President Thomas Jefferson by Rembrandt Peale, 1800

The letter is dated January 1, 1802, addressed to Messrs. Nehemiah Dodge, Ephraim Robbins and Stephen S. Nelson, a committee of the Danbury Baptist association in the state of Connecticut. In it, Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States of America, explained the full implications of the First Amendement:

“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church and State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.”

It is from this letter that we have the phrase “separation of church and state.” President Jefferson described it as a “wall.” Well, walls have two sides. Not only should the government not interfere with religion, but religions should not interfere with the government.

Archbishop Dolan met with President Obama before the ruling concerning contraception coverage was announced. He knew that the Church had a full year to negotiate an acceptable compromise on the requirement included in the Affordable Care Act. He knew the government was willing to compromise, that all they needed was a way to meet the requirements of the law and the conscience of the Church. So, with that information, why did Dolan turn this into a political hot button issue? Why did he go public with a hysterical accusation that the government was violating the church’s religious freedom?

Simple. Dolan wanted to give the Republican Party a wedge issue in an election year. He wanted to bolster the Republican Party’s determination to repeal the Affordable Care Act. He was playing party politics, inserting his church into our election in the name of his Pope, not even in the name of God since the same God does not have these requirements in his other churches.

Churches in the United States enjoy a tax-exempt status. That in and of itself is a violation of the First Amendment. Churches should not have special status in this country. That is an infringement of religion on government. Churches and clergy should not have the power to certify the purely secular legal document known as a marriage license, which carries with it a high degree of secular legal rights and responsibilities that have nothing to do with a religion. That is granting governmental power to clergy. And no church should be used as a place for a political gathering as Rick Santorum did this past week, giving his stump speech in front of an altar of God.

Dolan’s actions were political, inserting himself into our election. The Church that let Santorum speak was inserting itself into our election. It is past time to stop allowing churches to treat the “wall of separation between Church and State” as permeable on one side.

George Washington and John Adams both agreed that “…the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion…” The entire United States Senate agreed with that statement. When the Treaty of Tripoli was published in every newspaper in the fifteen states, no person objected. It is hypocritical for the very people who are “warning” of the threat of “creeping Sharia” and objecting to actions by fundamentalist Orthodox Jews to be pushing their religions into our secular government and civil laws. All of those who do not believe in a particular brand of Christianity or any other religion should not have their civil liberties, from the freedom to marry as they choose to the freedom to determine the medical treatments for their own bodies to the freedom to dress as they choose or ride in the front of the bus, abridged by someone else’s faith.

The First Amendment flows in two directions. It protects churches from government interference, but it also protects our government from church interference. The tempest over contraception proves that the faithful in America haven’t figured that out yet.

Related articles

• MN AU for Separation of Church and State (blaspheromones.com)
• Gingrich Vows to End Separation of Church and State (advocate.com)
• Racism, Homophobia And Religious Fervor, Oh My! (lezgetreal.com)
• Roman Catholic Church in the United States of America at war (marcusampe.wordpress.com)
• Santorum and JFK on Church and State (themoderatevoice.com)

2009 installation of Archbishop Timothy Dolan

The hysteria from both the Catholic Church and the Republican Party over a provision in the Affordable Care Act is the most callous abuse of religion since a bunch of Church leaders and nobles in Europe decided that they couldn’t possibly convince anyone to invade the Holy Land if the recruits were told they were fighting to secure a trade route to China that didn’t involve paying taxes to Arabs. So, they invented the lie that the Holy Land had to be rescued from the infidel Muslims.

Along the way, those Crusaders butchered Jews and Turkish Christians. And the lost the war, several times.

Catholics have more or less traditionally voted for Democratic candidates since John Kennedy. My in-laws were not the only Catholics in America whose walls were adorned with matching, framed portraits of Christ and Kennedy. Hispanics also tend to be Catholics, and to vote Democratic. The Republican Party was not making any headway in getting either group to go over to the Republican camp, partly because the Party has aligned itself for so long with the anti-Catholic Christian evangelicals (Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and Michelle Malkin should sit through a few late night hours of Christian radio) and partly because they are so determinedly anti-immigration. So, along comes the ruling about the birth control provision in the Affordable Care Act and how it would apply to any church-owned business that hired non-Catholics, served non-Catholics, and did not exist to proselytize. In 28 states, Catholic schools, colleges, universities, hospitals and other services already have birth control coverage in their employee health insurance plans. But Archbishop Dolan and a few other bishops, conservatives all, see a chance to convert Catholics to the party of “ban abortion, ban same-sex marriage, ban sex.” Everyone can just ignore the fact that their admission they would accept the provision with a co-pay shows that this whole thing is political, not religious. They can turn a requirement that they already have in more than half the states into a battle cry over religious freedom!

And the Republican Party ate it up. This was perfect. They had something to use to drive Catholics and Hispanics away from the Democratic Party. As a consequence, every Republican who get in front of a microphone has called this “the Obama administration’s war on religion.”

This not about religious freedom. It is not about contraception. It is about a political party that will use anything, any bigotry, any fear, any hyperbole, any hysterical shit to win votes. That is all this is about.

The Republican Party in general and the Tea Party branch in particular have pushed all the appropriate buttons in an economic crisis. They have blamed immigrants for taking our jobs. They have blamed blacks for both having unfair advantages through affirmative action and being lazy welfare-teat sucking lowlifes. They have blamed homosexuals for the disintegration of our allegedly moral society. They have blamed unions for destroying jobs in America. They blame Muslims for everything imaginable, starting with the destruction of our constitution through imposition of Sharia law. They have blamed socialists for the financial problems of our government…anyone and everyone to divert attention from the real causes of our recession and job losses. They have gone so far as to purposefully confuse people about socialism and fascism so no one will see how utterly fascist they are according to the definition of fascism given by the man who invented it. Mussolini himself called it corporatism. They take advantage of the blurred history they have created in the schools they control to convince their followers that the myths are the facts and this nation was some kind of perfect, Christian Happyland before those evil commie hippies appeared in the mid-1960s.

The bad part of this “debate” is that the Democrats are arguing the wrong thing. They are focusing on access to birth control instead of clearly calling out the Republicans and the bishops for their callous use of the Church to get votes. This is just the latest Republican three-card-monty to get votes – voter ID laws that have been proven to be unnecessary, redistricting with creative gerrymanders, union-busting laws to cut off campaign funds, hysterical predictions of the end of civilization if gays can marry and women can have safe abortions. All of these things are desperate measures which only prove what liberals and progressives know – if the American people were not being smoke-and-mirrored by all this crap, they wouldn’t vote for Republicans.

Related articles

• Analyst: Obama could lose Catholic vote over HHS mandate [I say Should, not could] (deaconforlife.blogspot.com)
• President Obama’s decision brings the imposition of Federal Law & religious conscience to the fore. (worldviewtonight.wordpress.com)
• Catholics and Birth Control (spaninquis.wordpress.com)
• Obama birth control policy divides Democrats (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• The Assault on First Amendment Freedom of Speech and Religion (ayearningforpublius.wordpress.com)
• Obama Should Not Yield To Reactionary Bishops (duanegraham.wordpress.com)
• Republican Party sees influx of voters in Oklahoma (newsok.com)

The Gulf of Mexico

Bestofneworleans.com reported that Mississippi state Representative Steve Holland has introduced a bill to rename the Gulf the Mexico the Gulf of America, well, not all of it, just part of it. He has said that the bill was only a joke, and was a commentary on the immigration debate. The bill would “provide that for all official purposes within the state of Mississippi, the body of water located south of Hancock, Harrison and Jackson counties shall be known as the Gulf of America.” This is not the first time this name change has been proposed.

The Mexican coastline is 1,394 miles, while the United States coastline is 1,680 miles, so, by 286 miles, it is more ours than theirs. But Stephen Colbert may have had the best explanation for supporting this idea, the so-called “Pottery Barn” rule: “We broke it, we bought it.”

The Gulf of America Dead Zones

He’s right, and not just because of the BP spill, which occurred in international waters. Between the agricultural run-off of all the bordering states and the entire Mississippi watershed, and the 33,000 oil and gas drilling operations that we have carried out, we are responsible for all the dead zones in the Gulf.

But calling it the Gulf of America wouldn’t be accurate. The entire hemisphere is “The Americas” – North America, South America, Central America, and most of it is called Latin America. There are people among that “most of it” who resent the fact that we call ourselves “Americans” and left them out of the name. But, United Statesians, United Statesites, United Statesiacs, USians, they all sound so unwieldy. How about the Gulf of THE Americas? That would be more diplomatic, wouldn’t it?

Related articles

• Gulf of Mexico? Try ‘Gulf of America’ (firstread.msnbc.msn.com)
• Miss. bill would rename Gulf of Mexico as ‘Gulf of America’ (philly.com)
• Ex-BP Worker Files Whistleblower Suit Over Cleanup (huffingtonpost.com)
• “It’s Safe!” (thewmeacblog.org)

Michele Bachmann (AP, Charlie Riedel)

At the C-PAC revival meeting today, Rep. Michele Bachmann told the audience that “Until Barack Obama, no American President had ever told the world that the United States was not a Judeo-Christian nation.”

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong and dead wrong.

Two of them did, George Washington in approving the draft version and John Adams in signing the treaty. Authored by diplomat Joel Barlow, a protégé of Thomas Jefferson, approved in draft by President George Washington, read to the United States Senate on June 7, 1797, and unanimously approved, signed and proclaimed to the nation by President John Adams, from the Annals of Congress, 5^th Congress:

“Treaty of Peace and Friendship Between the United States

and the Bey and Subject of Tripoli of Barbary.

Article 11: As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion, as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity of Mussulmen [Muslims]; and as the said States have never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan [Islamic] nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinion, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”

And this lady claims that she is a great reader of history? Really? Or is she just another conservative who only reads the historical mythology that suits her version of what America has been and ought to be? After all, this is the woman who ignored the fact that one of the men who raised the flag at Iwo Jima was not allowed to vote in the nation he was defending because he was a Native American, just so she could wrap her little Tea Party laughable rebuttal to the State of the Union address in that Iwo Jima flag.

This is why states like Texas and Arizona don’t want so-called “revisionist history” taught in their schools. It’s also why Bachmann home-taught her own kids.  Historical facts would rob conservatives of the justification for their propaganda.

So, Cal Thomas decided to say “I’m glad that you played the Rachel Maddow clip because I think she is the best argument in favor of her parents using contraception. I would be all for that. And all of the rest of the crowd at MSNBC, too, for that matter.”

Yawn. . .and this is why the Right Wing can never seem to get any decent comedians. That punch line just seemed to really fall flat, and honestly, this is a man who is supposed to be a decent writer. I don’t have the best sense of humor, but let me be blunt, even I could come up with a better joke than that.

It should be noted that Dr. Maddow does not have to use contraception as the likelihood of her getting pregnant or making someone else pregnant is about 0%.

Oh, and thank you for this ThinkProgress.

Wheat - a more precious commodity than oil or gold

The deals Iran is being forced to strike to obtain wheat show just how effectively the sanctions are working. The Iranian currency has been deeply devalued and is no longer being used by their government for international transactions.

In all probability, the private dealers (mostly Australians) who have arranged the sale of 200,000 tons of wheat to Iran are using the current prices of oil and gold to close their deals. Wheat, according to Index Mundi, is selling at $279.25 per ton, which makes the deal worth $55,850,000. Gold today is selling for $1,746.00 per ounce (Monex) and oil is priced at between $99.84 for light crude and $117.62 for heavy, per barrel. That’s 1,999.2 pounds (just under a ton) of gold or 559,395 barrels of light crude or 474,834 barrels of heavy crude.

What does that mean in terms of damage to Iran? The gold would have to come from the national treasury reserve, further deflating their currency because they would have less gold to back it. The oil sale would be deflected from the treasury to the purchase, thereby reducing the nation’s revenue. The only way for Iran to prevent widespread food rioting is to resell the wheat internally far below the cost. The Iranian treasury is going to take a big hit on this deal, further reducing the money they have available for…wait for it….building rockets and nuclear weapons.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has already barely avoided being impeached twice over his wasteful spending. Only the intervention of the Ayatollah saved his job, but he paid a high cost for that protection in the loss of nearly two dozen of his closest advisors to trumped up charges of sorcery. The more damage is done to the Iranian economy, the greater the shortages become of basic food staples, the more fragile both the secular and clerical regimes become. The open warfare between the two has highlighted for the Iranian people that both segments of their government are playing chicken with each other, seeing which side can be the more belligerent, the more anti-West, the more hardline, and in the process spiraling Iran along a path where any slip will send the country plummeting over the edge.

Sanctions are working. They will work. The important thing right now is to convince Israel to shut up and sit down and stop escalating the battle of threats and nuke-rattling.

Related articles

• New Iran Sanctions (lezgetreal.com)
• Iran evades US sanctions by paying with gold – The Christian Science Monitor (csmonitor.com)
• Sanctions already pushing Iran to the point where it is bartering for food (news.nationalpost.com)
• India Proposes Bartering Wheat for Oil From Iran, Times Says – Bloomberg (bloomberg.com)
• India Caught Between Western Sanctions and Iran (ibtimes.com)
• You: Traders shy from Iran as sanctions hurt (nation.com.pk)
• Sanctions take toll on Iran as Asia desists (thehimalayantimes.com)
• Spain pain: ‘Iran oil embargo to backfire on Madrid’ – RT (rt.com)
• Iran Defaults on Rice Payments to India: Traders (ibtimes.com)
• Sanctions on Iran: Iranians face shortages of rice, corn, and cooking oil (csmonitor.com)
• Iran shrugs off latest US sanctions, trade suffers – Reuters (reuters.com)

That, in one paragraph, is what has been wrong with “No Child Left Behind” from the very beginning. Without a national curriculum, without even state-wide curriculums, any standardized test is a trap.

