney King verdict, Kent State. As long as Washington keeps being vague about the spending cuts – our austerity budget – we’re safe from the possibility of street protests over program cuts. The Senate killed the Ryan Budget, so they de-fanged opposition to it’s move to privatize the social safety net. We’ve forgotten the cause and effect relationship between the Watts riots and Johnson’s Great Society, which was supposed to end the deeply ingrained culture of poverty, lack of education and desperation that existed in our inner cities.

The Great Society was a glorious failure – too much funding was put into the support of people and not enough into the ways to change the culture. Then, it started getting eaten away at, first by the Reagan administration’s block granting which cut funding subtly so it wasn’t immediately apparent. Then, Clinton instituted reforms to the system that were making real progress. All the measures of the sickness of a society – unwed teenage mothers, poverty, drop out rates, were reduced though the efforts of Bill Clinton and effective governors who reworked the system to match the needs and capabilities of their states. All of that went away in the Bush/Cheney era.

We are in worse shape than we were in 1965 when the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles burned for six days. Gangs are more prevalent, drugs more invasive in all levels of society, poverty is deeper because we have lost the manufacturing jobs that employed so many Americans who did not attend college and offered them middle class incomes, we have the largest prison population in the world – per capita, not just raw numbers – and our high school drop-out rate is back to the levels of 1965. The gap between the highest and lowest earners is the widest it has been in almost a hundred years.

And the social safety net is under assault in ways President Reagan never dreamed of. Though there has always been a resentment of welfare recipients, this is the first time in my life that there is even a suggestion that anyone who has lost his/her job would rather collect $103 a week in unemployment and live in a flophouse than get a job. This is the first time in my lifetime that the propaganda has overwhelmed reason. A large part of our population believes that all food stamp recipients are welfare queens, even though food stamp recipients have always outnumbered welfare recipients two to one and now, because 20 million adult Americans are either un-employed or under-employed that ratio has jumped to between three and four times as many. They don’t know about workfare. They don’t know one needs proof of citizenship to collect any Federal program. They confuse the truly disabled with the lazy and condemn them all as leeches living off the sweat of hard-working, conservative Americans. Only conservatives. If you are a liberal or progressive, you must, according to the propaganda, sit around your living room all day watching your huge flat-screen TV waiting for your personal check from the socialist President.

Republican state legislatures like Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida have cut billions out of schools and police departments to give billions in tax cuts to the rich and called it “balancing the budget.” The Republicans in Washington want to do the same – cut, cut and cut some more, but not get so much as a dime from the “job creators” who used ten years of tax cuts to create jobs in the third world, India and China.

We need to be paying attention to the riots and demonstrations and protests. This weekend, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu learned the hard way that telling the Israelis that he was going to open negotiations with the Palestinians using the 1967 borders was not enough to make them stop protesting high prices and stagnant wages. That’s the equivalent of an American President using elevated terror alerts to try to divert attention from inflation in food prices. It didn’t work in Israel, why should scare tactics work here anymore? Both countries have had too many cries of wolf and not enough wolves to make us accept what is going on in our economies. Europeans aren’t so much afraid of the increase in immigration of Middle Eastern Muslims from a social and cultural perspective any more as they are protesting the influx of people in depressed job markets.

My generation was backed off protesting by the tragedy at Kent State, by the photos of students lying dead in the street, killed by our own National Guard. It was the day the protests against the Vietnam War and social problems ended. But that was a long time ago, and the generation that is being destroyed by our economic malaise and the lack of real change doesn’t remember that. There is a new generation out there, one more desperate and more poverty-stricken than in 1965. They are watching the rise of a political power in this country that wants to force them into workhouses and prisons, force them further and further from the American dream, a political power that is demonizing immigrants and minorities, and is doing nothing about the rhetoric of the fanatics calling for genocide of immigrants and minorities and the poor as a way to “take back America.”

