Adam At The 2010 SAG Awards by Tomdog

Sigh…I wish I could keep up with Adam a bit more than I am able to right now. I really am trying to keep up with the news about him since I enjoy writing about him, and enjoy his music so much. Still, with luck, things will be a bit easier for me in the near future. As much as I can be a slightly harsh critic of music. . .I listen to music all the time. . .I still enjoy his music and hope that people can understand that I am trying to be constructive in my criticism.

I am thrilled to hear that Adam will be collaborating with Queen again. He has such a great voice when it comes right down to it, and he does Freddie proud. It is obvious that his life experiences are not as great as Freddie’s, but that is alright. Even if he is a bit lacking on that front, he is talented and quite able to tackle even some of Freddie’s heavier songs like The Show Must Go On, which was one of Freddie’s last songs.

So, like many of Adam’s fans, I am looking forward to the new album. I hope it is everything we have waited for.

JC Penney stated that it “stands behind its partnership with Ellen DeGeneres.”

Herndon Graddick, Senior Director of Programs and Communications at GLAAD stated “This week Americans spoke out in overwhelming support of LGBT people and J.C. Penney’s decision not to fire Ellen simply for who she happens to love, but while Ellen has the nation on her side, in 29 states today, Americans can still be legally fired just for being gay. Our elected officials should use this incident as yet another example of the support for legal protections for all hard working employees.”

In a press release, GLAAD also noted that:

Blogs including Joe My God, Think Progress, Lez Get Real and Towleroad first broke the news about the American Family Association’s demands to fire Ellen and joined GLAAD in calling on community members and allies to thank J.C. Penney. In an overwhelming display of support, a poll on the Los Angeles Times site shows 94% of readers polled agree that Ellen should not only maintain her post as J.C. Penney’s spokesperson, but call Ellen “a symbol of equality.”

Jeremy Hooper of Good As You notes that “One Million Moms- a project of the American Family Association” has a long history of working to strip LGBT people of vital protections, including actions against Johnson & Johnson after the company extended domestic partner benefits to LGBT employees and Cracker Barrel after the chain added workplace protections for gay and lesbian employees.

JC Penney has shown guts in standing up to the people who have a strong hatred for LGBT Americans.

While Komen has backed down somewhat and said that they will consider grants to Planned Parenthood, they have not made it completely clear that they will actually approve those grants which go towards the screening for breast cancer for many low income women.

Of course, we are finding out more about Susan G. Komen lately, and that includes the fact that their Vice President is Karen Handel. For those unfamiliar with her, she is the former Secretary of State for Georgia and is a Fundamentalist Christian and Republican who has a virulent hatred for LGBT Americans as well as a downright hatred for women who have to have an abortion.

Over at the Daily Kos, they wrote:

Choice excerpts Aravosis dug up from an interview during her ill-fated, Sarah Palin-endorsed run to govern the great state of Georgia:

KH: I’ve been very clear. And you know, as a Christian, marriage is between a man and a woman. I do not think that gay relationships are — they are not what God intended.

Do you and God talk to a lot?

KH: I am against gay adoption.

What is more, ThinkProgress noted that Ari Fleischer, the former spokesman for President George W. Bush, was involved in the strategy by Komen to try and hurt Planned Parenthood. They wrote:

Fleischer’s relationship with Komen and the Planned Parenthood controversy was previously undisclosed. He confirmed to ThinkProgress his recent role in filling a key communication position at Komen. Fleischer stressed, however, another communications firm (Ogilvy PR) was retained by Komen to deal with crisis communications over the last few days and he has not been involved.

This entire situation is likely to leave a lot of bruised egos and other issues. It is unlikely to die down any time soon, and Komen has now managed to piss off just about everyone who has supported them along the line.

At MTV’s EMAs in Belfast last November, Adam teamed up with Brian May and Roger Taylor to perform a few Queen songs to the delight of not only Adam’s fans, but many of Queen’s fans. Adam told the Daily Star that he is looking forward to working with May, 64, and Taylor, 62. He stated “The intention is to pay tribute to Freddie and the band by singing some f*****g great songs. It’s to keep the music alive for the fans and give it an energy that Freddie would have been proud of.”

Adam also said rather enthusiastically “After the EMAs, I heard faint little slithers of a backlash from people saying: ‘You can’t replace Freddie Mercury.’ But I already knew that. There’s no intention in my mind of replacing Freddie. That’s impossible. The way I’m choosing to view it is that it’s a great honour and one I’m in no way going to shirk.”

The Daily Star noted:

Adam first met his new band- mates when they played We Are The Champions at American Idol’s final in 2009.

Adam recalled: “Straight away I thought: ‘These guys are so f*****g rad.’ They’re a class act, so sweet and paternal and on a musical level really open to great new experiences.”

They have not discussed recording new music, but Adam did say “It’d be cool to record with Brian and Roger. Being asked to front Queen is the best thing that can possibly happen.”

May has recorded with a number of different people over the last two decades since Freddie passed away in 1991. He played guitar on one song for Meat Loaf’s Bat Out Of Hell III.

Adam’s second album will be coming out on 19 March. Adam stated “I learned so much from doing my first album. Trespassing is much more of an album, not just a collection of would-be singles like my first record.”

"Pastor" Terry Jones at hearing in Dearborn, Michigan, April 21, 2011 (Getty Images)

“Pastor” Terry Jones, whose March, 2011, Qur’an burning set off riots in Afghanistan that cost the lives of nine United Nations aid workers, is planning a series of events for 2012. His first one will be a rally in front of the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, Michigan, on April 7. The rally will be on Holy Saturday, the day before Easter. Last year, Jones wanted to hold a rally at the ICA on Good Friday, but the city refused to grant him a permit because of the proximity to so many Christian churches that would be holding Good Friday services. Jones’ final rally will be held in Gainesville, Florida, on September 11, and is being billed as the “International Judge Muhammed Day.”

The Wayne County, Michigan, prosecutor’s office filed a complaint against Jones and an associate named Sapp last year over the planned rally. A jury at the 19^th District Court in Dearborn, found that Jones and Sapp were “likely to breach the peace.” They were ordered to pay a single dollar “peace bond” and stay away from the ICA for three years. The were jailed for a short period for refusing the order. On appeal, the requirement for them to stay away from the ICA was overturned.

Jones has held two previous demonstrations in Dearborn that ended in counterprotesters storming the rallies and people being arrested.

“Pastor” Terry Jones is not affiliated with any organized religion. He simply declared himself to be a pastor and set up a “church” in his home. He is fanatical in his hatred of Islam, considers Allah to be a demon instead of the Arabic word for the same God that Christians and Jews worship, considers all Muslims to be murderous terrorists who should be deported, preferably to hell. He announced last fall that his “church” was bankrupt and he was losing his home. He refused to see any connection between his actions and the deaths in Afghanistan because he believes Muslims of all nations and sects build bonfires with Bibles.

Ever since 9-11, there have been small pockets of fundamentalist evangelicals who call Allah the “Monkey God” and say that Mohammed was a child molester because his third wife was only a child when he “married” her. They refuse to admit that Islam is based on both the Old and New Testament, with Muslims claiming descent from Abraham’s son Ishmael by the Egyptian servant Hagar. In Islam, Jesus is a prophet, not the son of God. Aisha was the daughter of one of Mohammed’s generals and somewhere between six and ten years old when the marriage ceremony was conducted. The fanatics will not listen to the facts, that the marriage was political, that it was a common practice in that time, that Aisha lived with her parents until she reached puberty and that with a life expectancy of only 35 years for men and less for women, a girl being married at 13 or 14 made perfect sense. Facts, reason and historical perspective make no difference to these people. Their hatred of Muslims is total and all one billion Muslims around the world are responsible for 9-11.

Terry Jones is more than a loose cannon. He is a danger to our troops and to aid workers in the Middle East. There are people in Islam who are just as fanatical as Jones is, and they will blame some innocent doctor or nurse for Jones’ actions.

Free speech is a Constitutional right, but I have to wonder if James Madison and his colleagues ever considered the impact of hate speech, and if they would have altered the First Amendment to exclude speech that carries the potential of inciting the murder of innocents.

Related articles

• Quran burning reverend Terry Jones makes appearance at USF Republican debate (digitalbullpen.com)
• Detroit Prayer Rally Rattles Muslim Community (lezgetreal.com)
• Judge overturns Dearborn’s useful idiots, rules they violated Terry Jones constitutional rights (creepingsharia.wordpress.com)
• WATCH: ‘All-American Muslim’ Shines Spotlight On Dearborn (huffingtonpost.com)
• Mad fundies plan to cleanse Detroit of its ‘demonic spirit’; Muslims aren’t happy (freethinker.co.uk)

Eleven of the sixteen works of fiction in Granta 118 are from strong women’s voices. The stories are all well written and delve into a variety of personal worlds.

Here is the press release:

Mazak writes in explanation:

With two separate promoters of The Dinah Shore Weekend having been in direct competition for the past six years, there has been a certain amount of confusion. In the early days, the event was a joint venture between Mariah Hanson, who pioneered the first Dinah Shore Weekend before joining forces with the duo Sandy Sachs and Dr. Robin Gans (promoters of Girl Bar). But in 2005, the partnership dissolved and the power promoters parted ways, each continuing the Dinah legacy with two separate visions of what the event should grow to become.

Since the split, the spirit of competition has stepped up the famed weekend to a spectacular world-class plateau. But for Hanson the rivalry translated into one thing: the fact that “competition inspires perfection.”

Girl Bar Dinah, run by Sandy Sachs and Dr. Robin Gans, is now leaving Palm Springs to produce a Dinah-like version in Las Vegas.

“I think starting over again in another city is a good move for Girl Bar and I wish them well, “ said Hanson, “I just hope they picked the right city since Lisa Pittman and the Miami Aqua Girls, Jesi and Alison, host an annual event in September called Shedonism and it does well. Time will tell.”

Apparently, the two have been running two separate events for the last six years. This will now mean that the two events will no longer be in direct competition. As Mazak points out, though “‘the producers of GIRL BAR DINAH SHORE WEEKEND in association with The Truck Stop Girlz from NYC are moving their events OUT OF Palm Springs and to Las Vegas on a different weekend,’” Gans and Sachs said in a statement about the move. The host hotels for the Vegas weekend are the Flamingo and Planet Hollywood.”

Mazak went on to report that:

Meanwhile, Hanson, under her Club Skirts marquee, is busy making the 2012 installment of the notorious weekend stronger, bigger and sexier than ever in the Sunny Oasis of Palm Springs.

Hanson’s 2012 lineup features performances from Grammy-Award Winning Music Legend Chaka Khan, Nina Sky, Wynter Gordon, Pussycat Doll Jessica Sutta, CeCe Peniston, cast members of Showtime The Real L Word, Fortune Feimster from E! “Chelsea Lately”, and a Q&A with Meredith Baxter moderated by Suzanne Westenhoefer, just to name a few.

Girl Bar’s move to Las Vegas has a lot of people wondering why since for the past 22 years, it has been a Palm Springs tradition. According to Palm Springs Hilton General Manager, Aftab Dada in a KMIR interview, “The Dinah ranks as one of the five premier events in Coachella Valley.” He goes on to explain his theory behind the Girl Bar exodus, “For the past four years, Club Skirts has been taking a lot of market share from Girl Bar.”

