"There is nothing hateful about those people I've seen." -- George C. Wallace Jr., welcoming the delegates of the "uptown Klan", the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) to its convention....In the audience listening to Wallace were a number of leading white supremacists. They included Don Black, proprietor of Stormfront.org, the most influential hate site on the Internet, and former Alabama grand dragon of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan; Jamie Kelso, right-hand man and Louisiana roommate of former Klan leader David Duke; Jared Taylor, editor of the neo-eugenicist American Renaissance magazine; Ed Fields, an aging white supremacist leader from Georgia; Alabama CCC leader Leonard "Flagpole" Wilson, who got his nickname shouting "Keep Bama white!" from atop a flagpole during University of Alabama race riots in 1956; and the CCC's national leader, St. Louis personal injury lawyer Gordon Lee Baum...He said he welcomed the delegates and spoke about his family and conservative values.
Proud faces of the CCC's racist Right: Don Black, David Duke and "assistant" Jamie Kelso, Jared Taylor, Gordon Lee Baum.Well, John, I think your political team might take a look at its strategies. I know you're trying to lock up the right winger vote, but this kind of maneuver almost guarantees moderates are going to question your sanity. It's too late for the progressives. We think you need a padded cell. Have they seen the CCC "manifest"? (I'm not linking to it):
1) We believe the United States is a Christian country.
We believe that the United States of America is a Christian country, that its people are a Christian people, and that its government and public leaders at all levels must reflect Christian beliefs and values.
We therefore oppose all efforts to deny or weaken the Christian heritage of the United States, including the unconstitutional prohibitions of prayers and other religious expression in schools and other public institutions.
(2) We believe the United States is a European country and that Americans are part of the European people.
We believe that the United States derives from and is an integral part of European civilization and the European people and that the American people and government should remain European in their composition and character.
We therefore oppose the massive immigration of non-European and non-Western peoples into the United States that threatens to transform our nation into a non-European majority in our lifetime.
We believe that illegal immigration must be stopped, if necessary by military force and placing troops on our national borders; that illegal aliens must be returned to their own countries; and that legal immigration must be severely restricted or halted through appropriate changes in our laws and policies.
We also oppose all efforts to mix the races of mankind, to promote non-white races over the European-American people through so-called "affirmative action" and similar measures, to destroy or denigrate the European-American heritage, including the heritage of the Southern people, and to force the integration of the races.
Nice.
Foul fowl
Mike Tidmus is at it again.
Put a fork in it.
Who on earth would volunteer for that mission?
via Wayne Besen.
Make your own
church sign.
Oklahomans, can you recall Coburn?
Coburn: "I wish this was in every courthouse on the lawn. We need more of this, not less."I don't know if you all can boot the dude, but this guy is a delusional theocrat moron. You'll recall that
earlier this month, Tommy Boy appeared on
Meet the Press and explained to Tim Russert that he is uniquely qualified (as an MD) to tell whether somebody is lying just by observing their body language. Therefore, he can tell whether Strip Search Sammy Alito is telling a fib.
It's really no shock to learn Coburn is pulling a Roy Moore and getting behind a Ten Commandments courthouse monument fringe rally in Tulsa. I just wish that this buffoon would just return to private practice. No wait, that would mean going back to his money-making practice of
sterilizing underage women without their consent. Maybe the public is safer with him in the Senate where he can make a public ass of himself. (
Fox News):
TULSA, Okla. - A group of pastors fired up a crowd of more than 300 people during a rally around a monument engraved with the Ten Commandments on the Haskell County Courthouse lawn.
U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn spoke Saturday at the gathering in favor of the monument, which a recent American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit says is a sign of the government favoring one religion over another. But Coburn and others who were vocal at the rally contend that the statements listed in the Ten Commandments are guidelines to a moral, law-abiding society regardless of religious beliefs.
...Jim Green, the Stigler resident who is the plaintiff in the ACLU case, was contacted by telephone and declined to comment because of the ongoing litigation. The suit is the first of its kind in Oklahoma since a July ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that Ten Commandments displays on government property are not inherently unconstitutional.
...Tim Turner, pastor of a Eufaula church, told the crowd that the problem isn't in Stigler, where there is apparently overwhelming support for the Ten Commandments at the courthouse. The problem is in Washington, D.C., where politicians and judges make separation of church and state decisions for the nation, he said.
"Today is just a little rally," Turner said. "The real battle is coming."
In an interview, Coburn said the Ten Commandments are not strictly a Christian belief system, even though they come from the Bible. He also disagreed with the idea that people who practice a different religion might be intimidated by the Ten Commandments when they enter the Haskell County Courthouse.
"We can either deny our heritage . . . or we can embrace that heritage," Coburn said. "The creators of our Constitution were men of faith."
The leader of the free world's exit strategy
Sunday, November 20, 2005
[
UPDATE: Visited the defenders of this loser in Freeperville.]
Atrios has the whole sequence of pictures of this
national worldwide embarrassment. Background from the
WaPo:
Irked by a reporter who told him he seemed to be "off his game" at a Beijing public appearance, President George W. Bush sought to make a hasty exit from a news conference but was thwarted by locked doors.
..."Respectfully, sir -- you know we're always respectful -- in your statement this morning with President Hu, you seemed a little off your game, you seemed to hurry through your statement. There was a lack of enthusiasm. Was something bothering you?" [the reporter] asked.
"Have you ever heard of jet lag?" Bush responded. "Well, good. That answers your question."
The president then recited a list of things of that he viewed as positive developments from his Beijing meetings, including cooperation on North Korean nuclear disarmament and the ability to have "frank discussions" with his Chinese counterpart.
When the reporter asked for "a very quick follow-up," Bush cut him off by thanking the press corps and telling the reporter "No you may not," as he strode toward a set of double doors leading out of the room.
The only problem was that they were locked.
"I was trying to escape. Obviously, it didn't work," Bush quipped, facing reporters again until an aide rescued him by pointing to him toward the correct door.
***
I had to see if there was any Freeper commentary on this, assuming that the dead brain cell crowd would
blame the media for the Chimperor's miscue, or that he was just being a "regular guy." I wasn't disappointed -- this is the President that they worship.
Actual Freeper Quotes™
"The smear continues unabated."
"That was a pretty comic moment..."
"There's only one good thing about the Post at this point, at least we know it's not Katherine Graham that is trying to "get this president"."
"Slow news day for Reuters?"
"I think the world needs a pressie blood sacrifice. Such a reporter needs to be sacrificed to remind the press it is but a voyeur and not a player."
"True, it was an attempt to minimize the stature of Bush by belittling him. There's always one more question, you have to cut it off at some point. Here the Post acts as if Bush should have stayed until every question was asked. That would take hours."
"Reuters never misses a chance to take a cheap shot at Bush."
"Yeah, we have no idea how many questions had been asked so far, about what, how they were asked, etc. These reporters could have been asking him "Mr. President, when did you stop beating your wife?" for all we know. I'd really like to see this in context."
"My question is WHY was the door locked? I consider that a security hazard."
"Manufactured news."
"Another example of the MSM trying to embarass the President. The reporter wasn't satisfied with one. He wanted to get in a second shot!"
"You don't want someone coming in from behind the President do you?"
"My youngest son has recently decided on a career in journalism. I have given him official and clear warning that if becomes a liberal weenie MSM journalist or reporter that I will kick his butt (figuratively, that is) and that he will repay me and his mother every penny spent on his education. I told him to: "WRITE the story, don't BE the story!" I do not understand for the life of me why reporters cannot be independent and fair-minded?"
"The utter hate and disrespect of the defeated liberal media toward President Bush has gone beyond any limit that we have ever imagined. It is extremely sickening. PS: From the picture that you posted above President Bush looked joyful and had a joking look on his face and I do not see at all that he is off his game."
"This is funny as heck. He might be the leader of the free world but he cannot exit a room without assitance. I love it ! We all have days like this but not all of us have a gaggle of reporters to tell it to the whole world."
"The great sense of humor shown by President Bush makes him very endearing as a "regular guy" who has succeeded."
Falwell and his legal plan to "save Christmas"
Jerry Falwell and his legal bootlicker
Mathew Staver, president and general counsel of
Liberty Counsel are going to be slapping some lawsuits because of you heathens, atheists and non-Christians this holiday season...
Shouldn't they spend some of the Right Wing Christian Energy
TM feeding the homeless and clothing the poor instead of
this?
Evangelical Christian pastor Jerry Falwell has a message for Americans when it comes to celebrating Christmas this year: You're either with us, or you're against us.
Falwell has put the power of his 24,000-member congregation behind the "Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign," an effort led by the conservative legal organization Liberty Counsel. The group promises to file suit against anyone who spreads what it sees as misinformation about how Christmas can be celebrated in schools and public spaces.
The 8,000 members of the Christian Educators Association International will be the campaign's "eyes and ears" in the nation's public schools. They'll be reporting to 750 Liberty Counsel lawyers who are ready to pounce if, for example, a teacher is muzzled from leading the third-graders in "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing."
...In signing on to "Friend or Foe" this month, Falwell urged the 500,000 recipients of his weekly "Falwell Confidential" e-mail to "draw a line in the sand and resist bullying tactics of the ACLU and others who intimidate school and government officials by spreading misinformation about Christmas."
..."We'll try to educate," said Mat Staver, president of Liberty Counsel. "But if we can't, we'll litigate."
Joe Biden wets his finger and sticks it up to see which way the wind blows
"The fact that he questioned abortion and the idea of quotas is one thing. The fact that he questioned the idea of the legitimacy of the reapportionment decisions of the Warren Court is even something well beyond that."
-- Senate Judiciary Committee member and politician extraordinaire Sen. Joe Biden
I can't be the only one tired of this gasbag. Today, he decided that
Strip Search Sammy Alito may now be filibuster-worthy. HIs anti-choice views are just a little distraction to him. That tells progressive all they need to know about 2008, Joe. Listen to this mealy-mouthed, sorry excuse for a Senator. No wonder he dutifully licks his masters at MBNA and the rest of the credit card companies in Delaware. He is w-e-a-k. (
AP):
The views that Samuel Alito expressed on reapportionment in a 20-year-old document could jeopardize his Supreme Court nomination and provoke a filibuster, a leading Democratic senator said Sunday.
"I think he's got a lot of explaining to do, and depending on how he does, I think will determine whether or not he has a problem or not," said Sen. Joseph Biden, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which plans confirmation hearings in early January.
...Biden, D-Del., said he was most troubled by Alito's comment about reapportionment under the Supreme Court when it was led by Chief Justice Earl Warren. The Warren Court, as it became known, ended public school segregation and established the election principle of one-man one-vote. "The part that jeopardizes it (Alito's nomination) more is his quotes in there saying that he had strong disagreement with the Warren Court particularly on reapportionment — one man, one vote," Biden told "Fox News Sunday."
In the document, Alito wrote, "In college, I developed a deep interest in constitutional law, motivated in large part by disagreement with Warren Court decisions, particularly in the areas of criminal procedure, the Establishment Clause and reapportionment," he said.
Biden said the chances of a filibuster against Alito had increased because of Alito's assertions in the document.
This guy isn't going to go on board for a filibuster. I guess Joe wanted to give Sammy a pass on all of this information that came out right after Alito got the nod from the Chimp. From
Think Progress:
ALITO WOULD ALLOW RACE-BASED DISCRIMINATION:
Alito dissented from a decision in favor of a Marriott Hotel manager who said she had been discriminated against on the basis of race. The majority explained that Alito would have protected racist employers by "immuniz[ing] an employer from the reach of Title VII if the employer’s belief that it had selected the ‘best’ candidate was the result of conscious racial bias." [Bray v. Marriott Hotels, 1997]
ALITO WOULD ALLOW DISABILITY-BASED DISCRIMINATION: In Nathanson v. Medical College of Pennsylvania, the majority said the standard for proving disability-based discrimination articulated in Alito’s dissent was so restrictive that "few if any…cases would survive summary judgment." [Nathanson v. Medical College of Pennsylvania, 1991]
ALITO WOULD STRIKE DOWN THE FAMILY AND MEDICAL LEAVE ACT: The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) "guarantees most workers up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a loved one." The 2003 Supreme Court ruling upholding FMLA [Nevada v. Hibbs, 2003] essentially reversed a 2000 decision by Alito which found that Congress exceeded its power in passing the law. [Chittister v. Department of Community and Economic Development, 2000]
ALITO SUPPORTS UNAUTHORIZED STRIP SEARCHES: In Doe v. Groody, Alito agued that police officers had not violated constitutional rights when they strip searched a mother and her ten-year-old daughter while carrying out a search warrant that authorized only the search of a man and his home. [Doe v. Groody, 2004]
ALITO HOSTILE TOWARD IMMIGRANTS: In two cases involving the deportation of immigrants, the majority twice noted Alito’s disregard of settled law. In Dia v. Ashcroft, the majority opinion states that Alito’s dissent "guts the statutory standard" and "ignores our precedent." In Ki Se Lee v. Ashcroft, the majority stated Alito’s opinion contradicted "well-recognized rules of statutory construction." [Dia v. Ashcroft, 2003; Ki Se Lee v. Ashcroft, 2004]
Was this not enough to deserve a filibuster Joe? Oh, that's right. You're like the rest of the Dem establishment-- you constantly have to put your finger up in the wind before you can actually form an opinion.
Alaska: dumping ground for pedophile clergy
There's a lengthy, disturbing piece in the
L.A. Times about a Catholic missionary that allegedly terrorized two remote Alaska villages three decades ago. Nearly every Eskimo boy in the parishes where the late
Joseph Lundowski served became his prey, and victims have come forward to say they suffered abuse by him for years.
Blender Paul of
Paul's Rants, who pointed me to the story, alerts readers to pay attention to the usual obfuscation and contradictory statements from the church in the article, which is facing lawsuits left and right in Alaska: "Note in the story the letters in which the priests are concerned, but they can't get rid of the abuser because he was placed their by the Bishop, and then flash to today, when the church says that they were not responsible because he was a volunteer, not under their control."
Peter "Packy" Kobuk has to walk past the old Catholic church to get almost anywhere. To fill a drum of heating oil. To take his children to school. To wash his clothes at the only laundromat in this Eskimo village of 370. "I think about burning it down, but I have to block that out," says Kobuk, 46. "It all comes back to me right away each time I have to see it."
The decaying wood-frame building also haunts John Lockwood, a married father of nine. Its bell tower, which rises above the village's 90 plywood shacks and prefabricated houses, is one of the first landmarks he sees when returning home in a longboat from hunting seals in the Bering Sea.
"It brings back a lot," says Lockwood, whose weathered face reflects a life spent in the Alaska outdoors. "He did all those bad things to us little kids there, and no one did nothing to stop it."
Even after 30 years, the men can't shake their memories of the late Joseph Lundowski, a volunteer Catholic missionary who arrived in their village in 1968. The devoutly Catholic village elders welcomed Lundowski warmly, as they did all men of the cloth. But the children soon grew to fear and despise him.
Lundowski lived at a Trappist monastery in Oregon and worked as a commercial fisherman in Alaska before being taken under the wing of
Father George Endal, a Jesuit priest, and placed as a volunteer in several remote Eskimo villages.
Lundowski was never ordained, but in every way acted as a Catholic priest in remote villages -- ones that otherwise wouldn't have been served. The article notes that residents said that he wore vestments, held Sunday services, gave homilies, taught catechism, baptized children, officiated at weddings and performed burial services. No Catholic officials stepped in. With 41 churches and only 24 priests in the rugged Fairbanks diocese, they were dependent on "volunteers" like Lundowski.
The
L.A. Times piece goes on to describe, in detail, the horrors allegedly perpetrated by Lundowski on several of the then-children of the villages:
* A young man was asked to stay after catechism class and wash dishes; Lundowkski, he said: "...sneaked up on me...He pulled my pants down and penetrated me...I never finished the dishes."
* Another boy was molested in 1971after a class -- Lundowski locked the doors, lowered the window shades, removed his dentures and performed oral sex on him in the missionary's rectory bedroom.
Lundowski gave Kobuk a $20 bill and told him he was a "special kid." * The same boy, over the next four years, was plied with altar wine by Lundowski, sodomized and forced to engage in sex acts with other boys and girls.
* Lundowski performed oral sex on a nine-year-old, and fterward
gave the boy 25 cents that he shook out of an Easter Seal donation can.
* when one boy planned to tell Lundowski told him to go ahead,
insisting that no one would believe a child over a man of God -- and threatened to flunk the boy out of catechism class.
* After one attack on a boy that left bruises on his arms, Lundowski told him: 'You're a little kid. People will just think you fell down.'
What a f*cking dirtbag. OK, so you might ask,
what did the church do about this low-life bastard? Take a guess. Many victims told their stories but were not believed. Three boys did report Lundowski's conduct to Father Endal. He promised to take care of the matter, but the molestations continued.
Endal died in 1996 and has since been accused of molesting a minor.
...Now the men must prove their claims. As victims of clergy sexual abuse across the country have learned, reconstructing events that occurred decades ago in secret is a daunting task. For the Eskimos, the job was complicated by the church's initial insistence that there was no record that Lundowski had ever volunteered for the church.
Ken Roosa, attorney for abuse victims.
The villagers and their attorneys dug through church archives, family photo albums and old letters looking for evidence. [Ken Roosa, a former state sex crimes and federal prosecutor who filed the first abuse lawsuit] came across a grainy copy of a 1975 church newsletter that listed participants in a training program for deacons in the Diocese of Fairbanks. It included a photo of a bald man with horn-rimmed glasses. The caption read: "Joe Lundowski, 59 yrs., Stebbins."
This was proof that the church had trained Lundowski as a deacon and knew he was serving in Stebbins.
In the same file, Roosa found a 1965 letter by a senior Jesuit stating that the church "should have gotten rid of [Lundowski] a long time ago."
The letter was written three years before Lundowski arrived in St. Michael by Father Jules M. Convert, then in charge of the Jesuits in Alaska, to Father Jack Gurr, chancellor to the bishop of Fairbanks. Convert began by asking for a shipment of food for his men and more nails to complete the building of a village church, but most of the letter was devoted to his concern about Lundowski.
Convert expressed dismay that the bishop in Fairbanks, Theodore Boileau, had moved Lundowski from one village to another after receiving "complaints" about his conduct.
"I absolutely believe that church officials intentionally sent abusive priests to minor communities, transient communities, where kids may be less apt to tell and have less faith in the justice system,"
-- David Clohessy, national director of Chicago-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests
This story, along with an earler AP article, suggests that the Catholic church used Alaska as its dumping ground for pedophile priests that they couldn't "control", unleashing them in places where there would be less scrutiny. Note more hand-washing by the church... (via
CNN):
All together, 12 priests who served in Alaska have been publicly accused of sexual misconduct. Most of the alleged abuse occurred in remote villages, and most of the alleged victims were Alaska Natives.
Patrick Wall, a former Benedictine priest and consultant for a Costa Mesa, California, law firm that has worked on more than 300 church abuse allegations nationwide, said rural Alaska was a prime place to send abusive priests. Alaska's isolation and its cultural reverence for authority figures, such as elders and priests, meant parishioners would be less likely to speak up.
...Fairbanks Bishop Donald Kettler disputed the notion of Alaska as a dumping ground. "My reaction when I hear that is that I feel the opposite is really true," said Kettler, who has been bishop for three years. Those who work or volunteer in the diocese "come with a commitment wanting to serve the peoples of Alaska. They were not forced to come here."
...Rev. John Whitney, a church official in Portland, Oregon, vehemently denied Alaska is a magnet or hiding spot for problem priests. "It's absolutely untrue," he said. "I have never seen any evidence of that. People were sent to Alaska who requested to go to the missions there. It was considered the hardest place to go, because of the remoteness and the conditions they had to work with at the time. They wanted to spread the gospel."
Right. That's not all that was being spread in the villages.
Women in Alaska are also
coming forward with stories of abuse at the hands of pedophile clergy, so the
pending Vatican "solution" to ban gays from the seminary isn't going to do squat because they are not looking at
the criminals in their midst. Here's a story on another sick perv (
KTUU):
Rev. James Poole and the Catholic Church of Fairbanks are facing another lawsuit... Poole is a former Alaska priest who has been accused by several women of sexually abusing them as children. According to a complaint filed in Nome Superior Court today, the woman, only identified as Jane Doe IV, claims Poole sexually abused her when she was seven years old, which was in 1968 or 1969.
The complaint alleges that Poole told Jane Doe IV that they were going to “play doctor” after catechism class. It goes on to say Poole attempted to touch her before she got scared and insisted on going into another room.
It is tiring and enraging to see
Prada Papa Ratzi and his homo-hating hierarchy purposefully MIA on this kind of evil. Instead they choose to spend time (and parishioner's money) composing irrelevant documents
that say "
practicing gays with 'deeply rooted' homosexual tendencies or those who support gay culture cannot be admitted to the priesthood." Ratzi was also too busy
worrying about immunity against prosecution for the coverup of the mass molestation of children in his criminal enterprise to be concerned with the destruction of those lives at the hands of men charged with serving the flock.
When will it stop? When will people finally say "enough is enough" to the men willing to sacrifice the faithful's children for "the good of the church"?
'Ex-gay' experts convene to make the case for 'curing' homos
Saturday, November 19, 2005
[
UPDATE: Freeper response has bubbled up from the swamp...]