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana, 1905. Unfortunately, those of us who do remember, those who understand the volatility of the situation are not the ones who are controlling the message right now. How sad that we are the ones who care enough about this country to be afraid for its future.

Related articles

• Tottenham riots: the history lesson from Los Angeles is that the modern middle class won’t tolerate mob rule (blogs.telegraph.co.uk)
• Police apologise to Mark Duggan’s family for failing to keep them informed (guardian.co.uk)
• WATCH: As Riots Spread Outside London, New Details Emerge In Police Shooting (businessinsider.com)
• These riots were about race. Why ignore the fact? (blogs.telegraph.co.uk)
• London riots: results of our crowdsourcing experiment (guardian.co.uk)
• 26 cops hurt, dozens held after London riot (msnbc.msn.com)
• Behind the London Riots: Twitter, Instant Messaging (techland.time.com)

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor

Remember all that talk last week about “preserving” Social Security and Medicare?

In an interview with the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Republican of Virginia, said that he is ready to slash Medicare and other entitlements, because “What we need to be able to do is to demonstrate that that is the better way for the people of this country. Get the fiscal house in order, come to grips with the fact that promises have been made that frankly are not going to be kept for many….The math doesn’t lie.”

No, it doesn’t. But math has little to do with this. The GOP has been trying since the Reagan years to privatize the Social Security system and Medicare, along with just about everything else in the government. Social Security would go to Wall Street and Medicare would go to private health insurance companies. Nothing wrong with a little volatility (as I write this the Dow Jones has dropped over 500 points today) and profit (the single greatest reason our health care costs twice as much as the next nation.). By sticking to their insistence that we cannot raise revenues, they create the math that says we have to end entitlement programs. And they are very careful, when talking about entitlements, to make it appear to their base that they are only talking about food stamps and unemployment insurance and welfare, not the Social Security and Medicare we have been paying into for years.

Every once in a while, Republicans get so sure of themselves they forget the script, they start ad libbing. That’s really bad for them, because in their ad libs they invariably tell the truth. If they have their way, all that talk about “preserving Social Security and Medicare for future generations” will just mean selling us out to the highest bidder.

And, yes, I meant the allusion to slavery. Slaves had cradle-to-grave care on the best plantations, just as long as that care was profitable for the slave owner.

Related articles

• Cantor: Entitlement Promises ‘Frankly, Are Not Going To Be Kept For Many’ (kaystreet.wordpress.com)
• Cantor: ‘Promises have been made that frankly are not going to be kept’ (dailykos.com)
• Will Reid Follow Pelosi and Take Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare off the Table? (crooksandliars.com)
• Lieberman Wants to Use Social Security and Medicare to Pay for the War on Terror (slog.thestranger.com)

8/3/2011

I got a chance to sit down with Jo Carbonell, the artist of Amie; A Web Comic, and pick at her brain about her life and ask a few question’s about where her comic ideas come from.  Her comic is a new addition to Lezgetreal.com and will be posted regularly to the site starting with Chapter one.

1. At what age did you begin to delve into the world of art?

“Both my parents were artists, so my introduction to art was very early. I began drawing people after looking through old Boris Vallejo books that my mother owned. My first canvases were the walls of our apartments with crayons. My mother never made me wash my art away, but drawing nude people in 2nd grade got me in trouble at school. Apparently you shouldn’t draw nude people holding hands next to a unicorn if you are in grade school”

2. What made you start Amie as a comic?

“Amie started as a story about a geeky lab assistant and the cat-mutant-girl he cared for in his lab. It turned into a comic when I became frustrated drawing my friends and having them get upset over how I depicted them. Amie became my outlet to draw people how I wanted and have them not complain because I didn’t get their chin right. It became my therapy. Over time people became entranced watching me draw it and it became popular among my friends and family.”