But Girl Bar’s Sachs and Gans have their own reasons for the move to Sin City. “Vegas is the Hot Spot with a plethora of entertainment and culinary options, which is exactly what our guests have been asking us for,” Gans and Sachs said in a statement. They added that what will be different with the Vegas move is that there will be “No more parties in massive corporate ballrooms, no more waiting in line for drink tickets, and most importantly NO LAST CALL!” Gans and Sachs promise they will, “offer an intimate experience to our clientele and yet allow them to experience everything that Vegas has to offer.” They also said that “unlike Palm Springs pool parties, when a patron’s top comes off in Las Vegas, that’s considered “au naturale” and OK in Vegas!”

Apparently, The Dinah started two decades ago by catering to a small gathering of women who went to Palm Springs to socialize, maybe take in some of the Dinah Shore Championship Golf Tournament, and so forth. It eventually became heavily linked to Palm Springs.

For many fans of The Dinah Shore Weekend, it is always going to be synonymous with Palm Springs. Christine Pease, who has gone to the event for six years, according to Mazak, stated “Vegas means that it’s not the Dinah but just a circuit party. The Dinah has a history in Palm Springs and it tells a story about the unity and tradition of our lesbian community.”

Typically, some 15,000 women from all across the word go there for the five-day weekend which includes “spectacular comedy shows, live concerts and legendary wild pool parties that have included some of the biggest names in the industry like Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, The Pussy Cat Dolls, Colbie Caillat, India Arie, Pat Benatar, Natasha Bedingfield, The Indigo Girls, Chely Wright and Salt’n Pepa.”

Finally, Mazak reported that

Hanson’s Club Skirts Dinah Shore Weekend is definitely not going anywhere, especially with this year’s event looking like it could be the largest in The Dinah’s history.

“Hotel sales and ticket sales are way up. We’re expanding our party space at both the Riviera and The Palm Springs Convention Center to accommodate the increased crowds,” said Hanson.

Last year Club Skirts sold out The Riviera, The Hilton, and The Shilo Inn.

But Girl Bar promoters Sachs and Gans are certain that if they build the event in Vegas then the women will come. “It’s not about quantity but more about quality – we expect to have the sophisticated ladies that have been joining us from around the world in previous years
coming back for this new and improved Dinah Shore Weekend Las Vegas,” Sachs and Gans said.

Meanwhile, Hanson credits faithful Dinah goers with opting for the original Palm Springs Dinah experience. “As far as The Dinah Shore Weekend goes, I may be the architect but the colors and the brush strokes, that’s the talent of the attendees, and based on pre-sales, they clearly want to be in Palm Springs,” Hanson said.

Like all government agencies, the Vermont State Police have a logo. It is printed on a decal that is affixed to patrol cars, and it’s about as overdone and uninteresting as any agency logo. It is so uninteresting that Vermonters failed for a year to notice that thirty of our patrol cars had logos that were subtly altered. It’s not like any of us actually examine the decal. We are either concentrating on the trooper who has pulled us over or wondering where the patrol car is going with its lights flashing. My last encounter with a state trooper involved me noting his close resemblance to the actor Brendan Fehr (Jared Booth on Bones), not on his logo decal.

In the logo, there is a spotted cow and the inmates who printed the decals altered the shape of one of the spots to look like a silhouette of a pig. Now that the state police have finally realized the alteration took place, they are very, very insulted. State Police spokeswoman Stephanie Dasaro went so far as to say “It dishonors the memory of those past and present members, especially for those who have lost their lives in the line of duty.” The state troopers are interpreting the silhouette as a reference to the derogatory word for police. Lawmakers are saying it will cost the taxpayers an unknown but huge amount to replace the altered decals. What an outrage! All Vermont is outraged! We are taking to the streets with pitchforks and scythes demanding respect for our gallant men in uniform!

Seriously? Get a grip, guys. Don’t you think that maybe if no one noticed for a year that the joke was a dismal failure? The “pig” is so badly done, it has to be pointed out to people. Have you ever considered the idea that those three whatevers on the left side of the logo look like engorged penises? What are they supposed to be? Thanks to the department’s outrage, we’re all looking for the thirty cars, so, not only did the inmates’ practical joke fail, but calling attention to it has backfired.

If the state patrolmen are all that upset about the pig-in-a-cow (is it any relation to a turducken?) they should take up a collection for a small can of auto touch-up paint and just paint over the pig. We have far too many demands on our limited budget to be replacing a decal that no one has noticed for a year. With the same-day announcement of increases in resident college tuition, we are in no mood to pander to a few injured egos.

With the obvious exception of those few cases where police officers have been accused of abuses of power, criminal activity or stupidity (like demanding immigration papers when they know they aren’t supposed to do that), Vermonters are pretty blase about our police forces. We are, for the most part, neither unreasonably hostile towards our police officers nor unrealistically worshipful. They are there, they do their jobs, we try to be co-operative and respectful as long as our police are respectful of us, and we honor those who are injured or who lose their lives in our service, just as we honor our National Guardsmen and firefighters.

Instead of being insulted, the Vermont State Police should be embarrassed. What does it say about their collective powers of observation if it took a year for anyone to see the pig? The fuss they are making over this is more damaging to their reputations than the pig ever could be.

Related articles

• Prison inmate adds pig to new logo design on a police car (dailymail.co.uk)
• See How They Squeal! Inmate Adds Pig To Decal On Cop Cars (weirdnewsfiles.com)
• Vermont Prison Inmate Plays Good Practical Joke (theawl.com)
• Can You Spot The Pig? Inmates Pranks Police By Adding Swine Image To State Seal (jonathanturley.org)

It boils down to this…they can still fund Planned Parenthood, but that does not mean that they will fund Planned Parenthood. Literally, Komen is saying “We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities.”

They will cut funding, though, for those being investigated criminally.

As Americablog points out “If Komen is serious, they can simply approve the application Planned Parenthood has already submitted. Yes, they turned it down once, supposedly because of the now-old rule about investigations. Fine. If the rule is gone, then approve the grant.”

Planned Parenthood is under attack from Social Conservatives who claim that life begins at conception. This is in violation of the Bible, which says that life begins at the Quickening, which is either at the first sign of movement in the womb or at birth. The claim that life beings at conception dates back just to the 1870′s, and is based on a Papal edict. A variety of religious have differing ages as to when life begins, up to three months of age.

Douglas W. Elmendorf, Director of the CBO

The Congressional Budget Office has verified what we all suspected – the Republican outrage over the corporate tax rate is disingenuous. The current corporate tax rate is 35%. Some companies like General Electric and Bank of America paid no taxes at all last year, and others like the oil companies get so much in tax breaks and whatever that we pay them instead of them paying us. The people paying the 35% corporate tax rate tend to be small companies that don’t qualify for all the special interest tax breaks.

The CBO released the latest tax figures. The average corporate tax rate based on taxes paid between October 1, 2010, and September 30, 2011, is 12.1%, the lowest level since 1972. From 1987 to 2008, the average rate was 25.6%.

Corporate profits (and tax revenues) fell during the recession, but in the past two years the profits have risen sharply while the tax revenues have not.

Republicans are demanding a reduction in corporate tax rates. It seems more obvious that what we need is to eliminate all those special tax breaks and tax credits first, then reduce the tax rate. It is unfair that small businesses pay the full rate while larger companies do not.

Related articles

• Obama will propose corporate tax rate reductions (sfgate.com)
• Corporate Tax Rates, Then and Now | The Big Picture (tribuneofthepeople.com)
• “Do Low Corporate Tax Rates Attract Inward Investment?” (economistsview.typepad.com)
• Americans Look to Corporate Tax Breaks to Increase Jobs (247wallst.com)
• Bartlett: Cutting the Corporate Tax Rate Is No Economic Panacea (taxprof.typepad.com)
• Eliminate the Complexity (citizeneconomists.com)

Christie laughably called this the “bargain of their life”.

Christie, at a town hall meeting in Denville, NJ, stated “I’ve called upon every Republican in the state legislature to vote to put it on the ballot. Well, you need three-fifths to put it on the ballot. The Republicans have two-fifths in the legislature. So that means the Democrats only need to come up with one-fifth of the legislature. This is the bargain of their life. I’m giving you two-fifths! And the polls they show me say that if it goes on the ballot, it will lose. How much more magnanimous can I be? What else do you want me to do? Go campaign for it too? Look, I’m doing the best I can here!”

Christie has been trying to make the case that same-sex marriage should be put to a popular vote, including taking the step of claiming that Civil Rights leaders would have longed to have Black rights put up for a vote. It was later pointed out by a variety of people, including Representative John Lewis of Georgia, that Civil Rights leaders were opposed to referenda being used and knew that only a legislative solution was viable. Christie had to back down, but refuses to back down on this issue.

The rights of the minority have never been put to a popular vote. Had the Founding Fathers put the rights of Catholics to a vote, it would have been rejected. People were still, broadly, hostile to Catholics right up until the mid-1950′s, and there are still people who oppose Catholics having rights even today. Putting Black rights up to a vote in the 1950′s and 1960′s would have been a debacle.

New Jerseyites broadly support same-sex marriage in polling, but that does not mean that a ballot initiative would succeed in granting marriage rights to same-sex couples. Christie is hostile to same-sex marriage rights, instead, choosing to be heavy handed and dictatorial in his decision to push government into the lives of its citizens.

Via Huffington Post

Sen. John McCain

Senator John McCain wants to save the Defense Department budget $109 billion. No, he doesn’t want to save the taxpayers $109 billion, he wants to cut $127 billion elsewhere in the government so the Defense Department doesn’t have to cut $109 billion. He has been joined in this proposal by five other Republican senators including fellow Arizonan Jon Kyl.

The bill would freeze federal pay for an additional 30 months and allow only two people to be hired for every three who is “leaving”. That phraseology saves the party being accused of adding to the unemployment rolls. Overall, the 2/3 hiring proposal would cut the federal workforce by 5%.

At the base of this proposal, or more accurately driving the masses to approve of this attack on federal workers, is the allegation that President Obama has made massive additions to the federal workforce and will be adding 20,000 more workers just for the IRS to process health care provisions. That last one is a complete lie.

Paul Joseph Goebbels, the principle propagandist of the Nazi regime, had a few things to say about how to control the message and the masses, “If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth,” “The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it,” and “Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.” Karl Rove calls it “creating a new reality.”

A few facts in refutation of the “new reality”……

In pure numbers, the highest levels of federal employment took place in 1990 for just executive branch employees (3,067,000) and 1968 for all branches and the military (6,639,000). The lowest levels were in 1962 for executive branch (2,498,000) and 2007 for total (4,127,000). But the government is a service industry, and the best way to judge the size of the government is as a percentage of the population. We think of classrooms that way, as student-teacher ratios. That is the way we should think of those people who process our Social Security and Medicare, take care of our national forests, investigate crime, guard our borders, who do all those things too numerous to articulate, as a population-employee ratio. Since it is the executive branch that provides the services, those are the figures to concentrate on.

Our federal workforce, though numerically larger by 42,000 employees than in 2010, actually shrunk last year as a ratio. It went from 0.00899% of the population to 0.00897% of the population. That is, incidentally, the lowest ratio in the past 51 years. In 1960 and 1970, the percentage of executive branch federal employees was 0.014% of the population. Under Reagan and Bush 41, it was 0.012%. The percentage has consistently shrunken since Bill Clinton took office. The total federal workforce, including the military was at its largest in 1970 at 2.5% of the population. The Iraq and Afghan wars saw our military shrink by 0.001% of the population.