President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have a cure for this stupidity – grant waivers from the “No Child Left Behind” requirements so that states have more flexibility to educate children instead of teaching them how to pass the tests.

Ten states have now been granted the waivers – Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oklahoma and Tennessee. New Mexico had applied, but needs to iron out some small parts of their proposal to get the waiver. Twenty-eight other states are preparing to apply for the waiver.

“No Child Left Behind,” with its standardized tests and punishment of schools and school districts that failed to reach certain benchmarks with those tests was a bad idea. It went at the problems of education in America backwards. Without a national curriculum, without a nationalized standard of course material, national standardized tests were only going to serve to show the differences between state curricula and individual school board interpretations of those curricula.

In 1956, Benjamin Bloom and a group of educational specialists developed the Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. It was a structure system for public schools, grades kindergarten through 12^th. It set out instructional objectives and goals, by saying that at such and such a grade level, children should have learned multiplication or gerunds. It was never adopted nationwide, though you will find copies of it in every college and university library with a education department. The problem became more evident as more families moved from town to town, county to county or state to state. My niece never learned to write a research paper because she moved from Florida to Georgia to Vermont in the wrong sequence, too early in Georgia, too late in Vermont. My daughter moved from Florida to Georgia, was a year behind in math and couldn’t take physics on schedule as a consequence. That happens all the time all across the country.

So, when the United States Department of Education, under the direction of Congress, created these benchmark exams for schools, no one took into consideration the idea that not every eighth grader in America had taken the same classes.

The state waivers will address the individuality of each state, and create their own benchmarks for judging how their schools are preforming. What they won’t get is a unified education system.

When the state of Georgia decided to re-write their entire K-12 curriculum over a decade ago, they published the proposed curriculums for public input. Reading the public objections was a lesson in how diverse our education systems are and how deeply some parts of the nation are entrenched in regionalized individuation of history and science. It is something we see every few years when the Texas School Board nixes scientifically accurate or historically factual textbooks for ones that reinforce Creationism or white superiority.

The inescapable fact is that the United States is not keeping up with the rest of the industrialized world in education. We keep slipping further and further down the list every year. The waivers don’t address that. The can’t. The only thing that would is the one thing we cannot do in this country – establish a national curriculum with national standards and national recognition that we really do a bad job of educating our children. That flies in the face of the conservative determination to retain local control of schools. But the waivers will allow some states to improve their schools without the pressure of improving scores on a standardized test that doesn’t match the state curriculums.

Related articles

• Oklahoma freed from some No Child Left Behind education mandates (newsok.com)
• Georgia to receive waiver from No Child Left Behind (ajc.com)
• You: 10 States Given Waivers From No Child Left Behind Law (nytimes.com)
• Massachusetts among states granted No Child Left Behind waiver (boston.com)
• Colorado Gets No Child Left Behind Waiver (denver.cbslocal.com)

Of course, Viagra usually is covered, and that is far more important to the old, white guys than the whole women’s health issue.

Well, the FRC is having some kind of video conference or such tonight, but in announcing that, they stated:

As part of the Obamacare health care mandate, beginning next year any organization that offers health insurance to employees will be forced to cover contraception, sterilizations, and abortifacients — no matter what their objections. This is not only an attack on the consciences of employers and employees, but a direct attack on religious freedom. This mandate must be stopped.

The outcry is growing even as the Obama administration attempts to stifle dissent. While church leaders around the country voiced their disapproval to the mandate on Sunday, the Army’s pulpits were silent. According to several sources, the Chief of Chaplains issued an Army-wide gag order, warning priests not to read any letter resisting the policy.

No one ever explains how it is an attack on religious freedom, or on the consciences of employees. It is, of course, something of an attack on the conscience of employers, but they should trust their employees enough to give them the option to use contraception.

What this comes down to is controlling others and not really to something like trusting employees or actually trusting that their teachings are being learned.

Well, that just goes to show how screwed up fundamentalist Christianity is, I guess.

Preflight check of an unmanned drone (Creative Commons)

The Federal Aviation Administration is going to issue rules for allowing businesses and law enforcement to use unmanned drones in American air space without special permits. Under the defense bill passed in December, the FAA has until June to choose six test sites for this program.

The irony is the FAA killed a similar program that the Air Force was working on in 1994-5 called Project Black Horse.

Pilot groups are concerned about using unmanned drones in the same space where they are flying manned aircraft.

At first glance it appears that this idea is being pushed by the manufacturers of these drones, particularly since they seem to be the ones how are talking to the press about it, and not the Congresspersons who put this provision into the National Defense Authorization Act. One such person is Steven Gitlin, spokesman for AeroVironment, Inc., of Monrovia, California, who said that “Market adoption will probably start slow and speed up over time as people get more experience with them. His firm has developed a 5.5 pound drone hovercraft for law enforcement called the Qube which retails for $50,000. AVAV sees their Qube benefitting the police, the news media and private detectives. Gitlin does admit that there may be some privacy issues that would have to be addressed, like the first time AVAV sells one of these drones to a freelance photographer, aka, the paparazzi.

For the pilots, it’s an issue of safety, not privacy. The drones take pictures, they do not have the capacity to detect proximity to another aircraft. In August, 2010, the military had to deal with an unmanned helicopter that was out of control and headed for restricted airspace near Washington. The Navy regained control just in time. Last year in Afghanistan, a drone crashed into a C-130 cargo plane in airspace that was considerably less crowded than our cities. The plane was able to land safely. Additionally, there are no training requirements or standards for operators.

Lee Moak, president of the Air Line Pilots Association union, told reporters that drones should not be allowed to share airspace until they can demonstrate that they won’t crash into other planes in the air or on the ground. “We have a long way to go.”

Only 1% of American law enforcement agencies even have aviation permits, so it is unclear how many agencies would be interested in ponying up the fifty grand for a drone, particularly with so many police departments having to cut officers because of budget problems. Initially, their use would be limited to sparsely inhabited areas with little or no air traffic. The one place they would be very useful is along the Mexican border, where some are already being used, and possibly along the less inhabited portions of the Canadian border, just so Mexico doesn’t think we’re picking on them.

Doug Davis, who oversees the testing facility at the New Mexico State University, says that the FAA will not allow their widespread use initially, and limit the devices to those weighing under 55 pounds and probably only allow flights under a few hundred feet and within sight of an operator. It could be quite a while before anyone is flying one of these through the overcrowded skies of Manhattan where pilots who can see what’s around them have been known to crash into each other.

Related articles

• US opens skies for drones (rt.com)
• Pilots worry about safety of drones in US skies (usnews.msnbc.msn.com)
• Unmanned Drones to Invade U.S. Airspace in 2015 (suburbanmen.com)
• Congress approves domestic deployment of surveillance drones- 30,000 could haunt skies by 2020 (billydie.wordpress.com)
• Congress Gives Commercial Drones Takeoff Clearance for 2015 (siliconfilter.com)
• Congress clears bill to let FAA move from radar to GPS (electronista.com)
• Congress green lights domestic deployment of surveillance drones- 30,000 could haunt skies by 2020 (theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com)

Catholic League leader Bill Donohue issued the usual run of statements while Catholic leaders are trying to get the nation’s 70 million Catholic voters behind their outrage. Over 90% of Catholics support the rules that require contraception to be offered at religious based universities, colleges, and hospitals. Currently, those institutions are required to offer contraception in their health plans in twenty-eight states.

Donohue stated “Never before, unprecedented in American history, for the federal government to line up against the Roman Catholic Church.” Which is, of course, rather inaccurate given that it was not until the 20th Century that the Catholic Church gained any real respect in the United States, including in terms of the government.

Donohue also stated that “This is going to be fought out with lawsuits, with court decisions, and, dare I say it, maybe even in the streets.” Given that 90% of the Catholic laity supports the rules, there probably won’t be any runs of people out into the streets.

Donohue, of course, is one of those old, white men that seem to have no real stake in this debate- like the majority of the Catholic hierarchy.

Pro-woman groups have already started saying that they will fight the Church over this. National Abortion Rights Action League President Andrea Miller stated “The Catholic hierarchy seems to be playing a cynical game of chicken and they don’t seem to care that the health and well being of millions of American woman are what’s at stake here.”

New York CBS noted that

Catholic leaders hope they will have more sway with the White House than usual because it is a presidential election year, hoping that if even a small percentage of Catholics back Obama’s opponent it could cost him the election.

When asked if this issue would affect who he would vote for in November, Wilton, Conn., resident Peter Taylor said, “Potentially, yes. I think it is a very serious issue, very meaningful.”

But not everyone views the situation as dire.

“I would certainly vote for Obama anyway. The church has to get up to date,” Manhattan resident Sue Thomas said.

Rick Santorum, by Donkey Hotey, Creative Commons

There are two things I truly do not understand about the primary/caucus process. Why would any state choose to halve their number of convention delegates, thereby sharply reducing their influence on national races? Why does any state have a non-binding primary or caucus?

First of all, none of last night’s results are truly binding. These particular horse races were just straw polls that will hopefully lead to actual delegates when the state parties get around to it. But, tentatively, Mitt Romney has 107 delegates, Rick Santorum 45, Newt Gingrich 32 and Ron Paul 9.

One of them needs 1,144 delegates to win the nomination.

At the rate this is going, the Republicans will be eating each other for a while, which is very good for the Democrats. The more the Republican candidates attack each other, the less the Democrats will have to attack them in the national race.

They really don’t get it. It’s not just Republicans who are seeing these Republican-on-Republican attack ads. And the ads are not really restricted to the states where the primary or caucus is being held. I live in central Vermont. Our cable systems in Vermont, when possible, carry two of each broadcast network. We have only three broadcast stations in our state and one of them is PBS. The other three non-PBS broadcasters are from Albany, New York. We also get New Hampshire’s political ads because our three stations reach into their markets. We just consider ourselves lucky we don’t get Canadian political ads, even though we get their commercial ads. Around 60% of American homes are hooked to cable systems, and 33 million homes have satellite. Television is like water and air – it doesn’t stay in one place.

The other thing the Republicans are not getting is the “wedge issue” nonsense. They are so used to being able to used religious issues like abortion and same sex marriage to turn out the vote that they have spent far too much political capital on those issues in the past year. Like James Carvill famously said in 1992, “It’s the economy, stupid.” They may be able to do anti-abortion laws and anti-same-sex laws in states with Republican majorities in their state legislatures, but on a national level, these issues are unimportant.

Related articles

• Analysis: Santorum gains momentum, if not delegates (boston.com)
• Did Santorum Win Big Or Win Squat? What’s A Nation To Believe? (npr.org)
• Santorum jumps into second place in delegate race (sfgate.com)
• Non-binding primaries and caucuses bring attention to states but cost money (boston.com)

It is difficult to pinpoint any specific recent actions that may have led to the continuing deterioration in Congress’ image, particularly because much of the political attention in January and early February has focused on the Republican presidential race. Congress at this point is again wrangling over the extension of the payroll tax holiday and unemployment benefits — both of which were temporarily extended late last year in a short-term fix that expires at the end of February. It is notable that President Obama has continued to make criticism of Congress a part of his broad presidential re-election strategy.

Democrats gave Congress 11% and Republicans gave it 12%. What brought it down to 10% is that only 8% of independents support the job that Congress is doing.

These are bad numbers going into the election cycle. Currently, Republicans control the House and they hold enough seats in the Senate to filibuster a lot of legislation. The House is up for reelection this cycle, and the Senate has a third of its members of for reelection. With the collapse of the Tea Party, Democrats could find the situation favorable, especially since many of the voter identification initiatives are ending up hurting Republican voters rather than Democratic voters.

(Louisville, KY) In an ongoing effort to better support the underserved aging lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) population, the Fairness Campaign is launching an “Aging Fairly” program series to address Alzheimer’s Disease, legal concerns, and other health and safety issues. Part of the “Aging Fairly” series will be a monthly LGBT-themed Alzheimer’s support group, held in partnership with the Alzheimer’s Association, that begins next Wednesday, February 15, Noon at the Fairness Campaign office (2263 Frankfort Avenue). The first meeting includes a free lunch and features an informative “Alzheimer’s 101″ presentation by Meredith Miller, Family Support Manager with the Greater Kentucky and Southern Indiana Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association.

The “Aging Fairly” Alzheimer’s support group will be held monthly on the third Wednesday in the Fairness Campaign office. It is free, confidential, and open to anyone in the LGBT and allied community that has been affected by Alzheimer’s Disease. Meetings will be co-facilitated by the Alzheimer’s Association’s Meredith Miller and Col. Luke Barlowe of Kentucky Advocate Association. A free lunch is provided at the first meeting and a brown bag lunch is welcome at each meeting thereafter.

Beginning in April, four free “Aging Fairly” legal clinics will be offered the third Sunday of each month, 2:30 p.m. at the Fairness Campaign office. These clinics will assist in legal issues and document preparation relating to relationship and property rights, hospital and end of life care decisions, family and adoptive rights, and more. Fairness Campaign Coordinating Committee member Nicole Kersting, a graduate of the University of Louisville Brandies School of Law, will facilitate the “Aging Fairly” legal clinics.