3. What are your inspirations for Amie and your artwork?

“My inspirations for Amie are simple, they are the people and events in my life that inspire the storyline. Oddly enough my Amie art has been prophetic in my personal life. My inspiration for my other artwork is much the same, it is inspired by the people and events in my life. I find nothing more inspiring for artwork than the beauty and wonder of the people that surround me.”

4. What is your date of Birth?

“Haha…my birthday is February 28th. I’m a Pisces through and through.”

5. How many chapters do you have so far, and how are they going to be posted on Lezgetreal?

“So far I am working on Chapter 6 of Amie. It has been in the works for….almost a decade now. It is posted to Lezgetreal by the owners of the site that get the pages directly from me.”

6. Who or what was your inspiration for some of the characters within the comic?

“As I’ve said, Amie is inspired by people in my life. Almost all the main chracters are based off of real people in my life. For example; Lady Shakra (owner of an underground gay dance club) is based off a Vermont drag queen named Alexandra Chase, Miss is based off of my own personality traits, Robas and Bloo Bird are based off of good friends named Emer and Bloo during their younger days as delinquents, while Amie is based off of my little cousin Erik. As for the personal animal traits that each character has in their makeup, its based off of animal traits found in the actual person.”

7. Where did you go to high school, and what is your highest level of education you have reached so far?

“My schooling was varied seeing as my family moved a lot during my formative years. I spent my freshman year of high school split between Grecco Jr. High School in Temple Terrace, FL and Glynn Acadamy in Brunswick, GA. I spent the rest of high school at Rutland Senior High School in Rutland, VT (my home town and the high school both my parents went to). I went to college at the Community College of Vermont in Rutland. Currently I hold 2 art degrees; Associate’s in Liberal Arts and an Associate’s in Visual Arts.”

8. What are your plans for the future education wise and for your comic?

“My plans for my future education is to be the first doctor in my family, but to be a doctor of something I’m passionate about and is utterly ridiculous to others. I plan to be a doctor of Cartoon Studies. I find that cartoons are actually very important to the education of our young. My plans for my comic are to keep drawing and creating it for as long as people want to read it. I’d like to see it in print someday, but I’m not holding my breath.”

9.Who would you like to thank on behalf of your comic starting to get to bigger places?

“I’d like to thank my friends, family and my fans for encouraging me to continue my art and for supporting it, introducing it to new people and for allowing me new places to show it off so others may enjoy my story.”

Muslim Americans

Chances are one could engrave the results of this new poll on marble and Rep. Peter King and the rest of the Muslim-haters in America still wouldn’t believe a word of it.

In the poll “Muslim Americans: Faith, Freedom and the Future” which was released today by the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center, Muslim Americans are more opposed to military attacks on civilians than other religious groups in the United States. 78% say that military attacks on civilians are never justified.

The first question in the poll asked “Some people think that for the military to target and kill civilians is sometimes justified while others think that kind of violence is never justified. Which is your opinion?

Muslims: 78% never justified, 21% sometimes justified

Protestants: 38% never, 58% sometimes

Catholics: 39% never, 58% sometimes

Jews: 43% never, 52% sometimes

Mormons: 33% never, 64% sometimes

No religion/atheist/agnostic: 56% never, 43% sometimes

Average: 48% never, 49% sometimes

#2: Some people think that for an individual person or a small group of persons to target and kill civilians is sometimes justified, while other think that kind of violence is never justified. Which is your opinion?

Muslims: 80% never justified, 11% sometimes justified

Protestants: 71% never, 26% sometimes

Catholics: 71% never, 27% sometimes

Jews: 75% never, 22% sometimes

Mormons: 79% never, 19% sometimes

No religion/atheist/agnostic: 76% never, 23% sometimes

Average: 75% never, 21% sometimes

#3. Now, thinking specifically about Muslims, do you think each of the following applies or does not apply to Muslims living in this country? Muslims living in THIS COUNTRY [America] are sympathetic to the al Qaeda organization?