Ever been in a retail store and there are only 2 cash registers open and lines of ten, twelve customers? Well, that is what the government would be like if we were to cut it further. I spent thirty years as the wife of a Federal employee. Over those years, I saw the government make advances in productivity and efficiency. It doesn’t seem like that to those outside of it, but they did, mostly through computerization and consolidation of responsibilities. I also saw the mess the Bush administration created with the Department of Homeland Security. What was supposed to be a consolidation of services instead became an over-complicated braided rug of jurisdictions and supervision. There is a great deal that the government could do to improve efficiency, but that will not happen if the Republicans are allowed to just slash employees. That’s putting the cart before the horse. For example, it would benefit both the federal government and the states if certain inspections were co-ordinated, like food processing.

But making the government more efficient is not what the Republicans want. The eventual goal is the privatization of as much of the government as possible. We saw the preliminaries of this policy in Iraq and Afghanistan, where private contractors like Halliburton and Blackwater took over work that used to be done by Federal employees. Instead of hiring Iraqis to rebuild their schools and their water systems, we hired private American contractors who charged us $5,150 a month for a truck driver, and then charged us twice that for the security personnel to protect those truck drivers because Iraqi unemployment was over 30%. Privatization is not intended to save us money, but to give money to corporations.

Lastly, the ultimate “new reality” lie is that Federal salaries are bloated and Feds get free health care and huge pensions. Federal salaries are 28% lower than the same jobs in the private sector, where comparisons are possible. There are certain jobs like forest rangers that have no comparable private jobs. The pension system started being eaten away at during the Reagan administration and the Federal employee share of health care premiums have grown since Clinton. Now, federal employees are discouraged from retiring before age 66 because they will be forced into Social Security at 62 at the lower benefit level. One can find people all over the country who believe that Anthony Weiner is receiving 75% of his Congressional salary right now and will receive it until he dies and that he gets free health care for life. Both are complete lies.

The lies that Republicans tell about Federal employment are so well entrenched in the minds of their supporters that it is easy for them to sell the idea that Federal employees are over-paid, contribute nothing to their health insurance or pensions, and don’t work nearly as hard as a private sector employee.

McCain’s bill should not be allowed to pass the Senate, but if it does, the President should veto it.

Related articles

• Federal Salary Cuts To Pay For Payroll Tax Extension? (lezgetreal.com)
• The Republican Lies About Federal Pay And Benefits (lezgetreal.com)
• Republicans propose alternative plan to budget cuts (politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com)
• McCain Plan to Avoid Spending Cuts Is a Plan to Increase Spending (pogoblog.typepad.com)
• U.S. House votes to freeze federal pay through 2013 (newsok.com)

Elizabeth Warren

This news must have the Republicans and the Tea Partiers freaking out. America’s employers have started stepping up hiring this past January. This has brought the unemployment rate down for the fifth month in a row down to 8.3%. Employers have added some 243,000 jobs this past January, according to the Labor Department, and that is a pick up of some 40,000 jobs since December when the job market added some 203,000 jobs. The job growth was stronger than analysts expected. They had projected that there would be 130,000 jobs added last month. They expected that unemployment would tick upward, in fact.

Financial information company Sageworks’ CEO Brian Hamilton said “This is an optimistic jobs report, especially in light of very poor jobs reports for almost three years. We don’t know if the positive jobs trend will continue, but it is definitely a good trend.”

Politically, this is bad news for the Republican Party who have based their entire election cycle on a bad economy. While the economy is still not superb, it appears to be leveling out. It may take a while for people to finally feel the effects of the economic recovery, however. The bigger problem is that the Republicans may try very hard to derail the recovery in the next few months by allowing tax increases on the Middle and Lower Classes. That, again, plays into the hands of President Obama during his reelection campaign since that makes Republicans look like tax increasers.

Via CNN

In the last several days, the story as to why Komen chose to defund Planned Parenthood differed between the spokeswoman for the group and the head Nancy Brinker, who chose to claim that they were just trying to change the direction of their grant giving. The spokeswoman claimed that the reason was because Planned Parenthood was under investigation by Congress. Planned Parenthood has been under investigation by Congressional Republicans because of pressure from the anti-women/anti-abortion groups.

Pressure to reverse course came in as Senators Lautenberg, Murray, Mikulski, Boxer, Cantwell, Gillibrand, Menendez, Wyden, Blumenthal, Shaheen, Begich, merkley, Tester, Akaka, Sanders, (Sherrod) Brown, Leahy, Baucus, Cardin, Feinstein, Franken, and Kerry sent a lengthy letter to the head of Komen. In the letter, the Senators state:

We write to express our disappointment with Susan G. Komen for the Cure’s decision to cut funding for breast cancer prevention, screening, and education at Planned Parenthood health centers. This troubling decision threatens to reduce access to necessary, life-saving services. We urge Komen to reconsider its decision.

Planned Parenthood is a trusted provider of health care for women and men. More than 90 percent of the services provided by Planned Parenthood are primary and preventative including wellness exams and cancers screenings that save lives. Each year, Planned Parenthood health clinics provide 750,000 breast exams, 770,000 pap tests and nearly 4 million tests and treatments for sexually transmitted diseases. Twenty percent of all women in the U.S. have visited a Planned Parenthood health center.

Brinker released the following statement reversing course on this particular event:

We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives.

The events of this week have been deeply unsettling for our supporters, partners and friends and all of us at Susan G. Komen. We have been distressed at the presumption that the changes made to our funding criteria were done for political reasons or to specifically penalize Planned Parenthood. They were not.

Our original desire was to fulfill our fiduciary duty to our donors by not funding grant applications made by organizations under investigation. We will amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political. That is what is right and fair.

Our only goal for our granting process is to support women and families in the fight against breast cancer. Amending our criteria will ensure that politics has no place in our grant process. We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities.

It is our hope and we believe it is time for everyone involved to pause, slow down and reflect on how grants can most effectively and directly be administered without controversies that hurt the cause of women. We urge everyone who has participated in this conversation across the country over the last few days to help us move past this issue. We do not want our mission marred or affected by politics – anyone’s politics.

Starting this afternoon, we will have calls with our network and key supporters to refocus our attention on our mission and get back to doing our work. We ask for the public’s understanding and patience as we gather our Komen affiliates from around the country to determine how to move forward in the best interests of the women and people we serve.

We extend our deepest thanks for the outpouring of support we have received from so many in the past few days and we sincerely hope that these changes will be welcomed by those who have expressed their concern.

On a totally different subject, one of the odd things that I love to point out is the fact that I am a cat owner. The two cats I own are rescues from the shelter. I would love to say that they are the most loving cats one could ever ask for, and I always recommend people adopt if they are going to own pets, and that they should always give up their unwanted pets to no-kill shelters. And, as Bob Barker use to point out- always remember to spay and neuter your pets.

The sentencing kept being put off time and again due to problems with lawyers and timing.

According to Edge on the Net “In a statement, the Commission for Gender Equality says the Cape Town court’s ruling is a lesson to perpetrators of homophobic violence. The commission said it would work to stop ‘this continued violation of gays’ and lesbians’ rights.’”

Unfortunately, the sentence is going to be seen as being too light by most people who will be wondering why a violent hate murder has been treated with such a relatively light jail term.

Amy Hunter, the President of Equality Michigan Pride PAC stated “Michigan voters elected Rick Snyder because he had a plan to fix our state’s economy. He was going to help keep the best and the brightest here and position Michigan as an economic leader. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, the Governor has made compromises we find disappointing. After nearly a year-long policy debate, Snyder has put hardworking couples and their children into harm’s way by eliminating important health care coverage. Michigan’s gay residents are fed up, and this is one way that we’re pushing back.”

They have set up two sites. The first is www.talkbacktorick.com where an open letter can be signed opposing the stripping of rights from LGBT Michiganers as well as to help buy airtime for the radio ad which can be heard at www.talkbacktorick.com/ads-in-your-town .

Sen. Scott Brown

Two years ago, while campaigning in the special election to replace the late Ted Kennedy as Massachusetts Senator, Scott Brown vowed to be the 41^st vote to stop the health care law. Once in the Senate, he forced deletions of critical portions of the Dodd-Frank Act weakening our oversight of the financial services industry. He was elected with the support of the Tea Party and he was goose stepping in line with their policies.

That was then. This is now. Now Brown is facing the normal cyclical election for his seat and his probable opponent will be the irrepressible, passionate, articulate, down-to-earth, almost irresistible Elizabeth Warren, the woman charged with creating the mechanisms of the financial reform bill and whose appointment to head the new consumer protection bureau was blocked by Brown and his fellow Republicans. Warren is determined to restore the so-called Kennedy Senate seat to the Democratic Party. From December 1960 to November 1962, the seat was held by the appointed Benjamin Atwood Smith II. That two year interval was just a bump in the 54 years that the seat was held by a Kennedy brother.

Now, Brown is facing three problems to get re-elected. The first is the fact that he is part of a Congress that has a 13% approval rating, the lowest in the history of polling. Second is a general sense of buyers’ remorse across America over the Tea Party. It is one thing to espouse an ideology. It is quite another to watch that ideology virtually shut down Congress. Though Brown may be a reasonable man, there were too many crazies who were running as Tea Party candidates in 2010. Lastly, Massachusetts is starting to feel picked-upon. Even Mitt Romney has disavowed RomneyCare. It may not be the perfect health care plan, but 84% of Massachusetts residents are satisfied with it. That is an impressive majority, and one that makes the Republican promise to repeal ObamaCare and the constant harping on Romney for signing their health care system into law very difficult for Brown.

Brown is trying to separate himself from his own party. He is presenting himself to Mass voters as deeply committed to bi-partisanship. The President has called for a bill banning insider trading by members of Congress. Brown has sponsored such a bill, and after the State of the Union Address, urged the President to talk to Majority Leader Harry Reid about bringing the bill to the floor. The exchange was caught on camera and the video is being used in Brown’s campaign. He voted against his party for the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and has supported the recess appointment of Richard Cordray to the post denied to Elizabeth Warren. Brown said “If we’re going to make progress as a nation, both parties in Washington need to work together to end the procedural gridlock and hyper-partisanship.” Dangerous words for a Republican. His party may want to hold his seat to maintain their ability to filibuster everything that comes from the President, but taking such a bi-partisan line could cost Brown support from the right wing media.

Elizabeth Warren

Elizabeth Warren would be a formidable opponent even in a state less devoutly Democratic than Massachusetts. She has a quick mind, a dry wit and an ability to talk with anyone without talking down to anyone that makes one wish there were more college professors like her. I certainly never had a college professor who could have made Jon Stewart double over laughing. No one can fake the passion Warren brings to her beliefs and her policies. Though there are other Democrats on the March 6 primary ballot, Warren is considered the winner already, and she has the war chest to prove it. She raised most of her $6 million campaign fund in just three months. Brown has $12.8 million in his coffers, but it is a gap Warren should be able to close easily.

Though Massachusetts is considered a Democratic state, the majority of Massachusetts voters are registered independents, something that Brown hopes will work to his favor if he stresses his “independent streak” But in the end, Brown is not running on his record, which is more Republican than independent, but is running against his own party.

Related articles

• In Mass. Senate race, GOP’s Brown embracing Obama (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Scott Brown Embraces Obama (huffingtonpost.com)
• Massachusetts Republicans launch blatantly dishonest video attacking Elizabeth Warren (dailykos.com)
• Washington Is Rigged – by Elizabeth Warren (jhaines6.wordpress.com)
• In Op-Ed, Elizabeth Warren Hits Scott Brown and Mitt Romney For Opposing The Buffet Rule (thinkprogress.org)
• Elizabeth Warren shows how elections are won (americablog.com)
• Elizabeth Warren Is No Longer Just A Candidate, She’s A Cause And She’ll Be Almost Impossible To Beat (businessinsider.com)

OMM, which is an affiliate of the American Family Association, is up in arms over the hiring of Ellen Degeneres as JC Penney’s spokeswoman.