The Fairness Campaign is working to finalize details with ElderServe, Inc. to become an official partner of their T

WHAT: LGBT-Themed Alzheimer’s Support Group

WHEN: Wednesday, February 15, Noon (3rd Wednesday of each month thereafter)

WHERE: Fairness Campaign office, 2263 Frankfort Avenue

WHO: Anyone affected by Alzheimer’s Disease
Meredith Miller, Alzheimer’s Association, Co-facilitator
Col. Luke Barlowe, Kentucky Advocate Association, Co-facilitator

Here is the Rainbow Sash’s take on this whole issue:

What do Roman Catholic Catholics think about President Obama’s decision that would require Catholic-affiliated institutions to cover contraceptives and sterilization in their employee health care plans? Are Catholics in the pew concerned with this matter? Does the US Council of Catholic Bishops represent their views? Or has the contraception issue already been decided in the Catholic Church by dismissing both the views of the Papacy and the various national councils of Catholic Bishops World Wide?

I think many practicing Catholic are scratching their head in bewilderment over this matter. While the matter has been decided by the vast majority of Catholics both nationally and internationally the secular media wants to promote the idea the Catholic Bishops speak for the vast majority of Catholic Voters.

They bring the crazies out of the closet to promote their agenda. Since when has Bill Donohue of the Catholic League become the mouth piece of most reasonable Catholics? Or for that matter when has Cardinal elect, Archbishop Dolan of New York become the national spokesperson for Catholic Parishes he can’t even control his own Archdiocese around these cultural issues.

The Rainbow Sash Movement believes that the Obama Administration has bent over backwards to listen to all parties concerned on this matter, and has come down on the side of women’s health as had many Catholics.

Clearly the US Council of Catholic Bishops does not represent the Catholic laity on this issue. They have been moved to a dismissive point when it comes to the Bishops position on anything dealing with sexuality. For Catholics across the political spectrum in the Church the Bishops have become just another voice in the many voices that make up the Catholic Church. Only when they hold themselves accountable for the clergy sexual abuse scandal in the Church will they ever be taken seriously on moral issues.

About 100 Catholic Bishops had letters read in their Churches this past week about this matter. Those letters were met with a collective yawn from the pews. This time next month the issue will have passed into clerical oblivion, and most Catholics will be focusing on Lent, Holy Week, and Easter.

Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have both condemned the decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals stating that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional. It is not surprising that they decided to attack the ruling even though it was based on accurate law and precedent. Romney attacked the judges because they are “unelected”, and Gingrich attacked it because of the supposed way it assaults the “Judeo-Christian foundations of the United States.

Romney stated

“Today, unelected judges cast aside the will of the people of California who voted to protect traditional marriage. This decision does not end this fight, and I expect it to go to the Supreme Court. That prospect underscores the vital importance of this election and the movement to preserve our values. I believe marriage is between a man and a woman and, as president, I will protect traditional marriage and appoint judges who interpret the Constitution as it is written and not according to their own politics and prejudices.”

Gingrich stated

With today’s decision on marriage by the Ninth Circuit, and the likely appeal to the Supreme Court, more and more Americans are being exposed to the radical overreach of federal judges and their continued assault on the Judeo-Christian foundations of the United States….

Should the Supreme Court fail to heed the disastrous lessons if its own history and attempt to impose its will on the marriage debate in this country by affirming today’s Ninth Circuit decision, it will bear the burden of igniting a constitutional crisis of the first order.

The Social Conservatives are up in arms over the ruling, and already threatening to appeal the ruling even though the appeal might not be in their best interest. The probability is that the Supreme Court will rule against Prop 8, and that is even if they are willing to take the case.

The Ninth’s ruling is based on established precedent that it is unlikely that the Court will likely want to revisit at this point. Even with the Court moving more towards the Right, there is still a probability that they will be unwilling to take up the case given the way the ruling was worded and structured.

The big problem for the pro-Prop 8 groups is that appealing this ruling is far more risky than it is if they leave it. It will set precedent that will make repealing same-sex marriage laws impossible, but appealing it risks sending this to the Supreme Court where the likelihood is that it will be ruled unconstitutional 5 to 4 due to the way that the current Court is structured, and at that point, they could widen the ruling to make it unconstitutional across the board.

The President's signature on the Affordable Care Act

This is turning into one of those days when I just want to scream at the talkers on television who are so absolutely sure they know what everyone thinks if they belong to the same faith or they know how people will vote or they know anything. The issue is a Health and Human Services requirement as part of the Affordable Care Act that even church owned businesses such as hospitals, schools, or relief agencies must provide insurance coverage for birth control. The Catholic Church says this is a violation of their freedom of religion.

All the people who are engaging in these heated, passionate arguments about this issue are screaming about the apples and ignoring the oranges. This isn’t about religion. It’s about affordable health insurance and affordable health care.

Way back in the dark ages of my childhood, Chinese restaurants had “family meals.” The menu had three columns of choices, appetizers and entrées. A certain number of people got to choose a certain number of items from column A, column B and column C, and paid a single price for the whole family-style meal which was delivered on serving dishes and passed around, just like at home. That’s what health insurance is like in America. A company or person can buy health insurance with options from column A, column B and column C. It is a stupid, cost-increasing way to buy health insurance.

The fewer people are in an insurance pool, the higher the premium cost. The mix-and-match-option method of buying health insurance guarantees smaller pools. They claim that no one should pay for things they wouldn’t use, like someone who doesn’t believe in abortions buying a policy that covers them. But that’s salesmanship, not honesty. The big secret the insurance companies will not tell you is that the more people choose optioned health insurance, the more profit they can make. Insurance premiums are dependent upon the odds of someone using the insurance figured against the number of people who have bought that package.

So, someone want to show me where enrollees in the Federal policies with Blue Cross-Blue Shield have their premiums put into a specific account only for those people who have chosen the same option that they have? Are only the premiums for Self-Low-Option in the account with other Self-Low-Option members? Or are all the premiums paid under all four federal option packages put in a single account which Blue Cross then uses to “invest” in the stock market to create additional income? Please, show me the proof that my Self-and-Family-High-Option premiums are only keeping company with like minded persons’ money.

The fewer the options and the higher the co-pays and deductibles, the lower the premiums. This option is the one most guaranteed to drive people into bankruptcy because of unpredictable occurrences.

The Catholic Church is being complicit with the insurance companies whose only concern is their profit margin and with the right wing which wants complete relief from regulation for those insurance companies so they can go back to denying health insurance for pre-existing conditions or cut off coverage when someone contracts an expensive disease.

One of the reasons every other country in the world gets health care at half or less of what it costs us is the insurance companies’ profit margins. With nationalized health, there are no options for coverage. Everything that the legislature and a nation’s health agencies decide upon is covered. We are stuck with private health insurance and these mix-and-match policies is because the insurance companies put out massive amounts of money to buy Republican votes to preserve their abuse of our health.

The Catholic Church does not want this battle. Seriously, the church’s leaders don’t understand how far out on a limb they have just put themselves. They should have started the debate over the additional cost of health insurance premiums when just one drug or one medical appliance is added to the policy. Instead, they are beating their breasts about religious discrimination and freedom of religion and that is taking the debate away from the ridiculous way health insurance premiums are priced to a face-down with the 98% of American Catholics who practice birth control.

Hispanic Republicans who are insisting that Hispanics will vote with their bishops and this policy is a danger to President Obama’s re-election are totally out-of-touch with young Hispanics. The abuelas may be sitting in church every morning in their black widows’ clothes fingering their rosaries, but their granddaughters are out buying the latest album by JLo or checking the magazines for what Sofia Vergara wore last week. Take a look at the evolution of Italian immigrants in America. It’s just three generations from those little old ladies with their black dresses and sensible shoes and lace doilies on their heads to Snookie. That’s the secret of America – the seductive power of personal freedom.

The White House and the Democrats need to turn the focus of this battle to the right issue – the high cost of health insurance with options. It is way past time they properly explained this to voters.

Related articles

• Love hurts: 5 insurance heartaches when good lovin’s gone bad (insurance.com)
• US Catholic Bishops Don’t Know Their Congregants (lezgetreal.com)
• The Church, The State, and Contraception (makeafriar.com)
• How To Find Affordable Health Insurance (answers.com)
• Consumer Reports: Mini-Meds and Other Junk Insurance Plans Still in Business as Consumers Wait for Health Reform to Kick In (yubanet.com)
• Many Catholic Universities, Hospitals Already Cover Contraception In Their Health Insurance Plans (thinkprogress.org)

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Iran’s currency, the rial, has been deeply devalued. Inflation is over 40% and unemployment is at 50%. There is not enough money in Iran’s treasury to keep subsidizing the poor, especially as their ranks are growing. And the people of Iran are watching huge amounts of money being spent on a nuclear program and military exercises in the Persian Gulf and listening to their leaders belligerently defy the West’s insistence that they cease their nuclear ambitions.

The International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors have been in Iran for three days. For the first two, it appeared that the Iranians were going to engage in serious discussions about their nuclear program. Then, on the morning of the third day, Monday, a letter was handed to the inspectors that made it apparent things were not going to improve.

On Monday in Washington, President Obama signed an executive order that slaps new, tougher sanctions on Iran and its central bank. He said that the new sanctions were necessary because Iranian banks were being used to hide transactions. “I have determined that additional sanctions are warranted, particularly in light of the deceptive practices of the Central Bank of Iran and other Iranian banks to conceal transactions of sanctioned parties, the deficiencies in Iran’s anti-money laundering regime and the weaknesses in its implementation, and the continuing anc unacceptable risk posed to the international financial system by Iran’s activities,” Obama wrote in his letter notifying Congress of this action. Congress has pre-authorized additional sanctions against Iran.

The executive order prevents any Iranian assets under American control, including assets held in foreign branches of American banks, from being transferred, paid, exported or withdrawn.

Related articles

• Obama Follows Through On Promise, Imposes Sanctions On Iran Banking System – The Inquisitr (inquisitr.com)
• Obama orders Iranian Central Bank freeze in new wave of sanctions (guardian.co.uk)
• US levies new sanctions on Iran’s Central Bank (telegraph.co.uk)
• Obama orders sanctions on Iran (thejc.com)
• Obama sanctions Iranian Central Bank – BBC News (bbc.co.uk)

Tahrir Square, Cairo, February 9, 2011

It has become clear in the past few months that the Egyptians who risked their lives in Tahrir Square for freedom were duped by the Egyptian Army which they counted on to help them eject President Hosni Mubarak. The Army promised they would maintain civil order and keep the country going until a new government could be formed. The simplest way to accomplish that would have been to have every town and city district elect a representative, call for representatives from the various religious and ethnic groups and create a Constitutional Convention. Once a new constitution had been fought over, argued, amended and accepted, it could be ratified by a referendum of the people and a new government elected. The whole process would probably take around a year.

Instead, the Army set up a multi-layered election for seats in Parliament, which will then select a committee to create the Constitution. A president would be elected separately. But the longer this process has gone on, the more apparent it has become that the Army has pulled off an old-fashioned coup and every action they take has just served to enhance their power.

The Army has now said it will try 43 members of non-governmental organizations that have been working in the country for years. The NGOs are accused of funding street protests against the Army. The Army has raided their offices and cancelled exit visas for foreign staff.

The Egyptian Army is mimicking the Syrian government in blaming outside forces for protests against itself. They underestimated the depth of commitment the protesters have to creating a new Egypt. Protests have grown in recent weeks and have become violent clashes between the protesters and the army. The latest round of protests began with a soccer game riot that killed 74 people. The protesters blame the Army’s lax enforcement of the civil order they promised last February for the deaths.

The Obama administration has warned the Egyptian Army that unless they respect the intent of last winter’s protesters and treat the NGO personnel in accordance with international accords, the United States will be forced to review aid programs to Egypt. Among those believed to be under arrest in Cairo is Sam LaHood, son of the U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood. Sam is the head of the Egyptian office of the International Republican Institute. The Associated Press has verified that five Serbians, two Germans and three non-Egyptian Arabs are among those who have been arrested and are facing trial. The identities of the other 32 are unknown.

Related articles

• Egyptian army targets women protesters – War in Context (fourbluehills.com)
• Egyptians protest army to mark “Friday of Rage” (cbsnews.com)
• Seven dead as street battle rages on in Egypt – Jerusalem Post (jpost.com)
• Egyptians rally against army (irishtimes.com)
• You: Army blamed for tragedy (sportsviews.com)
• Tension swells as Egyptian police raid NGO offices (independent.co.uk)
• American activists in Cairo seek refuge at U.S. Embassy (vancouversun.com)
• You: Move to shelter 3 Americans points up U.S. rift with Egypt (latimes.com)

Abortion is about patriarchy. It is, to some degree, about who controls a woman’s body, but more, it is about who controls a woman’s mind. It comes down to whether or not women can be trusted to know what is right and what is wrong for their personal Self, and whether or not women can make these complex moral decisions.

For those who oppose abortion, the answer is pretty clear that they do not trust women to control either their own bodies or their own minds. Take, for instance, Michele Bachmann. She made it clear that her husband Marcus was the one who ruled the household. She even needed his permission to attend law school and even to run for office. She opposes abortion.