These people are dangerous. How many gays and lesbians, desperate to avoid being ostracized from their fundamentalist families, seek out bogus outfits like Exodus International and Love in Action. The organizations promote "reparative" or "reorientation" therapy prey on the poor souls that turn to them, hoping the gay can be chased away. Using a combination of prayer and ludicrous exercises, the aim is to help homos in crisis "
attain the goal of reaching their heterosexual potential."
The first thing I thought of when I saw this
AgapePress article on the
National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), conference, held in Marina del Rey, California, was that the gay bars in the area had to have been packed with attendees from the gathering.
NARTH comprises more than 1,000 therapists, sociologists, and psychoanalysts who believe homosexuality is not inborn and can be changed. However, the organization's November 11-13 gathering in Marina del Rey (Los Angeles County) attracted an angry group of protesters, many of whom argued that reparative therapy is dangerous and encourages self-hatred in homosexuals.
However, one of the conference speakers, Exodus International president Alan Chambers, disagrees. "I myself was a homosexual man 15 years ago," he says, "and for over a decade now, I have been leading a heterosexual life. And it wasn't about me hating myself; it was about me wanting something different than what I found myself struggling with."
According to Chambers, the fact that ex-homosexuals exist invalidates the notion that homosexuality is biologically determined. And at the same time, he contends, those homosexual activists and other individuals who deny that hundreds of thousands of men and women have found freedom from homosexuality are, in effect, invalidating their own messages calling for tolerance and respect.
Alan Chambers
says leaving behind his life as a homosexual man was the equivalent of the Hebrews' biblical exodus from slavery in Egypt. As executive director of Exodus International, he's touts the organization's classes to help their institutionalized straight wannabes
butch up by tossing a football around. For more on straight-shooting Alan, check out
Wayne Besen's site, who says: "
Can you believe that THIS QUEEN is the international leader of the"ex-gay" ministries???"
Among the protesters denouncing the NARTH event was homosexual L.A. City Councilman Bill Rosendahl, a practicing Catholic. [Love that candid, unbiased description!] According to an ExGayWatch.com blog, Rosendahl called the group's research and methods "unproven, unsafe and abusive," and described its persistence in viewing homosexuality as a condition to be corrected as "another form of rationalization for the continued persecution and prejudice against gay people."
...Chambers believes more people than ever are finding out that homosexuality is detrimental to an individual's physical, emotional, and spiritual health. And, he asserts that, as countless people -- himself included -- have demonstrated, same-sex desires can be overcome with the help of Jesus Christ.
You can read about the Exodus founders that ran off with each other, Gary Cooper and Michael Bussee, on
Anything But Straight by Wayne Besen. It also features the downfall of other "ex-gay" proponents:
* In the early 1970's Gary Cooper and Michael Bussee were counselors at an "ex-gay" ministry in Anaheim, Calif. In 1976, they organized the first national conference of "ex-gay" ministries. At this conference, Exodus International was formed and it is now the world's largest "ex-gay" organization. While traveling on behalf of Exodus, the two men acknowledged that they had not changed and were in love with each other. They soon divorced their wives, moved in together and eventually held a commitment ceremony.
* In 1979, Seventh Day Adventist minister Colin Cook founded Homosexuals Anonymous (HA). Appearing twice on the Phil Donahue show, he solidified his reputation in the early 80's as the nation's premier "ex-gay" spokesperson. But Cook's efforts collapsed in 1986 after he was exposed for leading mutual masturbation sessions and giving clients nude massages. Cook moved to Colorado and made a comeback in 1992 by helping Colorado for Family Values and Focus on the Family promote their anti-gay agenda. But in 1995, Cook's efforts unraveled, once again, after several of Cook's clients accused him of phone sex, mutual masturbation and inappropriate hugs.
* In 1987, Jeremy Marks founded Courage, London's first "ex-gay" ministry. In 2001, after nearly 15 years of watching people - including himself - struggle in vain to "change", he renounced Exodus's methods by saying that they were failing in their efforts to change peoples' sexual orientation.
* In 2000, Wade Richard's appeared as a media spokesperson for a group called the Saviors Alliance for Lifting the Truth and gave his testimony of "change" at a major press conference sponsored by right-wing zealot Peter LaBarbera, who now works at Concerned Women for America. But a year later, Richards rebuked the "ex-gay" ministries when he came out in an interview with the Advocate magazine.
* John Paulk was the most famous "ex-gay" in history having appeared on 60 Minutes, Oprah, and on the cover of Newsweek. But it was his appearance in a Washington, DC gay bar in September 2000 that got him in hot water. After he was photographed, he was suspended as Chairman of Exodus and put on a temporary "hiatus" by Focus on the Family.
As you might expect, the Freepi line up behind these groups. Read on for some "science" talk from the knuckle-draggers...
Actual Freeper Quotes™
"Tolerance and respect in general is never what the homosexual groups wanted. The only tolerance they wanted was to their sexual acts, and the only respect they wanted was to homosexuals over heterosexuals."
"angry group of protesters, many of whom argued that reparative therapy is dangerous
Yes it is -- to their twisted, selfish agenda."
"The "born that way" provides them with two uses. First, it pushes the public to accept homosexuality as "natural". Second it sticks it to the religious who believe that homosexual acts are sinful, because "how can God condemn someone when He made them that way"? Therefore discounting Christianity entirely."
"Is it any surprise that a "catholic" would have trouble grasping reality? I was once a lesbian but am no longer. I decided I wanted to obey the Lord more than satisfy my sinful thoughts. It was really that simple. I still find women attractive, but I don't lust over them. I am happy and at peace with God over this issue."
"The catholic had a problem with understanding that one is not born gay. That's my point. No one is born gay. Period."
"Having had a lot more contact with gays than I suspect the average person here has, I've come around to the idea that homosexuality is a genetic propensity rather than an environmental one. I suspect that the "success stories" of Reparative Therapy were either not all that gay, or decided that they'd rather climb back into the closet than deal with the stress of family/social ostracism. Flame away."
"Ask your evolutionist how a "gay" gene can survive even a dozen generations. If you prefer inquire of your intelligent designer what he had in mind if he made homosexuality a built in."
"I agree, and it really doesn't have much to do with the theory of evolution. If homosexuality were actually genetic, homosexuality would have ceased to exist thousands of years ago due to the fact that the gene would have disappeared through the elimination of reproduction."
"Well, no, because in past generations there was no discrete social category for homosexuality. Everyone was expected to marry and reproduce, and most gave it a whack, although there were certainly many complaints about some of the effeminate husbands of the upper classes who sired heirs but fooled around with other men and neglected their wives. That said, I don't believe homosexuality is inborn."
"God bless you! You made the right decision for your life and your child(ren)."
"Why do you agree with the reports of one group (gays) over the reports of another group (ex-gays)? There is no objective proof one way or another, just personal bias in choosing one over another."
"This isn't a flame. Just pointing out that many therapists and counselors, over many years, have helped thousands of homosexuals leave the "gay" life. A lot more experience, time, sheer numbers and knowledge than your opinion based on anecdotal homosexuals you have personally known."
"Recent research into brain recovery from trauma like stroke points to the brain's ability to grow larger in areas that receive a lot of cognitive attention; therefore, the brain of a violinist at death will be structured differently from the brain of an administrator, etc. Much of what may appear to you to be the result of genetics may actually be the result of repeated thoughts and behaviors."
"A number of homosexuals do not discover their orientation until after they start families. ( How they do that is beyond me. The thought of having homosexual sex is so off putting, that I cannot imagine how they could have opposite sex if they are wired for same sex)"
"So, in that case, even if it is genetic, one still has to consciously decide to engage in the behavior. Which means that a person has the ability, through free will, to not behave in this way, or even to ask God to remove the desire to commit this sinful behavior. And all of this means that there is no reason for a person to remain a homosexual if they don't desire to."
"actually the science fails to back up any claim of the homosexuals. There is no homosexual gene. period. That is not bias, that is just science. They have mapped the human genome. Found the the six or so variants of the breast cancer gene, have found the location of any other number of inherited birth defects. HOWEVER this one sexual behavior has failed to appear in a gene."
"Why have the homoadvocates not explained away the prison populations with their "gay gene" mythology? The reason is that the homosexual argument of "born that way" is a political statement in order to drive a political agenda. It has never had ANYTHING to do with science. Homosexuality is just another abnormal fetish."
"That is my point, there is no objective proof for either group. Therefore deciding that one group is inborn and another is not is based on self reports by the members of the groups. The choice for believeing either group is based on personal bias. I happen to think its not nature, but nurture and my view is not objective."
"Among the protesters denouncing the NARTH event was homosexual L.A. City Councilman Bill Rosendahl, a practicing Catholic.
He may be a practicing Catholic. But only because his priest and bishop are not. Our bishop here has told abortion and sodomy advocates to consider themselves excommunicated. And they got the message."
"According to an ExGayWatch.com blog, Rosendahl called the group's research and methods "unproven, unsafe and abusive," and described its persistence in viewing homosexuality as a condition to be corrected as "another form of rationalization for the continued persecution and prejudice against gay people."
"Let's see how this sounds compared to other sexual deviance: '...viewing necrophilia as "another form of rationalization for the continued persecution and prejudice against necrophiliacs."' Are we expected to take such nonsense seriously?"
"These liberals are all about choice. But not when it comes to sexuality. And yet, they hug up to bisexuals too. And each time the bisexual selects a sex partner, they 'choose' all over again whether to be hetero or homo. And that's fine with the libs and sodomites who love to celebrate such 'diversity'. But let a sodomite or a therapist offer hope for normal family life to other sodomites who want it for themselves and just watch them come out of the closets screaming at the top of their lungs over how evil it all is."
"Yes it is a behavior. To accept one is born with a propensity for same sex attraction, one would have to accept that one can be born with a propensity for attraction to animals, or for someone who is bi sexual. Any other behavior you can possibly think of would have to qualify, and it really is quite ridiculous. As much as we are told it is natural, there is no basis for that notion."
"The mind is like your hard drive. If a program is faulty and a few dll`s are corrupt, they can be repaired."
"Physically homosexuality does not make sense. Why give men genitals designed to be used on woman genitals which the walls are designed to receive and handle the male organ? Yet the walls of the rectum is easilly torn if it receives the male organ, increasing the risk of blood borne diseases and infections. Liberals believe in evolution and yet they ignore this evolutionary design of the male and female sex organs, and advocate the misuse of it and do not see it as abnormal. Maybe liberal thought process is abnormal."
"You're not alone. FR is home to others who have chosen victory in Christ over the urges of the flesh.Lust is something we all have to deal with. So, in a way your situation is special. And, also, it's not. With Christ, there is no condemnation, no special sins, only the call to new life in Him. This is something the world does not and cannot grasp. To be a new creature in Christ is a wonderful gift. Those who protested NARTH simply have no clue what NARTH is about."
Wicked witch of the Hill
Ohio Congresswoman Jean Schmidt, with a makeup job from Mike Tidmus.The Blend's favorite P'shop wizard
has a lot to say about the unhinged performance of Congresswoman Jean Schmidt on Friday slagging war veteran Congressman John Murtha. I couldn't have summed up the vapid, insulting nonsense better than Mike:
With a killer competency rating of 34%, President Artful-Dodger, Commander Codpiece himself, speaking on Veterans Day : “While it’s perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began. Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war.”
Vice-President I-Had-Other-Priorities-and-Five-Deferments : “The president and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory or their backbone — but we’re not going to sit by and let them rewrite history.”
Besides, if there’s going to be any rewriting of history, Karl Rove will handle it. He made it all up the first time.
Hopped up on all that pointless Republican testosterone, Ohio Congresswoman Jean Schmidt, addressing the US Congress, decided to “swift boat” Democratic Congressman John Murtha, who this week called on the US to hand Iraq over to the Iraqis :
“Yesterday I stood at Arlington National Cemetery attending the funeral of a young marine in my district. He believed in what we were doing is the right thing and had the courage to lay his life on the line to do it. A few minutes ago I received a call from Colonel Danny Bubp, Ohio Representative from the 88th district in the House of Representatives. He asked me to send Congress a message: Stay the course. He also asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message, that cowards cut and run, Marines never do. Danny and the rest of America and the world want the assurance from this body — that we will see this through."
...Thankfully, Congressman John Murtha scored a direct hit : “I like guys who’ve never been there that criticize us who’ve been there. I like that. I like guys who got five deferments and never been there and send people to war, and then don’t like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done.”
Hell freezes over - the left and right take on Target
Both the Left and the AmTaliban are shunning the red bullseye (for different reasons). After Target defended its lame-brained, illogical practice of allowing pharmacists to
deny women emergency contraception on ethical or religious grounds, pro-choice forces called for action (my post
here).
Now, the
American Family Association is
calling for stepping up its boycott of Target during the holiday season because it has, again, refused to have Salvation Army representation in front of its stores.
The American Family Association (AFA) wants help from the shopping public in using the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday weekend to keep sending a message to Target Stores about the national chain's faith-and-family-unfriendly practices.
AFA chairman Donald E. Wildmon says it is important that the organization's current boycott against Target, which started in October, keep hurting the company's bottom line -- that is, the amount of money made --especially during the biggest shopping weekend of the year. He is hoping a strong message from the pro-family shopping public will help convince Target to change some of its policies.
The reasons for the boycott are valid ones, Wildmon asserts, and they include Target's "refusal to let the Salvation Army put their kettles in front of the stores," and the company's policy "banning all use of 'Merry Christmas' in their internal store operations and in their advertising." He says Target wants the profits from Christian families' spending, but the retailer does not want their holiday message or the spirit of their charities -- including faith-based service organizations like the Salvation Army.
Back on the left side of the political spectrum, Joseph Hughes of
Hughes for America, received a weak response from Target about its public womb control policies that's worth a read, and there's a
Boycott Target blog up with the latest news. John over at
AmericaBlog summed up the stupidity of the retailer's policy well.
So let's ask Target if they also support the following Target employees: - Check out clerks who verify how fat you are before selling you that package of potato chips?
- Pharmacists who don't want to fill prescriptions for Jewish customers who killed Christ.
- Pharmacists who don't want to help customers who worship a "Satanic counterfeit" (read: "The Pope," in fundie-speak).
- Pharmacists who only dispense HIV medicine to "innocent victims" of AIDS.
- Pharmacists who want proof that women seeking emergency contraception were really raped, and that they didn't "deserve it."
- Pharmacists (or cashiers) who are Christian Scientists - can they refuse to sell any medicine, even aspirin, to anyone?
- Pharmacists who won't sell birth control pills to unmarried women, condoms to unmarried men, or any birth control at all because God doesn't want people spilling their seed.
- Can fundamentalist Christian employees refuse to interact with gay people in any way, shape or form since gays are sinners, abominations, biological errors, and very likely pedophiles?
Precisely. This decision by Target makes no sense, simply for consistency's sake. I think people should encourage the red bullseye to extend its policy to all employees and allow religious objections to guide their business plan.
Seriously, where do you shop, given the choices out there? If only Costco (a Buy Blue company) was a cross-competitor - it's a bulk goods store. Wal-Mart, a direct competitor, is already on everyone's sh*t list, Kmart is Red as well. As a consumer in the Bush economy, it really is hard to both be an activist and a family on a budget. No one really talks about that and its effect on this kind of activism. Let's take a look at the Buy Blue ratings...
Numbers for Target (L) and Kmart.
Costco and Wal-Mart.
What are good alternatives? What actions will achieve the most success at inflicting pain and bad PR on these companies?
This man experienced some reality TV that he couldn't handle
Call the waaahhhmbulance for this baby...he
has no case against ABC, but I hope they air this trashy episode of
Wife Swap. My question is, since most of these reality TV participants whore their way onto these programs, they shouldn't be surprised when they get tossed a curve ball.
An Oklahoma man who agreed to take part in the ABC show "Wife Swap" is suing the producers for more than $10 million after the "wife" they sent to his home was a gay man.
Jeffrey Bedford of Haileyville says in his suit that he was "misled" and "threatened" by the producers. The suit names Walt Disney - the parent company of ABC, the network, and production company RDF Media.
Bedford says he became so emotionally distraught that he suffered "physical and mental illness."
Bedford claims that when he told the producers he did not want a "gay wife" they threatened not to tell him his wife's location and would not pay for her to be sent home. The suit also claims that during the episode when Bedford conducted his regular Bible study at his home for the Haileyville Baptist Church, the gay swap participant invited a gay coalition to take part in the study.
It also contends that when he continued to protest to producers they repeatedly told him his wife was leaving him. The suit says he became so emotionally distraught he became physically and mentally ill and was forced to drop out of a college course he was taking.
His fragile ego suggests that he had no business being on a show called "Wife Swap."
Why does God hate the fundies?
Charter Oak Church, an Independent Fundamentalist Church of America in Indiana, was set afire by an act of a vengeful God, deservedly punishing them for their judgmental ways. At least that's kind of bone headed nonsense the AmTaliban spews whenever there's a tsunami or hurricane that "targets" people that they don't like, or see as the source of cultural corruption. (
IndyStar):
Neighbors saw the lightning bolt hit Charter Oak church near Churubusco, 15 miles northwest of Fort Wayne Tuesday evening, said Churubusco-Smith Township Fire Chief Kris Bair. But church members say the original bell and a cross hanging on the wall below where the fire started were untouched by the heat and smoke.
...Flames then shot from the west end of the building and bell tower. Soon after, firefighters left the building, Bair said. "A few minutes after interior crews came out was when the roof came down," Bair said.
Firefighters from 10 departments in Noble, Whitley and Allen counties fought the blaze for more than three hours, Bair said. A Kendallville firefighter was treated for debris in his eye.
Thanks to Blender Holly for the pointer.
Don't adjust your browser...
Friday, November 18, 2005
In keeping with the coffeehouse theme of this blog, I decided to fix up the digs in more earth tones. I had been contemplating a redesign for a while, and just finally decided to sit down and work on it. That's why my posting and comments have been light.
Fellow bloggrrrl Shake Sis actually
launched her own redesign yesterday, which looks great, btw. She kindly contributed this new fab logo for the Blend (someone hire this gal!), and the blog layout itself is based on the Accidental Khaki
Erisfree template, which I futzed around with last night and this AM.
What do you think of the renovations to the pad? UPDATE: 12:45AM Sat: lots of time spent tweaking to get the freaking BlogAds to display properly, but it's fixed. Please continue to comment on the design and any display issues and performance (load times).
Also, for those of you that commented early on after the switchover (and posted in the Blogger interface), your comments aren't hosed. You can now see them when you hit the permalink for the post. They are located after the entry. [I had forgotten to load the Haloscan code, so for a short while your posts "disappeared."]
The Most Important Issue Facing America
What is the Most Important Issue Facing America Today? What one issue should Congress address immediately to provide the greatest benefit to the most Americans in need? Getting our troops the body and vehicle armor they need for protection from improvised explosive devices? Addressing our monumental budget and trade deficits? Providing assistance to the people devastated by Katrina and investigating real solutions to deeply-ingrained issues of poverty and race in America?
Bzzt! Wrong! The Most Important Issue Facing America Today is making damn sure Paris Hilton and the rest of the wealthiest top 1% of the country don't lose their tax breaks.
John at AMERICAblog nails it:
It's really amazing. In the past week, the GOP tried to cut student loans. They tried to cut school lunches for 40,000 children. All because we just don't have any more money. And at the same time, they want to have EVEN MORE TAX CUTS. And C-Span just confirmed that the House bill will cut Student Loans, Medicaid and Food Stamps. Yep, the Republicans say they simply have to cut all the programs for middle America and for the needy because we just don't have any more money. But then they turn around and try to pass ANOTHER TAX CUT.
The far-right cabal that's taken over the Republican party is out of control.
Oh yeah, by the way, that little Iraq fiasco has cost us $300 billion, more than enough to pay for everything.
We can have the argument about the fairness of taxation, who should pay how much, what levels of taxation are progressive and fair, and how we should make changes to streamline the federal tax code... but not during wartime. No government in the history of civilization has EVER cut taxes in a time of war.
The Republicans have abdicated their mantle of fiscal responsibility a long time ago. George W. Bush presides over the largest federal bureaucracy in our history, the largest federal budget and trade deficits in our history, all courtesy of government controlled exclusively by Republicans. Under Bill Clinton, government shrank and the budget was balanced (no wonder Republicans hated him so much). Anyone who still clings to the hoary cliché of the "tax-and-spend liberal" hasn't been paying attention for the past thirteen years. (Unfortunately, "untax-and-overspend conservative" doesn't trip off the tongue as well, despite being more factually accurate.)
Another pillar of the Right's support for the GOP -- "strong on defense" -- is now also crumbling as people see the lack of planning, financial and tactical mismanagement, and continued carnage in Iraq. These are the politicians, my right-wing friends always point out, that draw overwhelming support from the military vote. As the coffins pile up and the light at the end of the tunnel appears to be decades away, it will be interesting to see how true that point remains.
The third leg in the conservative tripod is that old chestnut about being the party of "family values". Even most non-religious conservatives I grew up with think the GOP symbolizes the flag, mom, baseball, and apple pie; all that is good, virtuous, and honorable about America. These conservatives balk at some of the more strident Evangelicals in their midst, but grudgingly accept their religious agenda as being a necessary trade for a reliable voting bloc. But as the Evangelicals overreach with issues like Terri Schiavo, Intelligent Design, stem cell research, and the Ten Commandments, the "live and let live, mind your own business" conservatives feel less and less in tune with the "base". And even Evangelicals (at least the truly Christ-like ones) have a hard time reconciling "family values" with the homoerotic torture at Abu Ghraib, the desecration of religion at Gitmo, and dead bodies floating in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans.