They also wrote:

It is absurd to think that a company would find treating customers in this fashion an acceptable behavior. Our members stated their concerns in a kind, professional manner. Insulting customers by ignoring us will not be tolerated. OMM members can shop elsewhere if JC Penney does not appreciate our business. Unless JC Penney decides to be neutral in the culture war and listen to customers in a considerate fashion, their brand transformation will be unsuccessful.

Degeneres is not a true representation of the type of families who shop at the retailer. The small percentage of customers they are attempting to satisfy will not offset their loss in sales by offending the majority.

Of course, the only way for the company to be neutral in the ‘culture war’, as one reader of LGR pointed out, is if they manage to find someone who is either completely asexual or a eunuch to handle their advertising. The reality is that most of the customers that JC Penney’s is reaching these days are younger, more tolerant individuals who are supporting LGBT rights, and for whom Degeneres is a wonderful comedienne.

As for ‘treating their customers in this fashion’, it is unlikely that their members are stating their concerns in a kind, professional manner. As someone who has had to deal with the religious fanatics that tend to be part of OMM, I can certainly say that they are not open to listening to anything other than the sound of their own voices.

Well, since they cannot harangue the corporate headquarters, they have decided to go locally. It is unlikely that this will have any actual affect on the national decision to hire Degerenes. Still, here is how you can find the local stores so that you, too, can voice your support for Ellen.

Mitt Romney

“FoxSpeak” is that peculiar manner in which conservatives managed to twist a liberal’s statements 180° to mean something that was not said, just so the statement can be vilified. Though Repubican presidential nominee candidate Mitt Romney may suffer from too many incidents of letting his mouth get in the way of his political brain, yesterday he proved that he has mastered the art of “FoxSpeak.”

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta laid out for the press on a trip to Brussels the very thing so many have been calling for for the past ten years – an exit strategy for Afghanistan. While campaigning, President Obama had promised us not just an exit strategy, but an exit from Iraq and Afghanistan. When he took up occupancy of the Oval Office, the facts prevented him keeping that promised immediately. We are now out of Iraq, and Panetta told Congress that the administration “hopes” it will be able to withdraw our combat troops from Afghanistan during 2013, and leave a small contingent to continue training the Afghans. The whole exit strategy depends on two things – the situation on the ground and the decisions of the Afghan government, which is very clearly determined to create its own internal peace and get the American troops out quickly.

The key word in Panetta’s presentation was “hope”

Romney used a visit to a Las Vegas factory to criticize Secretary Panetta. He told the factory workers, “The president’s mistakes, some of them are calculated on a philosophy that’s hard to understand, and sometimes, you scratch your head and say, ‘How can he be so misguided and so naive?’ Today, his secretary of defense unleashed such a policy. The secretary of defense said that on a day certain, the middle of 2013, we’re goint to pull out our combat troops from Afghanistan. He announced that. He announced that. So, the Taliban hears it, the Pakistanis hear it, the Afghan leaders hear it. Why in the world do you go to the people that you’re fighting with a tell them the date you’re pulling out your troops? It makes absolutely no sense. His naivete is putting in jeopardy the mission of the United States of America and our commitments to freedom. He is wrong. We need new leadership in Washington.” Romney has said that any decision he makes in Afghanistan would be based on the advice of the generals on the ground.

It was perfect “FoxSpeak” – create words that were never said so the administration can be called weak, incapable of defending our country, incompetent, naive. In the thrall of some foreign philosophy. “FoxSpeak” requires their audience to ignore facts like the deaths of Osama bin Laden and most of the top ranks of al Qaida. It requires ignoring the successful end of the war in Iraq. It ignores the way in which the United States is standing toe-to-toe with Iran waiting for them to blink. Like every other criticism of the administration, Romney’s rebuke is dependent upon having listeners who are programmed to believe the worst of any Democrat, Progressive or liberal.

Secreatary Panetta did not say anything new on that flight to Brussels. The 2013-14 timeline has been discussed for a couple of years already. Romney’s remarks can be interpreted as both his own ability to deny the true words of those in the administration and as an indication that the right wing media has managed for two years to never disclose to their viewers and listeners that this timeline existed.

Related articles

• Romney: Panetta’s Withdrawal Announcement ‘Misguided’ (abcnews.go.com)
• Pentagon pushes to leave Afghanistan as soon as possible (rt.com)
• Romney: Afghan troop announcement “naive” (cbsnews.com)
• Plan for early end to US combat role catches Afghan officials by surprise (csmonitor.com)
• Mitt Romney hauls out the weak-on-defense canard over Afghanistan withdrawal plans (dailykos.com)

Newt Gingrich by Gage Skidmore

By his own staff’s admission, if Newt Gingrich had won the Florida primary he would not be questioning the allocation of delegates. But he didn’t win, so he’s pulled out the rule book and is demanding that Florida follow it.

The state’s Republican Party decided that Florida is a winner-take-all-the-delegates primary state. But last year, the Republican National Committee decided that any state that wanted to play jump-the-gun with their primary date, specifically, holding the primary before February 1, would have to allocate their delegates according to the percentage of votes won. That was in addition to forfeiting half their state’s “elected” delegates to the national convention. (States have a certain number of delegates who are elected officials and party leaders, and the “elected” delegates from the primary process.) Florida awarded all fifty delegates to Mitt Romney.

Going into the Florida primary, Gingrich had 27 delegates, Paul 10, Romney 16 and Santorum 7. Romney’s win in Florida brought him up to 66 delegates. But if the delegates are pro rated, Gingrich would have 43, Paul 13, Romney 39 and Santorum 13. There would be one delegate left over from Florida unless the RNC has some provision for half-delegates. The pro rating of Florida’s delegates would turn the primaries upside down again, with Gingrich regaining the lead. Shifting 27 delegates isn’t a big thing, with 1,144 delegates needed to take the nomination, but it would be a huge psychological boost for Gingrich’s campaign and improve his fundraising.

Related articles

• Gingrich to Challenge Florida Results? (outsidethebeltway.com)
• Gingrich May Challenge Florida Delegate Count (tampa.cbslocal.com)
• Gingrich Wants Florida to Change Allocation of GOP Delegates – Wall Street Journal (blog) (blogs.wsj.com)

According to the language of House Joint Resolution 22, “Marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman. A marriage, civil union or similar relationship entered into by persons of the same sex that is recognized by another state or foreign jurisdiction is void and shall not be recognized for any purpose in this state. In the exercise of the state’s police power and recognizing the state’s strong interest in governing the relationships between married persons, the provisions of this section shall apply retroactively.”

When it comes to respecting marriage, though, Chavez has a pretty spotty record. In October 2010, Chavez was accused of domestic abuse, and his wife filed for divorce. The two were married for four years and two months.

This is a consistent theme. Many of the politicians who oppose same-sex marriage have problems with marriage. They tend to be divorced repeatedly or have problems with domestic abuse, and so forth.

The posted comments came in response to an interview that the blog did with Adam Lambert. GLAAD reports that “Some comments promoted anti-gay violence and even encouraged suicide. Among the most egregious of responses was: ‘It would make my day if someone was to do to [Lambert] what those men did to Matthew Shepard.’ Shepard was the 21-year-old University of Wyoming student who was brutally beaten and left for dead on the outskirts of Laramie, WY in 1998.”

GLAAD alerted Yahoo to the problem, and they quickly suspended the comments on the stream. It can often be difficult for a large organization like Yahoo or Blizzard or BioWare to monitor all of the comment streams and remove all of the hatefully violent ones that are out there.

Allison Palmer, GLAAD’s Director of Digital Initiatives, stated “Young music fans should be able to interact and comment on sites without seeing violent, hateful comments directed at LGBT people. Yahoo! did the right thing by taking immediate action to enforce their Terms of Service, setting an important example for other leading websites and tech companies.”

Yahoo issued its own statement saying that the company “does not allow content that promotes hatred against users or groups of users. Protected categories include, but are not limited to race, ethnicity, age, gender, disability, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Yahoo! takes issues like this very seriously. We provide methods for users to report content that they believe to be abusive. Yahoo! reviews these reports and takes appropriate action according to our Terms of Service.”

GLAAD wraps up by saying:

Both Yahoo! and GLAAD urge users to report violent, hateful comments to site administrators.

In 2010, GLAAD started similar work with Facebook and helped create the “Network of Support,” an educational initiative that works to put an end to anti-LGBT cyberbullying, which includes other LGBT and youth organizations.

According to Politico, Brinker “never mentions Planned Parenthood by name. But she says the organization is trying to focus on ‘higher impact programs’ and get rid of ‘duplicative’ grants — and she says the ‘scurrilous accusations’ about the change have been ‘profoundly hurtful to the organization.’”

Of course, part of the problem here is that Leslie Aun, a spokeswoman for Komen, made it clear that the cut in grants had to do with Planned Parenthood being investigated by Congress, and not some gobbledegook about ‘higher impact programs.’ The House is investigating Planned Parenthood on behalf of the anti-women groups opposed to abortion, and is lead entirely by Republicans on a witch hunt to destroy Planned Parenthood.

Politico also reported that

Brinker said she initiated “a comprehensive review of our grants and standards” in 2010 to put “more stringent eligibility and performance criteria” in place and insisted there was nothing unusual about it.

“These changes mean that we will be able to do more to help women and advance the fight against breast cancer,” Brinker said. “We are working to eliminate duplicative grants, freeing up more dollars for higher impact programs, and wherever possible we want to grant to the provider that is actually providing the lifesaving mammogram.

“We have the highest responsibility to ensure that these donor dollars make the biggest impact possible,” Brinker said. “Regrettably, this strategic shift will affect any number of long-standing partners, but we have always done what is right for our organization, for our donors and volunteers.”

Brinker, though, went on to say “We will never bow down to political pressure. The scurrilous accusations being hurled at this organization are profoundly hurtful to so many of us who put our heart, soul and lives into this organization. But more importantly, they are a dangerous distraction from the work that still remains to be done in ridding the world of breast cancer.”

The problem for Brinker and Komen is that they have already bowed their heads to the political pressure coming from those who wish women to be placed back in the kitchen, and who would rather cut women’s health coverage to the bone. Simply put, Brinker and Komen have no one to blame but themselves for the loss of life that will come from their decision, and for the damage that they have already done.

Given that it is their own words that say that they are cutting grants to those who are under investigation by Congress, it is not going to help Komen if Brinker gets up there and lies to try and mitigate the damage. It will only make matters worse.

Punxsutawney Phil

Thousands gathered in Punxsatawney, Pennsylvania, and various locations around America to watch a rodent who resembles a cross between a squirrel and a beaver with a less interesting tail get pulled out of this home and face the sunrise. He will then be spun around so he can see if he has cast a shadow. If there is little or no cloud cover and the groundhog “sees” his shadow, winter will continue until March 14 or 15, depending on Leap Year. If it is cloudy and the groundhog does not “see” his shadow, we will have an early spring.