She is not the only one. It is not surprising that the women who oppose abortion rights are, by and large, Fundamentalist in their world view. In the Fundamentalist world view, women have no capacity for independent thought. They have no capacity for independent reasoning. Women are flawed men who must be controlled or they will bring down civilization.

In truth, those who oppose abortion should be in favor of women having as much independence as they can. There are several different factors that contribute to the decline of abortion rates. Economic conditions are one of those, as are contraception and the ability for a woman to have an abortion if needs be.

These are antithetical to the thinking of a Fundamentalist. Women are to be controlled, after all.

We should start with a cold, hard fact. The more abortion is made illegal or hard to get, and the more contraception is made hard to get, the more abortions will occur. There has been an uptick in the number of illegal abortions occurring in the nation, and some of the stories are horrific.

Over at Slate.com, they make a much better point about the rest of where this is going. There, they discuss how to rid the world of abortion thought a novel method “Give it to Planned Parenthood.”

They go on to explain:

Look at the latest annual report from Planned Parenthood Federation of America, issued two months ago. The table on page 5 shows that over the course of a year, PPFA provided 3,685,437 contraceptive services and 329,445 abortions. That’s a ratio of 11 to 1.

Internationally, the ratio is even higher. Look at the latest annual report from the International Planned Parenthood Federation. The table on page 13 shows that over the course of a year, IPPF provided 33,854,786 contraceptive services and 1,411,494 abortions. That’s a ratio of 24 to 1. Did I mention condoms? IPPF distributed 152,397,194 condoms. That’s 108 condoms per abortion.

What happens when you provide condoms and contraceptive services? Women who don’t want to get pregnant don’t get pregnant. Which means fewer women are in the market for abortions. The abortion business dries up.

They noted that from 1995 to 2003, the global total for abortions fell from 45.6 million to 41.6 million. But why? Well, from 1995 to 2000, contraception use increased worldwide. Now, from 2003 to 2008, the number of abortions world wide increased to 43.8 million. After 2000, the use of contraceptives slowed their rise, and from 2005 onward, that increase died out all together.

The Lancet Report that they use for this data notes:

We found that the proportion of women living under liberal abortion laws is inversely associated with the abortion rate in the subregions of the world. Other studies have found that abortion incidence is inversely associated with the level of contraceptive use, especially where fertility rates are holding steady, and there is a positive correlation between unmet need for contraception and abortion levels. The unmet need for modern contraception is lower in subregions dominated by liberal abortion laws than in those dominated by restrictive laws, and this might help explain the observed inverse association between liberal laws and abortion incidence. Global levels of unmet need and contraceptive use seem to have stalled in the past decade: the percent of married women with unmet need for contraception fell by 0.2 percentage points per year in 1990-2000, but essentially did not change in 2000-2009. Family planning services seem to not to be keeping up with the increasing demand driven by the increasingly prevalent desire for small families and for better control of the timing of births.

Slate.com goes on to note:

In other words, if you outlaw abortion and limit contraception, you get more abortions, because more women who don’t want to have babies get pregnant. And when women who don’t want to have babies get pregnant, they find ways to get abortions, whether you like it or not. The way to get fewer abortions is to provide contraception—and to teach people to use it diligently, which is a moral project, not just a technical one. That way, fewer women who don’t want to have babies get pregnant. And the abortion rate goes down.

It also means that, when women are trusted to make their own decisions, choose their time to get pregnant, and choose when to get pregnant, there are fewer abortions.

Of course, that violates patriarchal thinking, doesn’t it?

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)

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)

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 .

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)

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.

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)

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)

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

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.

“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.

Ethic composition of Muslim Americans

University of Windsor (Canada) law professor Julie MacFarlane has published a survey of 200 North American Muslims on the subject of Sharia Law, the Islamic law system that, in varying degrees of severity, is part of most Islamic countries. Three-quarters of the survey participants live in the United States, with the rest residing in Canada. There was no difference in responses based on nation of residence.

Imposition of Sharia Law in the U.S. and Canada is the anti-Muslim scare tactic being pursued by the right wing. Oklahoma, Tennessee and Louisiana passed laws or referendums banning state judges from considering Sharia or any other foreign law in making rulings, and over 20 other states have debated such laws. New Gingrich wants a Federal law to ban Sharia and Rick Santorum called Sharia an “existential threat” to America.

The right wing plays up the stories from the severest Sharia countries: women being stoned to death for adultery, thieves having hands chopped off, executions by decapitation (shades of the guillotine!), women being attacked for going to school or driving or showing a quarter inch of skin. They ignore the majority of laws covered under Sharia, many of which resemble Jewish laws (no pork) or Mormonism (no alcohol) to make Sharia scarier than it actually is, when applied in more moderate countries or limited to specific areas of life, like inheritance.

MacFarlane has stressed that the study should not be used to generalize about all American Muslims, but offers an insight into Muslim attitudes. The survey, published by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, interviewed 101 Muslim men and women, 41 imams and 70 Muslim community leaders about their use of Islamic law in everyday life.

The study was inspired by a 2003 case in Toronto, where a small group of Muslims petitioned for equal treatment in family court cases. Toronto has separate “family tribunals” for Catholics and Jews to hear family law issues. Islam has a very complex set of inheritance laws, which are very different from the civil laws of both America and Canada and may have prompted the request. The request was denied. It set off protests, not just in Canada but in London, Vienna and Paris, with protesters insisting such a tribunal violated the principle of separation of church and state. The contradiction of that, in a city which has two religion-based family law tribunals, was lost on everyone. In America, the right wing has warned of “creeping Sharia” and claims that Muslims want to infiltrate our court system and replace our constitutional and common law with Sharia. Not a small feat for less than 1% of our population to pull off.

When the survey asked if American courts should apply Islamic law to non-Muslims, everyone said “no.” Three imams thought it would be a good idea to have a parallel family law court to handle Muslim family issues, but the rest of the imams are perfectly

Let’s get our comparisons in a row here. Civil law says that two people, once married legally in any state, can get a divorce. Catholic law says they can only divorce if they get a dispensation for a divorce from the Church. A Catholic can choose to obey church law and not obtain a divorce, or choose to follow civil law and get the divorce. There is a parallel to Sharia law here. Under Sharia, a couple marries within their faith and divorces within their faith. To have a legal marriage and divorce, they must do so with the civil authorities. Separate ceremonies, separate contracts. Gee, great idea. The survey participants believe that the two, religious marriage and civil marriage, should be separate, just the way Catholics do it in Monaco. We should not have blurred the line between them and allowed clergymen to certify civil marriage licenses.

MacFarlane wrote, “For most American Muslims, Sharia represents a private system of morality and identity, primarily focused on marriage and divorce rituals.” There is one aspect of Sharia law that might appeal to some of the retro-Mormons out there. On rare occasion, an imam will permit the use of an Islamic marriage contract, a nikah, to take additional wives. No civil laws are broken by this practice, while the Sharia law which encourages multiple wives is satisfied.

MacFarlane said that her sampling was not representative of the Muslim community as a whole. Over 70% of the participants were immigrants and almost half had college degrees. Half were South Asian, 30% Middle Eastern descent, 10% African descent and 10% Caucasian converts and African Americans (African-Americans make up around 35% of all American Muslims.) A follow-up survey would be welcomed, one more closely paralleling the demographics of Muslims in America. It would also be interesting to see a similar survey of Jews and Catholics, both of whom have legal systems within their faiths that are different from the civil laws of our country.

The publication of MacFarlane’s study comes at a very important time in the debate over Sharia. In the most extreme cases, Islam allows the murder of a female family member who “dishonors” her family in some way. It is a cultural aspect of Islam that has been exploited in warfare between Muslims and non-Muslims as in Bosnia and the Sudan. Rape becomes a weapon that is equal to killing the woman, because she will either take her own life or be killed by her male family members.

Hamed and Mohammad Shafia, Tooba Yahya (photo by Graham Hughes, Canadian Press for AP)

In Kingston, Ontario, three members of an Afghan family were found guilt of murder in the deaths of three teenage sisters and their step-mother. The family considered them honor killings because the girls were living as Canadians and not adhering to their father’s strict rules of Islamic life. All four were drowned and their bodies placed in two separate vehicles which were then placed in canals to fact accidents. Mohammad Shafia, his wife Tooba Yahya and their son Hamed were each found guilty of four counts of first-degree (premeditated) murder with each count carrying a no-parole 25-year sentence. Justice Minister Rob Nicholson denounced honor killings as “barbaric and unacceptable in Canada.” American courts have come to the same conclusion.

We have had Muslims in America from the very beginning. The percentage has grown in recent years because of wars in their homelands, something that is very common with any immigrant group. But in two centuries, only rarely has anyone made an issue of the imposition of anyone’s religious laws on our civil laws. It was never something suggested by the members of a faith, but a scare tactic used by others, as it was with the non-issue of John Kennedy’s Catholicism.

There is another aspect of Sharia Law that MacFarlane didn’t ask about – how many of those immigrants actually came to North America to escape countries with severe Sharia? There is more to the First Amendment than just being able to practice one’s faith. It is also a guarantee that the state will not impose a religion or a form of a religion that is in violation of one’s personal beliefs. My mother’s Bavarian ancestors were Catholics who came here to escape a state-imposed Protestantism. My paternal grandmother came her to escape a country where Catholic canon law dictated civil law and forbid her divorce from the husband who abandoned her. The Irish came here because being Catholic barred them from civil rights including jobs and educational opportunities in a Protestant country. My husband’s French Canadian parents came here for the same reason. Most Americans get that whole First Amendment thing backwards. Freedom FROM state religion comes before freedom OF religion in the First Amendment.

Via Liz Goodwin At Yahoo News

Related articles

• Study: State Legislation Addressing ‘Sharia Threat’ Misrepresents Views Of Muslim Americans (thinkprogress.org)
• Why Americans Are Right To Be Concerned About Muslims (neosecularist.com)
• Growing use of Sharia by UK Muslims (theromangate.wordpress.com)
• AIG/Sharia Bailout Unconstitutional: Appeal Before Federal Court (atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com)
• How Far Advanced is “Creeping Sharia” in USA Classrooms? You Won’t Believe Your Ears. (biblicaltimes.wordpress.com)
• Muslims lobby for sharia in Pennsylvania, claim bill on sharia law unfair to Muslims (creepingsharia.wordpress.com)
• Activist Judges Are Traitors; Allow Sharia Law, Radical Islam, To Override American Law (neosecularist.com)

“I’ve been married to my wife for 14 wonderful years. Like many couples out there, we’ve had our hardships, we’ve had our trials, but nothing like the LGBT has to go through. It pains me to see my family and friends blocked from the same rights, privileges, protections that my wife and I are granted, just because we are legally married. What does it say to the youth of Indiana when a whole segment of our society is treated like second-class citizens?”

H/T Towleroad

The Health and Human Services Department made the announcement earlier this month that they will not exempt church-linked groups from the requirements regarding contraceptive services. They will have more time to come into compliance, though. While church-related groups are not exempt from these rules, churches and any other employer that is explicitly focusing on a religious message.

In explaining the decision not exempt these church-affiliated groups from the rules regarding contraceptives, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebilius stated

“Scientists have abundant evidence that birth control has significant health benefits for women and their families, it is documented to significantly reduce health costs, and is the most commonly taken drug in America by young and middle-aged women. This rule will provide women with greater access to contraception by requiring coverage and by prohibiting cost sharing.”

“This decision was made after very careful consideration, including the important concerns some have raised about religious liberty. I believe this proposal strikes the appropriate balance between respecting religious freedom and increasing access to important preventive services. The administration remains fully committed to its partnerships with faith-based organizations, which promote healthy communities and serve the common good. And this final rule will have no impact on the protections that existing conscience laws and regulations give to health care providers.”

Republican presidential candidate and Catholic convert Newt Gingrich even used this to attack the Obama Administration and Mitt Romney. He stated on CBS This Morning “The Obama administration has just launched an attack on Christianity so severe that every single church in Florida had a letter read from the bishops yesterday all across the country – Cardinal [Timothy] Dolan was leading an effort to explain that, literally, freedom of religion in America is now being attacked by Obama. The Romneycare does the same thing. Romneycare has tax-paid abortions. Romneycare put Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in America, in the bill. No right to life group’s in the bill. Planned Parenthood is. Romney himself approved taking away a conscience clause from Catholic hospitals.”

The Catholic Church is one of various churches to read similar letters attacking the Obama Administration and claiming that it “has cast aside the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, denying to Catholics our Nation’s first and most fundamental freedom, that of religious liberty.”

Of course, one has to wonder why offering to cover medicine that could be used for things other than preventing pregnancies violates the freedom of religion of an organization given that not everyone who is hired by a given church-related organization is a member of that specific religion. Apparently these churches do not trust the people they hire or their own parishioners to follow what they teach.

Here is the full letter from the Bishop of Marquette via CBS.

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

I write to you concerning an alarming and serious matter that negatively impacts the Church in the United States directly, and that strikes at the fundamental right to religious liberty for all citizens of any faith. The federal government, which claims to be “of, by, and for the people,” has just been dealt a heavy blow to almost a quarter of those people — the Catholic population — and to the millions more who are served by the Catholic faithful.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced last week that almost all employers, including Catholic employers, will be forced to offer their employees’ health coverage that includes sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs, and contraception. Almost all health insurers will be forced to include those “services” in the health policies they write. And almost all individuals will be forced to buy that coverage as a part of their policies.