The sad news is that even with the evaporation -- nay, outright reversal -- of the three mainstream memes of support for Republicans (fiscal conservative, strong on defense, family values), as evidenced by Bush's and Congress's cellar-dwelling approval ratings, the Democrats don't poll much better. As Jon Stewart noted, it's as if the Democrats are content to sit back, say and do nothing, let the Republicans implode, and then just collect the votes because now it's their turn. Why should anyone abandon the Republicans and support the Democrats if the Democrats don't take a strong, principled, opposition stand? Most people prefer the devil they know...
It is times like these when I long for a viable third party option in American politics. Rather than our partisan duopoly, where it seems one party tries to just be a less worse choice than the other, it would be nice if there were two major parties out of power, competing to be the better choice. Ah, but that would be too much like a
democracy now, wouldn't it?
The time is ripe for strong, principled, progressive Democratic leaders. If the Democrats drop the ball on this one, if they continue running "Republican Lite" in 2006, they're going to lose me to the Greens. I'd rather support a principled party with no chance in hell of winning an election than a so-called progressive major party that should be able to knock Bush and his thugs out of the park like Barry Bonds in a tee-ball game.
Agreeing with Conservatives Week
God what a weird week. I've been finding myself in agreement with conservatives. Not much, and not often, but enough times in a week for it to be noteworthy.
It started with McCain's Anti-Torture amendments, then there were a couple of posts by my anti-blogger,
Adam, that I agreed with. But this -- agreeing with Washington Post columnist and Fox News talking head Charles Krauthammer -- ugh, I don't know if I should celebrate or take a shower:
(Washington Post) Because every few years this country, in its infinite tolerance, insists on hearing yet another appeal of the Scopes monkey trial, I feel obliged to point out what would otherwise be superfluous: that the two greatest scientists in the history of our species were Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, and they were both religious.
... Neither saw science as an enemy of religion. On the contrary. "He believed he was doing God's work," James Gleick wrote in his recent biography of Newton. Einstein saw his entire vocation -- understanding the workings of the universe -- as an attempt to understand the mind of God.
Let's be clear. Intelligent design may be interesting as theology, but as science it is a fraud. It is a self-enclosed, tautological "theory" whose only holding is that when there are gaps in some area of scientific knowledge -- in this case, evolution -- they are to be filled by God. It is a "theory" that admits that evolution and natural selection explain such things as the development of drug resistance in bacteria and other such evolutionary changes within species but also says that every once in a while God steps into this world of constant and accumulating change and says, "I think I'll make me a lemur today." A "theory" that violates the most basic requirement of anything pretending to be science -- that it be empirically disprovable. How does one empirically disprove the proposition that God was behind the lemur, or evolution -- or behind the motion of the tides or the "strong force" that holds the atom together?
In order to justify the farce that intelligent design is science, Kansas had to corrupt the very definition of science, dropping the phrase " natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us," thus unmistakably implying -- by fiat of definition, no less -- that the supernatural is an integral part of science. This is an insult both to religion and science.
How ridiculous to make evolution the enemy of God. What could be more elegant, more simple, more brilliant, more economical, more creative, indeed more divine than a planet with millions of life forms, distinct and yet interactive, all ultimately derived from accumulated variations in a single double-stranded molecule, pliable and fecund enough to give us mollusks and mice, Newton and Einstein? Even if it did give us the Kansas State Board of Education, too.
Evolution 'warning' for science textbooks in Alabama retained
"We have also seen improvements in the textbooks because of this -- slight improvements. They still have an evolutionary bias, but we're finding them not as bad as they were ten years ago when we achieved getting the first sticker in the biology books."
-- "Research Analyst" Margaret Brown of Mother Schlafly's Eagle Forum, 'Bama division
Sigh. I was hoping not to have to post about wifey's home state again today, but up popped this headline about this interesting approach taken by the flat-earth crowd at the Alabama Board of Ed.
Parents can be assured that their kids will be adequately warned that they will be
exposed to evolution in the classroom. It's interesting to note in the
AgapePress article that Margaret Brown is confident that the cultural/political climate in Alabama is supportive of the labeling and is unlikely to be challenged, as the practice was in Cobb County, GA (a federal court declared it unconstitutional); one was removed from books in
Beebe, AR.
Science textbooks in Alabama public schools will continue to warn students that controversy surrounds the theory of evolution. The Alabama Board of Education recently agreed unanimously to retain an evolution disclaimer that has been in state biology textbooks for four years. The insert refers to evolution as a "controversial theory" on the origins of life.
Margaret Brown with the Eagle Forum of Alabama says although similar evolution disclaimers have been challenged in other states, that has not been the case in Alabama. "We have kept the battle focused on teaching science," she notes. "We just have tried to promote not excluding science," Brown further explains. "For the purpose of seeing that it would not be challenged, we've tried to keep the debate on science itself and the teaching of scientific information in science classes."
Nevertheless, supporters of the disclaimer being used in the Alabama public school biology textbooks realize the insert is likely to rankle neo-Darwinian evolutionists. A federal court declared a similar evolution disclaimer in Cobb County (Georgia) schools unconstitutional. However, Brown says such disclaimers are not as contentious in her state.
...The Eagle Forum supports an academic freedom bill in the Alabama legislature that would remove penalties from teachers who teach scientific criticisms of the theory of evolution. Brown says she would like to see Alabama teachers allowed to discuss with students the strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian evolution, as well as scientific alternatives to that theory.
Alabama's not alone, a plethora of states are doing end-runs like this, or like the fairyland of Fred Phelps,
Kansas, just tossing out the science altogether (a good site to see what states are doing is the
National Center for Science Education).
Anyway, I hunted around for the original insert provided by the Alabama, and here is the language from the
Textbook League.
A Message from the Alabama State Board of Education This textbook discusses evolution, a controversial theory some scientists present as a scientific explanation for the origin of living things, such as plants, animals and humans.
No one was present when life first appeared on earth. Therefore, any statement about life's origins should be considered as theory, not fact.
The word "evolution" may refer to many types of change. Evolution describes changes that occur within a species. (White moths, for example, may "evolve" into gray moths.) This process is microevolution, which can be observed and described as fact. Evolution may also refer to the change of one living thing to another, such as reptiles into birds. This process, called macroevolution, has never been observed and should be considered a theory. Evolution also refers to the unproven belief that random, undirected forces produced a world of living things.
There are many unanswered questions about the origin of life which are not mentioned in your textbook, including:
* Why did the major groups of animals suddenly appear in the fossil record (known as the "Cambrian Explosion")?
* Why have no new major groups of living things appeared in the fossil record for a long time? * Why do major groups of plants and animals have no transitional forms in the fossil record?
* How did you and all living things come to possess such a complete and complex set of "instructions" for building a living body? Study hard and keep an open mind. Someday you may contribute to the theories of how living things appeared on earth.
Head over to the Textbook League, where this disclaimer is wonderfully fisked.
***
Live Science has a good four-part series to check out,
SPECIAL REPORT: Evolution & Intelligent Design. I don't think anyone on the Alabama Board of Ed will be taking a peek.
PART 1
An Ambiguous Assault on Evolution
This Trojan Horse for Creationism has become very popular. But who is being duped? And what does it all mean for morality? PART 2
'The Death of Science'
Intelligent design is presented as a legitimate scientific theory and an alternative to Darwinism, but a close look at the arguments shows they don't pass scientific muster. So why are scientists worried?<
PART 3
Belief Posing as Theory
As evolution takes a beating, scientists remind us of the difference between fact, theory and belief.
PART 4:
Anti-evolution Attacks on the Rise
Each time the effort to introduce creationism into classrooms starts up again, so does legislation aimed against evolution. Learn about the rash of recent cases, plus a look at historically pertinent court cases.
Quicksand Jeebus statue 'keeps watch' over Ohio freeway
The Jesus statue in Monroe, Ohio, is 62 feet tall and weighs eight tons.This monstrous eyesore has been credited for reducing accidents on an Ohio highway. Does this mean the bible beaters will be erecting big fiberglass Jesuses in high traffic areas...? This story actually appeared in the
NYT:
Jesus first appears in a flash, a white statue rising from the flat cornfields 40 miles north of Cincinnati. Then he is gone, hidden behind a gas station.
Drive another quarter-mile up Interstate 75, past the billboards for Bristol's Strip Club and Trader's World Flea Market, and suddenly the image appears in all its full dimensions. Jesus, depicted from the waist up, is six stories tall and seems to burst from the ground, as if he might gather a tractor-trailer in his Honda-size hands and lift it to heaven.
After dark, the figure is illuminated by spotlights from below. "It sort of looms out at you, especially at night," said Aaron Andrews, a trucker from Milwaukee.
It looks like Jeebus has already had plastic surgery --
The image's steel frame was built in nearby Lebanon, Ohio, and the body, made of Styrofoam and fiberglass, on the beach in Jacksonville, Fla. The body was then trucked north. But when workers started installing the statue on an island in a man-made reflecting pool behind the church, they found that the head and arms were too small for the chest.
The builder, James Lynch, then spent three months ripping the fiberglass apart and recasting the outstretched arms and upturned face. The completed figure weighs 16,000 pounds and, at 62 feet, stands 20 feet taller than originally planned, though its skin is so thin that it bends to the touch of a finger.
Must read: 'The War against Right-wing Theocrats finally begins for real'
Thursday, November 17, 2005
Wild wingnuttery (clockwise from top): James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family; Donald Wildmon, founder of the American Family Association; Gary Bauer, president of American Values; and Pat Buchanan, a political commentator and founder of American Cause. They've been in control of the GOP agenda for too long, and the internal holy war is starting. (Photos: AP)Here's a
great DKos diary by Glenn Greenwald that Blender
Paul pointed me to. It's a piece on the long-awaited war within the Republican party against the social conservatives that have hijacked the movement with an unbridled desire to wind back the cultural clock, put a bible in every hand, a lock on a woman's womb, and gays firmly back in the closet.
Is it too late to stop these fire-breathing maniacs? A snippet:
The GOP is already hopelessly dependent upon the enthusiastic support of this strident, power-hungry minority. And these social conservatives are tired of waiting. They believe that their time for true power has arrived and they are not going to modify their demands or be satisfied with token gestures. They believe that they twice delivered the Presidency to George Bush and that the GOP needs them if the party is to stay in power. These beliefs have made them drunk with power and they are insisting upon carte blanche to control the areas of federal policy they care about. And they have been given that control by a captive Administration which has no choice.
Almost nothing happens of any domestic significance without the prior consultation and approval of the James Dobson's of the world, and entire sectors of federal law are being shaped to comport with their highly intrusive vision. There is nothing conservative about it, but by operating in the bureaucratic crevices of Washington where little attention is paid, they are slowly but inexorably re-creating almost every sector of federal law and administrative agency regulations in their own image.
But wait -- Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League, threw down the gauntlet
in a speech last week, taking on Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council.
Foxman said as these groups seek to use the government to further their missionizing goal, Democrats and Republicans alike are "pandering" to the religious conservatives.
..."What we're seeing is a pervasive, intensive assault on the traditional balance between religion and state in this country," he said. "They're trying to bring Christianity to all aspects of American life. They're not just talking just about God and religious values but about Jesus and about Christian values."
...But even more threatening, Foxman said, is how the views of many of the most strident Evangelical leaders have started to pervade American society, which he said will be revealed in a forthcoming ADL poll.
Some of the findings in that poll will send a chill down your spine:
*
70 percent of weekly churchgoers and
76 percent of self-described Evangelicals agreed that "Christianity is under attack", even though they have inordinate influence in Congress, the White House and the courts.
*
69 percent of Evangelicals and
60 percent of weekly churchgoers said there should be "organized" prayer in public schools
*
89 percent of Evangelicals agreed that religious symbols "like the Ten Commandments" should be displayed in public buildings.
And what are we going to do with these people - we're f*cked:
* only
26 percent of Evangelicals and
31 percent of weekly churchgoers
agreed that "courts should protect church-state separation."
Foxman's speech scared the dickens out of the spineless
Jonah Goldberg, who likes bedding down with the AmTaliban because the thought of siding with liberals is too much to bear, in fact dangerous. Glenn:
The explosiveness of this rift within the GOP is nicely illustrated by the reaction of National Review's Jonah Goldberg to the ADL's long overdue stance. Driven by the deep personal fear which characterizes virtually everything that he thinks and writes, Goldberg yesterday attacked the ADL for this speech, because Goldberg is petrified that the ADL, by criticizing this theocratic movement, will make them angry. He beings by melodramatically lamenting that the ADL "is making a horrible, horrible mistake," and then launches this telling, name-calling criticism of the ADL's stance:
Indeed, it strikes me as a form of cowardice to turn your energies against philo-Semtic (sic) Christian conservatives at a moment when real anti-Semitism is thriving in so many other quarters. Liberalism isn't Judaism and Judaism isn't liberalism. He'd be well advised to keep that in mind, for the sake of Jews and liberals alike.
Goldberg apparently thinks that, "for the sake of Jews," the ADL should avoid criticizing "Christian conservatives" because to do so is to associate itself with liberalism, which can only endanger Jews. He argues that the theocratic longings of Christian conservatism ought to be ignored by the ADL because the group's energies are better directed towards fighting what he calls "real anti-Semitism thriving in so many other quarters."
What powerful forces exhibiting "real anti-Semitism" does Goldberg think the ADL should be condemning instead of the church-state attacks being launched by the American Religious Right? Where are these threatening circles of "real anti-Semitism" which the ADL can do anything about? Goldberg doesn't say. Is it found among impotent, powerless Ward Churchill-type academicians? Among Muslim rioters in the French slums? Among clownish neo-Nazi groups with membership lists in the hundreds?
Boy, Jonah's feeble. Maybe the tide is turning among moderates and economic conservatives, but damn, when are the rest of the elected GOP clowns going to stop taking Dobson's calls and publicly take on the AmTaliban?
Go read the rest of that
Recommended Diary.
Get out the tiny violin for Dover, PA wingnuts
"There are those who resist all efforts of academic freedom when it comes to the subject of evolution," Gramley says in a press release. "It seems [evolution proponents] may be insecure in their views as they so viciously attack those who try to offer students the opportunity to explore a different viewpoint."
-- Diane Gramley, head of the American Family Association of Pennsylvania
Bite me. Waah, waah, little babies, crying because they were STOMPED in the election, with all the "intelligent design" knuckle-draggers on the Dover school board in
Santorum's state, booted because people are sick of these flat-earth moralists.
A pro-family activist in Pennsylvania is lamenting school board election results in a city that spawned a highly publicized federal trial over the teaching of evolution and intelligent design in public schools.
Residents in Dover recently voted in eight new Democratic board members, replacing all eight current members who had voted for a science policy that was challenged in court. The Dover science required students in ninth-grade biology classes to hear a statement on intelligent design before hearing lessons on evolution. The statement encouraged students to keep an open mind to various theories about the origin of life, including intelligent design.
...Diane Gramley, who heads the American Family Association of Pennsylvania, believes that both students and taxpayers were the losers in last week's election -- and that academic freedom in Dover has taken a blow.
...[Excuses, excuses] "The teachers are very disappointed with the current school board because it's a very frugal school board [that has] not raised taxes in the entire time they've been on the board," Gramley shares. In addition, she says, an increase in teacher salaries also played a part. "They're negotiating with the teachers [who] want a big pay raise, and this board has said 'we can't afford it.' And the teachers union was very much involved with the race."
..."[Voters] bought into the lie that was being perpetuated by the other side," she says. "There was a group started called 'Dover Cares' shortly after the lawsuit was brought. I mean, that's a nice-sounding name -- Dover Cares -- and they had money from the teachers union funneled through this organization because they had a candidate or two running who were Dover Cares candidates."
She wonders if the new members of the school board will permit students to know there is a controversy over the origin of life and that not all scientists agree on the issue. "Their answer," she says, "will reveal their true intent for academic freedom in the district."
Diane,
we want your children...we will make them heathens and deviants...or worse,
reality-based scientists. boohoo..boohoo.
AFP brings back the Cheney photo only a mother could love
This heinous image is
back again, with a new caption: US Vice President Dick Cheney, pictured October 2005. Cheney heightened the White House campaign against Democrats calling their accusations that the administration misled the country into the Iraq war 'reprehensible' and 'pernicious'.(AFP/Getty Images/File/Joe Raedle)
Another record low for the Chimp: 34%
"
How would you rate the job President George W. Bush is doing as president: excellent, pretty good, only fair, or poor?"
That's the question
Harris Interactive asked, and Bush is swirling the bowl at
a record 34% approval -
what a mandate!
Darth Cheney, lord of the
dark side of torture, is spiraling down to numbers still too high for my taste:
30%, down from from 35% in August.
Secretary of Defense Rummy's approval ratings dropped to
34% from 40%, and how about this: Secretary of State Condi Rice's approval ratings fell to
52% from 57%.
How Condi manages those ridiculously high numbers can only be explained by half of the sheeple not knowing what the hell she does, aside from her public role
co-mothering the infant-in-chief.
Alabama: still the worst place to be a gay person in Bush's America?
Last year, Bob Moser wrote an article for
Out Magazine that opened with the question "
Is Alabama really the worst place to be a gay person in Bush's America?" A snippet from my
December post :
My wife Kate, a native Alabamian, escaped from the nightmare, and even she couldn't believe the depth of the hatred and homophobia exposed by this article, including the heinous statistic that 44% of gay Alabamans are physically beaten and assaulted -- by their own family members. It's truly upsetting, and depressing. You wish the queer community would just get the hell out of there, but as with all stories like this, there are those that still want to stay and fight for their rights. I would consider this an almost insurmountable mountain of intolerance that runs both deep and high -- and all the way to the state house. Judge Roy Moore, famous for wanting to keep a gigantic slab of the Ten Commandments in the courthouse, is planning to run for governor. He says some frightening things about gays in this story that make you wonder what could happen if he is elected -- and he just may be.
Rense.com
As you all may know, Moore has officially
announced his run for governor, though one has to hope he has no chance of winning.
He has declared homosexuality "abhorrent, immoral, detestable, a crime against nature." he considers gay sex "an act so heinous that it defies one’s ability to describe it," an "inherent evil" that "should never be tolerated."
Moser, author of the article, currently works and lives in Montgomery-- he served as editor of the great progressive local paper here in the Triangle,
The Independent Weekly, from 1995 to 2000. He is a senior writer for the
Intelligence Report, an investigative magazine published by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
While the competition is stiff for what is the most gay-hostile state since that Out article, Alabama is trying to hold its own. So many gay Alabamians have to remain in closets that are tightly shut for their own safety. It's sad, yet all too predictable that an incident like this --
another 'gay panic' attack -- makes the headlines. (
Montgomery Advertiser):
An autumn wreath welcoming visitors into his home hangs just above the crime scene tape barring entry into Billy Sanford’s house, where he was allegedly beaten last month because he is gay. Sanford, 52, lay in a coma at Jackson Hospital Tuesday, clinging to life as police announced that they had arrested the man accused of leaving him near death on Oct. 19.
Marcus Dewayne Kelley, 26, of Union Springs was arrested Monday night following a traffic stop in Alexander City. He is charged with attempted murder. Lt. Huey Thornton, a Montgomery Police spokesman, said the case is not being considered a hate crime. According to Alabama law, a hate crime is committed against a person because of his “race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, or physical or mental disability.” Sexual orientation is not included in the statute.
Kelley, a handyman for Sanford and his roommate, told Montgomery detectives he hit Sanford in the head with a hammer because the older man wouldn’t stop making sexual advances toward him.
Sanford’s neighbors don’t buy that explanation. “I just don’t see Billy doing that,” said Jackie Richardson, who lives next door to Sanford on Palmetto Drive. “He wouldn’t have done that. There has to be more to it.” Sanford’s family feels the same way. “Billy is such a sweet spirit, a gentle, non-violent soul,” said his sister, Sherry Luna. “It’s really hard to imagine.”
Luna declined to talk about her brother’s sexuality, citing the sensitivity of the issue. “That would be a question best left to him,” she said.
It is uncertain if Sanford will ever be able to answer it, or tell people what happened to him. Doctors initially gave him little chance for survival and, even if he does wake up, severe and permanent brain damage is a possibility.
...Howard Bayless, chairman of Equality Alabama, said it is time for Alabama lawmakers to take action and include sexual orientation in the hate crime statute. He also expressed outrage at Kelley’s alleged crime.
“It is not okay to hurt us, and this kind of response is ridiculous,” Bayless said. “If it were a straight person who hit on someone of the opposite sex, he would have gotten a ‘No, thank you,’ and that would have been the end of it. “We don’t get a polite ‘No, thank you.’ We get clubbed with a hammer,” Bayless continued. “I hope the district attorney prosecutes this to the highest degree.”
The article also notes that this is the second alleged anti-gay crime in Montgomery in the last year and half, and in the last incident, "gay panic" was also the lame excuse given for a defense. In that case,
Roderick George of Montgomery was shot in the head by
Anthony T. Johnson, citing “inappropriate sexual advances.”
While the picture can seem bleak for gay Alabamians, there is hope and activism that can be found in pockets around the state. It's too easy to tell queer folks to just pack up and get out -- even in Montgomery. In July, the city
held its first gay pride celebration in seven years, while facing bigotry and disdain
from the likes of the Christian Coalition. It's a significant thing to note is that there were no protestors at this event.