I live in Vermont. Having shoveled out a 24″ snow fall on March 17 and been stuck in a snow bank coming home from college in mid-May, I consider mid-March an early spring. I prefer to judge my weather by the squirrels. So far this year, they are not interested in my birdbath filled with sunflower seeds. We’re having a very, very mild winter. I figure that the more I spend on sunflower seeds, the more I’ll be spending on wood pellets to heat my house.

Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney

The whole Groundhog Day thing started in 1887, and the current Punxatawney Phil is the latest over-fed, pampered, caged prognosticator in a furry dynasty. At its peak, in 1920, the town had a population of 10,000 in its 3.4 square miles, 84 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. Now, the population is lower than it was in 1900 at 6,271. It used to have coal mines and glassworks, foundries, ironworkds, machine shops and flour, feed and silk mills. Now, it pretty much has the groundhog and a thriving groundhog souvenir business. The town’s name comes from a Native American term that translates into “town of the sandflies,” or maybe it’s mosquitoes.

Punxsatawney Phil and his cohorts in weather forecasting have a pretty abysmal record. They have been right only 37% of the time.

Sarah "Marmot Day" Palin

Pity poor Alaska, they have no groundhogs to forecast their weather, so, in 2009 during her last few months as Governor, Sarah Palin signed a law designating the groundhog-wannabe marmot as their official harbinger of an early spring. Alaskans dealt with their rodent-envy by legislating February 2 as Marmot Day.  Since the Alaskan marmot’s natural range is the extreme north of the state, I’m not sure how the whole sunrise aspect works out.

There are a half-dozen or so theories of the origin of the tradition of Groundhog Day, ranging from the ancient Celtic festival of Imbolc (least likely as Imbolc was linked to spring livestock births) to the folklore of the German settlers in Pennsylvania (most likely).  Groundhog or marmot, shadow or no, I think I’ll stick to Jim Cantore and The Weather Channel to tell me what to expect in the weather.

Related articles

• Groundhog Sees Shadow; 6 More Weeks of Winter (towleroad.com)
• Groundhogs behaving badly: When forecasting critters go rogue (mercurynews.com)

I still enjoy Animaniacs. The skits were always so much fun. Of course, some of my favorites made fun of Gilbert and Sullivan or Disney…

Typical stack for college course (Creative Commons, Flickr)

The explanation for why college textbooks are so expensive is simple. The books are very big, requiring a lot of paper, and very few of them are sold at any given time. As a consequence, textbook costs for college student can quickly approach $400 a semester just for survey courses. Once a student gets into more specialized classes, textbook costs easily top $1,000.

But what if the textbooks didn’t have to be physically printed? What if they could be purchased for a Kindle or Nook or other reader? Wouldn’t they cost a lot less?

Take that idea down to public school level. I graduated from a very, very small high school in Vermont. We bought our own textbooks. To save money, we had a system for selling good used textbooks to the next grade for three of the four major subjects, math, history, science and English. One of those four was completely replaced every year. That meant that our textbooks were never more than four years old, and more up-to-date than most of the schools where the books were provided by the districts. And yes, there was a fund to assist those who could not afford the books.   One of the reasons textbooks chosen by the Texas School Board are so important is because they buy so many books, it lowers the cost for other states to buy the same books. 

Too many school systems are struggling with the cost of books. Too many students are stuck using books that are out-of-date and forced to supplement those books with outside materials. And on the other side of the world, students are being supplied with extremely cheap computers by One Laptop Per Child, founded in 2006 by Nicholas Negroponte.

The devastation in Joplin, Missouri, led that school system to replace hundreds of thousands of lost textbooks with laptops. Digital learning is being used in Florida, Idaho, Utah and California. The biggest deterrent is the lack of national broadband capacity. It is also a transition that is front-heavy for expense.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan and the Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski announced on Wednesday that they are challenging America’s schools to transition to digital textbooks in the next five years. This comes two weeks after Apple announced it will sell electronic versions of a few standard high-school textbooks for the iPad.

The United States is lagging behind countries like South Korea in the transition to digital textbooks. Digital textbooks, on a device that can also access the internet, holds enormous potential for improving education. Chairman Genachowski explained, “When a student reads a textbook and gets to something they don’t know, they are stuck. Working with the same material on a digital textbook, when they get to something they don’t know, the device can let them explore, it can show them what a word means, how to solve a math problem that they couldn’t figure out how to solve.” A digital format also makes the material adaptable for the individual student. Some children learn best through pictures, others through words, still others through interaction. A computer makes it possible for a student to explore a subject in the method that works best for the student.

American schools spend $8 billion annually on textbooks, and that’s an amount that reflects the “cost cutting” system of keeping textbooks going in a school as long as the books hold together. Though textbook companies have been working to transform the industry, it isn’t enough. The schools aren’t ready in many cases. Few schools are wired for broadband in ways that allow every student to access the connections needed for digital learning. There is also the problem, not being addressed in this challenge, of how children will do homework in a digital mode in homes without internet access or in neighborhoods where the computer might be a target for a criminal.

Joplin, which received donations from the United Arab Emirates to supply the computers, is a perfect showcase for this type of learning. Some students have had problems making the transition, according to the district’s Assistant Superintendent, Angie Besendorfer, but they are hoping that as their eighth graders progress through the system, they will be textbook-free. What Joplin is learning from this is that not only is a mind a terrible thing to waste, but it is also a terrible thing to regiment. When a 14-year-old has trouble adapting to a new way of learning, that child has spent too many years locked in a box, limited in what he or she can learn because it must be learned in a particular manner. Hopefully, those who are advocating this transition will recognize that it is best done by changing the way children learn in kindergarten through third grade first, possible going as high as fifth grade if the students respond to it, then let the new method rise to top with the students. It would, unfortunately, take years. Educational reform is notorious for trying to change all the students at once, not acknowledging that we force children into patterns of learning that are hard to break.

Digital learning can do so much to improve America’s competitive position against countries which are pouring more money into their schools and more technology into their teaching. The only thing standing in the way, besides the money and broadband access, is a right wing resistence to any proposal that would destroy their ability to tightly control what their children learn.

Related articles

• Challenge to schools: Embracing digital textbooks (sfgate.com)
• Challenge to schools: Embracing digital textbooks (mysanantonio.com)
• Download Textbooks (college-textbooks.co)
• Digital Textbooks Go Straight From Scientists to Students (almacen13.wordpress.com)
• Apple’s e-textbooks do not look so world-changing to educators (teleread.com)
• Apple Digital Textbooks: iBooks 2 Revealed (VIDEO) (blippitt.com)
• Apple sees over 350K digital textbook downloads, report says (venturebeat.com)

That is how much is currently unaccounted for – $2,000,000,000. No one knows where it went. The problem is, this wasn’t our money. In 2004, the Iraqi government gave the United States Department of Defense $3 billion for Iraqi-related expenses. Somehow, the “bulk of the records are missing.” Now, you ask anyone who has ever been in the military and they will tell you that you can’t take a dump or fire a single bullet without filing the paperwork in triplicate. How the hell they could misplace the records for $2 billion in expenditures is just inconceivable.

The Iraqi Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction audit also notes that “From July 2004 through December 2007, DoD should have provided 42 months reports. However, it can locate only the first four reports.” Defense Under Secretary Mark Easton acknowledged, in a letter responding to the audit that “a records management issue” exists.

The Iraqis, bless their hearts, don’t think we are guilty of fraud, they just think we are really incompetent in our record keeping. At least, that’s the official line.

The money has been a problem from the beginning, when the Bush administration offered up the reconstruction contracts before we even invaded. We gave those “cost plus three percent” contracts to favored companies like Halliburton (which received a multi-million dollar contract to do exactly the same work they had just completed under the United Nations Food for Oil program) and its subsidiary RGB. Contractors brought in Americans to do the work at salaries up to twice what they could make for similar jobs in America, while denying work to the Iraqis, who had built their country before we bombed it. There was a story in the Florida Times Union about 8 years ago about a cement factory in Baghdad. The army said it would take two years and two million dollars to restore the factory. They gave the owner $20,000 and told him to make it look like something was being done. He took that $20,000 and the existing inventory in the factory and in three months had that factory operating at a higher capacity than before the invasion. That is what the Iraqis could have done on their own without our interference. The reconstruction could have cost us a tenth or less of what it did and the Iraqis would have had better built schools, roads and housing without our shoddy contractors. Letting the Iraqis rebuild their own country would also have defused the insurgency and reduced our casualties, both military and civilian.

It isn’t bad enough that we got screwed by our contractors. Now it turns out, we can’t account for Iraqi money. And people wonder why they don’t love us in Iraq.

Related articles

• Billions to Defense Contractors in Iraq unaccounted for (thetruthhaschanged.com)
• Watchdog says U.S. cannot account for Iraqi billions (vancouversun.com)
• Pentagon lost $100 million in Saddam’s palace (rt.com)
• Massive amounts of money still missing or unexplained in Iraq (americablog.com)
• New Government Audit can’t account for billions given to US Defense Dept for Iraq projects????? (bonjupatten.com)
• Investigating Iraqs stolen money (thecurrencynewshound.com)

On Thursday, Feb. 2, GetEQUAL — a national, direct-action lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization — will protest “The Family” and their agenda of persecuting LGBT people around the world, by demonstrating outside the National Prayer Breakfast. The National Prayer Breakfast is an annual event — often keynoted by the President and always attended by members of Congress, business leaders, and international heads of state. It is co-organized by certain members of Congress and a secretive, shadowy religious group to which they belong called “The Family” (also known as “The Fellowship” or “The Fellowship Foundation”), which pursues a viciously homophobic agenda in the United States and around the world. Members of “The Family” are tied to the Ugandan lawmaker who authored Uganda’s “Kill the Gays” bill.

While some people may believe that the National Prayer Breakfast is an inclusive gathering without a particular policy agenda, the truth is that “The Family’s” aim is to influence political systems worldwide. They use the support and prestige gained from events such as the National Prayer Breakfast to promote their worldwide campaign of bigotry against LGBT people.

Beginning at 7 a.m. ET in front of the Washington Hilton Hotel (1919 Connecticut Avenue, NW), members of GetEQUAL and their families, friends, co-workers, and supportive members of the community will gather outside of the National Prayer Breakfast to demand that Members of Congress, the President, and leaders of all kinds take a stand against the hatred and bigotry that the National Prayer Breakfast organizers have promoted worldwide.

GetEQUAL will make the point that attendance at the Breakfast helps prop up this fringe group, and implies an endorsement of the anti-LGBT agenda of “The Family.” Demonstrators will make the case that “The Family’s” role in the persecution of LGBT people worldwide must be exposed for the harm it continues to cause. They will call out purveyors of hate like “The Family,” whose words and actions incite the daily LGBT suicides, bullying, gay-bashings and murders that our community faces. And they will point out that separation of church and state is a guiding principle of our nation, and requires that privately-held religious beliefs not be used as justification to impose discriminatory legislation and the denial of equality to others.

What: GetEQUAL Protests “The Family” and their anti-LGBT agenda outside the National Prayer Breakfast

Who: GetEQUAL and their families, friends, co-workers and supportive members of the community

When: Thursday February 2, 2012, 7 – 10 a.m. (ET)

Where: Outside of the Washington Hilton, 1919 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Washington, DC

“Demonstrators from GetEQUAL will remind ‘The Family’ and all those attending the National Prayer Breakfast that Jesus taught love for everyone, and anyone who hates and persecutes others in his name is grossly misguided,” said Michael Dixon, a lead organizer for the DC chapter of GetEQUAL. “People die and families are destroyed when ‘The Family” is allowed to advance its agenda of anti-LGBT hatred and discrimination. We’re going to remind our elected representatives and others that the whole world is watching.”