In so ruling, the Obama Administration has cast aside the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, denying to Catholics our Nation’s first and most fundamental freedom, that of religious liberty. And as a result, unless the rule is overturned, we Catholics will be compelled to either violate our consciences, or to drop health coverage for our employees (and suffer the penalties for doing so). The Obama Administration’s sole concession was to give our institutions one year to comply.

We cannot–we will not–comply with this unjust law. People of faith cannot be made second class citizens. We are already joined by our brothers and sisters of all faiths and many others of good will in this important effort to regain our religious freedom. Our parents and grandparents did not come to these shores to help build America’s cities and towns, its infrastructure and institutions, its enterprise and culture, only to have their posterity stripped of their God given rights. In generations past, the Church has always been able to count on the faithful to stand up and protect her sacred rights and duties. I hope and trust she can count on this generation of Catholics to do the same. Our children and grandchildren deserve nothing less.

And therefore, I would ask of you two things. First, as a community of faith we must commit ourselves to prayer and fasting that wisdom and justice may prevail, and religious liberty may be restored. Without God, we can do nothing; with God, nothing is impossible. Second, I would also recommend visiting www.usccb.org/conscience, to learn more about this severe assault on religious liberty, and how to contact Congress in support of legislation that would reverse the Obama Administration’s decision.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

+Alexander K. Sample
Most Reverend Alexander K. Sample
Bishop of Marquette

They have been ridiculed, certainly, but they have never been prosecuted. In fact, case law has said that religious leaders can preach against homosexuality, interracial marriages, etc, all they want. Still, these four men have filed a lawsuit to get the hate crimes law torn down. They have already had the suit thrown out once by the district court.

At the center of the lawsuit are Gary Glenn of the Michigan American Family Association and Pastors Jim Combs, Rene Ouellette and Levon Yuille. They are represented by the Thomas More Law Center.

At the center of this is something that Glenn stated:

“Homosexual activists have clearly and openly admitted that they want to see pastors and others who speak out against the homosexual political agenda criminally prosecuted as ‘accessories’ any time a violent crime is committed against an individual who engages in homosexual behavior or cross-dressing.”

“The concern is that simply making a statement on your radio program or from a pulpit could be interpreted at some point in the future as having induced or encouraged someone to commit an act of violence.”

While many LGBT Activists would like to see this occur, it cannot because of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and several cases that have gone to the US Supreme Court have already ruled in favor of that. In other words, while hate speech can and does lead to hate crimes, under the First Amendment, no matter how vile the speech is, its speaker cannot be held criminally liable unless it is a direct threat or directly leads to the harm of a person.

Of course, that is not what this is about, but that is normal.

The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act explicitly talks about punishments for anyone who attempts to or “willfully causes bodily injury” to a person and “is motivated by prejudice based on the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability of the victim.” Nothing in there about “thought crimes”, huh?

According to Talking Points Memo that the argument for the four men:

“primarily argues that the law is unconstitutional because it ‘elevates those engaged in certain deviant sexual behaviors to a special, protected class of persons under federal law.’ Or as George Orwell put it, the complaint says, creates a special class of people who are ‘more equal than others.’
“In another reference to Orwell, the suit fears that the law promotes ‘thought crimes,’ as it ‘criminalizes certain ideas, beliefs, and opinions, and the involvement of such ideas, beliefs, and opinions in a crime will make the crime deserving of federal prosecution.’”

“The suit calls hate crimes prosecutions ‘inherently divisive,’ and adds that the law ‘is intended to send a government-endorsed message to those persons who oppose the homosexual agenda on the basis of deeply held religious beliefs,’ and to ‘eradicate religious beliefs opposing the homosexual agenda from the marketplace of ideas by demonizing, vilifying, and criminalizing such beliefs as a matter of federal law and policy.’”

The suit was already dismissed by US District Judge Thomas L. Ludington who agreed with Holder’s argument that the “plaintiffs do not allege that they have been prosecuted under the Act, that they have been threatened with such prosecution or that they intend to engage in any conduct prohibited by the Act.”

Holder also wrote “The Act does not proscribe speech. It prohibits only violent conduct and includes specific provisions ensuring that it may not be applied to infringe any rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.” Ludington apparently wrote that “It is entirely speculative that Plaintiff’s conduct would be prosecuted under the Act.”

This is something that Illinois Bishop Daniel Conlon of the Diocese of Joliet has not learned. In a recent statement, Conlon tries to defend the Church’s views by asking rhetorically if Catholics are bigots. He said “Are a bigot? If you are a believing Catholic, chances are many people will consider you a bigot. To believe, as Catholics do, that homosexual acts are disordered, as well as immoral, is considered a form of prejudice against people with same-sex attractions.”

This, of course, makes most practicing Catholics non-believers since the majority of them believe in equality for lesbian and gay couples.

Conlon went on to say “Last summer, the state of Illinois deemed several Catholic dioceses, including Joliet, to be discriminatory against couples, of whatever stripe, living together without benefit of marriage. The dioceses wanted to continue their long-standing policy of placing foster and adoptive children only with couples in a traditional marriage. (The policy stems in part from the belief in marriage itself and from the well-demonstrated fact that children do best within a stable, marital relationship.)”

In fact, Conlon is splitting hairs here. It is a “well-demonstrated fact that children do best within a stable, marital relationship”, but research has also shown that, so long as children are raised in a relationship that is stable, it does not matter if they have two mothers, two fathers or one of each. In fact, so long as the household is stable, it does not seem to matter if they have more than two parents. What matters is not the composition of the parental unit, but the stability of the relationship, and the stability of same-sex relationships is undermined by a lack of equal rights and acceptance in society. In other words, Conlon’s is a good bout of circular logic.

Conlon continued by saying “For years, the Department of Children and Family Services had contracted with Catholic Charities to assist with funding for adoption and foster services. The married couples-only policy was not a problem. Then, one day the Catholic Church became a discriminatory organization, and its ability to function as a religious institution was curtailed.

“How does this happen? In my view, the United States, and the Western world in general, has thrown overboard its traditional moral values that are based on the Judeo-Christian code. Our modern culture, followed by our legislatures and courts, have replaced this code with one
value: the will of the individual. The old code is not just God-given. It is designed to protect and promote the common good. Marriage, for example, is not just for the benefit of the two persons involved.”

Or one could blame it on the overthrow of the ‘traditional value’ that the Pope was the head of the Church. That happened back in the 1530′s when Henry VIII overthrew a thousand years worth of tradition to name himself head of the Church in England. Or it could be when St. Brigid, St. Columncille, and so on overthrew 2000+ years of Celtic tradition to establish the Celtic Catholic Church. It could be when the Roman Catholics overthrew 1000 years of Roman tradition. Traditions are just an attitude that thousands of years of dead people cannot be wrong.

The Catholic Church could have done what the Diocese of Belleville did, which is to spin off their adoption agency so that it was no longer forced to follow the rules of the Church. Instead, Conlon chose to hurt the children and families that needed help because he would rather be a bigot than be a true Catholic.

Conlon continues “It benefits their children and society in general. Thus, traditionally, laws, such as a minimum age for marriage, the difficulty in obtaining a divorce, even laws against adultery, were all intended to strengthen marriage, because marriage was good for society. If marriage were just a matter between two people, the state would have little reason to involve itself in marriage.”

There is a reason for a minimum age for marriage- one that the Catholic Church once fought tooth and nail against, one might add. Many of my French-Canadian ancestors were buried young because they were married at 11, 12, 13 and forced to bear children, like a good Catholic girl. As for laws against adultery, those are no longer enforced, and at one time, divorce was banned- something that the Church wants reimposed.

Conlon continues to whine “Now, many people are trying to redefine marriage as simply a legalized friendship between any two people, with no connection per se to children, to fidelity, to
endurance or to society. All that matters is the individuals. Likewise with abortion: the child in the womb doesn’t matter; the father doesn’t matter; society doesn’t matter (think Steve Jobs, who was adopted). All that matters is the wish of the mother (or if she doesn’t want to be thought of as a mother, the woman).”

If this was a sticking point, than Newt Gingrich would have never been allowed to convert, and he would be excommunicated forthwith. As for children, many lesbian and gay couples have children even as many straight couples have opted to not have children. There in lies the problem, if this was really about the children, as Conlon complains, then he would be doing everything he can to protect the children of same-sex couples. It is even funny that while complaining about the fact that he cannot keep the money coming from the adoption agency, he slams adoption itself.

Let us continue with his ramblings “This approach to defining the moral values of society, besides being philosophically bankrupt, ends up pitting the rights of one citizen against the rights of another or a group of citizens (like a church). For example, not so very long ago, abortion was illegal. Then it became legal nationwide when the Supreme Court discovered the right to privacy in the Constitution. Now, so as not to discriminate against women who want to exercise their right to an abortion, the government wants to force pharmacists who oppose abortion to dispense drugs that cause abortions. We are not far from the government requiring private hospitals and insurance programs to provide for abortions, again, in order to avoid discrimination.”

If you are a pharmacist who opposes abortion, then you are in the wrong line of work. Your freedom of religion is not necessarily pretty here, I should add. If you oppose abortion as a pharmacist, then walk away from that profession and do something else. You see, either you do your job or you do something else where your religious beliefs will not interfere. That is, of course, the problem, is it not? Rather than taking a truly moral stand and walking away from your job, you demand that others follow your religious beliefs. There are jobs out there that I refuse to do because of my political or moral stances, but you do not see me making a huge fuss about that.

Conlon continued with “This may well include Catholic hospitals and insurance programs. So, it’s not just a moral system turned upside down. The Bill of Rights is in jeopardy. The First Amendment provides for the free exercise of religion. Already we have seen that freedom converted into freedom from religion. Look at the situation in public schools and town squares. Now we have the state excluding churches and religious organizations from participation in government-funded programs because their beliefs are suddenly ‘discriminatory.’ Next, we will have the state requiring churches and religious organizations to incorporate government regulations that violate their teachings. More and more, we hear people speak of the freedom of ‘worship’ instead of the freedom of ‘religion,’ as though religion involved only ritual.”

The Bill of Rights says flatly that there is freedom from and freedom of religion. The first clause of the First Amendment reads “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Of course, it should be noted that Conlon is, here, engaging in the usual fear mongering that his position has to rely upon.

It should be noted that, if taken seriously, the very first part of the First Amendment would mean that no religious group would get money from the State nor get any form of tax breaks since that would be seen as being Congress giving preferential treatment to the various churches and religious groups. Thus, hiding behind the First Amendment while taking lots of money from the State is rather hard to justify.

And, of course, we get to the crux of the problem here. Conlon states “We are long past the threat of any religion forcing its views on America. Just the opposite is happening. Our schools,
hospitals, nursing homes, Catholic Charities – anything that involves government licensing, regulation or even one dollar of government funding – are at risk of losing their First Amendment protection for the free exercise of religion. This is not the Tea Party speaking. This is the voice of religious liberty.”

This is about money. The thing is, churches and religious groups are given tax-exempt status because they are expected to do good works with that money. They are suppose to provide food for the hungry, shelter for the homeless, and support for the needy. They are suppose to do this on their own without a dime of taxpayer money because they are suppose to not pay taxes in order to do this. Instead, they get a lot of money from the State to help them run those charities- and that money comes with a caveat- the Church must obey the Law.

If the Catholic Church wanted to, they could quite easily discriminate against people just by giving up the money that they get from the government. Instead, they would rather discriminate and get the money. The Church has, though, been using that money to push their religious beliefs upon others through various means. They have squandered a lot of money fighting same-sex marriage. They have abused the very taxpayers that they rely upon for their money and tax exempt status in order to try and make their lives richer.

It comes down to greed and power, and they do not want to give up a single bit of those.

Conlon finishes up with “We Catholics are not bigots because of our beliefs. We are loyal Americans who, for 200 years, have stood up for the poor and the oppressed within our nation. We also accept truths revealed by God and handed on for centuries — truths that allow people to lead lives of integrity. One of those truths is our obligation to love and respect everyone. But
we need to fight for our right to religious freedom, for the sake of the Church and for the sake of the common good. We should certainly never be ashamed of our faith. Indeed, we should encourage one another and seek God’s strength.”

Until 1960, being Catholic was hardly something that people were proud of. Catholics were treated horribly. They were often denied jobs, denied promotions, and denied rights even with the First Amendment there. Perhaps the Catholic Church should learn their history and remember that, once, marriage between two Catholics was banned by law.

Wallace also stated that “They’re all stupid. . .It’s like you’re tuning into a car race, you really want to see if there’s a wreck.” Wallace has moderated two debates so far.

Wallace is not alone in his criticism about the number of Republican debates. Karl Rove criticized the number saying “debates have nearly crippled campaigns, chewing into the precious time each candidate has to organize, raise money, set themes, roll out policy and campaign.”

The next GOP debate is on 22 February.

Via Huffington Post

The Santa Fe City Council has already approved a resolution opposing the ban. The resolution was introduced by Councilwoman Patti Bushee.

Jacob Candelaria, the president of Equality New Mexico, stated “The Santa Fe City Council stood with New Mexico families last night, and sent a clear message to legislators: that in New Mexico we celebrate diversity, we respect our neighbors, and we value our families. All of our families.”

Candelaria also hopes that lawmakers will go back to focusing in on issues that matter to the people of New Mexico saying “My sincere hope is that all legislators, including Rep. David Chavez, will spend their time focusing on what matters most to New Mexicans: education, jobs, and the economy.”