Howard Bayless welcomed attendees to the Montgomery Gay and Lesbian Association's gay pride festival held at Equality Alabama's headquarters on Perry Street in Montgomery last July.The strategy that gay folks should escape from the Red and Purple states (Red states with Blue enclaves) to safety of Blue states is an illusion. Our interests in the long run are better served if those in Purple states reclaim them by coming out, getting politically active and protecting their interests. In a deep Red state there's only so much open hostility you can take, never mind outright danger. But there are those that want to stay and fight, and they deserve our support.
It's also notable that there
a legislator is now stepping forward in the state in the wake of these last gay-bashings. I can only imagine the grief he is going to get from the homo-bigots, black and white.
State Rep. Alvin Holmes, D-Montgomery, called the attack on Sanford "awful." "If a young man would make a remark to a young lady, you don't think we'd shoot him and kill him," Holmes said. "You can't treat people like that."
Holmes said he plans to introduce on Jan. 10, the first day of the 2006 legislative session, an amendment that would change Alabama's hate crime law to include crimes based on a person's sexual orientation. Gay and lesbian rights activists in Alabama and beyond are lauding that promise.
"It's not OK to just beat up on someone because you don't like who you think they are," said the Rev. Felicia Fontaine, a lesbian minister and head of Soulforce Alabama. "When someone assaults someone because they are gay, that's terrorism. It's about scaring other gays and lesbians." Fontaine said it was the same situation during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. "Lynchings were never about the person who was strung up," Fontaine said. "It was about scaring everyone else."
[BTW, Fontaine met with Roy Moore back in 2003, read about that exchange
here.] She's right, changing the status quo, especially on civil rights issues in a state with Alabama's history is threatening, and the best way to slow change is by instilling fear. Would this step of legislative conscience occur without a growing number of openly gay voices of advocacy (and allies) there, willing to stay and fight for their rights? I think not.
Related:
*
Nowhere to Run, a post by The Next Hurrah's JamesB3.
*
Equality Alabama.
Triangle Bloggers Bash in Durham
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
I had a great time last night at the
Triangle Bloggers Bash, which was held at the kick-ass
American Tobacco Historic District in downtown Durham. It was organized by the incredibly cheerful Anton Zuiker of
Mr. Sugar. I say incredibly cheerful because I just learned, by surfing over to his pad, that his place had been broken into before the event! Good grief -- he certainly didn't let on.
The evening started off with a tour of the impressive new studios of
WUNC (public radio station). It is located right off of the main courtyard, across from the restored Lucky Strike water tower and a graceful, flowing man-made river that runs through the complex. Take it from someone who works in a nearby renovated tobacco warehouse (
Brightleaf Square), this revamping is masterfully done, inside and out. Best of all - free WiFi in the courtyard!
The studio tour was also paired with a wonderful spread of food sponsored by
Lulu.com, an online book-publishing company, which allows you to self-publish in an incredible turn-around time. Anton did a book with them that was produced in
two days.
It was a great turnout - I am bad with head counts, but I'd say we had maybe 40-50 bloggers (and those interested in blogs), including the WUNC staff mingling for an hour or so. The festivities moved to one of the restaurants in the ATHD complex,
Tyler's Tap Room, where
WRAL (our CBS affilliate) and
Henry Copeland of
BlogAds sponsored beverages. They have a strong online presence and interest in the blogosphere and maintain
a list of local bloggers.
The highlight, of course, is meeting new people -- and those that you know only as an online presence. I chatted with
ae of
Arse Poetica; I hadn't seen her since our adventure with the
Westboro Baptist loons at the Durham School of the Arts back in May.
AE, with Bora; Bora and you-know-who.I finally met
Bora Zivkovic of
Science and Politics. Blenders know him by his commenter handle -- Coturnix. We had a great time chatting about the real and virtual worlds, and geeky stuff like what we find when we Google ourselves. Now that's a pair of dweebs.
You can see more pictures of the event
here and
here.
***
It must be meet-the-blogger week in these parts, because I will get the chance to meet up with Jill from
Brilliant at Breakfast, on Friday, who's in town for a family visit.
Pentagon: US Used White Phosphorous in Iraq as a Weapon
On the 8th of this month I wrote
They're Not WMDs When We Use Them, which detailed Italian and British media reports of the US use of white phosphorous, usually used for illuminating dark battlefields, as a burning chemical weapon against Iraqis, both civilian and hostile.
A commenter named
Confederate Yankee steadfastly refused to believe it:
White phosphorous is not a chemical weapon.
White phosporous may been used in Fallujah consistent with its primary purpose, illumination of targets, but exactly zero evidence is presented for the claims that is was used widely and purposefully, as a weapon.... Do you really think Marines would have poured hundreds of rounds of such an agent into an area that they would then immediate occupy? The story shows a complete ignorance of tactics or even a shred of logic....
You have a simple choice: do you believe a story that provides no direct evidence, or do you trust your lying eyes?
... The laws of physics are just that: LAWS.
White phosphorous simply does not have the capablity to do what your "experts" say that is does.
So you can disbelieve the evil military if you like, but you can't argue with science with any sort of credibility.
Oh. So, then, what should I make of this...
is the evil military lying to me?
(BBC News) US troops used white phosphorus as a weapon in last year's offensive in the Iraqi city of Falluja, the US has said.
"It was used as an incendiary weapon against enemy combatants," spokesman Lt Col Barry Venable told the BBC - though not against civilians, he said.
The US had earlier said the substance - which can cause burning of the flesh - had been used only for illumination.
BBC defence correspondent Paul Wood says having to retract its denial is a public relations disaster for the US.
Col Venable told the BBC's PM radio programme that the US army used white phosphorus incendiary munitions "primarily as obscurants, for smokescreens or target marking in some cases.
"However it is an incendiary weapon and may be used against enemy combatants."
And he said it had been used in Falluja, but it was a "conventional munition", not a chemical weapon.
Ah, I see. Just because it is a flammable chemical that ignites on contact with oxygen and is contained in a munition and contact with its particles causes burning of skin and flesh, and as GlobalSecurity.org notes, "Phosphorus burns on the skin are deep and painful... These weapons are particularly nasty because white phosphorus continues to burn until it disappears... it could burn right down to the bone", that's no reason to call it a chemical weapon. And lying to a grand jury about outing a CIA agent in a time of war, why that's just a technicality. And we don't torture people, we use extreme interrogation methods. And George W. Bush is a Compassionate Christian Conservative who's left no child behind, cleaned the skies, revived the forests, and is a intelligent, wise leader with impeccable ethical credentials.... OW! My keyboard just bit me!
Papa Ratzi wears Prada...and Gucci...and sequins
When will we see him on the catwalk? We know that the
Devil wears Prada, so Satan must be sharing his tastes with the fashion trendsetter sitting in the Vatican.
Ratzi's shocking people with his lavish choices -- and shimmering custom frocks. Do Blenders think that there is a tie here to Benedict's homo-bigoted policies, or just a desire to play Vegas? Hmmmm. (
Newsweek):
Pope Benedict XVI is nothing short of a religious-fashion icon, riding in the Popemobile with red Prada loafers under his cassock and Gucci shades. But his penchant for designer wear and a move to ditch the papal tailors who have dressed popes for more than 200 years are causing new wrinkles in the Vatican.
Benedict has favored his tailor from his days as cardinal, Alessandro Cattaneo, and the 20-year-old religious-fashion house of Raniero Mancinelli, which has provided the pope with dazzling new vestments (some with shimmering, sequinlike details).
I'll leave it to you all for the witty commentary. :)
Queer Tar Heel Baptists: you're screwed
I hope (the public) will take it to mean that North Carolina Baptists are voicing our biblical conviction ... (but also) that God offers love and forgiveness and healing."
-- delusionally bigoted Rev. David Horton, president of Gate City Baptist Church in Greensboro and the outgoing state convention president
Well, it's not like you were a welcome presence in most Baptist churches before. Any churches that were tolerant are getting officially booted now. (
365gay.com):
The Baptist State Convention of North Carolina has taken a formal stand on gays in a vote that asked its board to define when a member church is "in friendly cooperation" with the convention.
...The motion was made by Bill Sanderson, pastor of Hephzibah Baptist Church in Wendell, who said that such a policy "must deal clearly with "homosexual behavior" and include that a church that "knowingly affirms, approves or endorses homosexual behavior" is a church not in friendly cooperation with the convention."
Churches that contribute financially to the convention are said to be "in friendly cooperation" now, said Norman Jameson, convention spokesman.
Executing the policy might not be easy, an observer of religion said. "The convention becomes essentially an investigatory agency ... on one issue," said Bill Leonard, dean of divinity at Wake Forest University. "It will be interesting to see how they police this."
Not all delegates supported the motion.
[A voice of sanity] "Could it be that homosexuality gains our attention primarily because it's not 'our' sin?" said Rob Helton, a messenger from Cherry Point Baptist Church in Havelock. "If we write a policy (on homosexuality), it seems only fair and right that we write a policy on every sin in the Bible."
Bodies left rotting in the Ninth Ward
And to think, the Administration's biggest worry was the photography of the bodies of victims. I think leaving them to rot is a slightly bigger problem, don't you think?The continuing Shame of America. No respect for the poor and disenfranchised, even when you're dead.
On
Anderson Cooper 360 last night, a report that just makes you sick. I don't know who the Bush Admin was going to get to believe that they had found all the bodies after this disaster. When they called off the search on October 3, there was such an outcry that it has continued, but folks are coming home and finding the corpses of loved ones rotting in homes. (
CNN):
The official search-and-rescue effort was called off October 3, but there was such a backlash, crews resumed searching demolished neighborhoods. They have cleared areas zip code by zip code.
There was no joy for Paul Murphy (ph) in this homecoming. When he walked into his house in New Orleans' Ninth Ward last month for the first time since Katrina, it was shock and anger.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So, I'm thinking that, OK, I was going to come and salvage a few pictures or something. And I walk in here. I found my grandma on the floor dead.
DORNIN: Since November 1, 10 bodies have been found in the ruins of the Ninth Ward. The last area, known as the Lower Ninth, will open to residents December 1. Coroner Frank Minyard worries about what people will find.
(on camera): You're fully expecting that more bodies will come in once they open the Ninth Ward?
FRANK MINYARD, ORLEANS PARISH CORONER: Yes. And I think it's -- it's going to come in for a good while. There's so much rubbish around that they might find people in the rubbish. DORNIN (voice-over): They already have. And there are still many bodies left unidentified and unclaimed.
MINYARD: We have 150 autopsies left to do, all on unidentified people. Hopefully, that -- that will help us identify that person, if we can find a pacemaker or an artificial hip or something. Then we're into DNA.
DORNIN: Susan Eaton (ph) asked if she could send a DNA sample and was told DNA samples were not being accepted. Nearly 80 days after Katrina, not one DNA test has been done.
To add another layer of disbelief, after the state called off the search, the firm doing the body count - Kenyon International -
was still racking in payments up until yesterday.:
But on Sept. 12, Louisiana signed a body-recovery contract that included $25,000 for body bags. The state called off its search for victims Tuesday, but it's bound through Nov. 15 by a contract with a Texas firm that's costing it as much as $118,000 a day.
Kenyon, you may recall, had ties to Bush going back to his days as governor of Texas, and was accused of illegally discarding and desecrating corpses, yet they received the contract. More shame.
Hat tip, ScoutPrime, via AmericaBlog.Also see:
Katrina body counting duties given to firm tied to Bush family
Slave wage, er, slavery, in the Gulf
Halliburton and its subcontractor KBR hired hundreds of undocumented Latino workers to clean up, treated them like animals, and threw them out without paying them.[Welcome folks from C&L...]
Slavery is alive and well if you're an undocumented worker on the post-Katrina clean-up effort, according to a
Salon article (day pass or registration req'd).
Folks were worried about low wages, no-bid contracts and general corruption in the Gulf region, but this is the height of immorality, courtesy of Bush/CheneyCo's friends at
Halliburton/KBR.
Arnulfo Martinez recalls seeing lots of hombres del ejercito standing at attention. Though he was living on the Belle Chasse Naval Base near New Orleans when President Bush spoke there on Oct. 11, he didn't understand anything the ruddy man in the rolled-up sleeves was saying to the troops.
Martinez, 16, speaks no English; his mother tongue is Zapotec. He had left the cornfields of Oaxaca, Mexico, four weeks earlier for the promise that he would make $8 an hour, plus room and board, while working for a subcontractor of KBR, a wholly owned subsidiary of Halliburton that was awarded a major contract by the Bush administration for disaster relief work. The job was helping to clean up a Gulf Coast naval base in the region devastated by Hurricane Katrina. "I was cleaning up the base, picking up branches and doing other work," Martinez said, speaking to me in broken Spanish.
Even if the Oaxacan teenager had understood Bush when he urged Americans that day to "help somebody find shelter or help somebody find food," he couldn't have known that he'd soon need similar help himself. But three weeks after arriving at the naval base from Texas, Martinez's boss, Karen Tovar, a job broker from North Carolina who hired workers for a KBR subcontractor called United Disaster Relief, booted him from the base and left him homeless, hungry and without money.
At least slaves picking cotton got a meal and a shack to live in. This is so base that it boggles the mind. As Blender and
Julien's List contributor 'Bean said:
"After all, the last five years have shown American Values means the only people we put first are the ones we like - the ones in our OWN church, with our OWN speech pattern, with our OWN skin color, with our OWN orientation, right?"
But 'Bean, you forgot the most critical factor:
putting your rich base first is always the overriding concern in this corrupt, guilt-free Administration.
Roberto Lovato, the writer of this Salon article, continues, for those of you that doubt it's really that bad:
Immigrants rights groups and activists like Bill Chandler, president of the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance, estimate that hundreds of undocumented workers are on the Gulf Coast military bases, a claim that the military and Halliburton/KBR deny -- even after the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency turned up undocumented workers in a raid of the Belle Chasse facility last month. Visits to the naval bases and dozens of interviews by Salon confirm that undocumented workers are in the facilities. Still, tracing the line from unpaid undocumented workers to their multibillion-dollar employers is a daunting task. A shadowy labyrinth of contractors, subcontractors and job brokers, overseen by no single agency, have created a no man's land where nobody seems to be accountable for the hiring -- and abuse -- of these workers.
Other quotes:
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., is also against the practice, citing its "serious social ramifications." As he told Salon, it devastates "local workers who have been hit twice, because they lost their homes."
Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., who has been an outspoken critic of the use of undocumented workers at Belle Chasse and on other Katrina cleanup jobs, said in a recent statement, "It is a downright shame that any contractor would use this tragedy as an opportunity to line its pockets by breaking the law and hiring a low-skilled, low-wage and undocumented work force."
...Texas-based DRS Cosmotech is another subcontractor that provided cleanup crews to Halliburton/KBR in the Gulf. Roy Lee Donaldson, CEO of the company, refused to respond to accusations of non-payment and exploitation leveled at his company by several workers, including 55-year-old Felipe Reyes of Linares, Nuevo Leon, Mexico. (Donaldson hung up the phone when I identified myself as a reporter.)
There is no accountability on this. It's why outfits like
Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch need to be on the case of this heinous story.
Here's a little contact info:
Cosmotech Inc./Donaldson Restoration Services
2009 Dowling Drive
Richmond, TX 77469
(CMR 01251)
281-341-6631
Cross-posted at Pandagon.Read more Fresh House Blend.
How the world views the U.S.
It's good to get a peek at how other countries view U.S. policies and actions. A great portal,
Watching America, collects news about the U.S. written outside our borders. The site is the brainchild of Robin Koerner, a British entrepreneur, and Will Kern, who is a former editor of the International Herald Tribune.
The appeal of this site is that it presents English translations of foreign-language news sources that you cannot find anwhere else. Some current headlines:
*
People's Daily, China: U.S. 'Looks for Enemies,' Loses Friends in 'Its Own Backyard'
*
El Universal, Venezuela: Chavez Says Bush Left Summit, 'With Tail Between His Legs'
*
El Universo, Ecuador: In Spite of Bush ...A Simple Voting Error?
"There is no need to confuse the twisted politics of Bush and Cheney with the positive ideals of America.”
*
Corriere Della Serra, Italy: Italians Seek Extradition of 22 CIA Agents Charged in 'Rendition'
*
The Star, Jordan: Karen Hughes' Mission 'Rude,' 'Insensitive,' 'Tactless'
*
Tunis Hebdo, Tunisia: Bush Hurtling Into Oblivion
*
Azzaman, Iraq: Iraqis Say Life is Deteriorating; Americans Say Things Are Better
Surf over and support Watching America's work.
Why is Bill O'Reilly spying on queers at Brown?
A still frame from a video recording shot around 1:45 a.m. Sunday morning catches "O'Reilly Factor" producer Jesse Watters, above, filming for the show's Monday night segment on Sex Power God. (clip: Oliver Schulze)Could it be...
ratings? O'Reilly sends an "undercover" producer to tape "debauchery" at a queer party at Brown. Yeah, I'm sure there were no frat parties or keggers that he could have found at any other college, highlighting what goes on when straight folks party down. (
Brown Daily Herald via PageOneQ):
Brown's annual Sex Power God tradition made national news Monday night when Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor" aired footage of Saturday's party taped by a producer who attended the Queer Alliance event but did not identify himself at the time.
The Fox News Web site described the segment as an investigation into "the party Brown University doesn't want YOU to know about!"
To add to the bullsh*t, O'Lielly didn't have his facts right (what's new there), so he just went on the air and lied. His whole focus was to point out that Brown was paying for the event and thus endorsing it. Brown didn't pay for the party.
O'Reilly argued that it was inappropriate for Brown to use University property and the "$100 student government fee" - actually a $136 per year student activities fee - for a party in which many students got hurt. "I'm sure there are a lot of students who don't want their money to go to this," he said.
In fact, no University money went toward the event, said Undergraduate Finance Board Chair Swathi Bojedla '07. Instead, Queer Alliance paid for the event with funds it had raised, she said.
Say it ain't so, Bob
Bob Woodward is caught up in the Plame case, and knew about her ID -- in
mid-June 2003 -- before Jailbird Judy. Even worse, he didn't tell his boss at the WaPo that he was deeply involved in the case until now. We're only learning about this at the present time because Woodward was slapped with a subpoena to testify after one of those "unnamed senior administration officials" squealed on him. (
WaPo):
Woodward never mentioned this contact -- which was at the center of a criminal investigation and a high-stakes First Amendment legal battle between the prosecutor and two news organizations -- to his supervisors until last month. [Washington Post Executive Editor Leonard] Downie said in an interview yesterday that Woodward told him about the contact to alert him to a possible story. He declined to say whether he was upset that Woodward withheld the information from him.
It gets sleazier, because the formerly-straight-shooting Woodward has been slagging prosecutor Fitzgerald and downplaying the significance of the leak all this time as a talking head, which amounts to propaganda for the Bush Administration. Now we know why he did it - it clearly wasn't in his best interest to spin it truthfully.
Woodward, who is preparing a third book on the Bush administration, has called Fitzgerald "a junkyard-dog prosecutor" who turns over every rock looking for evidence. The night before Fitzgerald announced Libby's indictment, Woodward said he did not see evidence of criminal intent or of a major crime behind the leak.
"When the story comes out, I'm quite confident we're going to find out that it started kind of as gossip, as chatter," he told CNN's Larry King.
Woodward also said in interviews this summer and fall that the damage done by Plame's name being revealed in the media was "quite minimal."
"When I think all of the facts come out in this case, it's going to be laughable because the consequences are not that great," he told National Public Radio this summer.
Is there something in the water up there inside the Beltway that robs folks of ethical principles?
How the mighty have fallen...
*
Text of his statement, via Raw Story
* Excellent DKos diary by Glenn Greenwald,
The Woodward Bombshell is a Disaster for the White House
'Dean' Flickinger on Iraq
Uncle Sam needs HIM.As we expected, we find the recruiter of fine young conservative minds, "Dean" Christopher Flickinger, is a card-carrying member of the
Yellow Elephant brigade. Here's his ballsy excuse for not stepping up to serve and take an IED for his Dear Leader, from the Conservatives On Campus web site (no, I'm not linking to him -
I've given him plenty of hits already), in response to some "hate mail."
I'm not in Iraq because I don't have to be in Iraq. We have brave men and women who volunteer and dedicate their lives to fighting for our country so those of us back here at home may carry on with our livelihoods in comfort and security. But, make no mistake, Americans who cherish freedom and liberty will not hesitate to defend the values they hold dear.
And he actually digs in deeper, in a column for
Human Events. Read this godawful bullsh*t:
The loss of 2,000 lives is tragic. In fact, the loss of even one life is heartbreaking. But, to pick some sort of magical "death toll number" as to when America should tuck its tail between its legs and run is down right un-American! They want to know, "How many more?" The answer is: "As many as it takes." The price of 2,000 lives over a two and a half year period - for the cause of freedom - is small compared to what our forefathers paid.
There, my friends, is the Right Wing.
Joseph Hughes (the former roomie of "Dean" Christopher Flickinger) is on a tear about this:
"Make no mistake," you tell us, "Americans who cherish freedom and liberty will not hesitate to defend the values they hold dear." How, exactly, are you defending the values you hold dear? Have you taken up arms in this Global War on Terror that your leader loves to wage? Have you enlisted in the armed forces, joining those "brave men and women" you mentioned? Have you fought for those same men and women once they have returned home only to see their benefits cut? Of course you haven't.