Tom Morgan, a GetEQUAL State Lead from Ohio and a planned attendee at the protest, remarked, “As Bishop Desmond Tutu once said, ‘If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor….’ We face injustice and oppression everyday. We will not remain neutral.”

Coburn, a Republican from Oklahoma who is well respected on both sides of the aisle, has placed a filibuster hold on a bill authorizing an annual earmark of $20 million for the New York City September 11 Memorial & Museum at the site of the World Trade Center. That’s $20 million a year to operate the museum and memorial, not just to build it. That earmark comes at the same time that funding for other museums all over the country, including our national museum, the Smithsonian, have suffered budget cuts.

Coburn’s spokesman, John Hart, explained the Senator’s rationale, “Our debt is our greatest national security threat, and Dr. Coburn makes no apologies for forcing Congress to make choices and avoid unnecessary borrowing. If providing federal funding for this effort is a critical national priority, the sponsors should pay for this effort by reducing spending on lower-priority programs. It is also important to question why we need a $20 million earmark for a 9/11 memorial when private and patriotic Americans across the country are generously supporting this noble cause.”

The sponsors for the bill include Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer of New York. Schumer told Politico that “This is sacred ground not just to New Yorkers but to all Americans, and it deserves the same treatment as other memorials. Sen. Coburn heard our arguments on the Zadroga bill and eventually supported it. We hope he will do the same this time.” Big difference here. The Zadroga bill was for the medical care of those who worked on the Ground Zero site. Schumer is obviously forgetting that funding has been so severely cut for the Capital Mall that the Reflecting Pool is a cesspool of goose droppings and a private fundraiser was needed to start repairs. The Mall is a national monument as well. And how about the need for a private donor to fix the Washington Monument? Congress only approved half the necessary funds.

I understand the emotional element of the 9/11 memorials, just as I understand the Pearl Harbor memorial. But I also understand a couple of other things about Ground Zero….

First of all, it is not Federal land. The property, as near as I can figure out, belongs to the New York Port Authority. The buildings belong to the developers and from the beginning, back in 1966, the city of New York, the Port Authority and the developers had deals concerning property tax payments being replaced with fees collected from the building tenants. The new World Trade Center complex will consist of five high-rise office buildings and a transportation hub close in size to Grand Central Terminal (meaning a heck of a lot bigger than anything most of us have ever seen) in addition to the museum and memorial. Nothing in all of that says “Federal government” anymore than Central Park is under Federal jurisdiction. People from all over the world and all over the United States enjoy Central Park and New York City’s many museums. None of them are, to my knowledge, subsidized by the Federal government.

Then there’s the thing very few of us speak of out loud…how fed up so many Americans are with being blackmailed with 9/11. If you don’t support invading Iraq, you’ve forgotten 9/11. If you question the legality of activities of the Bush administration, you’ve forgotten 9/11. If you vote for a Democrat, you’ve forgotten 9/11. If you are in any way tolerant of Muslims, you’ve forgotten 9/11. If you think it’s a stupid idea to drop a nuke on every Muslim in the world, you’ve forgotten 9/11. If you believe that a Muslim group should be allowed to build a community center in lower Manhattan, you’ve forgotten 9/11.  There came a point, about 5 years ago, where the constant refrain of “if you….you’ve forgotten 9/11″became sickening. My husband was a Federal employee. I would rather hear people say, “If you use violent imagery in discussing politics or call Democrats ‘communists’, you’ve forgotten Oklahoma City.”

Coburn is right. The September 11 memorial and museum are for all Americans, but unless they are on Federal land under Federal superivsion, they are not a Federal responsibility. Twenty million doesn’t sound like much, but if you take ten little $20 million projects off the books, you have saved $200 million. Take out 100 of them, and you save $2 billion. To put that in perspective, this week the House has voted to eliminate the $330 million in support for Planned Parenthood. Now, which is more important, the funding for 15 purely regional projects like a museum for Lawrence Welk, or the health of millions of women?

Related articles

• Coburn blocks 9/11 museum funding (politico.com)
• World Trade Center Design Flaw Could Cost Millions (huffingtonpost.com)
• Voices of September 11th Urges Senators to Support Zadroga Bill (prweb.com)

Home ownership and sub-prime origination, 1987 through 2007

Have you ever heard someone say that the stock market is going through “an adjustment”? They are describing a situation in which stock prices have been inflated beyond the real value of companies and stock prices fall to more accurately reflect what a company is worth.

As hard as this is to accept, the housing market collapse may eventually prove to be the same kind of adjustment.

Americans tend to equate new home construction with a good economy to the point where construction is one of the prime indicators of our economic health. But what if new home construction exceeds the need for new homes? What if the new homes being constructed are priced too high for the average family? What if new home construction is adding to our economic problems, not indicating a healthy economy?

Comparisons of incomes and prices across time are normally adjusted into their equivalent in today’s dollars. That’s not monkeying around with the beans. In purely numerical terms, the median income in 1967 was $6,156 per year, but today, the same income would be equal to $40,770 in purchasing ability.

So, back to that 1967 number….the median income is the absolute center of the income spectrum in a population. In 1967, the U. S. median income was $40,770. The median house price was $25,000. In 2007, when the housing bubble was collapsing, the median income was $52,820 but the median house price was $250,000. In forty years, the median house price went from 61% of median income to 473% of median income. Economists have long used a simple measurement to determine if one can afford a house. The price should not exceed 150% to 200% of income. By 2007, using that standard, one would have needed an income of $125,000 to $166,667, 2.4 times to 3 times the median income.

Naturally, house prices vary widely across the country, but so do incomes. One place where this whole thing is very easy to see is Atlanta. Back in 2007, you could drive around the suburbs of Atlanta and see dozens of housing developments and the cheapest house price was $175,000. More normal was $300,000. But drive into the city and you found a huge swath of the city with dilapidated houses, certifiable slums, too many owned by absentee landlords. The amount of housing between those two points was not equal to the number of people who were at the median income level. Older neighborhoods with relatively affordable houses were occupied by older people who had bought those houses twenty, thirty years previously or by tenants. Some older neighborhoods were being “gentrified” by young professionals. The affordable housing market for the family with a median income was practically non-existent, and for a family with one median income, absolutely non-existent. There was a horrific case about a decade ago involving a young family who had downgraded their housing so the wife could go to school. The husband became the victim of a random shooting in a convenience store parking lot in front of his two young children. They could not afford for the wife to go to school and stay in the more safe neighborhood they had lived in. The shooter was a ten-year-old gangsta-wannabe.

Since the housing bubble burst in 2007, house prices have fallen. It’s a particularly bad situation for those who bought those inflated homes during the 2000s. Too many now have mortgages higher than their houses are worth. It is conventional wisdom to blame the bursting housing bubble on everything starting with a law passed during the Clinton administration that forbid banks making mortgage decisions based on the zip code of the house instead of the financial stability of the purchaser. The practice was called “red lining.” Red lining contributed to deteriorating neighborhoods as those people who might have held off urban blight were kept from buying in neighborhoods on the brink. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are blamed. But the worst abuse is blaming people who “bought houses they couldn’t afford.” No one ever thinks to blame the housing bubble on people who thought they were entitled to have their houses double in value in five years, or the never-ending construction of grossly over-priced houses. No one wants to see that when people cannot find houses they can afford, they are forced to buy houses they cannot afford or live the rest of their lives in rentals that are inadequately maintained and allowed to crumble. And they also don’t want to see the impact of a President who pushed for an “ownership” culture, as George W. Bush did.

We can talk openly about the stock market “adjusting” and how the “tech bubble” bursting weeded out the dead weight in the industry, but we are reluctant to discuss the housing market “adjusting” or the “housing bubble” bursting as a means of correcting something that went very wrong. We lost sight of the fact that people need decent, affordable housing.

Mitt Romney has suggested that we should deal with the foreclosure crisis by allowing developers to buy up those houses, renovate them and rent them out. No. We do not need more absentee landlords. We need a way to stabilize the housing market so that people can afford homes again they way they did in the 1950s and 1960s. We have to decide if we are going to lower the river or raise the bridge. We can lower home prices until they are in line with incomes or we can raise incomes so that people can afford them. There are no easy solutions to this, but we cannot determine solutions if we refuse to acknowledge the totality of the causes.

Related articles

• Where home prices are headed in 2012 (freedommortgage.com)
• David Coates: Republican Truth and Real Truth: GSEs and the Housing Bubble (huffingtonpost.com)
• Positive market conditions fail to spur rapid home buying demand (freedommortgage.com)

That is simple. It has to do with why the South has so many people searching for pornography. They are a bunch of repressed individuals who need to have sex- even gay sex- but feel so guilty about it because of their religion and culture that they have to do it in the dark.

As one Celtic Queen told Empress Julia of Rome “We make love to our best in the light while you are debauched by your worst in the dark.”

As the Edge notes:

In fact, when you look closer at the cities where the term “gay sex” is searched for the most on Google they are in areas that are known to be more gay-friendly, like Miami. So it would seem like that term isn’t central to a concentrated town or city of these Bible belt states, but spread out over the entire region.

Although the locations of internet traffic for that term are thought provoking, the real surprise comes when you look at not where these searches are taking place, but in what language the searchers speak, themselves. The number one language for this search is, believe it or not, Arabic, followed by English and then Spanish.

By and large, people like the Baptists want to hide things like gay sex away from the world out of shame. They are ashamed to be human, really. They hate being born with human failings like the need to go ‘pearl diving’. Unfortunately, this is common with Christianity.

They note that this number is based on 33% of workers nationwide saying that their employers are hiring workers as well as expanding the size of their workforce. They note that the job market is still best in the Midwest with the South coming in second, the West third and the East fourth. That can be deceptive since some states are growing faster than others.

Gallup notes that:

January’s increase in Gallup’s Job Creation Index is good news about job market conditions. The index is not seasonally adjusted and the job situation usually deteriorates at this time of year, making the improvement last month even more impressive.

The index also seems consistent with the government’s weekly report on jobless claims, which are running under 400,000. Over time, the Job Creation Index has tended to correlate with this government report.

Politically, this could be bad news for the Republicans who have been doing what they can to stall the recovery and hurt the chances of President Barack Obama’s reelection.

As GLAAD notes in their press release

The call for support comes after a group known as “OneMillionMoms.com, a Project of the American Family Association” — an organization designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) — told its supporters to call J.C. Penney and demand that the company replace Ellen as its new spokesperson because she is openly gay. According to SPLC, hate groups have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.

GLAAD launched an online action for fans and community members to stand up for Ellen and thank J.C. Penney: www.glaad.org/standupforellen

Sites including Joe My God, Think Progress, Lez Get Real and Towleroad broke the news and are also calling on readers to voice support for J.C. Penney.

Indeed, we got the story up soon after getting the word from OMM that they were doing this.

Herndon Graddick, Senior Director of Programs and Communications at GLAAD stated “While designated hate groups try to start ‘culture wars,’ it’s clear that a vast majority of Americans today support Ellen as well as their LGBT friends and family members. Selecting an out performer who has inspired and entertained millions, is not only a smart business practice, but a reflection of how LGBT Americans today are an integral and valued part of the fabric of our culture.”

GLAAD notes that, as of 2011, 53% of Americans support marriage equality. As LGR noted earlier today, the younger nation that JC Penney is banking on to revive its fortunes is far more tolerant than those represented by OMM.