Via OnTopMag

Speaker John Boehner by Donkey Hotey

Having failed to force President Obama to approve the Keystone XL pipeline route by attaching a sixty-day limit for action to one law, Speaker of the House John Boehner has laid out which up-coming bills the pipeline will be attached to, this time with a straight “approve it or else.”

That leads to a very big question….

Since TransCanada has already said it doesn’t really care about the route and will re-submit the application, just who is Boehner doing this for? It’s not for jobs for Americans. According to TransCanada’s website, they already have thousands of miles of pipeline across Canada and the United States and have only 4,200 people on payroll. Not exactly the 20,000 Boehner keeps saying would be employed by the pipeline. In fact, TransCanada has a series of natural gas pipelines that approximate the route for the Keystone XL pipeline and could be tandemed with an oil pipeline with little or no disruption to the environment. The Northern Border Pipeline begins in Alberta and runs to Iowa and the oil pipeline could be connected to the ANR Pipeline route with a span across Illinois. The ANR runs all the way to the Gulf of Mexico in Louisiana. From Louisiana, it’s a really short hop to the refineries in Texas.

So, back to the question…who is so desperate to run the Keystone XL pipeline on the proposed route, which would run through virgin lands in six states? It’s not TransCanada, so who? Tandeming with the existing pipelines would be a longer route, and cost TransCanada more, but they are eager to co-operate with our government on finding the route that will present the least potential for environmental disruption and protest. They are having enough problems with environmental issues over the oil sands development in Canada without adding Americans to the mix. Their only other option for the oil sands is to run pipelines to British Columbia and ship the unrefined oil to China, but the First Nations are blocking that proposal and will probably win the court battle over it. They could, of course, tandem with the GTN pipeline into Oregon and Washington, cut over to the Pacific and then ship to China. Good luck getting that one approved. If TransCanada tried to pipeline through the United States to ship to China, even the right wing media couldn’t spin that one enough to stop opposition. (Very interesting website, www.transcanada.com)

We already know that Boehner’s campaign fund was enriched by $1.1 million from fossil fuel interests and the 234 members of Congress who voted for the pipeline have received $42 million in contributions from fossil fuel companies. Is that the answer? Got any better ones? They are not doing this for TransCanada or for tens of thousands of American jobs. There is only one explanation – they are planning to hold our government hostage for people like the Koch brothers. In fact, the protest groups are demanding to know if the Kochs have

Boehner said Sunday morning that they will attach an immediate approval amendment to the energy and highway bill that will be considered next month. “If [Keystone] is not enacted before we take up the American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act, it will be part of it.” Boehner told ABC’s This Week. Part of the bill already includes elements that will not pass the Democratic Senate, including opening the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.

There is also a chance Boehner would attach the Keystone approval to a bill to extend the payroll tax cut that benefits most Americans.

This entire proposal, adding the approval of the pipeline {in defiance of the stated plans of the company that would build it) to bills that are necessary for America’s recovery is not just partisanship at its worst, it’s out-and-out blackmail. There are only two reasons for holding a person or thing hostage for blackmail – to force someone to do something or to collect a great deal of money. In the case of the Republican blackmail of the American people over Keystone XL, it’s both. They are trying to force us to do something so that someone can collect a whole lot of money, and it certainly isn’t the American people.

Here’s my best guess –

The oil sands fields are in Canada, so the United States gets no revenues from leasing the land or royalties form the oil extraction. This operation has no monetary benefit to the United States, except at the end of the pipeline. The oil sands require a specific type of refining operation because of their impurities. Our existing oil refineries in Texas are already incapable of keeping up with American output. To refine the oil sands, we would probably have to approve a new refinery in Texas. That’s where the money is. The United States taxpayer would be expected to heavily subsidize the building of a new refinery in Texas and the people of Texas would be expected to waive any kinds of benefit from it to “attract the jobs.” Republican governors loving giving away the tax benefits for a few jobs. Whoever would be involved in the building or expanding of a refinery is probably the money person we should be looking at for the source of all that money that the Republicans are getting to support this project. Like I said, my best guess.

Related articles

• Surprise! Boehner Owns Stock In Keystone-Related Companies (lezgetreal.com)
• Keystone a Key Ingredient Missing from Obama’s Economic Recovery Recipe (tarpon.wordpress.com)
• Republicans keep up Keystone XL efforts (ctv.ca)
• BREAKING: TransCanada’s Dirty Keystone XL Jobs Claims Draw Complaint To SEC (thinkprogress.org)
• Demise of Keystone XL Means More Bakken Shale Gas Flaring (desmogblog.com)
• Keystone XL Pipeline: Extra Large Pipe Dream Or Extra Large Infrastructure Project? (constructionsocialmedia.wordpress.com)

Anti-ACTA protest in Paris

29 January 2012
by Pauline Malmqvist

On the initiative of Anonymous a hundred of people protested this Saturday in Paris against ACTA. They also asked to protest in 36 other french cities.

ACTA, known as Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, is an international treaty that aims at reinforcing the copyright laws. It wants to reinforce the cooperation between all the countries that has signed ACTA. Like SOPA and PIPA, ACTA threatens the liberty of internet and the freedom of expression. This treaty has been secretly negotiated by the United States, the European Union, Canada, Australia, Mexico, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland. Which is the first controversial issue about ACTA: the States hid it away from us during the process of the law which lead us to know nothing about this treaty. 

The agreement expands the copyrights law by criminalizing file-sharing, which firstly was a civil infringement. It will give the right for the governments worldwide that has signed the treaty to allow right holders to seek personal data through ISPs (Internet Service Providers). It will also give copyright holders legal means to pursue people suspected of bypassing copyright protections. It also allows to seize goods at theirs borders if suspected of containing infringing content. 

In order to reinforce the copyright laws ACTA has severe penalties. The judicial authorities have the authority to order the person engaged in infringing activity:
- To pay the right holder damages adequate to compensate for the injury the right holder has suffered as a result of the infringement. (Section 2: Civil Enforcement, Article 9: Damages, paragraph 1 – ACTA)

- For offences specified in paragraphs 1, 2, and 4 of Article 23 (Criminal Offences), each Party shall provide penalties that include imprisonment as well as monetary fines sufficiently high to provide a deterrent to future acts of infringement, consistently with the level of penalties applied for crimes of a corresponding gravity.(ACTA in section 4: Criminal Enforcement, Article 24: Penalties). 

Anti-ACTA protester

In the European Union 22 members has signed the treaty on Thursday 26^th January in Tokyo, including France. However, it still must be signed by the European parliament. The hope that the treaty can still be stopped lead to protests from the internet hacker group Anonymous but also non-member of the group. As a matter of fact, a European Parliament official, Kader Arif, resigned and stated: “I want to denounce in the strongest possible manner the entire process that led to the signature of this agreement: no inclusion of civil society organizations, a lack of transparency from the start of the negotiations, repeated postponing of the signature of the text without an explanation being ever given, exclusion of the EU Parliament’s demands that were expressed on several occasions in our assembly”.

This was a awakening alarm for some of us, unfortunately to few. Only a couple of hundreds of people gathered in Paris to protest on Saturday 28^th. The French medias did not put the spotlight on ACTA, that might explain also why the crowd was not as big as expected. 

Behind the Guy Fawkes masks people yelled “No to ACTA” and “We are legion”. They stated that they want to defend the liberty and rights of each individual.

Protests were particularly strong in Poland, where a thousands of citizens marched together against ACTA. There were also several government officials that showed their disapproval of ACTA by wearing the now very famous mask of Guy Fawkes. 

To show their disapproval of ACTA, Anonymous has launched several attacks against Governmental and entertainment websites, including the FBI and also the french Governments. Until the European parliament has not signed ACTA there is still hope that ACTA will not be enacted. On avaaz.org there is a petition, that they plan on taking to the European parliament so the voice of the citizens may count for something. It did for SOPA and PIPA, why not for ACTA? 

Anti-ACTA troll

Davos, Switzerland

There are some stories which, though very serious, lead to uncontrollable bouts of the giggles. This is such a story…..

When the recession hit Europe, the effects were devastating. Too many countries were operating on combinations of high government spending and low taxation. Germany was the exception. Though incomes had stagnated, Chancellor Merkel was aggressive in her attitude about taxation. She has been trying for years to organize all the Western industrialized countries into reining in tax shelters and collecting from tax cheats. Germany’s economy, while not explosive, is solid. It is built on small, high-grade manufacturing to provide a middle class which supports the service industry. But Germany is part of the European Union, and too many in the EU are looking to Germany to bail out the rest of the Union. It is Germany that is pushing hardest for deep budget cuts in other European countries. A leaked document has suggested that Germany is pushing for Greece to be put in a sort of receivership — surrendering control of its finances to the EU.

At his first economic summit, President Obama tried to make the case for the Keynesian model of recovery, the one that had pulled the United States out of the Great Depression faster than Europe. But, in response to the recession, Europeans had elected conservative governments that wanted to follow the same economic policies being advocated by our Republican Party. In a few European nations – Greece, Italy and Spain specifically – it is part of a six decade pendulum between socialist and fascist governments, with none of them going all the way to communism or corporatism. So, President Obama’s recommendations were met with the same kind of dismissive attitude that his policies have met in America.

Right now, in the Republican candidate battle, the President is constantly being accused of trying to turn America into Europe….translation: he wants us to become a socialist nation with cradle to grave welfare. Here’s where the giggles set in. Europe has dug itself in deeper into the economic morass because they turned their backs on Keynesian economics and embraces the trickle-down model.

IMF head Christine Lagarde with partner Xavier Giocante, Paris, June 22

The head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, warned at the Davos summit this week that spending cuts could “strangle” economic growth, and any cuts must be made on a nation-by-nation, program-by-program basis instead of being made “across the board.”

This is a perfect time to take a look at what Margaret Thatcher really did. She allowed the British manufacturing base to disappear. She also “privatized” everything she could sell off, from British Petroleum to the railway system. The privatization was supposed to create jobs and super-charge the economy. It certainly pumped a lot of money into the British treasury – once. She traded the yearly income for a one-shot payment. BP moved itself out of the country. The owners of Britrail closed smaller lines, forcing people to buy cars, all of which were built overseas, forcing major upgrades to roads. Get the picture? Thousands of Brits lost their middle-class incomes when the factories shut down and there was nothing to replace them. The lower wages of service industry jobs, if one could get a job, weren’t enough to sustain a family, so government support systems were expanded. Older people who had lost their jobs and pensions were particularly susceptible to not being able to find work and were not easily retrained to new jobs. The result – life-long dependence on “the dole.” If you watch Brit-coms and British movies, you’ve seen parts of this, in The Full Monty and the character of Onslow in Keeping Up Appearances.

Lagarde is not advocating any one-size solution to Europe. In fact, combining their problems across the EU is the last thing Lagarde wants. “Some countries have to go full-speed ahead to do this fiscal consolidation, but other countries have space and room. They should explore what to do…in order to help themselves. It has to be tailor-made.”

And into this debate comes U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. He warned that there is a risk of a recessionary cycle if the austerity measures aren’t done properly. “There is a risk that every disappointment in growth will be met with an austerity that will feed the decline, and that is a cycle you have to arrest to solve financial crises. For parts of Europe for a long time, there will be no alternative to very substantial adjustment in budget deficits.”

Billionaire financier George Soros, who was very involved in the transition of the former communist countries of Eastern Europe to capitalist economies, warned that the extreme austerity advocated by the conservative governments of Europe could lead to a “lost decade” of economic stagnation. “This German insistence on austerity could destroy the European Union. This is reality, this is the harsh reality that we need to face. It is not written in stone, the future is not predetermined. We determine the future, so it would be well within the possibility of the authorities to change it.”

There is a second story at Davos that is less headline-making but equally important. Davos is a ski area in Switzerland that has been used for these economic summits for years. The story involves Swiss banking, that guardian of money that people want to keep hidden from government authorities for various reasons.

Swiss Finance Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf

Switzerland’s oldest bank, Wegelin, announced on Friday that it is breaking up into separate divisions in response to a disagreement with the United States over men like Mitt Romney who have some or most of their money in Swiss banks to avoid paying American taxes. Just the way the city of Burlington, Vermont, is chasing people who didn’t pay their parking fines (to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars), the Obama administration is chasing down the tax avoiders who have stashed their cash in Switzerland. The administration agrees with German Chancellor Merkel that countries are deeply damaged by the ability of international corporations and individuals to hid their money in Swiss bank accounts and tax shelter countries like the Cayman Islands (another Romney bank site) and avoid paying taxes. But it would take an international effort to shut down these countries and the consequences to their economies would be horrific. A nation like the Cayman Islands has no other revenue source than the fees paid by corporations to register their “corporate headquarters” in post office boxes or virtually empty office buildings, like the little two story one a reporter tracked down last year that houses 20,000 corporations.

Wegelin was facing the possibility of multiple indictments on charges of helping Americans evade taxes. Swiss finance minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf called Wegelin’s decision “very regrettable,” and went on to say that “This development show how important it is that we come to solutions in the discussions, negotiations with the United States which hopefully prevent other banks getting into similar situations.”