Instead, you've decided to cash your chips and sit back, relax, and let someone else's sons and daughters fight for your values, for your imperial foreign policy. You've chosen instead to enlist other like-minded twits to form the next generation of war-era cowards. You romanticize war, you fetishize it. War, to you and your ilk, is nothing more than a patriotic snuff film, a masturbatory aide. Yet despite your bluster, your bravado, you refuse to fight. Why? Because someone else will.
I decided to take a look at some of the Flicka's "Thank You" mail, and it seems to me that the "Dean" doesn't mind bullying professors on campus; he's a great candidate to suit up and use his "skillz" over in Baghdad:
"Mr. Flickinger did an amazing job confronting my professor.... It was truly amazing to see such a feared man on our campus quiver back into the corner.... When Flickinger brought this issue to national attention, there was an instant breeze of attitude change that came over Simpson's campus. For the first time students saw that they didn't have to back down to bullying professors. Students don't need this sort of added pressure and intimidation in their lives, and it is going to take people like Mr. Flickinger and Human Events Online to address these issues. Often, students think that they don't have options but to back down when facing professors who are wrong, but this is simply not the case!
-- Christopher Erickson, President, Simpson College Republicans (Iowa)
Do we want to put any money on whether Mr. Erickson is a fellow Yellow Elephant? The "Dean" is tight with Christopher, having written a knee-slapping profile in
Human Events of thwarted conservative protest against Senator Tom Harkin, so that would explain the "Thank You" letter. BTW, I still don't see the ads rolling in on Flicka's site. You'd think the dork would be capitalizing on the exposure. No Freepi advertisers ready to sign on, Chris?
Impure thoughts
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
The brown paper wrapper existed for a reason. Its existence acknowledged the harm that can come from an impure thought.
-- Jane Jiminez, a former elementary school teacher and "freelance writer dedicated to issues of importance to women and the family."
Oh. my. god. If you are a regular Blend reader you are familiar with
Jane Jiminez, the AgapePress columnist in need of, well,
something. She's written about the evils of dancing (see my post, "
Pelvic thrusts are the devil's work"), and birth control (
Emergency contraception is the devil's work).
However, this week, Jane's obsessing about advertising and porn (and Paris Hilton). (
AgapePress):
It used to arrive in a plain brown paper wrapper. Schoolboys lucky enough to find a hidden copy would sneak off to share it at school ... a perfect way to win points with their friends.
In the span of one lifetime, the plain brown paper wrapper has been recycled to make in-your-face glossy catalogues and wall-sized murals of nearly naked teens suggestively posed by Abercrombie & Fitch. MTV puts the photos to music. And video games draw you into the fun.
Fully fusing porn with American family life, last May, hometown burger king, Carl's Jr. gave Dads something to watch with their young boys. Paris Hilton, barely clad in a thong bikini, "with hoses shooting up everywhere," writhed in suds atop a Bentley ... seductively licking her lips over a hamburger.
Well, alrighty then.
Jane goes on to profile a teacher that helps scare young people with porn and chastity stories.
Dana spends five days each week in the classroom talking about sex with teens. She and the kids cover the physical, emotional and relational reasons for abstaining from sex until marriage.
On the last day of class, Dana brings up the subject of porn. "I can see it in their eyes," she says. "Half of the kids in the class look down at their desks. They're involved with porn, and they're embarrassed."
Dana has a hard job in a culture that mixes porn with simple television commercials for hamburgers. She must help students understand the damage of an impure thought. She must lead them through the natural consequences of linking a beautiful expression of intimate sexual love to the heartless eroticism of porn.
This unhinged woman has too much time on her hands, not to mention she's behind the curve. Railing on Paris Hilton for that ad at this stage is
so yesterday.
Brandi came up "a bit short"
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! I needed a good laugh before I left work today:
(www.BrandiSwindell.org) By now I'm sure you've heard the news that we came up a bit short Tuesday night.
A bit short? You lost 70% to 30%! Your opponent beat you by a thousand more votes than you received! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! I guess I shouldn't expect an understanding of simple math from the kind of people who think evolution is a lie and Adam and Eve rode around on a dinosaur's back.
Take solace, Brandi, that the Denver Broncos, who "came up a bit short" in their 55-10 Super Bowl XXIV loss to San Francisco, eventually won a couple. Or, take heed the story of Walter Mondale coming up "a bit short" in his 525-13 Electoral College loss to Ronald Reagan in 1984 and was never seen on the political scene again.
'Bush rarely speaks to father, family is split'
Get the Drudge sirens going...
Insight Mag is reporting (via Queen Drudge - and I'm not linking to him) that the Chimp isn't getting on well with Poppy these days, and that it really is a bunker mentality at the White House. I'm just getting too much pleasure out of this, then I think -- this guy is running the country and has access to nukes, for god's sake.
President Bush feels betrayed by several of his most senior aides and advisors and has severely restricted access to the Oval Office, INSIGHT magazine claims in a new report.
The president’s reclusiveness in the face of relentless public scrutiny of the U.S.-led war in Iraq and White House leaks regarding CIA operative Valerie Plame has become so extreme that Mr. Bush has also reduced contact with his father, former President George H.W. Bush, administration sources said on the condition of anonymity.
“The atmosphere in the Oval Office has become unbearable,” a source said. “Even the family is split.”
INSIGHT: Sources close to the White House say that Mr. Bush has become isolated and feels betrayed by key officials in the wake of plunging domestic support, the continued insurgency in Iraq and the CIA-leak investigation that has resulted in the indictment and resignation of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff.
The sources said Mr. Bush maintains daily contact with only four people [all his mommy figures]: first lady Laura Bush, his mother, Barbara Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes. The sources also say that Mr. Bush has stopped talking with his father, except on family occasions.
Maybe Poppy's finally told the little guy that the current administration has f*cked up U.S. relations with
half most of the globe and it's all due to the incompetence of the Chimperor. After all, Poppy's had to help the poor bastard out all his life, and what does he have to show for it -- a son that is a dangerous, unstable dunce -- and everyone knows it.
And perhaps the matter of the Chimperor probably
hitting the booze again -- and being a head case -- isn't sitting well with the old man either.
Also see:
Bush and His Women, by Shakes Sis.
Air-kiss to Darth Cheney
Cheney Heckled by Anti-War Protesters. Tee-hee.
Vice President Dick Cheney was heckled by protesters Tuesday as he spoke at the groundbreaking for a public policy center honoring former Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker.
During Cheney's brief remarks, about a half-dozen people protesting the war in Iraq yelled, "War, what is it good for?" and held up a large banner saying, "Peace Now."
Cheney continued speaking and didn't acknowledge the protesters, who were escorted from the ceremony inside the University of Tennessee's basketball arena.
About 50 protesters, most of them appearing to be college age, demonstrated outside the arena. Several carried signs, including one that read "Honor Baker, Impeach Cheney."
Those pesky women bloggers
My bloggrrrl
Shakes Sis and
Pandagon co-blogger
Amanda Marcotte are just two of the gals featured in an online article on women bloggers at
SadieMAG:
"Bloggers add to the public discourse a sense of the immediacy of national politics, undermining the myth that decisions made in D.C. don't have an immediate impact on average people," says Melissa McEwan, who blogs on the site Shakespeare"s Sister (www.shakespearessister.blogspot.com). "They bring the passion and vibrancy of average people to the democratic process in a way that has not been visible for quite some time."
What does a typical day on the blogosphere reveal? On the liberal leaning Rox Populi (www.roxpopuli.com), bloggers skewer the president, opining, "The American public is awake now and many of them are no longer buying the faux Jesus juice," adding, "Ah, if only this were true." On the other end of the spectrum, AndRightlySo (www.andrightlyso.com)--whose motto "There is nothing sexier than women who are on the right" firmly states its political affiliation--slings insults at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals which "has gone TOO FAR this time" in undermining parental rights. Meanwhile, Suburban Guerilla (www.susiemadrak.com) smirks, "What some journalists won't do to have a Republican in their bed?" and Feministe (www.feministe.us/blog) warns, "Watch out, Pennsylvania, God's gonna getcha."
One of the issues that comes up in the article, which you've
read before here at the Blend, is the "male bloggers rarely link to female-written sites" issue. It also covers the dilemma among women bloggers about Wonkette, who is, for some reason, still the designated go-to gal blogger by the establishment.
Wonkette (www.wonkette.com) provides a titillating, raunchy collection of inside-the-Beltway gossip--not a website for those who see women as the more refined sex--making Ana Marie Cox, Wonkette's creator, the go-to gal when mainstream media wants to cite a "women blogger."
"I think she's funny," says Beyerstein, "but it's kind of frustrating for more serious female bloggers. She's not a [policy] wonk, she's an entertainer." Kathy states it more bluntly: "Any woman blogger on the web can use her sexuality to gain readers. But is that what we want?"
Yet mainstream media pundits and academics regularly invite the dirty-writing Wonkette to comment on issues of blogging or blogging ethics. She "was invited to represent not only women but the liberal blogs. That [annoyed] the hell out of everyone," Beyerstein says.
While a significant number of female bloggers exist, they often don't receive the credit given to male bloggers, explains Marcotte. "It's out-and-out sexism. That comes from my experience switching to Pandagon. For a certain percentage of the audience, there was nothing I could do to make them happy. There was nonstop sniping--obviously coming from resentment that a woman was blogging."
Anyway, it's a good read, and I'm sure you'll have your own impressions to share. At least I
hope so...
Amanda has more to say about the topic
here.
While I'm at it, check out Shakes Sis's post,
O’Reilly is an Un-American Jackass -- I heartily agree on that.
'Cool mom' gets 30 years for sex parties
What is with the rash of women who have suddenly turned to fulfilling their sexual needs with young teenage boys? And where the hell were they when I was a young teenage boy?
It's not a new phenomenon, I'm sure. We can look back to
The Graduate for confirmation of that. I even have friends whose first sexual experience was with a much older woman. One friend lost his virginity at 12 with a 24-year-old babysitter. But the attention paid to the phenomenon seems new, especially with the seemingly monthly stories of a female teacher sleeping her male teenage students.
There's certainly a double-standard when society looks at the adult-child pairing. A man seducing a Lolita is taking advantage of a young innocent girl. But a MILF seducing a teen boy gets a reaction that is part "huh?" toward the woman and "you lucky bastard!" toward the boy. Is that right or wrong? Do boys get as messed up by such a relationship as girls do?
The public's attitude must be swinging toward "yes", at least judging by this latest sentencing:
GOLDEN, Colorado (AP) -- A woman who authorities said had sex with high school boys during alcohol- and drug-fueled parties has been sentenced to 30 years in prison, officials said.
She pleaded guilty in July to two misdemeanor counts of sexual assault and nine felony counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
She also was sentenced for additional charges of third-degree assault, violation of a restraining order and harassment for unrelated cases involving her husband and children, prosecution spokesman Carl Blesch said.
Authorities said Johnson held parties for the boys almost weekly between October 2003 and October 2004. They said Johnson provided drugs and alcohol to eight boys and had sex with five of them.
No word on whether that was all five at once. And you gotta feel for the other three boys. Imagine the teasing they'll get because they couldn't even get laid by the party mom. (Or, maybe those three just had better sense. And taste. Or they're gay... not that there's anything wrong with that.)
Thirty years? Does anyone else think this is a little excessive? Especially when you consider the average sentence served for rapists and murderers is less than half that?
'Bald Ego' Murkowski gets 'unusable' jet on Alaskans' dime
Man, you just can't make it up -- the balls on this dude (and lack of brains). Can't do without
the airborne flushable crapper, eh Frank?
Critics have dubbed it "Bald Ego," "Murky's Turkey" and "Incontinental Airlines," but Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski finally has the sleek executive jet he says he and other state officials need.
The $2.6 million Westwind aircraft, equipped with a leather sofa, burgundy carpeting and a flush toilet, arrived this week in Anchorage and will replace a no-frills turboprop used by previous Alaska governors for official business.
Critics say Murkowski's jet is unusable in much of rural Alaska, where runways are too short and made of gravel or nonexistent. Murkowski press secretary Becky Hultberg defended the purchase, saying the Republican governor believes that "this is an aircraft that Alaska needs as one of the most aviation-dependent states in the nation."
Alaska, which has a $30 billion oil-wealth savings account, is in better financial shape than most U.S. states. But the jet purchase has been cited as one reason for the former banker's low approval ratings.
Polls show him to be the nation's second-most-unpopular governor, topped only by Ohio Republican Gov. Robert Taft.
Speaking of the corrupt Taft, have you seen Time Magazine's piece "
The Worst Governors in America - Bob Taft"?
The only thing more stunning than the spectacle of a quivering, hangdog Ohio Governor pleading no contest in August to criminal charges is the fact that he is still in office. Bob Taft, the Republican great-grandson of a U.S. President and son of a Senator, could have received a two-year jail term for failing to report, as state law requires, 47 golf outings paid for by others, but a municipal-court judge let him walk after slapping him with a $4,000 fine. Taft has since ignored thunderous demands for his resignation, even from many onetime allies.
Baptist bucks force disbanding of gay group at Mercer University
The Mercer Triangle Symposium is an organization recognized by the Student Government Association, and though the University does not sponsor this organization, we do respect the right of students to assemble and discuss wide-ranging social and religious issues.
As president of the University, I am very much aware of the views and deeply-held feelings of all of our Baptist allies, and we have sought to balance a genuine sensitivity to the viewpoints of the many Baptists who support the University while preserving a community of respect for all students and faculty.
The
Mercer Triangle Symposium's purpose is to "discuss political, theological, social and academic issues relating to sexuality." It wasn't even sponsored by Mercer University, but the Georgia Taliban decided that the mere existence of a gay support group was too much to bear.
The MTS held its final meeting on Monday, after being disbanded due to the pressure from the Georgia Baptist Convention and a school administration scared of losing its funding from the GBC. (
AJC):
A support group for gay students at the Macon campus of Mercer University disbanded Monday after the head of the Georgia Baptist Convention complained to school officials that the group's existence betrayed the university's Christian heritage.
Mercer's student Senate first recognized the group in 2002. Monday was the first day of the annual Georgia Baptist Convention in Columbus.
Last month, the GBC's executive director, J. Robert White, publicly complained about the gay group after learning about it in a campus newspaper. White said he received calls from parents around Georgia who were concerned about the education their children were receiving.
Mercer, which also has a campus in Atlanta, is a Baptist-affiliated college of 7,000 students that receives about $2.4 million a year from the Georgia Baptist Convention.
In the
Christian Index, a publication touting that it's "helping Georgia Baptists share the Good News," you get a pious helping of the AmTaliban's version of Christianity. Its article is breathless on the topic because it is "
raising eyebrows among Georgia Baptists who have begun questioning the integrity of the historically Baptist university." Here's GBC Executive Director
J. Robert White:
"This kind of event is diametrically opposed to who we are as a Convention. This creates a conflict for Georgia Baptists who send their students to Mercer as a Georgia Baptist university believing that they will be nurtured in a Christian environment, then learn that their students are invited to attend meetings of this nature on campus.
..."The thing that concerns me most deeply is the disregard for the physical, mental and emotional well-being of the students by those who promoted this event and other similar activities that apparently take place with regularity on the campus. If there was no spiritual reason whatsoever to discourage homosexuality, certainly the blight of AIDS should be adequate to surmise, 'This is not a good thing to promote at our university.'
"Add to the physical concerns, the emotional crisis this creates for our families, to say nothing of the spiritual result of choosing to live a life of unrepentant sin, and the results can be devastating."
White further stated, "If Mercer says, 'There's nothing we can do about this kind of event taking place at the university,' or 'Students must be free to express themselves without interference from the university,' we still have a serious compatibility problem." [What? Freedom of speech? It's an un-Christian concept to talk about difficult issues? Where is that in the bible?]
White concluded, "I understand that a part of the university experience, whether Baptist or otherwise, is being exposed to a broad variety of thought. [Hmmm. This is an unamusing way of showing it...]
At the same time, I believe that Georgia Baptist parents should be able to have the confidence that their young people who attend a Georgia Baptist institution will not receive errant signals but will be taught that learning to live a life that is like Christ - full of integrity, character and truth - is the supreme result of higher Christian education."
Hat tip, PageOneQ.
Senate Rethugs running for cover on Iraq
Abandon ship! Cat Killer Frist and John Warner of Virginia want to get their party out of the vortex sucking down the Chimp and are moving, with a non-binding resolution, to solidify their position with the equivalent of a no-confidence vote on Bush's Iraq policy.
This move came after Dems Carl Levin, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, Chris Dodd of Connecticut and John Kerry took turns pummeling Bush policy on Iraq on the Senate floor yesterday.
As these GOP clowns run for cover, are the Dems going to let them take this issue away from them? Wait, don't ask...
The U.S. Senate opened debate today on measures that would put the chamber on record for the first time asking President George W. Bush to set limits for keeping American troops in Iraq.
The Bush administration "needs to explain to Congress and the American people its strategy for the successful completion of the mission,'' say resolutions introduced separately by both Republicans and Democrats. Both parties also would require that Iraq's rival political factions be told they must make the compromises necessary to achieve a stable government, united against the insurgency, which will allow U.S. troops to leave.
The measures will prove attractive to Republicans up for re-election next year who want "to distance themselves from the White House,'' Fisher said.
Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch site launches
Monday, November 14, 2005
I finally met the talented
Chris Kromm, executive director of the Durham-based
Institute for Southern Studies and the editor of
Facing South tonight at the
Durham premiere of Robert Greenwald's
Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price at the Carolina Theatre. [It's a hard-hitting documentary, and it confirms all the evil -- and more -- behind the retailer's business practices.]
Chris let me know that ISS's
Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch has launched. It is a new project designed to document and investigate the rebuilding of the Southern Gulf in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
The effort by the ISS (a non-profit research and education center), and its investigative reporting magazine,
Southern Exposure, involves original reporting and features, community voices and with
a blog. It aims to hold folks accountable during this period of reconstruction now that the cameras are not there 24/7, and there is little oversight.
The question that is before us all now, as citizens (and taxpayers) of this country is:
who's watching the Gulf? Here's how you can help this independent effort.
* Be a Gulf Watcher: Active readers like you will help be our eyes and ears for key news. Send an anonymous tip here.
* Get active: Reconstruction Watch will feature regular action steps you can take to support those working for a just and accountable rebuilding in the Gulf.
3) Support our Investigative Fund!
The ISS is looking to raise $20K to fully fund the effort, so pass along the word, contribute and keep checking out the
GCRW site for updates.
Head on over to Perrspectives
Jon's cooking up some fun stuff
over at his pad. Here's one of
the latest...
What a bunch of ho-beasts these pious pervs are! I have to agree with Jon when he says, "No doubt Libby's "man-on-deer" and "bear-on-girl" forbidden love scenes would make
Rick Santorum and friends cringe."
And he's got the scoop on
The Top 10 GOP Sound Bites: Rewriting History Edition:
After the President's shameless Veterans Day speech, the smash hit "Rewriting History", performed by George Bush, RNC chairman Ken Mehlman and National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, jumped to the top of the charts. Kay Bailey Hutchison's ode to Scooter Libby, "No Underlying Crime," dropped two places to #3, while Scott McClellan's ballad "Ongoing Investigation" held firm at #2. For the first time since January 2002, George Bush's hard-rocking "Axis of Evil" fell off the charts altogether.
Surf over to see what landed on the Top 10.
Up close and too personal with Flicka
In college, "The Dean" had an embroidered pillow on his bed, with a smarmy slogan like "The Best is Yet to Come" on it.Over the weekend
I posted about "Dean" Christopher Flickinger, the ego-tripping head of a ridiculous winger outfit,
Network of College Conservatives.
Joseph Hughes of
Hughes for America actually roomed with this dork in college, and he's posted on it --
I lived with a Republican douchebot.
Please check it out -- and protect your keyboard and monitor...don't say I didn't warn you!
You'll learn more than you ever wanted to know about this turd.
As the Dems plan to roll over and play dead...Alito and abortion
The Dems are playing nice little doggie, with
Joe "Ego" Biden declaring ahead of time that there
wouldn't be a filibuster. But look at this bit of news on Sammy Alito
that popped up:
It has been an honor and source of personal satisfaction for me to serve in the office of the Solicitor General during President Reagan's administration and to help to advance legal positions in which I personally believe very strongly.
I am particularly proud of my contributions in recent cases in which the government has argued in the Supreme Court that racial and ethnic quotas should not be allowed and that the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion.
This was written as silent Sammy in a 1985 memo, part of a job application sent to then-Attorney General Edwin Meese, obtained by the
Washington Times.
Joe, have anything to say now?
Little Ricky: no 'intelligent design' in schools
Perhaps
Santorum was paying attention to the housecleaning of the wingnut school board in the Pennsylvania city of Dover this past Tuesday. (
Beaver County Times):
U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum said Saturday that he doesn't believe that intelligent design belongs in the science classroom.
Santorum's comments to The Times are a shift from his position of several years ago, when he wrote in a Washington Times editorial that intelligent design is a "legitimate scientific theory that should be taught in the classroom."
But on Saturday, the Republican said that, "Science leads you where it leads you."
I love the last line in this excerpt. Clearly Little Ricky is scared of being too close to the Chimp, but he can't help showing his pathetic self-interest and naked ambition.
Though Santorum said he believes that intelligent design is "a legitimate issue," he doesn't believe it should be taught in the classroom, adding that he had concerns about some parts of the theory.