Degeneres made history when she came out of the closet both in real life, and on her television show at the time. She became one of the first lesbian characters to appear on a Prime Time network television show. Nigh on two decades later, many lesbian and gay characters have followed.

For those who want to see JC Penney’s keep Degeneres as their spokeswoman, the numbers are “972-431-8200 (customer service) and 972-431-1000 (corporate headquarters).”

Related articles

• Ellen Degeneres As JC Penney’s Spokeswoman Has Hate Group Furious (lezgetreal.com)

The suit challenges the constitutionality of DOMA as well as the law that governs the Department of Veterans Affairs policy on these matters.

Severicemembers Legal Defense Network Executive Director Aubrey Sarvis welcomed the lawsuit. The Army veteran stated “SLDN welcomes today’s filing by the Southern Poverty Law Center and looks forward to coordinating in any way they deem appropriate. We have worked with the plaintiff, Tracey Cooper-Harris, in the past, and we believe that her case is compelling. This filing today advances the cause of equality for gay and lesbian service members and veterans.”

Christine P. Sun, the deputy legal director for the SPLC, stated “The government’s refusal to grant these benefits is a slap in the face to the gay and lesbian service members who put their lives on the line to protect our nation and our freedoms. Especially given the recent repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, it’s shocking that the federal government continues to demean Tracey’s years of service and the service of many others in this way.”

The SPLC Notes that:

While in the Army, Tracey reached the rank of sergeant and served in Kyrgyzstan and Kuwait in support of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. She received more than two dozen medals and commendations and was honorably discharged in 2003.

Five years later, she married her partner, Maggie, in Van Nuys, Calif. In 2010, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS), which the VA has determined is connected to her military service. There is no known cure for MS, a disabling disease that attacks the brain and central nervous system.

Tracey received disability benefits, but the VA denied her application for additional compensation to which married veterans are entitled – benefits meant to help ensure financial stability for spouses – even though her marriage is legally recognized in California. The denial also means the couple will not be permitted to be buried together in a national veteran’s cemetery.

This all began because JC Penney announced that Ellen Degeneres will be the company’s new spokesperson. She has had some pretty successful commercial runs in the past, so this makes some sense. Where this hate group affiliate fails is when they stated “Funny that JC Penney thinks hiring an open homosexual spokesperson will help their business when most of their customers are traditional families. More sales will be lost than gained unless they replace their spokesperson quickly. Unless JC Penney decides to be neutral in the culture war then their brand transformation will be unsuccessful.”

JC Penney has been focusing on the younger family these days, which are far from the traditional family that OMM claims to be their big demographic. There are families that tend to be far more socially liberal, and less likely to be older in age. While the choice of Degeneres may not be perfect given her lack of children, her being lesbian is likely to not have any actual affect on their brand except to drive away a few people who hate lesbians and gays. What is more, given the perception of the number of childless lesbian and gay couples out there, and that they have more money to spend, it is unlikely that OMM is going to be as successful in getting much in the way of change to occur here, especially if the LGBT Community speaks out in favor of Degeneres as a spokesperson.

Michael Francis, the President of JC Penney, said in a press release “Importantly, we share the same fundamental values as Ellen. At JC Penney, we couldn’t think of a better partner to help us put the fun back into the retail experience. Moving forward, we’ll be focused on being in sync with the rhythm of our customers’ lives and operating in a ‘Fair and Square’ manner that is rooted in integrity, simplicity and respect. We’re thrilled that she’s joining our team to help convey the exciting transformation under way.”

DeGeneres said in an accompanying statement “They have an incredible vision for the future and are completely re-inventing themselves to become America’s favorite store.”

Of course OMM states “By jumping on the pro-gay bandwagon, JC Penney is attempting to gain a new target market and in the process will lose customers with traditional values that have been faithful to them over all these years.”

Of course, if those customers with traditional values had been faithful to JC Penney’s over the last decade, the company would not have nearly collapsed in recent years and been forced to undergo a massive transformation.

One Million Moms is an affiliate of the American Family Association. The AFA has been designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center due to its constant and consistent use of misinformation and lies to support homophobic, transphobic and racist ideals.

For those who want to see JC Penney’s keep Degeneres as their spokeswoman, the numbers are “972-431-8200 (customer service) and 972-431-1000 (corporate headquarters).”

Mitt Romney

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney may want to really consider just which party he is in. In a CNN interview Wednesday morning, Romney was asked about his economic plan, and he said repeatedly that he is not concerned about the very poor in America because there is a social safety net there to catch them. Instead, he wants to help the middle class.

The Washington Post pointed out that:

Romney explained that he was confident that food stamps, housing vouchers, Medicaid and other assistance would keep the poor afloat — he pledged to fix holes in that safety net “if it needs repair.” He repeated past statements that his main focus is the middle class because those people, in his opinion, have been hardest hit by the recession (President Obama also has focused many of his efforts on the middle class).

Romney stated specifically that “I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich, they’re doing just fine. I’m concerned about the very heart of the America, the 90 percent, 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling.”

Soledad O’Brien then pointed out that the very poor are struggling too, to which Romney replied “The challenge right now — we will hear from the Democrat party the plight of the poor. And there’s no question it’s not good being poor and we have a safety net to help those that are very poor . . . My focus is on middle income Americans … we have a very ample safety net and we can talk about whether it needs to be strengthened or whether there are holes in it. but we have food stamps, we have Medicaid, we have housing vouchers, we have programs to help the poor.”

Two weeks ago, Romney, though, said “I’m concerned about the poor in this country.”

This is Romney in a nutshell. He is not necessarily saying something that, is at its core, different from one spot to the next, but his inconsistency in phraseology is such that it makes him look like he is. It also makes Romney look out of touch since this shows he lacks both a sense of nobless oblige and any sense of what it is like to be poor living on that safety net. This is one of the things that is turning many voters off towards him.

Making matters worse for Romney is the fact that the social safety net is one of the big targets of the Republican Party. They have a desire to take down and dismantle the social safety net as quickly as possible or turn it over to the private sector to plunder. Fixing it is not something that Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum are interested in, and as far as Ron Paul is concerned, getting rid of the whole system is primary to his belief system.

It is understandable to see why the Republican Party is growing fearful of not only losing the White House, but Congress as well.

Via Washington Post

Related articles

• Book Goes Into The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Exploits of 1940′s Stars (lezgetreal.com)

Republicans hold veto-proof majorities, with votes to spare, in the House and Senate. The state Republican Party platform defines marriage as “the legal union between one man and one woman” and opposes “all other forms of civil unions, regardless of where such unions were formed.”

The problem, of course, is the fact that, in 2010, the Republican Party’s divisions became greater than they had ever been, and that is what is undermining their efforts. The Republican Party has, since Ronald Reagan, melded the Christian Conservatives, the Libertarians and the Fiscal Conservatives. In 2010, the Christian Conservatives waned while the Libertarians gained a larger amount of power in the Republican Party.

State Senator Fenton Groen, a Republican from Rochester, said last week that “It is certainly disappointing to me. I think that, in the House particularly, we have a significant libertarian caucus within the Republican Party. . . . And there are some Republicans who differ on that within that caucus.”

While it is likely that the Assembly Republicans are going to pass the measure, Governor John Lynch has vowed to veto the bill, and it is unlikely that the Republicans will have enough to overturn the veto. Representative Steve Winter, a Republican from Newbury, opposes repeal and stated “I’m for liberty and freedom, leaving people alone so long as they don’t harm or defraud other people.” The 73-year-old retired airline captain considers himself to be a “fiscal conservative and a social libertarian. He also said “I believe what people do with their lives, how they select their mates, is none of my business and none of the state’s business.”

Representative Seth Cohn, a Republican from Canterbury, also opposes repeal saying that “I know for a fact, based on people I’ve talked to, that if Gov. Lynch vetoes it, that veto is not override-able.” Cohn plans on introducing an amendment to the repeal legislation which would take government out of marriage entirely and give all couples a civil union.

All together, as the Concord Monitor notes, this is one of those battles that could really hurt the Republicans given the fact that close to two-thirds of New Hampshirites oppose repeal of same-sex marriage, and it could trigger an expensive court battle.

Kate Middleton and Prince William by John Stillwell Getty Images

The tongues of royal watchers have been all awag for the last several months since Prince William, Duke of Cambridge married Katherine, the Duchess of Cambridge. They have all been agog over the idea of the pitter patter of little feet, and now they have been proven right! Indeed, the Duke and Duchess (such a full sounding word…Duchess) of Cambridge are hearing the pitter patter of little feet.

They have a puppy.

The royal couple have added a new puppy- a boy- who is a few months old, and is a black cocker spaniel. The puppy comes from a litter “with a close family connection.” The puppy’s name has not yet been announced.

Prince William is set to be deployed to the Falkland Islands for a six week tour shortly.

As People reports, the puppy “may be good successor to William’s dog Widgeon, a black Labrador who passed away about two years ago.”

Could we suggest Rufus for a good name?

The split between the two charities is hard on a lot of people who have worked hard for both groups. Patrick Hurd, the CEO of Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Virginia, stated “We’re kind of reeling. It sounds almost trite, going through this with Betsi, but cancer doesn’t care if you’re pro-choice, anti-choice, progressive, conservative. Victims of cancer could care less about people’s politics.”

Hurd’s wife Betsi is a veteran of several Komen fundraisers and is currently battling breast cancer. His branch of Planned Parenthood received a grant from Komen back in 2010.

Last year, Komen grants totaled some $680,000 and went to at least 19 affiliates in order to provide breast-cancer screening and other breast health services.

The Huffington Post reports that:

Komen spokeswoman Leslie Aun said the cutoff results from the charity’s newly adopted criteria barring grants to organizations that are under investigation by local, state or federal authorities. According to Komen, this applies to Planned Parenthood because it’s the focus of an inquiry launched by Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., seeking to determine whether public money was improperly spent on abortions.

Cecile Richards, the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America notes that Stearns’ probe is politically motivated, and said about the split with Komen that “It’s hard to understand how an organization with whom we share a mission of saving women’s lives could have bowed to this kind of bullying. It’s really hurtful.”

Democratic Senator Patty Murray and Representative Michael Honda issued statements denouncing Komen’s actions. Honda stated “I am stunned and saddened. I call on Komen to reconsider this decision, stand strong in the face of political pressure and do the right thing for the health of millions of women everywhere.”

For its part, Komen has made no reference to the reaction and cited its new grant-making riteria saying “While it is regrettable when changes in priorities and policies affect any of our grantees, such as a long-standing partner like Planned Parenthood, we must continue to evolve to best meet the needs of the women we serve and most fully advance our mission.”

Yahoo News reports that:

“Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars” is to be published on February 14 by Grove Press. Bowers, who lives in the Hollywood Hills, was interviewed by the New York Times ahead of the release of the book, which was written by Lionel Friedberg.

Bowers claims to have been plying his trade for nearly three decades, and has, in the past, turned down offers to tell his story. He now says that “I finally said yes because I’m not getting any younger and all of my famous tricks are dead by now. The truth can’t hurt them anymore.”

Bowers states that, for instance, he set up Hepburn with “over 150 different women”, and in the books he also recounts the sexual exploits of Spencer Tracy, Cole Porter, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (that would be Edward VIII and Wallis Spencer), and publisher Alfred A. Knopf.

Bowers began his career while working at a gas station near Paramount Pictures when he was propositioned by Walter Pidgeon. He accepted and word spread from there. The business went on for decades until the AIDS epidemic began to curtail much of the sexual exploits.