The Justice Department has targeted 11 Swiss banks, including Credit Suisse, Julius Baer and Basler Kantonalbank. Widmer-Schlumpf told the press, “I don’t know whether other banks are in a similar or same situation…but what I know is that various banks are being threatened by the United States with prosecution and we will try to do everything…to come to a solution.” Switzerland wants the investigations halted in exchange for paying a large fine and handing over the names of thousands of American bank clients suspected of dodging taxes. UBS (which is not the initials of anything) paid $780 million in fines and handed over the names of 4,500 clients in 2009 to avoid prosecution.

Widmer-Schlumpf has been holding talks with Secretary Geithner this week in Davos. Switzerland struck deals with Britain and Germany last year that allowed clients to retain their secrecy while collecting taxes for their governments. But the EU Commission wants to force Switzerland into an automatic revelation of client information. Widmer-Schlumpf is part of the seven-member council that acts as a joint head of state for Switzerland and one of the rotating presidents.

The Great Depression ended in the Second World War, in part because of the way the Depression and the First World War were handled. This Great Recession does not need to end in a global war, but it may lead to some enormous changes in the world’s economic relationships, if it is handled properly. This country does not need to become Europe, as the Republicans want us to be. We also do not need to be isolationist, as some would have us be. It is essential that we work with the world, all of the world, to find global solutions to a global economy.

Related articles

• Switzerland’s Oldest Bank Is Selling Its Non-US Business After Tax Evasion Charges (businessinsider.com)
• Swiss Officials Urge U.S. Tax Deal to Shield Country’s Banks (ibtimes.com)
• Davos 2012: IMF issues austerity warning (direcmood.wordpress.com)
• IMF chief asks for more cash at Davos – Sydney Morning Herald (news.smh.com.au)
• More Pressure on Europe for Solution to Debt Crisis – New York Times (nytimes.com)
• Brussels takes control of taxation and spending in eurozone countries (telegraph.co.uk)
• IMF issues austerity cuts warning (bbc.co.uk)
• IMF Chief At Davos: ‘I Am Here With My Little Bag, To Collect A Bit Of Money’ (huffingtonpost.com)
• European austerity measures could be ‘grave’ for world (cbc.ca)
• Swiss leader: Must restore faith in Swiss banking (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

Of course, the Religious Right seem to be less about telling the whole truth and more about their own versions of reality. For instance, the Family Research Council sent out this letter complaining about the eviction of churches from school spaces:

Imagine if tomorrow you went to worship with your church only to be turned away because the landlord of the property doesn’t want to rent to people of faith — not because of conflicts with building use, just because of religious discrimination. Imagine then if the landlord was the local government…in an American city. But this is just an urban legend, right?

Sadly this is really happening now in New York City. For the past decade, New York’s Department of Education has given a number of small, mostly Christian, upstart or itinerant congregations the option to hold their weekend services in any one of the city’s empty school buildings. The only condition is that they pay to use the facilities — a nice benefit to the cash strapped public education system. Now, the Department of Education has reversed course, and as many as 100 churches face eviction on February 12, as the school board’s ban against the use of property by religious congregations goes into effect.

The evictions could be devastating to small congregations and church plants in the city. With limited space in one of the most densely populated areas of the world, and real estate costs that are sky-high, opportunities for ministry in many areas of the Big Apple would be effectively shut down.

There is hope, however. This week, the New York Senate Education Committee voted unanimously to bring a bill to the floor that would stop keep this from happening in the future. All 18 senators — including eight Democrats and 10 Republicans — agreed that the Senate should take action to protect the city’s faith community. We expect this issue to come to the State Senate floor soon, but NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg still needs to rescind the eviction order.

We know that the church is more than a mere meeting place, but this is America — not a totalitarian regime. Stand with us and these churches in New York City by signing our petition supporting them. We’ll deliver it to the New York Senate next week to help give the effort momentum, and show the churches that believers throughout the nation stand with them for our First Freedom.

Of course, what no one seems to note is that the evictions were not made on a whim. While the Christian Conservatives want to hide behind tyranny, here is the reality. For the last 16 years, a case has been litigated regarding this particular issue. Bronx Household of Faith v. New York Bd. of Education was a case regarding whether or not the NY Board of Education could institute a rule that “prohibited outside groups from using school facilities after hours for ‘religious worship services,’” and “at issue was whether the rule constituted viewpoint discrimination in violation of the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment.” The courts found that, because the rule did not stop people from worshiping or from expressing their speech, it was Constitutionally valid.

Marci A. Hamilton, one of the top Church/State scholars in American law today, wrote that the decision was the correct one. The US Supreme Court refused to take up an Appellate ruling on the case, which means that the Appellate decision stands. Specifically, Hamilton wrote:

To summarize, religious groups are not being prevented from using the New York public schools. The line drawn by the New York schools and by the Second Circuit is more than reasonable: public schools are not appropriate locations for houses of worship, though extracurricular activities involving religion are not barred.

. . .

Sadly, religious lobbyists with no concern for the separation of church and state have taken on the mantle of being “homeless,” as they lobbied the City Council and the state legislature. Their core argument seems to be that they are entitled to have the public schools provide their worship facilities, for no cost, and with no strings attached.

Now, the New York State Assembly and the New York City Council are both considering what to do, but it should be noted that any law that they pass allowing for these churches to continue to use these schools as places of worship would be doomed in expensive litigation. There is something even more sinister about this than the waste of taxpayer dollars. As Hamilton explains:

. . .many of the officials’ constituents are likely to be outraged about what is happening here—at least, if they can wade through all the misleading rhetoric: These city and state politicians are endorsing the use of public schools by groups that discriminate on the basis of religion and religious status, like the Bronx Household of Faith. The suggested bill would open the door for white supremacist, misogynist, and anti-homosexual religious organizations to take up weekly residence in the public schools.

. . .

finally, the phenomenon of transforming public schools into houses of worship is in part a result of what has been dubbed the “church planting” movement. To put it rather simplistically, but not inaccurately, some evangelical churches have chosen not to invest in buildings, because they want to fill public schools with their religion. Their triumphalism does not make them correct.

In other words, it is wrong for these churches to use public spaces for long, protracted periods of time when they should be getting their own buildings.

It is not surprising that the FRC and others are resorting to lies and mistruths in order to try and get their way and to impose Christianity on others. They have always sought to surround their faith- what they see as the truth- with a body guard of lies.

In an editorial, Mehlman wrote:

The party of Lincoln and Reagan should stand first and foremost for freedom. It’s part of our heritage and ought to be part of our DNA. Freedom for Americans of all races is why our party was founded. And our greatest moments — from the unbelievable economic recovery unleashed by lower taxes and less regulation to the fall of the Berlin Wall — resulted when we promoted freedom.

Stripping away the right of adults in New Hampshire to marry the person they love is antithetical to freedom. If we really believe (and we should) that every citizen is endowed by their creator with the right to pursue happiness, shouldn’t this include the right to marriage? If we believe in limited government, how can we justify expanding the authority of the state to take away this most personal, fundamental right? Aren’t politicians already too involved in too much of our lives? Why would we want to expand government to such a personal space?

. . .

During my time in politics, I always believed that good policy is good politics. Looking at the views of New Hampshire voters, it’s pretty clear that stripping the right to marry is bad policy and bad politics. Sixty-two percent of New Hampshire voters oppose taking away the right to marry.

I will be in New Hampshire this week — to urge legislative members of my party to reject House Bill 437. It’s time to stand up for individual freedom and liberty, to live by the Golden Rule and to oppose any effort to diminish or strip away individual rights, and to return to the real business of building business, keeping taxes down and growing our economy. “Live Free or Die” should be more than just a slogan.

Many Americans are tired of having the Religious Right dictate what the nation is suppose to be like, and they want an end to these discriminatory laws and they want the maximum amount of personal freedom that the State can manage.

It may take some time, but hopefully, Mehlman can redeem himself and reverse the damage he has done to the LGBT Community during his time in politics.

http://www.unionleader.com/article/20120126/OPINION02/701269967

A press release from Children Matter states:

“Strengthening Economic Security for Children Living in LGBT Families”,describes how antiquated and discriminatory laws increase poverty for children with LGBT parents, and can be especially harmful for children living in low-income households. Today’s release is the latest in a series of reports co-authored by Movement Advancement Project, the Family Equality Council, and the Center for American Progress, in partnership with the National Association of Social Workers. It is a companion report to “All Children Matter,” which paints one of the most comprehensive portraits to date of LGBT families in America and how outdated laws make it harder for children with LGBT parents to achieve three major needs: economic security; stable, loving homes; and, health and well-being. Both reports are available online at www.children-matter.org.

AMERICA’S FAMILIES ARE CHANGING

“Our laws and economic policies need to reflect the reality of today’s families – especially those families led by parents who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender,” said Jennifer Chrisler, executive director of the Family Equality Council. “Overall, LGBT families are twice as likely to be living in poverty as married, opposite-sex couples.”

Current trends also show the following:

Approximately 2 million children are being raised by LGBT parents.
Children of same-sex couples live in 96% of U.S. counties.
Gay and lesbian couples are most likely to raise children in the South. The highest percentage of families are in Mississippi, followed by Wyoming, Alaska, Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Kansas, Alabama, Montana, South Dakota, and South Carolina.
LGBT families are more racially and ethnically diverse than the population as a whole, and same-sex couples of color raising children are more likely to be poor than white same-sex couples raising children.

EXTRA SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC COSTS FOR LGBT FAMILIES

Strengthening Economic Security for Children Living in LGBT Families illustrates how LGBT families face economic burdens that most families do not.

“Public policy should be based on reality. Our nation’s reality is that gay and transgender people are forming families and raising kids. It’s time for our laws to reflect this fact and make sure LGBT families do not face unnecessary obstacles to achieving their economic security,” said Jeff Krehely, director of the LGBT Communications and Research Project at the Center for American Progress.

Some of the most common extra economic burdens faced by LGBT families include:

Lack of legal protections. Because same-sex couples cannot marry, children in LGBT families often have legal ties to only one parent. Althouh legal documents can help create some protections, they are costly and usually inadequate.
Higher taxes. LGBT families cannot file joint federal tax returns and are often denied child-related tax deductions and credits. As a result, many LGBT families pay higher taxes.
Reduced access to health benefits. Because employers are not required to extend coverage to children without legal ties to their parents, LGBT families may be forced to buy coverage privately for their children or go without.
Lack of access to safety net programs. Programs designed to support families during difficult economic times often treat LGBT families families inconsistently or exclude them completely. As a result, children fall through the safety net when they most need help, including when a parent dies or becomes disabled.

PROVIDING ECONOMIC SECURITY FOR ALL CHILDREN

“This report again clearly details how children have become unintended collateral damage of anti-gay policies,” said Ineke Mushovic, executive director of the Movement Advancement Project. “There is a lot that can be done to ensure all children are treated equally under the law.”

“Strengthening Economic Security for Children Living in LGBT Families” details several policy recommendations that would help reduce the extra financial burdens faced by LGBT families, including:

Strengthening the legal ties of the entire family by legalizing and federally recognizing same-sex marriage.
Allowing joint adoption by LGBT parents, and recognizing LGBT parents and recognizing LGBT parents through other avenues such as second-parent adoption and de facto parenting that allow children to gain full legal ties to their parents.
Revising the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tax code to provide equitable treatment for LGBT families.
I equal access to health insurance.
Modernizing archaic wrongful death and intestacy statutes.

The report also supplements the 100+ policy recommendations included in the All Children Matter reportwith 20 practical “in the field” steps that governmental agencies, community-based organizations, advocates, and funders can take to assist and support all LGBT families, including those in crisis, low-income LGBT families, and LGBT families living in poverty. These include:

Expanding outreach to, and documenting the unmet needs of, low-income LGBT families, including LGBT families of color and LGBT families living in rural communities.
Expanding training to organizations serving low-income LGBT families, including adoption agencies, child welfare and government agency workers, judges, and schools.
Creating guidebooks to help LGBT families navigate the economic hurdles they face and, if needed, help them access safety net programs.

For a complete list of recommendations, download the report at http://www.children-matter.org

Recently Macy’s Department store mailed its newest catalogue out to many Americans. In the hopes of making sales, instead they offended many customers in the process. The back cover looks like just a regular advertisement for their wedding registry service, but there is one major difference.

When you take a closer look you see the cake topper of two men instead of the traditional man and woman. The ad also includes a license plate that reads “I do” and hearts scattered everywhere. Macy’s must believe this is mainstream, but just because gay marriage is legal in a few states, this is inappropriate marketing and conservative customers will not support it.

TAKE ACTION

Please send Macy’s an email letter below asking that they discontinue their “two groom” advertisement. Many of our supporters have already spoken up concerning Macy’s policy on transgender men allowed into women’s dressing rooms, and we will continue to speak out on traditional values. Some of our members have reported that they requested that their Macy’s store credit card account be closed and shared the reason behind their decision. During our last campaign, we did not receive a reply from Macy’s, but this does not mean that we will give up.

Yes! Let us take action sisters and brothers and use their easily altered letter to send Macy’s a message- that we support their decision to show support for us, and that hatred would rather hide behind form letters and threats of boycotts.

In the conversation, Gingrich states “It’s pretty simple: marriage is between a man and a woman. This is a historic doctrine driven deep into the Bible, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, and it’s a perfect example of what I mean by the rise of paganism. The effort to create alternatives to marriage between a man and a woman are perfectly natural pagan behaviors, but they are a fundamental violation of our civilization.”

The problem is, as it has always been, that the battle over same-sex marriage is one over religion, and this is a nation built upon the notions of Freedom of and from Religion.  This has been ignored throughout the past, of course, with many Pagan Native American tribes being forced to convert to Christianity, often with government backing.