Earlier this summer, President Bush said he favored teaching intelligent design in the classroom.
With Santorum running for re-election next year, and with Bush and the Republican Party taking some significant hits in public confidence in recent months, Santorum insisted he is not trying to distance himself from Bush.
...Saturday, Santorum said of Bush, "I don't agree with everything he does," but said that overall, he considers Bush a good president and that he has "done a lot" for the country and for Santorum himself.
He's done a lot, alright, Mr. Man-on-Dog. You lie down with him and you come up with fleas.
Who's race-baiting now - Steele's phony Oreo-pelting story
Uh oh -- no carpet bombing of Oreos on Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele (here with Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.). Photo: Baltimore SunSince 2002, the lies have become legend as Michael S. Steele and the GOP have tried to tout stories about his victimization at a political event -- that the Lt. Gov. was on the receiving end of a race-baiting rainshower of Oreo cookies, marking him as a sell-out.
Hey, that's good play if you can legitimately make your opponent's side look like a bunch of bigots, but Steele should have chosen a tale that couldn't so easily be debunked. It's blowing up in their faces now and
no one -- what a surprise -- wants to comment now.
Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. said yesterday that he is angry at "revisionism" from political opponents who question a much-repeated story about Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele being pelted with Oreos during a 2002 campaign debate in Baltimore.
...Speaking on Stateline with the Governor on WBAL-AM yesterday, Ehrlich said he would not tolerate questions about the veracity of the incident.
...Paul Schurick, Ehrlich's communications director, said last week that he saw people passing out packages of the cookies outside Morgan State University's fine arts center before the debate and that when Steele entered the auditorium about 15 minutes before the start, people let fly with the cookies.
"It was raining Oreos," Schurick said. "They were thick in the air like locusts. I was there. It was very real. It wasn't subtle."
As for those who question the story, Ehrlich said yesterday: "They're not going to be able now to reinvent something that a lot of people saw. Just go ask people who were there."
..."It didn't happen here," said Vander Harris, operations manager of the Murphy Fine Arts Building at Morgan State. "I was in on the cleanup, and we found no cookies or anything else abnormal. There were no Oreo cookies thrown."
The incident is said to have occurred when Steele walked to his seat before the debate started, not during the event on stage when it would have been captured on video. Newspaper articles and television news reports from that night didn't mention it, and representatives of the news departments at television stations WBAL, WJZ and WMAR and Maryland Public Television said they have no video of the incident.
...Wayne Frazier, president of the Maryland-Washington Minority Contractors Association said he watched Steele walk into the auditorium that night but saw no Oreos. "I was there the whole time and did not see any of the so-called Oreo cookie incident," Frazier said.
Hmmm. Seems a mass of Oreos flying, rolling and pelting folks would have been quite a sight, wouldn't you say? Yet, where are these unhinged accounts coming from, other than from the
fertile imaginations of these windbags?
* Washington Post writer
George F. Will wrote in his column that "some in the audience had distributed Oreo cookies."
* That day, while campaigning at a Jewish day school in Pikesville,
Ehrlich told the audience that Townsend supporters threw the cookies at Steele.
* Ehrlich said on WBAL radio that his father was hit in the head by one of the cookies. Schurick also said Ehrlich's father was hit.
Schurick would not make Robert L. Ehrlich Sr. available for an interview yesterday.
* After the election, Steele told a writer for the Capital News Service that
an Oreo rolled to his feet during the debate."
If you had half a brain, you GOP dunces, you would have just hired some Freepers to show up posing as lefties and pelt the Oreos for a nice photo op.
Hat tip, AmericaBlog.
Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price showing in the Triangle
There's a lot of sweating executives in the Wal-Mart boardroom because of a new documentary on the mammoth chain's foul corporate behavior.
Just a reminder for folks in my area that
The Institute for Southern Studies is sponsoring theater screenings in the Triangle of Robert Greenwald's (
Outfoxed) "
Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price" with
The Independent Weekly and the
N.C. Justice Center.
MONDAY, NOV. 14, DURHAM -- "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price" screening and discussion. 7 p.m., Carolina Theater.
TUESDAY, NOV. 15, CARY -- "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price" screening and discussion. 7 p.m., Galaxy Theater.
For those of you in the DC area, there will be a premiere with the filmmaker on November 15, according to
Campaign for America's Future:
Washington, DC Premiere: Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price
Date: Tuesday, November 15th
Time: 7:30 pm screening begins; 6:30 pm sponsors' reception
Location: Regal Cinemas, Gallery Place, 701 7th St NW, Washington, DC 20001
Invited: Sen. Edward Kennedy, Rep. George Miller, film director Robert Greenwald,
Campaign for America’s Future Co-Directors Roger Hickey and Robert Borosage.
More info, including the trailer for the film is here.
Latest from Bush stooge: can't rule out torture
Sunday, November 13, 2005
National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, thinking hard about what the latest U.S. policy on torture is.Someone remind me -
isn't torture against the law? Didn't the Chimp just tell us last week that Americans
do not torture -- or did someone let the dunce-in-chief go off-message yet again?
A "clarification" was issued out of this confused and criminal administration today. This time, the stooge of the hour was
National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, who trotted out to make sure everyone understood where the U.S. stands when it comes to putting the thumbscrews to people in the government's custody. Don't forget, we must refer to torture as "
enhanced interrogation techniques." (
AFP):
In an important clarification of President George W. Bush's earlier statement, a top White House official refused to unequivocally rule out the use of torture, arguing the US administration was duty-bound to protect Americans from terrorist attack.
The comment, by US national security adviser Stephen Hadley, came amid heated national debate about whether the CIA and other US intelligence agencies should be authorized to use what is being referred to as "enhanced interrogation techniques" to extract from terror suspects information that may help prevent future assaults.
The US Senate voted 90-9 early last month to attach an amendment authored by Republican Senator John McCain to a defense spending bill that would prohibit "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment of detainees in US custody. But the White House has threatened to veto the measure and has lobbied senators to have the language removed or modified to allow an exemption for the Central Intelligence Agency.
You'll recall that soft tushy punching bag Scotty McClellan refused to answer any of the
16 questions asked of him about Cheney wanting an exemption for torture at a press briefing last week, so they are dancing on the head of a pin over there at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. We've also got senators differing over the efficacy of torture, er, "
enhanced interrogation techniques."
Republican Senator Kit Bond, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told Newsweek magazine that "enhanced interrogation techniques" had worked with at least one captured high-level Al-Qaeda operative, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, to thwart an unspecified plot.
...A compromise with senators was in the works, Hadley assured, saying the White House was holding consultations with them about the McCain amendment. He offered no specifics about the administration's goals in these talks. But McCain, who appeared on CBS's "Face the Nation" program, said White House negotiators led by Vice President Richard Cheney were pushing to safeguard the option of using the enhanced interrogation techniques in order to get information from detainees in extraordinary circumstances.
The senator said he disagreed with that approach because he was worried about the damage to the image of the United States. "I hold no brief for the terrorists," he said. "But it's not about them. It's about us. This battle we're in is about the things we stand for and believe in and practice. And that is an observance of human rights, no matter how terrible our adversaries may be."
Bush DOJ: Southern Illinois University's giving white guys a raw deal
Reasonable people can disagree about how to address the legacy of discrimination and racism in American society, and the definitions and effectiveness of the various forms of affirmative action policies. However, I don't think any sane person can logically argue that
white men are underprivileged, underrepresented as a class, and in need of a helping hand in comparison to women and racial minority groups that are socioeconomically vulnerable.
But we are talking about
sane folks, right? That might explain why we're hearing this out of Bush's Justice Department (
Chicago Sun-Times):
President Bush's administration has threatened to sue Southern Illinois University, alleging its fellowship programs for minority and female students violate federal civil rights laws by discriminating against whites, men and others.
In a move Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said "just doesn't make sense," the U.S. Justice Department charged that three SIU programs that aim to increase minority enrollment in graduate school exclude whites, other minorities and males, in violation of Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act.
"The University has engaged in a pattern or practice of intentional discrimination against whites, non-preferred minorities and males,'' says a Justice Department letter sent to the university last week and obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.
It should be noted that
only 8 percent of SIU's 5,500 graduate students are black or Hispanic, so we're not talking about a bum rush of "darkies" into SIU's programs, taking away fellowships from the pale faces dominating the school's population. But Alberto's goons are ready to sue. Here are the programs in question:
FELLOWSHIP: Bridge to the Doctorate
Started: 2004
Award: $30,000 stipend, plus $10,500 for education expenses
Purpose: "For underrepresented minority students to initiate graduate study in science, technology, engineering and math.''
Budget: $985,000
Number of awards since inception: 24 (19 blacks, 5 Latino, 1 Native American)
FELLOWSHIP: Proactive Recruitment and Multicultural Professionals for Tomorrow
Started: 2000
Award: Tuition waiver and $1,200 monthly stipend
Purpose: "To increase the number of minorities receiving advanced degrees in disciplines in which they are underrepresented.''
Budget: $158,000
Awards since inception: 78 (61 blacks, 14 Latinos, 1 Asian, 2 Native Americans)
FELLOWSHIP: Graduate Dean's
Started: 2000
Award: Tuition waiver, $1,000 monthly stipend
Purpose: "For women and and traditionally underrepresented students who have overcome social, cultural or economic conditions.''
Budget: $67,000
Awards since inception: 27 (16 whites, 7 blacks, 4 Latinos)
SOURCE: Southern Illinois University
The Bushies are making this case based on the
Grutter vs. Bollinger U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2003, which ruled that race could be included as a factor in determining admissions (in that case, the University of Michigan), but not the only factor. Because of this, each applicant now had to be evaluated on an individual basis, making it difficult, if not impossible, to consider a factor such as race. This is yet another desperate appeal to the Chimp's "base," which is
eroding faster than you can say "Turdblossom."
A spokesman for the Justice Department's civil rights division declined comment Thursday, but Illinois' junior U.S. senator ridiculed the maneuver as a "cynical" bid to distract public attention from Bush's sagging popularity.
"One of my concerns has been with all the problems the Bush administration is having, that they'll start resorting to what they consider to be wedge issues as a way of helping themselves politically," Obama said.
"If anything, the White House should be doing everything it can to encourage more engineering students and Ph.D.'s. It strikes me as a completely unnecessary and divisive move and one that I think may be pretty cynical in its motive," Obama said.
Pat McNeil, an assistant dean and administrator of the Underrepresented Fellowships Office, said she knows of no white students who have applied for the Bridge or Proactive Recruitment programs.
When it comes down to it, our President was the beneficiary of an affirmative action program that the students up for these fellowships will never get a crack at -- the Legacy Award, or "Daddy's Little Helper." The Chimp will never have to worry about needing a helping hand when he has Poppy to help him out -- Shrub has coasted all the way to the White House without any apparent talent, intelligence -- or
hard work. When is the DOJ going to go after legacy admissions as discriminatory?
Tidmus on a new idea for Crazy Pat
Mike Tidmus is right -- why not just market the fortified Kool-Aid and make a quick buck (for the flock,
of course). Folks have been drinking it for free.
"Forget Pat’s Shakes. Say good-bye to those Protein Pancakes, and those embarrassing death threats against elected world leaders, and those paranoid pronouncements against feminists, scientists, liberals, American voters and gay citizens."
For those of you that may not recall the shakes and the pancakes, these are actual products shilled by the good Rev. Pat. He got in a little of trouble for profiting off of those endeavors. From an earlier
Blend post...
Crazy "assassinate 'em"
Pat Robertson could get on the scope of the IRS because of
a little problem of mixing church 'n profit, according to an evangelical church watchdog organization.
Robertson may be abusing the nonprofit status of his ministry by launching a business selling "anti-aging" milk shakes with GNC (the latter will get none of my business with this news). What kind of sleazy shill-fest is this?
Robertson, founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network, has for years given away a recipe for his "Age Defying" diet shake. Recently, however, he partnered with General Nutrition Corporation (GNC) to market the shake. But Ole Anthony, president of the Dallas-based religious media watchdog group Trinity Foundation, says the well-known TV minister cannot legally use his nonprofit ministry to push his nutritional drink.
"This is something that's done commonly throughout ministries," Anthony says. Frequently, he explains, ministers will "write a book -- sometimes a really bad book -- but it's promoted daily over the airtime, and they make, supposedly, royalties."
The sheeple via Newsweek: Bush sucks
Saturday, November 12, 2005
(AFP/Jim Watson)36%.
The rest of the numbers are, as Marcus Mabry says in the article, "
astounding."
* 68% of Americans are dissatisfied with the direction of the country-the highest in Bush's presidency.
* 42% of all Americans now believe the Chimp is not "honest and ethical."
* Only 29% believe that Vice President Dick Cheney is honest, and, incredibly even 26 percent of Republicans believe Darth's a f*cking pathological liar.
* 52% of Americans believe Cheney "deliberately misused or manipulated pre-war intelligence about Iraq's nuclear capabilities in order to build support for war,"
-- and that goes for 22 percent of Republicans and 54 percent of independents.
And this paragraph has to hurt -- can I twist the knife more, please?
Bush's new approval low of 36 percent in the NEWSWEEK poll equals the low point of Bill Clinton's presidency in May 1993, when the former president hit 36 percent. The 41st president, George H.W. Bush, hit his lowest ratings late in 1992 before he was defeated by Clinton. A Gallup poll in July 1992 recorded a 32 percent approval rate for the first President Bush. But other presidents have fared worse. Jimmy Carter scored 28-29 percent in June and July 1979, according to Gallup. President Richard Nixon's Gallup number dropped to 24 percent in August 1974.
"Radical" Russ quoted on NPR's "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me"
Well, what a surprise! I got two e-mails from friends who heard me quoted on National Public Radio's program,
"Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me". You can listen to the streaming audio clip (with RealPlayer) by clicking
here.
The quote in question comes at about the 4:12 mark of the first segment of the show. They are playing the news quiz where they quote a headline and ask a contestant to identify the news item:
CARL: "High school science finals will be so much easier now that the kids can just write down 'God did it!'"
That was a blogger named Russ Bellville, one of the many people covering the State of Kansas for their latest victory in the ongoing battle against what?
So welcome to anyone who's just found my little corner of cyberspace. Take a look at the main page and you can follow my twisted views on other news items of the day... I can even forgive them for misspelling my last name.
New laughable winger site: Network of College Conservatives
So, how can we expect Americans, who have been brainwashed for years by leftwing educators, to embrace conservative philosophies when all they've been taught are liberal ideologies?"
-- "Dean" Christopher Flickinger, of N.C.C, "Liberal Academia's Final Exam"
[
UPDATE: I cross-posted this on
Pandagon, and a reader there actually went to school with this numnut. I added his comments at the end.]
Despite the pictures, this is not a parody -- the Freepers are
quite enthusiastic about this effort by a winger with extreme delusions of grandeur. He's on a one-man mission (funded with a currently
empty store and no advertising yet - "coming soon") to, well, just read this sad stuff.
The mission of the Network of College Conservatives is to educate, inform, expose and counter the liberal bias on college campuses throughout America. The N.C.C. will offer students an advanced and manifold educational experience based on conservative thoughts, views and opinions. It will inform students of liberal and conservative activities taking place on campuses across the nation, as well as keeping conservative students aware of the liberal establishment that permeates our institutions of higher learning and its tools of indoctrination.
The Network of College Conservatives is the brainchild of Christopher Flickinger - who refers to himself as the "dean" of this conservative institute of higher education. His creation comes about after years of personal experiences, confrontations and battles with liberals in positions of power and influence. Yet, in spite of their best efforts, he remains true to his conservative beliefs and is a testament to other students who must wade through higher education's liberal indoctrination.
Flickinger graduated Summa Cum Laude from Ohio University Scripps School of Journalism - or as he refers to it "a dark cesspool of liberalism in an otherwise conservative and beautiful state." Flickinger majored in broadcast journalism with specializations in political science and economics. And, despite daily verbal clashes with his leftwing instructors - some of which had his fellow students taking cover under their desks - Flickinger earned his degree in less than four years. "I was just trying to get the heck out of Dodge before somebody got hurt," says the "dean."
This dude's frustrated because he couldn't make a career for himself in broadcast journalism. After serving as an intern at Faux News, booking and producing segments for Rita Cosby, Geraldo Rivera, Carl Cameron and Brit Hume, he tried to make it as a reporter in upstate NY, but once he learned that TV news was "too fake and too left-wing for his tastes" he was outta there.
Dean's comment about the picture at left: "
[It] contains three things radical liberals despise: the Holy Bible, an American proudly waving the flag and, of course, Dean Flickinger.The "dean" determined his "God-given talents" would find a home elsewhere, and that happened to be as regular contributor to the hangout for flame-throwing lunatic conservatives,
Human Events Online. You've probably seen the queeny editor,
Terry Jeffrey -- the former campaign manager to Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan (which should tell you something) on talking head shows spouting the winger line.
He likes attention too: "While I will always enjoy hearing about conservative students who have found the Network of College Conservatives beneficial, I really get a kick out of reading the hate mail that's sent to me. For one, it's entertaining. And secondly, it let's me know I'm right on target!"
***
Joseph Hughes said on November 12, 2005 11:04 PM:
OK, I totally lived across the hall from this douchebag when I was a junior at Ohio University. I'm not even kidding. I was a junior and this guy was a freshman. Everyone on the floor hated him, not so much because he advertised his obvious conservatism, but moreso because he was just such a douche. He had an embroidered pillow on his bed. I'm not kidding. It had some smarmy slogan like "The Best is Yet to Come" on it. Something like that.
And let me tell you, as a graduate of the same Scripps School of Journalism "the Dean" attended, I'm ashamed to share the building with that tool. His stories on local television were BEYOND idiotic - the kind of goody-goody, Chris's People kind of bullshit about Uptown buskers and little old ladies and cute kids. Good God was he lame.
And now this.
Seriously, I saw his picture and immediately remembered and learned anew why I never liked this guy. If you want more details from what I can remember, just ask. But we for sure lived on the third floor of Boyd Hall on the West Green at Ohio University. Would have been 1999-2000. We used to play PlayStation in his room with his roommate, who also thought the Dean was a colossal moron.
...Most people in his freshman cohort that year were busy trying to get me to buy beer for them, as I had already turned 21, but this guy was busy polishing up his regional Emmy speech, it seemed like. He was always one of those asshole go-getters who would say hello to your face but be secretly plotting your overthrow behind your back. I wish I had stayed in touch with his roommate and buddies more, because they'd have the dirt on this guy. He has a very Mehlmanesque air about him, very polished and put together. But I think it was more of a facade, as he seemed rather fake to me. He's put on a lot of weight, it seems, he's gone from looking like a Ralph Reed-type of moron to more of a Reed-Joe Scarborough assface. I think he freaked out when we would sit on his bed to play College Gameday, as I think he had this also-embroidered homemade throw blanket down near the end of his bed. I mean, most of us tried to keep our rooms tidy – who am I kidding, we didn't – but this guys neatness put everyone to shame. He's all rim and no wheel, so to speak. I think that facade covered for his being a scared, rank amateur.
Did you see how few schools he's got "signed on"? Not even his damn alma mater. I stayed in town at grad school and also working a year or two after he should have left and no one really thought of him as anything more than a Bill Hemmer-esque puff piece machine. Sure, he won some awards, but in broadcasting (especially student broadcasting), it's like the difference between actually being smart and knowing how to take tests. Journalistically, this guy knew how to take tests, if you know what I mean. He knew what people thought a good local story was, the kind of ones starting with two minutes left in the show, and he shamelessly reproduced them, as I remember. But none of us thought he'd become the next Anderson Cooper or Keith Olbermann.
And Athens isn't a dark cesspool of liberalism. If that douche had gotten out more and had some fun – or surgically removed that stick from his ass – he would have had a better time. Athens, Mr. Dean, was the only county in Ohio not voting for Issue 1, the hateful anti-gay marriage amendment last November. So cross-stitch that on your embroidered pillow, you shitface.
***
Oh god --
here's a site with a list of "articles" written by this clown. Some topics:
* Terri Schiavo: "Terri Schiavo's battle for life is over, and as a result, our nation will forever be changed. "
* Groundhog Day: "Today is Groundhog Day, and for many liberal Democrats it means more than just a possible early spring or six more weeks of winter"
* Declaration of Independence: "Once upon a time there was a document called the Declaration of Independence. Some Americans have probably never heard of it. Even more have probably never read . . ."
Bonus points for this description of himself:
"Christopher Flickinger is a conservative columnist from Pittsburgh, PA (or as he likes to call it, "The People's Republic of Pittsburgh: a cesspool of unionized liberalism"). He is co-founder and President of the Center For Conservative Thought. Mr. Flickinger's columns can be found periodically at Human Events Online, The Rant, and other websites that hold lifetime memberships to the "vast right-wing conspiracy." Although his columns are usually mild-mannered and anything but blunt, this six-foot-two, two-hundred and twenty pound Goliath doesn't back down from liberal instigators, and he's just waiting for a left-winger to throw a pie in his direction."
More House Blend
here.
This and that in the Blend mailbag
Things that came in from Blenders that you might want to check out...
* Glenn Greenwald has an interesting post up about the marriage amendment fight in Texas,
Gay Groups Should Support a Ban on Divorce, and he tells me: "
Lord knows that what we've been doing so far isn't working. I really think a fundamental change in advocacy is needed (how could it be worse?), and it maybe that this would work."