The statement does not apply:

Muslims 92%

Protestants 56%

Catholics 63%

Jews 70%

Mormons: 57%

No religion/atheist/agnostic: 75%

“Muslim Americans: Faith, Freedom and the Future” is part of a nationally representative study of major religious groups in America that has been conducted over the past three years. The study looks at trends in life evaluations, national identity, terrorism, foreign policy, religious discrimination and political participation.

Gallup conducts such polls and surveys worldwide on a continual basis.

Related articles

• Poll: U.S. Muslims don’t back terror (politico.com)
• Muslims Say They’re Loyal Americans, Poll Finds (nytimes.com)
• Muslim community ‘thriving’ in United States: poll (life.nationalpost.com)
• Poll: American Jews and Muslims share common values (jta.org)
• Poll: Muslim Americans say they are thriving (msnbc.msn.com)
• NOM Fudges The Numbers On Anti-Christian Hate Crimes (lezgetreal.com)
• Understanding Shari’ah (islamophobiatv.wordpress.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.

Luke Russert at the 2008 Democratic Convention

Last night was an interesting time to observe the pundits on the three news networks. They were having a ripping good time “analyzing” the deal.

Jim Cramer, of CNBC’s Mad Money ripped the President a new one over his speech last week on the debt ceiling. According to Cramer, what the world needs and Americans need is “confidence.” We don’t need scare talk, which is what President Obama did last week – lay out the consequences of not having a deal in place by August 3. Cramer wanted the President to give a “don’t worry, be happy” speech. That’s bull. We needed to be scared. We needed to finally understand that there were real, desperate consequences if Congress continued being stupid and digging themselves deeper into their ideological holes.

Over on Fox, it quickly became apparent that Juan Williams fits on that network about as well as Major Garrett did. Williams committed one of the “unforgivable sins” – he practically called Sean Hannity an idiot. Hannity was spewing the Fox gospel. This is Obama’s recession, it’s Obama’s deficit, it’s Obama’s debts, etc. etc, etc. Williams challenged that gospel. He made it very clear, in small syllables, that the debt is Bush’s, the recession was inherited, the problems pre-date this President. No one, except the pre-dawn Sunday panel, is allowed to contradict the Fox gospel.

Williams is a bit of a conundrum. He has just published a book about his dismissal from NPR. He still doesn’t understand that the issue was his being identified as a member of NPR on Fox, giving the impression that NPR endorsed Fox’s positions. He still thinks it was what he said that caused the problems. His idea, that we really truly need to openly discuss the problem of perceptions of Muslims is a valid one. He just ended up on the wrong network for rational conversations about Muslims.

The last word belonged, not to Lawrence O’Donnell, but to Luke Russert.

In case you’ve missed the story of Luke Russert, here’s the short version. His father, Tim Russert, was one of the most respected and beloved newsmen in America. Luke’s mother, Maureen Orth, is a special correspondent for Vanity Fair. Luke had graduated from Boston University with a degree in communications when his father suddenly died on June 13, 2008. Through the 2008 elections, Luke was a special correspondent for youth issues at NBC/MSNBC is what many thought was a sympathy job. We were dead wrong. Since May, 2009, Luke has been MSNBC’s Congressional correspondent. He will be 26 on August 22.

As I said, the last word last night belonged to Luke, and it was a simple observation. He said the Congress needs to get this deal settled before the liberal blogosphere and the conservative talk radio hosts get their followers riled up. In one sentence, he defined the difference between the progressive-liberals and ultra-conservatives in this country. The right wing is still communicating with demagogues on AM radio the way they did in the days of Huey Long (think Brother, Where Art Thou?), while the left wing is engaging each other and challenging the news and opinion providers in the ether. It was a beautiful observation – the right and the left, the past and the future. The left needs to remember that the past has lessons to teach us, as long as we are honest about the past. The right chooses to remember the past through the veil of mythology and blind patriotism.