In actuality, Christianity is the violation of the cultural base of the Anglo-Saxon, Celtic and Norse fusion that is the English and American cultural bases.  Christianity, like Judaism and Islam, is native to the Middle East, and was introduced, often at the point of a sword, to the cultures that lived in Europe.

Of course, it should be pointed out that divorce was banned under Christianity for a long time, but it has its roots in Paganism.  In most Pagan cultures, marriage could be dissolved.

The decision to go after Paganism is also probably not one of the better ideas on the side of Gingrich.  While that was the target of the Religious Right back in the 1990′s, these days, they are more worried about Islam than the rise of Paganism.  You do not hear people offering more than a mild token objection to things like the erection of a stone circle on a military base while people are furious if someone so much as talks about setting up a mosque.

Via Huffington Post

The HRC sent out this form letter to be ‘signed’ by those who want to get this bill from happening:

Rep. Reynolds,

I was dismayed to learn that you are pushing a bill that would essentially reinstate an even more extreme version of the defunct “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy within the Oklahoma National Guard.

Our nation’s military leaders have said the U.S. armed forces are stronger than ever following the implementation of DADT repeal. In fact, Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said:

“…with implementation of the new law fully in place, we are a stronger joint force, a more tolerant joint force, a force of more character and more honor, more in keeping with our own values.”

Your bill will do absolutely nothing to improve the military readiness of the Oklahoma National Guard. It will not contribute to the economic well-being of your state. It will, however, send a message to gay and lesbian Oklahomans that they are essentially second-class citizens who are incapable of performing just as professionally as their straight counterparts. That is an unacceptable message to send.

I urge you to immediately reconsider your support for this bill.

Now, if the HRC was on the ball, they would mention the Virginia DADT law proposed by Delegate Bob Mitchell last year. It was noted at the time that Federal law means that the Virginia National Guard has to accept lesbians and gays serving openly or face having their entire budget cut. In Virginia, that is a lot of money. Specifically, the US Government gives them some $200 million. Oklahoma, though, gets some $30.1 million from the US Government, but that accounts for 66% of the budget for their National Guard.

Why the HRC is bothering with the usual run of inane talking points and not just going for the throat is baffling. Why not just tell Reynolds that Oklahoma would, in this time of budget cuts, have to cough up $30.1 million or have their National Guard units disbanded.

That is the kind of argument that you can’t argue against, huh?

I once made the mistake of saying something nasty about Ronald Reagan. My mother informed that I was free to disagree with him, but I would, under penalty of hellfire, respect the office. Jan Brewer’s mother didn’t teach her any manners or any respect for the office. She got into a heated exchange with the President on the tarmac of the Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport and actually waggled her finger at him as though he were an errant little boy.

Brewer spent the rest of the day doing damage control. According to Brewer, she handed the President a letter, contents unknown, and wanted to talk with him about Arizona’s stunningly brilliant economic recovery. According to Brewer, he told her he was “disenchanted” with the description of　their 2010 meeting in the White House in her book Scorpions for Breakfast. She felt “minimized, to say the least.” She says she wants him to visit the border and see what her state has to contend with – you know, show him those headless corpses in the desert. In a Fox News interview last night, she called the talk a “terrible encounter” and called the president “thin skinned.” “I want our borders secured. I want our nation protected. He wants amnesty,” Brewer said. “We’re never going to agree. I don’t know why he was surprised by my book. Brewer claimed that by handing him a hand-written letter inviting him to the border, she was “trying to be very gracious,” but the president “reacted in a very negative manner… that kind of left me breathless.

The White House responded with a statement: “The governor handed the president a letter and said she was inviting him to meet with her. The president said he’d be glad to meet with her again, but did note that after their last meeting, a cordial discussion in the Oval Office, the governor inaccurately described the meeting in her book.”

This is the sales pitch for the book, written by Brewer herself: “Friends: America can no longer tolerate illegal immigration and my message to President Obama is simple: “Do your job! Secure our borders!” My new book Scorpions for Breakfast describes my on going fight against President Obama Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary Napolitano to stop the illegal immigration crisis facing our country. I will continue to fight until the border is secure for all Americans!” Even in print, she yells at the President.

Got all that? In that blurb, she accuses the President of not doing his job and says that she is fighting to secure the border for all of us. Forget the 400,000 illegals turned back at the border last year. Forget the 400,000 arrested and deported. Forget that the number of illegals getting across the border is at the lowest point in a generation. And, while you are at it, forget the fact that anti-Hispanic Senate leader Russell Pearce has been recalled and unelected and Sheriff Joe Arpaio is facing multiple criminal, civil and ethics charges for his actions. Forget that the newly elected director of school content was elected on a pledge to “stop la raza” and Tucson sent goons into classrooms to remove books written by Native Americans and Hispanics. Forget the fact that most of the sheriffs on the border don’t support the “papers please law” because it interferes with real crime fighting.

Brewer’s depiction of herself as a gun-toting defender of America against a tidal wave of criminals (who, by the way, only commit a misdemeanor by being in this country without papers) is essential to her political survival at this point. Everything else in her administration is turning out very badly.

Her cuts to Medicaid killed people who were waiting for life-saving transplants. The state suffered revenue losses when Hispanic businesses left after the “papers please” law was passed. Both the Hispanic and Native American populations – close to 40% of the state’s population – are furious over the removal of books by their authors from schools. And Brewer has just entered the anti-union brigade of the Republican Party by the sneakiest path possible.

She has offered state employees a choice between a 5% raise in salary or their rights as employees. If they will give up their right to appeal demotions and terminations without cause, she’ll give them the raise. Brewer has set aside $53.7 million of her $8.96 billion state budget to do what one state employee characterized as “blackmail.”

Of course, the Republicans are cooing about how no state employee who works hard has anything to worry about and all the ruckus is just the unions overreacting, but Arizona state workers have no collective bargaining rights as it is. In their view, changing the rules this way would put all their jobs in jeopardy and allow them to be fired without cause close to retirement, saving the state their pensions. The employees are citing the rules as protection against cronyism and discrimination in their workplaces. Cronyism is an accusation that could stick to Brewer since she “hired” a private contractor with deep connections to herself to operate Arizona’s prison system and the private management has ended up costing more than running the prisons as state operations.

Piece by piece, the Republican agenda is falling apart. One by one, those at the state level who thought they had a mandate to turn their states into corporate subsidiaries are facing strong opposition. And, finally, most of us have stopped laughing at the ludicrousness of the birthers and begun to see the depths of disrespect these people have for the office of the President of the United States. Disagree with the man all you want, but you will face hellfire for disrespecting the office.

Related articles

• Jan Brewer ‘felt a little threatened’ by President Obama … really? (thegrio.com)
• Jan Brewer, Obama Face Off Over Book, Immigration Issues (tribuneofthepeople.com)
• Jan Brewer and Barack Obama in Heated Exchange on Runway [Video] (inquisitr.com)
• Governor Jan Brewer Pointing In President Obama’s Face (buzzfeed.com)
• Jan Brewer: “I felt a bit threatened” by Obama (newblackwoman.com)
• You: Ariz. governor says Obama was ‘thin-skinned’ in airport exchange (latimes.com)

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels

Here is the Daily Show’s take on Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels’ rebuttal to the President’s State of the Union Address, or what we like to call Mourning in America. Let us be honest, Daniels seems to have figured out that the only way for the Republicans to make in roads against President Obama is to tell Americans about how they should stop having hope for the future. In fact, they should just give up and crawl under their beds because the world of tomorrow is going to be worse than it is today. In fact, tomorrow, the Sith will take over world, Emperor Palpatine will destroy democracy, and there will be no hope for tomorrow.

Yes, the Republicans have decided that tomorrow is not brighter, and that America is screwed.

The State of the Union Address, 2012

I’m going to get the sappy part out of the way first. When a President arrives for the State of the Union Address, he shakes hands with everyone who can reach him. When he reaches the front of the chamber, where the extra chairs have been placed to accommodate the Senators, Supreme Court and Cabinet, he can choose to go down the front row shaking more hands. Last night, President Obama shook hands with the members of the Supreme Court and near the end of the front row, reached Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. The President didn’t shake her hand. He gathered her up into a huge bear hug and rocked her, nestling her head against his shoulder. It wasn’t the first time they have seen each other this year. Captain Mark Kelley’s retirement ceremony was held in the White House. But this was more than just “I’m so glad to see you.” This was also good-bye because Gabby had already announced her retirement. It was one of the most spontaneous, honest, warm, loving human things I have ever seen a President do with an adult, and I’ve lived through 12 presidents. It was beautiful.

Now, down to the speech……

The pundits were right. The State of the Union Address was the first salvo of the Presidential election, even if the Republicans haven’t figured out who is going to be their nominee. We know who will be the Democratic nominee and he gave his first campaign speech last night.

A State of the Union Address is supposed to be, by Constitutional definition, a report to Congress of the, well, the state of our union. It has evolved into a wish list for Presidents. It is the opportunity for the President to say what he wants out of Congress. President Obama’s first two State of the Union Addresses were sort of like Oliver Twist time – “please, sir, may I have some more?” – with him asking Congress to send him bills that would support his agenda. Didn’t work. Even when the Democratic House in 2009 and 2010 gave him what he wanted, most of it died in the Senate because of the Republican filibuster. He had to give up critical parts of his health care law and financial services reform laws just to get the things passed. This time, there was no asking please.

I like watching the opposition’s reactions. At one point, I was sure I saw steam coming out of Eric Cantor’s ears. I thought as the speech went on he was going to chew up and swallow his lips. There probably isn’t enough Maalox in Washington for the dyspepsia that John Boehner was experiencing. This speech was game, set and match to the President.

Unlike last year, it is not the specifics that matter. What matters is that the President laid out things that would benefit the 99% and not one single thing he asked for will happen. Not one. We will not see a program that allows the Defense Department to purchase green energy instead of fossil fuel based energy. We will not see a Senate rule change that restores the majority rule that our founders believed in. We will not see infrastructure work or the ability of homeowners to refinance at “historically low” interest rates. We will not see laws that do buttkiss about eliminating the unfairness of the tax code or restructures regulations to make them more efficient and less obtuse. We will not see the money to support joint projects between businesses and community colleges to train people for the jobs of this century. We will not see support for college financing or more work-study jobs. It ain’t gonna happen.

The entire Republican election strategy for 2012 consists of making sure that as little as possible gets done in Washington so they can call Obama a failed president. They already call him the worst president in history and get away with it because their base is so grossly undereducated they’ve never heard of any of the presidents between Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Well, they probably have heard of Teddy Roosevelt just because Dubya admired his “big stick” foreign policy without understanding what a progressive he was and how he fought government corruption all his public life. We can expect that the Republicans in Congress will do everything they can to screw this nation so they can blame the President.

It is incomprehensible to everyone how the Republicans cannot understand what it means when a Congress has a 9% approval rate. Sorry, they are up to a whopping 12% this week. These are the lowest approval ratings in the history of approval ratings. No matter how low the President’s rating is, it has never gotten near that.

And the overnight polls are even more bad news for them. They show 91% of Americans approved of what the President proposed last night. Only 9% disapproved.

We are supposedly a nation addicted to instant gratification. The Republicans are playing on that. They are pushing the idea that because the recovery is taking time it isn’t working. They are playing on the “right now” instead of the future. I don’t believe that we are incapable of focusing on the long term.

The President’s speech was not about the “right now” it was about the long term, about moving into the 21^st century, not taking our country back to the 19^th. It is a more focused message than “Yes we can” and “Hope and Change” were. It is a message that says there is a future, but not if we don’t change with the times and adjust our thinking. It shifts the responsibility for creating that change from the government to us in many ways. We must be willing to see past the now to the future.

I am 63 years old. I don’t have a lot of future left to me, but I want to see us firmly in the 21^st century before I go. I want to see stem cells being used to replace damaged and eroded tissue so that people can live without pain or disability. I want to see us playing on a level global marketplace, not scrabbling to the bottom of the barrel. I want to see us finally realize that we have had the ways and means to educate all our children well. I want so much for the future. There is only one way to achieve that.

The Democrats had better have been listening last night and they had better grow cajones and backbones this spring. This must be a party-wide effort. We must regain control, total control, with no wussing out over eliminating the filibuster rule so that we can pass things with a simple majority. We must have a clear, unassailable majority in both the House and the Senate to drag this nation kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century. In 2010, the party was a study in cowardice. They didn’t have the guts to listen to us and act accordingly. No, 76% of us did not disapprove of the health care bill. Half of that 76% were pissed off there was no public option. That changes the meaning of the poll, doesn’t it? They were listening to Fox News instead of listening to us.

There is more than enough evidence out there that this is our time – the Occupy movement, the strike-back against the right wing propaganda. We need more. We need the courage to demand that those who have chosen to represent us in court cases over abortion and gay marriage stop farting around and go for the First Amendment jugular. We need every Democrat who steps in front of a mike to be fully prepared for anything that might be thrown at him. We need all of them to get an infusion of Alan Grayson and Anthony Weiner, because at least those two men fought back. They lost, but they fought back. We all need to be United Wisconsin and realize that unions are not the enemy. Unions fought to get us safe working environments and decent pay and end sweatshops and death traps. Unions created our middle class. It is not a question of what is right for America. We all know what is right for America. It is purely and simply a question of us having the courage to fight for what we need.