* Scott points to yet more insanity by the
Family Research Council. Do these people ever quit? A snippet:
Pro-homosexual activists are fond of arguing that homosexuals are routinely the victims of employment-related "discrimination." Such claims might be supported if research could demonstrate that homosexuals (like, for example, blacks or women) have lower incomes than the average worker, but such evidence has been hard to come by. In fact, some marketing studies have suggested that homosexuals actually have higher disposable incomes than heterosexuals.
* Reader Ryan pointed me to a
Liberal Avenger post on wingnut, racist, idiotic, windbag on the Right, Michelle "
I have a lot of respect for Ann Coulter" Malkin. Actually it's about her
ghostwriter husband Jesse, and boneheaded thoughts against safe-sex.
* Reader Jonathan found an interesting editorial maneuver on Sheryl Swoopes, the WNBA player that recently came out --
Tech students differ in reaction to Swoopes' announcement, lifestyle. He noticed something interesting about the distribution of the piece:
Later when I was looking on Nexis, I found the same article (slightly abbreviated) was sent to the U News national newswire with the headline "Students at Texas Tech support Swoopes' coming out." The content was the same, and the article clearly supports the claim that Texas Tech students supported her coming out. This certainly suggests the paper ran the same story with two headlines- one headline appealing to homophobic prejudice on campus at Texas Tech and the other appealing to more tolerant national attitudes.
* Blender Jeff B. has started up
The Angry Gay -- and he has plenty to be pissed about...
* Kelly, aka Gold Star Dyke, would like folks to check out and give feedback on her effort,
The Lesbian Lifestyle.
* and you all MUST check out the
latest bullsh*t emitting from Bill O'Lielly, courtesy of Media Matters. I really think he's crossed over into Pat Robertson-unhinged territory.
Criticizing a ballot measure passed by 60 percent of San Francisco voters urging public high schools and colleges to prohibit on-campus military recruiting, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly declared on the November 8 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, "[I]f Al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we're not going to do anything about it. We're going to say, look, every other place in America is off-limits to you, except San Francisco."
What Texans are saying about the new marriage amendment
House Blender Joel, a Texas native currently in Brooklyn, had thoughts about the recent wingnuttery in his home state as it voted to enshrine discrimination into its state constitution on Tuesday. He decided to write the
Ft. Worth Star Telegram.
He also passed along some of the other letters to the editor after the election, to give you a peek at the state of things in the Lone Star State. Joel: "
As a native of Texas, I felt I had a duty to speak to the ‘phobes down there. My comments are the very last ones printed - ‘best for last’ kind of thing, right?"
With the vote count finished, it's time for the Star-Telegram Editorial Board to take a long step back and take a hard, critical look at itself.
With its support of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance in the attempt to defeat Proposition 2, it has clearly shown that it's an integral part of the radical, immoral left. Its extreme-left positions show conclusively that it lives in an echo chamber that resonates only within the gay and lesbian cheerleader group.
Any claim to being in the political "mainstream" has been removed, as the people of Texas overwhelmingly supported Prop 2 and repudiated the vitriol of the left with pure common sense. Even the lowly Ku Klux Klan, which you demeaned, showed more historical appreciation of essential societal institutions than the Editorial Board.
You should hang your collective heads in shame and clean house of those with such bankrupt, truncated views of what is beneficial to society.
Gerald C. Lutton, Hurst
***
The only heartening piece in Wednesday's Star-Telegram was the concise, fair appraisal of the passage of Proposition 2 in the editorial "What happened?"
It's clear that the Star-Telegram Editorial Board can see beyond the rhetoric of the religious right and address the real issue of institutionalizing discrimination.
It particularly hit home with me as I stood in line for well more than an hour Tuesday night at my neighborhood polling place. I was disturbed and angered by the many whispers and low conversations that I heard about how Christians needed to address the "gay issue" and that the large turnout was a sign that this was happening.
A woman near me was on her cellphone, telling a friend to be sure to come down to vote -- to visibly take a stand on family values. It reminded me of the time in my youth when the first black family attended our church and of the whisperings of righteous indignation done "in the name of God."
I'm convinced that history will correctly judge the direction of our government being taken by the fundamentalist Christian element, and perhaps that's already happening. Jimmy Carter's new book, Our Endangered Values, does a good job of analyzing the long-term harm of using religious fundamentalism as a cornerstone of policy.
I'm equally convinced that our younger generation will not accept this attempt to legitimize discrimination of any group, including gays. Let's just hope that it doesn't take as long for this to occur as it did for Rosa Parks' actions to be validated.
Daniel Heath, Trophy Club
***
The Editorial Board, which recommended voting against Prop 2, is out of touch with the newspaper's readers. Texans voted 3-to-1 for traditional, biblically-based marriage. Are the editors clueless as to why fewer people are reading their newspaper?
Tom Pryor, Pantego
***
Kudos to the Star-Telegram for its thoughtful Wednesday editorial on the gay marriage amendment. The heterosexual community needs to clean up its own back yard before legislating the rights of the gay community.
How many women and children in this state have been abandoned by their husbands and fathers to live in poverty? How many wives are beaten and abused by these so-called Christians?
Chapter 7 of Matthew is one part of the Bible that some Christians would rather forget when they're on one of their "crusades" to clean up America. When they stop acting like bigots and start acting like the person whose name they claim, maybe America will have more respect for them.
Shirley Bumbalough, Watauga
***
I'm surprised that you don't understand what Proposition 2 said and, equally important, what it did not say.
It confirms only what is already state law: "Marriage" can only be a union between one man and one women.
Your Wednesday editorial asked: "How does this amendment improve or correct a deficiency in state government when it was already against state law to issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple?"
I'm confident that you know the answer, but apparently you preferred not to acknowledge that the purpose of Prop 2 is to prevent the courts from changing what Webster's defines as "the social institution under which a man and a woman establish their decision to live as husband and wife." And husband is defined as a man being married to a woman and wife as a woman being married to a man.
You incorrectly stated that this amendment "deprives one group of rights that the other, dominant group is able to take for granted." All that needs to be done for those who wish to have a same-sex legal union is to do so -- but define it as something other than "marriage."
Arthur McIlwain, North Richland Hills
***
There's a little-known feature of Proposition 2, resoundingly approved by Texas voters. It is clause (b), which states: "This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage." Marriage between a man and woman is identical to marriage and is very similar to marriage.
Congratulations to all voting Texans, who have just voted to annul the marriages of every married person residing in Texas and to prevent all future marriages performed within the state. Now we're all treated alike.
Our new license plate motto can become "The Lone Singles State," "The Freedom from Marriage State" or "The National Laughingstock State."
Jim Cornehls, Arlington
***
Texans should be proud today. They've followed the Ku Klux Klan in lock step. Passage of Prop 2 has made me embarrassed to be Texan.
No, I'm not gay. I just don't believe in sticking my nose into other people's business. If the bigots of Texas want to preserve the so-called sanctity of marriage, maybe y'all should outlaw divorce.
Charles Flanders, Fort Worth
***
"We just should never have given them the right to vote. They're just getting too uppity. They just don't know their place."
My mother was funny like that. She really didn't realize she was a bigot.
My friend says: "I don't mind them, really. Can't they just keep to themselves? I just don't want to see it in my face, you know? They really are just out of place."
Well, no worries now. They have been put in their place. There will be no civil unions, no chance for gays to have equal rights with us now.
All is well with the world.
Surely we will never again have to hear that hypocritical balderdash about "hating the sin but loving the sinner." There was no love in the passage of this amendment. There's no longer any doubt about how we feel about them.
Garry Sisco, Carrollton
***
"What happened?" you asked in your Wednesday editorial. I'll tell you what happened.
Most Americans are sick and tired of the deceitful and arrogant gay agenda. The institution of marriage involves one man and one woman -- period! There will be no compromise.
Gay partners or couples currently have available all the civil rights afforded to all citizens, and that's as it should be.
The real gay agenda is deceitful and is hidden under a facade of "civil rights." The real gay agenda is to tear apart the fabric of the institution of marriage and force society to formally recognize and identify gay partners or couples as "married."
They are not married -- they are partners or couples.
I have family members who are gay, and I love them. I don't want their civil rights violated. Equal civil treatment under the law is the only obligation that society owes to gays -- period! We don't owe them the recognition of marriage.
So the next time that you (the writer of the editorial) go to the "reading room," take your Wednesday editorial with you and put it to good use.
David Neal Phillips, Weatherford
***
Congratulations, Texas Republicans. You scared the people of the great state of Texas into buying your version of the same-sex amendment.
Now that you've achieved mandating the Pledge of Allegiance, the Texas Pledge and a moment of silence (prayer in disguise), you can add your mean-spirited amendment to your list. Now that you've succeeded, what will you do to divert attention from the real issue of this state -- education?
Oh, yes, I forgot. You'll now work on curbing and eventually taking away a woman's right to choose.
Thomas G. Haase, Fort Worth
***
Did I wake up Wednesday to a Texas that was meaner and more ignorant than it was when I went to sleep Tuesday, or did the voters for Proposition 2 just shine a light on what was already there -- a profound pettiness so immoral and illegal that a constitution had to be changed to make room for it?
Well, those who would deny the vote to women, imprison Japanese-Americans in internment camps and try to keep African-Americans out of public schools need to make room for a new soul mate: the typical modern Texan.
And we all might want to think about whom the religious right might put in its crosshairs next. Maybe you.
Roger M. Bunch, Fort Worth
***
I received eight phone calls on Monday from various religious and political organizations, including one from Gov. Rick Perry, urging me to help protect marriages by voting for Proposition 2.
Now that marriage is safe from destruction by civil unions and other forms of perceived evil, I'm sure that the ministers, politicians and our governor who helped this flawed amendment pass will focus their energy on real threats.
I look forward to receiving calls about their plans for dealing with poverty, the homeless, the hungry, affordable healthcare, education reform, deficit reduction, political corruption, domestic violence, child abuse, teen pregnancy, drug abuse, immigration, disaster relief and divorce rates, just to name a few.
I'm sure that my phone will be ringing at any moment.
Mark Hudson, Arlington
***
Thank God that Texans don't have to fear gays and lesbians trying to taint the sanctity of marriage. Thank God that our political representatives in Austin had the resolve to protect the morally superior from the morally destitute. Thank God that we've toppled the gay agenda, which, according to Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, is "the greatest threat to our freedom that we face today."
OK, now that I have your attention, may I point out some things that Texans really should be afraid of?
The Legislature continues to fail at passing any legislation that might directly benefit the children and adults of Texas. It inexplicably neglects to address the following:
The Texas unemployment rate is 5.7 percent.
22.9 percent of Texas children under age 18 live below the poverty level.
12.5 percent of people 65 and over in Texas live below the poverty level.
21.3 percent of Texans never completed high school.
24.6 percent, or about 5 million Texans, don't have any form of health insurance.
Yet even more frightening than these horrifying statistics is the fact that we're governed by the most racist, bigoted, narcissistic, egotistical and morally corrupt politicians this country has seen in a long time.
Giving gays and lesbians the same rights under the law (not religious law -- state law) that all heterosexual citizens have would not threaten anyone's freedom or interfere in their lives. What does threaten America is a government that spreads fear, ignorance and hatred and allows legal discrimination against its own citizens. Now that's something to be afraid of.
Melinda Tanos, Keller
***
As much as I was taught to respect other folks' opinions, Tuesday's overwhelming vote in favor of Prop 2 made for a dark and embarrassing day for the human race, especially in Texas.
Book burnings are sure to follow.
Bob Kline, Granbury
***
As a Texan living among Yankees, I had assured people here that Texas would vote right on Proposition 2 in my home state. I haven't been let down. Y'all passed it under great duress and with steely fortitude, standing tall for the majority and rejecting the minority in a resounding triumph.
Now, I know that every Texan will go forward and prove me right on what comes next. I've promised my neighbors that we will, very soon, see the divorce rate there plummet to a point of almost nonexistence. And then, along with this saving of matrimony, we'll be thrilled to see domestic abuse and child neglect become a thing of the past.
Yes, I'm so proud of Texas for showing these Yankees how to protect traditional marriage and save society. The Lone Star State's true colors are shining for the nation to see.
Joel Howard, Brooklyn, NY
There's nothing like Fall...
I only posted once yesterday, so thank goodness for "Radical" Russ, who served up engaging posts here.
Fall is the my favorite season; my slacker posting is the result of being seduced by the fall color, the crisp temperatures and the gently warm sun. It's such a relief after the Carolina hot humidity weather. We were out and about yesterday.
Today Kate and I are going to hike and picnic at
West Point on the Eno, a beautiful, city park several miles north of downtown Durham, with 388 acres of woods, waters, and wildlife. The fall color should still be amazing. There is a working old mill there, where corn and wheat are ground with water power. Stone-ground meal and flour, are sold in the mill's store and they have tours year-round.
Some thoughts for Veteran's Day
Friday, November 11, 2005
First of all, let's take a moment to remember the heroes who've voluntarily (and some not-so-voluntarily) chosen to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. My grandpa fought in the Pacific Theatre during WWII, and my brother-in-law serves today in Afghanistan. Regardless of how I feel about the current war, past wars, or war in general, I cannot deny that a free country requires a ready military and volunteering to follow orders without question in defense of that country is still one of the most selfless sacrifices a citizen can make.
Now, with that in mind, here are some very thoughtful quotes from political leaders regarding the seriousness of a president committing those volunteers to war. (Hat tip to
Ms. Julien's List) Try and guess which politican or pundit said the following:
1) "You can support the troops but not the president."
2) "Well, I just think it's a bad idea. What's going to happen is they're going to be over there for 10, 15, maybe 20 years."
3) "Explain to the mothers and fathers of American servicemen that may come home in body bags why their son or daughter have to give up their life?"
4) "[The] President...is once again releasing American military might on a foreign country with an ill-defined objective and no exit strategy. He has yet to tell the Congress how much this operation will cost. And he has not informed our nation's armed forces about how long they will be away from home. These strikes do not make for a sound foreign policy."
5) "American foreign policy is now one huge big mystery. Simply put, the administration is trying to lead the world with a feel-good foreign policy."
6) "If we are going to commit American troops, we must be certain they have a clear mission, an achievable goal and an exit strategy."
7) "I had doubts about the bombing campaign from the beginning...I didn't think we had done enough in the diplomatic area."
8) "I cannot support a failed foreign policy. History teaches us that it is often easier to make war than peace. This administration is just learning that lesson right now. The President began this mission with very vague objectives and lots of unanswered questions. A month later, these questions are still unanswered. There are no clarified rules of engagement. There is no timetable. There is no legitimate definition of victory. There is no contingency plan for mission creep. There is no clear funding program. There is no agenda to bolster our over-extended military. There is no explanation defining what vital national interests are at stake. There was no strategic plan for war when the President started this thing, and there still is no plan today"
9) "Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is."
10) "I think it's also important for the president to lay out a timetable as to how long they will be involved and when they will be withdrawn."
Wow! Where's the mainstream media on these quotes? You'd think that Democrats and cable news talking heads uttering such quotes would be making huge headlines...
...except that all those quotes come from Republican leaders and FOX talking heads from back in the 1990s when President Clinton was committing troops to Bosnia. (1=Tom Delay, 2=Joe Scarborough, 3=Sean Hannity, 4=Rick Santorum, 5=Tom Delay, 6=Karen Hughes [on behalf of George W. Bush], 7=Trent Lott, 8=Tom Delay, 9 & 10=George W. Bush.)
[The original source for this tasty dish of Republican hypocrisy comes from
Barbra Streisand's blog. Did you know Babs had a blog?]
What's Wrong With Libertarianism, Part II
My piece on
What's Wrong With Libertarianism seems to have provoked a lot of discussion. I originally let the words of another website speak for me. Now I've got some time, so let me explain in my own words What's Wrong with Libertarianism.
All I ask for is for rich and poor alike to pay their fair share of taxes. In the 1940's, corporate taxation made up 35% of the federal tax revenue. Now it's about 7%. In the 1950's, CEO income was about 40x that of the average worker. Today it's about 500x.
Now, certainly, producers and risk-takers deserve compensation. Their talents and hard work prove them to be useful to society, and deserve reward. But really, is the CEO of Pepsi twenty-thousand times more useful to society than a schoolteacher, fireman, policeman, or soldier?
Back to the fairness of taxation -- do you really think corporations only benefit from 7% of the federal tax dollars spent?
Let's look at it this way: if anyone has a right to complain about the unfairness of taxation, it is not the rich corporatist, but the poor or middle-class worker. We pay far more in taxes than we ever get back in services. I actually dream of the perfect libertarian society where everything is privately owned and people must pay for their own individual uses. It would be beautiful to watch rich people and corporations actually have to pay for the government they use.
For example, lots of my tax money goes toward running the Securities and Exchange Commission. I don't own and trade stocks; what do I need that for? But the corporation's entire existence depends on the SEC. There's also a huge local, state, and federal court system. Yeah, I need that a little bit to make sure criminals get punished and I don't get beaten or robbed. But the vast majority of lawsuits and court cases involve corporate interests that mean little or nothing to me. Do I really care whether Widget Corp. wins their copyright-infringement case against Gadget Inc.?
How much money goes into national defense? Sure, I need an Army to keep marauding hordes of invading Canucks out of my back yard, eh, but that's a small percentage compared to the money spent on overseas military action. How much risk do we put on the fortunes of oil company CEOs if they don't have an Army to guard those Middle East pipelines or a Navy to protect those oil tankers?
I understand there's this entire interstate highway system that runs across the entire United States. Now, I only use a small stretch of I-84 about twice a year to visit Boise, and a stretch of I-5 to travel between Portland and Salem. But I understand the CEO of Walmart needs just about every mile of that highway system, every day to run thousands of trucks to get his products to the market.
Public education? Well, I don't have any kids, so I can't figure out why I'm paying for that. I did go to public school, but my cost for that has to have been paid up long ago by my parents' taxes, I figure. However, doesn't just about every corporation require an educated workforce in order to function? Is Phil Knight going to step up and start creating elementary, secondary, and college educational institutions that their future workers can attend for free?
FDIC? FSLIC? Yeah, right, like I have any significant money in the bank that needs insuring. But I'll bet Bill Gates does.
Space exploration? Why do I need rocket technology, re-usable shuttles, and well-trained astronauts; it's not like I've got a summer home on Titan or anything. But I'm pretty sure Rupert Murdoch needs all of that to keep his satellites in operational order.
Tax deductions for entertainment expenses? Yeah, maybe once a year I get to write off a $20 meal for work. But I'm guessing Mark Cuban gets to write off a whole lot more than that.
And in general, the more you have to lose, the more you have to pay to protect it. You pay more for car insurance when you drive a Lamborghini then when you drive a Pinto. What would I have to lose if the country were taken over in a Socialist revolution by violent disgruntled Americans sick of unemployment, poor health care, high crime, and inflation, who then nationalize healthcare, nationalize the oil industry, and mandate union membership? Nothing; in fact, it might make my life better. But the lifestyle of the CEOs of Pfizer, ChevronTexaco, and General Motors would be drastically altered. So it seems to me the taxation is the "society insurance" that provides the social services that keep the hoi polloi just barely gruntled enough put up with Donald Trump's gold plated bathroom fixtures while homeless guys sleep on the steam grate outside the Trump Tower.
See, in that perfect, science-fiction libertarian society you speak of, the rich would actually have to start paying for those government services they use. And if a big corporation, oh, let's pick on airlines and savings & loans, goes belly-up, they wouldn't be getting back any bail-outs from us. (Why should I pay that? I don't fly or use an S&L.) Furthermore, we can forget about all the subsidies, protectionary tariffs, and grants the government gives to various industries, like big corporate farms, for one example.
Of course, don't think for a second that Richie Rich will actually cough up the money for all of those things. He'll just tack that operating expense to the price of his goods and services. Welcome to the world of $10 gas, $30 steaks, $1/20 mile roadways, $5000 airline flights, and a permanent caste system.
Now, I love science fiction as much as the next guy (and believe me, I comprehend Heinlein; I'm just able to separate fiction from reality), but it is not a good basis for a religion or economic system. If we could just see one historical example of working libertarianism -- ONE! -- maybe you could prove your point.
But we do have historical examples of capitalism unfettered by regulation and taxation -- the American Gilded Age, modern Haiti, Pinochet's Chile, post-Communist Russia -- and those didn't work out so well for society in general.
Now, to your moral imperative: How can I give a woman, black, or homosexual liberty for their actions and being, but deny Richie Rich the liberty of keeping all of his money because he has to pay his fair share of taxes? (The imperative feels very different when it's framed like that, no?)
Because I don't believe Richie Rich is really much of an aggrieved party. A woman forced to bear a child against her will; a black denied opportunity or advancement; a homosexual denied civil rights; these things seem much more serious to me than a guy who made $10,000,000 forced to bear the hardship of getting by on a paltry $5,000,000 and the indignity of only getting to pass on $2,500,000 to his never-have-to-work-a-day-in-their-lives kids when he dies.
Entrepreneurship and capitalism are wonderful, and they do deserve reward. That's why successful businessmen get to live lives where they need not worry about where their next meal is coming from, how they're going to afford college for their kids, where will they get the rest of the rent money, choosing between prescriptions or new clothes, or whether their only car will break down. That's why they get to enjoy all-expenses-paid vacations in Jamaica, 20,000 square foot houses on both coasts, yachts & country clubs, trophy wives & girlfriends, caviar & lobster, and front-row seats at the Lakers' games.