About the time one starts to think that the future of journalism is entirely on the internet, along comes Luke Russert to remind us that the visual and the reach of the televised medium still has power.

Related articles

• I Watched the News Last Night…On Twitter (pallino1021.wordpress.com)
• Sean Hannity And Juan Williams Engage In Shouting Match Over Debt Crisis Agreement (mediaite.com)
• Kara Miller: The media’s role in the debt-ceiling debate (boston.com)

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)

07-31-2011 by Linda S. Carbonell

With the looming threat of no paychecks for Federal employees or the military, or subsistence assistance for the disabled, the working poor and children, people are starting to panic. There are reports, however, of help being offered in the case of a failure by Congress to act in a timely manner.

Small, regional banks and credit unions are telling their customers who receive government checks that they will have a line of credit available to them equal to the amount of their checks. That offer is not being echoed by Bank of America, the largest bank in the country and one that paid no taxes at all last year. Poor BoA, they are being forced to repay billions of dollars to investors they bilked by selling off their Countrywide mortgages. They probably cannot find a few million to prop up the people being hurt by their pet Congressmen.

Small, locally owned pharmacies are promising to refill vital prescriptions for Medicare and Medicaid patients and wait for reimbursement of the amount they would receive from the government. Landlords are offering to defer rent payments until Washington gets its collective head out of its collective butt.

And across the board, rational Americans are demanding that the first checks not to go out are Congressional salaries, expenses and office salaries.

Related articles

• New Countrywide Lawsuit For Bank Of America (huffingtonpost.com)

Her Majesty arrived in a classic pink coat with matching accessories for the simple, quiet wedding of her eldest granddaughter, Zara Phillips, to rugby star Mike Tindall at Canongate Kirk in the Old City of Edinburgh, Scotland. The church’s situation, in the oldest part of a very old city, limited the crowds to only a couple of thousand people. The entire royal family was in attendance.

Zara Phillips is the 30-year-old daughter of Princess Anne and Captain Mark Phillips, who were divorced in 1992. The 45-minute ceremony was followed by a private reception at the royal palace of Holyroodhouse, which is practically up the street. The couple arrived back at Holyroodhouse to the accompaniment of the Royal Scots Association pipe band.

Zara’s gown was created by Stewart Parvin, a favorite of the Queen. In ivory duchess silk and ribbed faille, the corseted bodice surmounted a bell-shaped skirt supported by yards of stiff lace. The chevron-pleated bodice had wide silk tulle straps that vee’d in the back and the skirt actually had pockets. Zara chose Jimmy Choo shoes and her veil was held with the same Greek Key tiara that the Queen gave to Princess Anne for her first wedding in 1973.

White must be the new “in” color for attendants at weddings. Zara’s three young flower girls and her matron of honor all wore simple full-skirted white dresses.

Princess Beatrice behind Prince William and Princess Catherine

Though there was the usual British collection of precariously perched millinery frisbees, even Princess Beatrice’s hat did not reach the outrageousness seen at Prince William’s wedding three months ago.

Zara has chosen to retain her maiden name, presumably because that is the name she is known by in championship equestrian circles and competitions, as well as in the numerous contracts she has signed to fund equestrian events.

The 32-year-old groom, Mike Tindall, is one of the stars of English rugby and plays for Gloucester. He was born in Otley in Yorkshire, on the east side of the island. He and his best man, Iain Balshaw were on the 2003 Rugby World Cup team in Australia which took the title. The couple were introduced by Prince Harry and have lived together for several years. Both bride and groom will be continuing in their sporting careers, with Zara trying for the U. K. Equestrian Team for the 2012 Olympics in London next year. Princess Anne was a member of the team at the 1976 Montreal Olympics and was President of the Fédération Équestre Internationale from 1986 until 1994.

The couple reside in Cheltenham in Glouchestershire, the same county as both her mother and Prince Charles.