Many of the names that are named are not exactly surprising at this point since many of them have been rumored to have been gay, lesbian or bisexual. At the time, much of this information was kept under wraps, which may be difficult for many younger readers to believe in the tabloid soaked world of today.

The Roman Catholic Church has been the big pusher for this bill given that they lost a lot of money when they were forced to shut down their adoption and foster services because of the civil union bill.

Anthony Martinez, executive director of The Civil Rights Agenda, stated “This is the same bill that we have been fighting for a year now. It is just another attempt to codify into law the ability to discriminate against Gay people. The separation of Church and State is absolutely imperative to this argument, because these agencies are State funded. They are funded with tax payer’s money, so they should have to follow the laws like every other State funded agency. The fair-minded voters and elected officials of Illinois do not allow discrimination, and this should not be the exception.”

Many people are starting to feel that it is important for religious groups to follow the law if they take taxpayer dollars.

Mitt Romney

With 56% of the votes counted, Mitt Romney has been declared the winner in Florida at 48% of votes. Newt Gingrich came in second with 31% and Rick Santorum has 13%, Ron Paul 7%. The percentages are not expected to shift by much. Florida is a winner-take-all primary, so the numbers for the other candidates don’t really matter. Romney has taken all 50 Florida delegates.

At the moment, Romney has 70 delegates for the nomination and Gingrich has 23. Santorum has 11 and Paul 6. The magic number is 1,144 delegates of the 2,286 who will be at the convention in August. Saying that anyone has wrapped up the nomination with only 70 delegates is really stretching it. He has 1,074 to go. Gingrich has vowed to continue the fight all the way to the convention.

Next up are the Nevada and Maine caucuses which begin Saturday, February 4. Nevada’s is a single day and Maine’s runs until the 11^th. In the middle of that are the Colorado and Minnesota caucuses on February 7, next Tuesday, and the completely irrelevant Missouri primary which awards no delegates and just sets the stage for the caucuses there in March. It is in the caucuses that Ron Paul is a real threat to the balance, which is why he has concentrated on campaigning in Maine instead of Florida.

Let’s start with the most un-secret Super PAC in this election cycle – Steven Colbert’s “Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow.” The FEC disclosure is anti-climatic for Colbert’s donors. He has run the names of his donors on a ticker during his show. Most were under the disclosure requirement of $200. Among those who topped that number were California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsome, and actors Bradley Whitford of The West Wing and Laura Sangiacomo of Hot In Cleveland. Colbert has raised a total of $1.2 million in small donations, all for the purpose of teaching Americans what Super PACs are and how they function. He has spent a small portion of the money on a few select ads and his “Colbert for President of South Carolina” campaign that suggested people who supported him should vote for Herman Cain in the primary there last week. Colbert has not announced any plans for the rest of the money.

Colbert’s Super PAC is an educational tool, the others are tools of manipulation and power.

As Colbert has shown us, Super PACs are not supposed to “co-ordinate” their activities with candidates. At least not directly. What Super PACs do, and do well, is buy advertising time for attack ads. Over 90% of the ads in Florida were Super PAC attack ads. The “don’t co-ordinate” rule allows the candidates to disavow the most heinous of these ads, while benefitting from them.

The Plain bus

A few of the Super PACs filed early, so we already know that the Jon Hunstman-”leaning” Our Destiny group raised $2.7 million in the last quarter of 2011, $1.9 million from Huntsman’s father. Sarah Palin’s isn’t doing too well. SarahPAC only raised $752,000 in the second half of 2011, almost a million short of the $1.7 million it raised in the first half. Guess her donors finally figured out she isn’t running. Or maybe the magical mystery history bus tour finally showed people what an idiot she is. And Gingrich’s Winning Our Future group got $5 million each from Las Vegas billionaire Sheldon Adelson and his wife. Adelson is #13 on the Forbes 400 top billionaires.

Among Romney Restore Our Future Super PAC donors are former Bain executive Edward Conrad ($1 million) and Marriot CEO J. W. Marriot, Jr. (half a million). Restore Our Future spend $14 million on attack ads in the first four primary/caucus states while Romney’s campaign has only spent $12 million.

In addition to advertising, the Super PACs have also paid for direct mailings, phone calls and get-out-the-vote efforts.

Not all donors will be disclosed. Super PACs can establish no-profit arms that shield donors and concentrate on issues ads…you know, the kind of scare-the-hell-out-of-voter ads that allege President Obama is coming for our guns ads. Karl Rove’s American Crossroads has a very strong non-profit side.

The FEC filings will also show how much money is being spent on the support structure of the Super PACs and campaigns, on payroll and travel and even wardrobe if they have a candidate or candidate family member with as little personal taste as the Palin family.

The Republicans and their Super PACs claim that the groups are necessary to open the campaigns to a free discussion of ideas and to counteract the money that is being made available to the President and the Democratic Party. All by itself, that says the most about the situation. The Republicans have to rely on millions of dollars donated by a few people while the Democrats are relying on a few dollars donated by millions of people (okay, there are also some big donors and the union PACs in there). The disclosures may give us a solid comparison of the 99% versus the 1%.

There will be some immediate release of names by the press, but it should be a couple of days before the full extent of the disclosure is made public and analyzed.

Rep. Dan Burton, Indiana

It is really discouraging to see how much press is being given to the “retirement” plans of Senators and Congressmen this year. Granted, this is a very important election and it is less about the presidency than about retaking the House and Senate. But, seriously, gushing in any direction about retirements in a census-dictated redistricting year is ludicrous.

Senators, obviously run statewide and are not impacted by redistricting. They are, however, impacted by shifts in demographics and the realities of their own lives. After they pass seventy, retirement is a constant possibility. It all depends on how much of a workaholic the Senator is and how their previous elections have gone. Bernie Sanders is 70, but most Vermonters suspect that he would die if he retired. Besides, he won his Senate seat by a 2 to 1 margin. Pat Leahy is 71 and we thought he might retire two years ago, but with the deaths of Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd, Pat is in that rarified air of senior statesman.

It is Congressmen who are most hurt by redistricting. Even states that don’t lose or gain Congressional seats are redistricting to reflect population movement and a change in control of the states’ legislatures. Dan Burton of Indiana is the latest Congressman to say he is retiring, and his campaign two years ago was a vicious one. He has also been redistricted. This would have been his 16^th term of office. At 73 and after 30 years in the House, with an undisclosed health problem in his family, Burton has decided to pack it in.

On the Republican side, seven Congressmen are retiring and seven others are running for higher office. That removes 14 Republican incumbents so far. On the Democratic side, eleven are retiring and eight are running for higher office. The Dems are down 19 incumbents so far.

Related articles

• IN-05: Veteran Republican Dan Burton to retire (dailykos.com)
• Burton Will Retire In Face of Tough Primary (politicalwire.com)
• GOP Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana to Retire (newser.com)

The Asexual Visibility and Education Network issued the following statement with regards to that particular episode’s portrayal of two asexual individuals.

On January 23, 2012, “House:MD” became the first major network television show in history to feature characters who openly identify as asexual. Scientific studies show that 1% of the human population is asexual. The episode presented damaging misinformation about the asexual community by presenting asexuality as a condition to be cured rather than as a healthy part of human sexual diversity. The episode portrayed two characters whose asexuality was dismissed as being caused by either medical pathology or deception.

“This misinformation could have severe negative consequences on asexual people around the world, especially youth, who are struggling to come to terms with themselves and find acceptance,” said David Jay, founder of the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN). “This episode encourages viewers to meet asexuality with skepticism rather than acceptance, to probe asexual people for causes of our ‘condition’ rather than to accept us as a part of the natural spectrum of human sexual diversity.”

Sara Beth Brooks, an organizer with Asexual Awareness Week, added, “The writer of the episode opened a dialogue with the community immediately after the episode aired and we appreciate the research and effort that she put into portraying asexuality positively.” Asexual Awareness Week has launched a Change.org petition that has gathered nearly 1,000 signatures in only five days. The petition asks the Executive Producers of House to reconsider their portrayal of asexual characters in the future. The petition can be accessed here: http://www.change.org/petitions/executive-producers-of-house-reconsider-your-portrayals-of-asexual-characters

Members of the community expressed disappointment, but little surprise at the misrepresentation by Fox. According to Jay, “There’s a strong message out there that something is broken if you experience sexuality differently, a message that Fox is helping to promote. The asexual community is working for the day when we can talk openly about how asexual people live happy, healthy lives.”

Scientific studies estimate that more than 1% of the population is asexual. Since 2002, the asexual community has been organizing on- and offline in more than 150 countries. 80% of the community identifies as LGBT or an ally to the LGBT community, and 20% identify as transgender or questioning their gender identity. The Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN) and Asexual Awareness Week are two of the largest asexual organizations in the United States.

“My recent comments in The New York Times were about me and my personal story of being gay. I believe we all have different ways we came to the gay community and we can’t and shouldn’t be pigeon-holed into one cultural narrative which can be uninclusive and disempowering. However, to the extent that anyone wishes to interpret my words in a strictly legal context I would like to clarify:

“While I don’t often use the word, the technically precise term for my orientation is bisexual. I believe bisexuality is not a choice, it is a fact. What I have ‘chosen’ is to be in a gay relationship.

“As I said in the Times and will say again here, I do, however, believe that most members of our community — as well as the majority of heterosexuals — cannot and do not choose the gender of the persons with whom they seek to have intimate relationships because, unlike me, they are only attracted to one sex.

“Our community is not a monolith, thank goodness, any more than America itself is. I look forward to and will continue to work toward the day when America recognizes all of us as full and equal citizens.”

Ms Nixon also recently said “Everybody likes to dump on the bisexuals,” and this is true. Our Community has a horrible track record of either ignoring bisexuals or treating them with disdain as if they are either someone who is dallying in order to be ‘cool’ or someone who cannot make up their mind. It is not uncommon a situation to be in. The Community has tended to elevate transgendereds above transsexuals creating problems for those of us- like myself- who have no identity rooted in transgenderism, but who are transsexual.

Perhaps it is time that our Community start having a greater dialogue rather than getting up in arms any time someone missteps or challenges the conventional wisdom.

So, tonight, I bring you something from Inkubus Sukkubus, which is one of my favorite bands. Of course, they are very pagan. This is a live rendition of the title song from their latest album. Enjoy.

She later clarified saying “I didn’t want his hate in my restaurant. I told him he wasn’t welcome here. … I feel like he’s gone from being stupid to being dangerous, and I wanted to stand up to him.”

There were some who praised Boggs’ actions saying “You didn’t unfairly discriminate against Stacey Campfield. You have the right to refuse service to anyone, especially a poorly educated bigot.” And those who did not with one person saying “Denying service to a man because you don’t agree with his opinions is no different than denying service to a man because you don’t like his skin color.” Actually, no. One cannot choose what color one’s skin is, but one can choose to be an uneducated bigot.

Last week, Campfield showed his ignorance when he told Michelangelo Signorile:

“Most people realize that AIDS came from the homosexual community — it was one guy screwing a monkey, if I recall correctly, and then having sex with men. It was an airline pilot, if I recall. My understanding is that it is virtually — not completely, but virtually — impossible to contract AIDS through heterosexual sex…very rarely [transmitted].”

Of course what Campfield seems to ignore is that, while the percentage of gays with HIV/AIDS is higher than straights, straights have far higher numbers of people with HIV/AIDS, at least in the United States. HIV/AIDS is most commonly transmitted among straights in many places including Africa.

Via Huffington Post