Related articles

• Another Royal Wedding (lezgetreal.com)
• Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie Arrive For Zara Phillips’s Wedding! (popsugar.com)
• Zara Phillips Makes a Beautiful Bride in a Veil, Tiara, and Stewart Parvin Gown at Her Own Royal Wedding (popsugar.com)
• Zara Phillips, Mike Tindall Get Married (omg.yahoo.com)
• Zara Phillips to keep her maiden name following marriage to Mike Tindall (telegraph.co.uk)
• Zara marries rugby star Tindall (mirror.co.uk)

Illinois Rep. Joe Walsh (R)

If you want to interview a fire-breathing Tea Party Congressman, who also happens to be photogenic, absolutely television-ready, point your camera at Illinois’ Joe Walsh. Walsh is one of the Republican freshmen, having won his district’s primary with just 34.2% of the Republican vote, and the general election with only 48.5%. He believes he has a mandate to cut, cap and balance because he was so overwhelmingly elected. So, if you want to know what the 87 Republican freshmen in the House want, just ask Joe Walsh.

Just don’t ask him to support his three children by his first wife.

The Chicago Sun-Times has learned that Walsh’ ex-wife filed court papers last December claiming that the Congressman owes $117,437 in back child support. This is hardly the first time she has had to take him to court for his child support payments. Walsh in the past had pled poverty because he worked as a contract fundraiser and, according to his attorney, wasn’t a “big-time wage-earner politician” until this past January. However, in her 2004 filings, Laura Walsh asserted that while claiming that he could not make his child support payment because he was unemployed or between jobs, Walsh had taken his then-girlfriend to Mexico and Italy on vacation. In 2005, Cook County Judge Grace Dickler informed him that if he failed to catch up his back support, she would have his wages garnisheed. Unfortunately, it is virtually impossible to garnishee wages from an independent contractor. In one battle, she showed that he had sufficient assets to loan his own Congressional campaign $35,000. He lost his first two attempt at Congress.

This time, Laura Walsh has asked the courts to exercise one of Illinois’ methods of dealing with deadbeat dads – suspend his drivers license until he pays up. She can also petition the state to intercept his state and federal income tax refunds, submit the information about his back child support to consumer reporting agencies and private collection firms.

Walsh’s attorney, R. Steven Polachek, says that Walsh “disputes that he owes the child support that [Laura’s] claiming.” That will depend entirely on the terms of their divorce and child support agreement. If it was based on a percentage of his earnings, he will have to prove that he did not earn enough to owe that amount. If it is contingent upon a percentage of the cost of the children, Laura will have to provide the proof. If it was based on a firm number, he owes the money, period.

Walsh is claiming the story in the Chicago Sun-Times is a political hit job, telling CNN, “I know that story just broke, and it’s interesting that it just broke right now as I’m out there trying my best to fight this President and fight the Democrats and solve this debt crisis. I’m the most openly vetted candidate in the world. I have had financial troubles and I talked about them throughout the campaign. This is where real America is.”

To the request that the judge suspend Walsh’ drivers license until he pays up. Walsh’s response was to ask her attorney, “Have you no decency?” Walsh is really good at lecturing others on personal values. In his own words: “A free people cannot survive under a republican constitution unless they remain virtuous and morally strong.”  At least he’s never lectured anyone on how deadbeat dads are the greatest cause of welfare.

Related articles

• GOP Freshman Sued for Child Support (politicalwire.com)
• Tea Party Rep. Joe Walsh sued for $100,000 in child support (kaystreet.wordpress.com)
• Joe Walsh’s defense: ‘He’s had no more problems with child support than any other average guy’ (dailykos.com)
• Walsh sued for $117K in child support (politico.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

• Why Oligarchs Don’t Want A Deal (crooksandliars.com)
• Oligarchy and the Debt Ceiling (drumsnwhistles.com)
• How Washington’s favorite pundits explain why we’re doomed (salon.com)