Your closing line sums it all up: "I want to be a human being who associates with those who wish to associate with me." Well, you don't get that luxury -- nobody does. You're a part of a society. That society includes lots of people you don't want to associate with, but must -- the illiterate single mom, the HIV-positive junkie, the man working two McJobs to feed his family, the homeless guy you ignore on your way to the office, the pregnant teenage girl, the illegal aliens you employ to keep labor costs down -- you are not an island, Mr. Libertarian, and you need us and government far more than we need you.
You'll deny that with some line about the importance of producers and creators of wealth and how the peons should all be grateful that the altruistic capitalist did them all a favor by creating corporations to provide them jobs and goods and services. I can't argue with that -- I like computers and cars and movies and my paycheck.
But your own philosophy tells me that if one capitalist can't make the venture fly, another one will step up to take his place. Our far-from-libertarian society seems to be producing plenty of millionaires and billionaires, so what's the complaint, that they aren't millionaires and billionaires enough? And it seems to me the capitalist needs the workers -- making and buying his goods and services -- much more than the other way around. No man can become rich without leveraging the labor of others, but every man can survive through the brunt of his own labor, even if that's just subsistence survival.
Another libertarian talking point is the "initiation of force" -- that taxation is stealing from people at the barrel of a gun. Well, as shown above, the libertarian needs the government more than I do, and even the most die-hard libertarian will agree that we need some government, for police, courts, and military protection. That's over 20% of the federal budget right there, so some taxes will have to be taken, even in mythical Libertaria, which means it's okay by libertarians to point that gun and steal that money for at least basic government services. To paraphrase W.C. Fields, we've now determined what you are (in favor of initiation of force to steal citizen's money for government), now we're just haggling about the price.
The libertarian will also argue that in their science-fiction universe, anyone is free to compete and trade and leverage their skills, work, and talent to become rich. Absolutely -- anyone can, but not everyone can. Some people will be born unskilled, untalented, handicapped, or just not very bright, or will become sick, injured, discriminated against, or suffer hardships and bad luck beyond their control. No matter how hard they work, they cannot win. Not everyone can be a winner in the capitalism game. So the question is: how good should the winners have it and how badly should the losers have it? As others have explained, in such a system, eventually the winners game the system to the point where only other winners can compete and losers have no shot. Eventually the best winners collude to prevent competition among themselves. Eventually the losers owe their soul to the company store.
Progressive taxation and limited capitalistic socialism is the only workable solution for a successful and vibrant democratic economy. It's what we have had in place since the New Deal, and it took the United States from the failed, second-rate, Depression-era economy caused by laissez-faire capitalism of the robber barons to being the dominant world superpower with the greatest standard of living ever achieved in human history. Why would libertarians want to mess with success, just to implement a science-fiction philosophy that's been shown to cause greater overall human misery, all because they feel that they are not quite rich enough? How many 17-foot home theaters do they need before they figure that even a lazy, shiftless, parasite on society (otherwise known as a "human") deserves better than sleeping in the street, eating from the garbage, and suffering from easily treatable medical ailments?
OK, discuss. That's all I have to say about that. Since the Libertarian Party has no chance in hell of winning any election that will effect me directly, and since the hard right-wing of the Bushites is going down faster than Paris Hilton in a night-vision home video, I really don't worry about them very much.
Damn -- I'll just have to cook with mine
Tin foil is only good for lining pans and wrapping leftovers, according to some
enterprising (and humorous) students at MIT:
Abstract
Among a fringe community of paranoids, aluminum helmets serve as the protective measure of choice against invasive radio signals. We investigate the efficacy of three aluminum helmet designs on a sample group of four individuals. Using a $250,000 network analyser, we find that although on average all helmets attenuate invasive radio frequencies in either directions (either emanating from an outside source, or emanating from the cranium of the subject), certain frequencies are in fact greatly amplified. These amplified frequencies coincide with radio bands reserved for government use according to the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). Statistical evidence suggests the use of helmets may in fact enhance the government's invasive abilities. We theorize that the government may in fact have started the helmet craze for this reason.
...We evaluated the performance of three different helmet designs, commonly referred to as the Classical, the Fez, and the Centurion. These designs are portrayed in Figure 1. The helmets were made of Reynolds aluminium foil. As per best practices, all three designs were constructed with the double layering technique described elsewhere [2].
Surf over for the hilariously apropos test methods and conclusion.
Question of the day:
Who stands to lose the most (foil) because of these findings? I have two batsh*t artists that I'll throw out there to start...
Pat Robertson and
Louis Farrakhan.
Hat tip, Americablog.
Rep. Don Sherwood - the pig pays up for choking mistress
Don Sherwood's "backrub" was actually a chokehold, according to amazingly Barbie-like Cynthia Ore.You boink, you abuse,
you pay. A case study in family values.
Rep. Don Sherwood reached a settlement Tuesday with a former mistress who accused him of abuse in a $5.5 million lawsuit, according to his lawyer.
Terms of the settlement between Sherwood, R-Pa., and Cynthia Ore, with whom he acknowledged a five-year affair, will remain confidential, said Paul Clark, a spokesman for Sherwood's attorney, Bobby Burchfield.
"Attorneys for Cynthia Ore and Congressman Don Sherwood announced today that their clients have resolved their differences, and the lawsuit will be dismissed," Clark said, reading from a statement.
...Sherwood, a fourth-term congressman, is married with three daughters. He issued a statement this summer apologizing for the affair but denying he physically hurt Ore. He also said she never lived with him, which she had claimed in her lawsuit.
This violent, hypocrotical bastard has an
84% Christian Coalition rating, a
100% rating from Concerned Women for America, and considers himself a strong "defender of marriage" by voting for the Defense of Marriage Act, and a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. What a real piece of work. Here's why he had to pay up. From our
Conservative Values Monitor:
Police called to his Washington apartment by Cynthia Ore, 29, to whom Sherwood was giving a back rub, when he began choking her for no apparent reason. Ore backed off the claim, but one may still wonder what a 64 year old married Congressman was doing alone in his apartment giving a back rub to his 29 year old friend. In a telephone interview, Ore said she met Sherwood at a Young Republicans meeting in 1999 and that they had a relationship that lasted over the years. "For me to start to go back to that day is very painful to deal with all the suffering I went through," Ore said. "I loved him. He always told me he loved me and I believed him."
Hat tip, BlogActive.
James Dobson's compassionate tag for the gays
Thursday, November 10, 2005
Daddy Dobson's latest family-friendly site, "
Troubled With," is laughable. The site's intent is to sensitively approach the troubled youth of today, counseling them through such topics as...oh, homosexuality:
[
Note the tender, homo-suggestive picture chosen for the page by the FoF staff.]
Though homosexuality continues to gain cultural acceptance, many who consider themselves gay or experience homosexual tendencies feel puzzled and even apprehensive about their sexuality -
If this is normal, why am I so confused? Do I have a choice in the matter? Perhaps you've struggled with same-sex attraction, making you wonder if you're gay. Maybe you've even sought to meet your needs for companionship and acceptance through a same-gender relationship. If so, realize that you do have a choice in the matter. You're not simply "wired that way." For those with unanswered questions or a desire to change,
we offer a compassionate message of transformation and truth.
Born Gay?Debunking the claim of biological determinism.
The Sexual Developmental StagesHow males develop homosexual attractions.[
Gee, what about those lesbians?]
An Ounce of PreventionMyths about homosexuality abound. Not least is the notion that, for some people, homosexuality is inevitable.
[...]
Finding His Way OutOne man proves it is possible to escape the grip of homosexuality.
My Father's ClosetWhen Dad leaves Mom for another woman, the wounds are deep. But what about when he leaves for another man?
Jeremy of
Good As You emailed me with a doozy from his post
Focus on the Meta Tags. He did a little snooping in the source code of the TroubledWith.com site, and found out what kind of "compassionate message of transformation and truth" lies in Daddy D.'s selection of descriptive keywords for the homos in that
meta tag :
I agree with Jeremy -- Daddy D.'s staff is not too bright -- they omitted the Right's current favorite perjorative term, "homosexual,"
and misspelled effeminate. La-dee-da.
Emboldened TX bible beaters going after divorce next
Blow-dried dandy/Texas Governor
Rick Perry and his bigoted crew of AmTaliban are basking in the glow of Tuesday's vote for a state marriage amendment. Only Travis County (where traditionally liberal Austin is located) voted against it, out of the Lone Star State's 254 counties.
Rick is over the moon:
After keeping curiously quiet all week, Perry spoke out Thursday on the overwhelming passage of Proposition 2. He said he and his wife, Anita, felt strongly the gay marriage ban was needed.
"We believed passionately that marriage should be between a man and a woman," he said after an appearance in Addison. "The good news is, 75 percent of the people who went to vote — plus — agreed with us."
..."I'm an opinionated person," Perry said. "I have a strong set of beliefs and values. And I'm not afraid to stand up and say, 'Here's what I believe in.' If someone wants to say 'Gosh, he just believes that for political purposes,' that's their reason, but they're wrong," Perry said.
WTF ever, Rick. It's very clear that all you married straight folks in the state better worry about Rick and his friends taking their sick obsessions into your bedrooms and relationships. The Texas Taliban now plans to go after divorce now, the natural next step to save marriage from you deviant hets. (
Dallas Morning News):
Rep. Warren Chisum, who wrote the amendment, Proposition 2, endorsed by Texas voters by a ratio of more than 3-1, said Wednesday that it's too easy for spouses to split up. The state should consider repealing or modifying its no-fault divorce law, the Pampa Republican said.
"Gee whiz, our divorce rate's higher than New York," Mr. Chisum said. He proposed that between now and their next regular session in 2007, lawmakers study ways "to make marriage thrive more in our state."
...Supporters of Proposition 2 said that during debates, they regularly heard gay rights activists cite Texas' divorce rate. Texas had about 3.9 divorces for every 1,000 residents in 2002, a higher rate than New York (3.4) or Massachusetts (2.5), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Mr. Chisum said he planned to ask House Speaker Tom Craddick, R-Midland, to convene a panel to examine no-fault divorce, longer waiting periods for marriage applicants and "covenant marriage," an idea tried in three other states.
A covenant marriage provides an alternative to the traditional marriage contract for couples who oppose no-fault divorce or who want to demonstrate a stronger commitment. Couples selecting a covenant marriage must get premarital counseling and may divorce only after a separation of two years or after proving adultery or domestic abuse.
Also see:
TX bible beaters hold voter drive for marriage amendment, Rick Perry re-election
By popular demand...
Russ's recent post,
What's Wrong With Libertarianism, has scrolled off the front page (a casualty of frequent posting here at the Blend), and so I'm reposting the links the discussion can continue and folks that may have missed the post can hop in.
So the link's above, and here are
the comments.
Dover, PA, votes the IDIOTS off the School Board
While
Kansas has decided to turn to the Bible for its high school science curriculum, the good people of Dover, PA, voted out all of the Intelligent-Design-Is-Our-Type-of-Science (IDIOTS) supporters on their school board in favor of candidates who understand that science is science and religion is religion and ne'er the twain shall meet:
(Baptist Press) All eight seats on the nine-member Dover Area School Board that were up for election Nov. 8 were narrowly won by candidates affiliated with the Citizens Actively Reviewing Educational Strategies (CARES). The organization’s platform calls for removing Intelligent Design from the district’s science curriculum.
The school district is a defendant in a federal trial over its policy to inform ninth-grade science students about the existence of Intelligent Design. Testimony in the case ended in early November. U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III is expected to issue a ruling by early January.
One of the winners in the board election, Bryan Rehm, is a plaintiff in the lawsuit against the school district. Last year he and 10 other parents, facilitated by the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, sued the district. The plaintiffs alleged that exposing the students to Intelligent Design was putting religion in the classroom.
I've been following these cases in
Pennsylvania and
Kansas for some time now, and critics of the IDIOTS always point out that it is merely a backdoor attempt to teach Biblical Creationism in a high school science class in complete disregard for our separation of church and state. The IDIOTS always respond that their theory merely posits an Intelligent Designer without making any mention of their own Christian God, so it isn't really religion so much as an alternative explanation of existence.
Of course, that's never fooled anyone, since most of the IDIOTS are also card-carrying members of the American Taliban who never met a political issue into which they wouldn't inject the Bible. It's not as if activist Wiccans, Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, or Native Americans are out there stumping for Intelligent Design, even though they too believe in religious creation myths.
So it is beautiful to me to read the latest words-of-God directly from his holy messenger on Earth, Rev. Pat Robertson:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Conservative Christian televangelist Pat Robertson told citizens of a Pennsylvania town that they had rejected God by voting their school board out of office for supporting "intelligent design" and warned them on Thursday not to be surprised if disaster struck.
"I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover: if there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city," Robertson said on his daily television show broadcast from Virginia, "The 700 Club."
"And don't wonder why He hasn't helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I'm not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that's the case, don't ask for His help because he might not be there," he said.
Wait, Pat, I thought Intelligent Design had nothing to do specifically with the Christian God or the Biblical Creation described in Genesis?
And what's up with your vengeful Yahweh these days, anyway? According to you and your Talibanic buddies, God struck us with 9/11 because of the
"pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America", he would hit Orlando with
"earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteor" if they put up rainbow flags to honor diversity, and New Orleans and the Gulf Coast were devastated by Katrina because of our support of
legalized abortion.
If this God of yours is so all-powerful and all-knowing, why can't He pinpoint His destruction a bit more accurately? Did Christian Conservative workers at Cantor-Fitzgerald in the World Trade Center really need to die in the 9/11 attacks? Did good Bible-fearing heterosexual folks need to suffer through all those Florida hurricanes? Did pro-life supporters in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama have to die for God to prove His point? You'd think and omniscient, omnipotent Intelligent Designer could just throw out a few well-directed heart attacks and strokes instead of indiscriminately wiping out hundreds or thousands of His Children at a time.
The Prez and the VP
From protests outside the White House over Chalabi's visit. (REUTERS/Jim Young)
Little Ricky dodges the Chimp
Gee, why wouldn't
Santorum want to rub shoulders with the ultra-popular, patriotic, values-rich President? One of those pesky "prior commitments" that always seem to come up when you're running for re-election. (
PA Standard-Journal):
President Bush will appear at a Veterans Day event in Pennsylvania on Friday with the state’s moderate Republican senior senator and a Democratic congressman but without the state’s conservative junior senator, who is fighting a tough bid for re-election.
A prior commitment is keeping Sen. Rick Santorum, the Senate’s No. 3 Republican, from joining Bush, said Robert Traynham, Santorum’s press secretary.
You know, speaking of Pennsylvania, I wonder how Little Ricky feels about the wingnut Dover school board members that backed "intelligent design" who were
booted out on Tuesday.
Brownie's off the payroll
Gee, maybe that giant sucking sound of FEMA removing money out of my wallet will decrease somewhat. (
CNN):
Last month, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said he extended Brown's contract for an additional 30 days, until mid-November, to help the agency complete its review of the response to Katrina.
But Brown ended his contract early, said Knocke, responding to an inquiry about House Democratic demands to remove Brown from the payroll.
In a letter to President Bush on Wednesday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, and Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland said Brown's contract was "inexplicable and a gross waste of taxpayer dollars."
"It is difficult to imagine anyone less qualified to assess FEMA's failed response to Katrina and make recommendations for improving the agency," they wrote.
Brown had said in an earlier interview about his extended work that he was "motivated to wrap it up."
Two good columns to catch
Over at
PageOneQ, National Black Justice Coalition board member
Jasmyne Cannick has a great piece up,
Much Ado Over Outing, that covers the reaction she and
Keith Boykin had over their
Outing Black Pastors campaign a few weeks ago, which exposed the bigotry toward the black gay community by calling attention to high-profile pastors responsible for creating a climate of sadness and fear. [I
covered this series on the Blend.]
The outline of the campaign was straightforward. Each day for one week Keith and I profiled a Black pastor highlighting his relationship with the Bush Administration, recent homophobic gay comments, and ending with the question, is this pastor gay? Starting with mega church pastors Bishop Eddie Long and T.D. Jakes, we included profiles of other prominent pastors including Los Angeles' Noel Jones and Bishop Charles Blake, D.C.'s Reverend Willie Wilson, Chicago's Reverend Gregory Daniels, New Orleans' Bishop Paul Morton, Georgia's Creflo Dollar, and ended with a joint profile of ex-gay gospel singer Donnie Mclurkin.
For the record, there is nothing wrong with asking a question. My experience has shown that the people who are the most adamant on certain issues also tend to be dealing with their own issues. People who are comfortable with who they are usually don't care as much about what other people are doing. Which lead me to an obvious question, are these pastor's gay?
...To date, I have received over 1,000 emails regarding this campaign and they still continue to come in. While a good number of the responses that I have received regarding this campaign are positive, I will say that I have received many threats against my life for "bringing harm to a man of God." And if the email wasn't a threat against my life I was blasted for speaking badly about men of God, not notifying the pastors ahead of time and put on notice that I was going to be on a direct path to hell, as opposed to a more scenic view.
Do I have remind you that anyone can claim to be a man of God? Jim Jones said he was a man of God and because of him 913 people, many of whom were Black are dead. President Bush claims he is a man of God and was called upon by God to lead this country and look at where we are today. Reverend Craig Ward of the Brookins African Methodist Episcopal Church considers himself to be a man of God, but he was still arrested in Oakland for trying to negotiate a 20-dollar oral sex act.
So you see, claiming that you are a man or woman of God does not automatically elevate you to sainthood, at least not in my book.
***
Over at
Raw Story, fellow
B3 contributor
Nancy Goldstein reveals the effects of our criminal justice system on children of the incarcerated that are covered in journalist Nell Bernstein's book,
All Alone in the World: Children of the Incarcerated.
The oftentimes harrowing accounts of her interview subjects not only foreground the trauma children are exposed to through the current system, but offer glimpses of where it has gone wrong — and could go right. The police who came for nine-year-old Ricky’s mom were in such a hurry that they left him alone in the apartment with his infant brother. For two weeks, Ricky cooked for himself and his brother, and changed his diapers, until neighbors noticed and called Child Protective Services. Antonia was five when she saw her mother arrested on the street for prostitution — handcuffed and put into the back of a police car. At home, she and her ten-year-old brother were on their own for a week until their mother returned.
Witnessing a parent being seized and handcuffed at gunpoint and then being left alone in the house to fend for oneself — and this routinely happens to children during an arrest — isn’t just a bad situation for the child, or one that could easily be redressed by something as simple as an officer taking the child into the next room and asking the parent if there’s someone who can take care of him. It also creates early, deep mistrust towards the law and its enforcers — and, as one officer reminds Bernstein, encouraging children to see police as the enemy does not enhance public or police safety.
Through careful documentation and statistical evidence illustrated by first-hand accounts, Bernstein argues that the well-being of both prisoners and their children is better insured through drug treatment, regular family visits, and parenting classes than it is through simply locking prisoners up, forcing them to communicate with their children by phone or through glass, or farming a child out to a foster home “for their own good” — i.e., to remove them from the “criminal element” in their lives. The latter may satisfy the current American bloodlust for retribution, but the policies that Bernstein recommends produce far lower rates of recidivism among inmates and decrease the chance that their children will later wind up in trouble with the law themselves.
Here's one way to spin the vote in Maine...
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
“Homosexual activists poured in resources from out of state, engaged in smear tactics and were aided by a media that routinely engaged in character assassination. The pro-family people were outspent by more than 10 to 1, saw hundreds of yard signs ripped up, and generally were under siege. But having fought the good fight and done all they could, they can hold their heads high."
-- Robert Knight, Director of CWA’s Culture & Family Institute (a Maine native)
You have to hand it to Concerned Women for America's penis-possessing Bob Knight. He knows how to gracefully accept defeat. After yesterday's election saw Maine's voters reject an attempt by the wingnuts to overturn the state's civil rights protections for LGBT citizens, Bob's saluting "
Mainers Who Worked Hard In Attempt to Overturn Special Homosexual Rights" with his usual overheated rhetoric.
“This setback means that Mainers must gird themselves for the next assault, which will be on marriage. Homosexual activists hope to force the Pine Tree State to issue counterfeit marriage licenses like Massachusetts is already doing.”
Maine voters rose up twice – in 1998 and again in 2000 – to pass a “People’s Veto” to overturn “gay rights” laws passed by the legislature and backed by the governor. “This time around, the activists threw the kitchen sink at them, and it finally worked. But Maine’s pro-family movement is as strong as ever, and they’ll continue to work for sound public policy,” Knight said.
...“Maine and the nation owe a lot to Mike Heath of the Civic League, Sandy Williams of the Coalition for Marriage, and Paul Madore of the Maine Grassroots Coalition, and all their volunteers,” Knight added. “Without their dedication, sacrifice and integrity, Maine would have knuckled under without a whimper. I think the other side knows they are not going to go away. They’re in it for the long haul.”
We might laugh, but the homo-obsessed Bob is not blowing smoke, given this news -- the Maine Taliban wants a marriage amendment. (
365gay.com):
While conceding the referendum to those who sought to preserve gay rights protections in the Maine Human Rights Act, organizers of the repeal campaign said the fight is far from over.
Sandy Williams on the civil rights law he wished to overturn: "We are offended by Governor John Baldacci’s lack of interest in hearing the legitimate and principled concerns of those who do not support the gay agenda. We are offended by Governor John Baldacci’s characterization of some of Maine’s foremost religious leaders and citizens as “cuckoo clocks”.
"Though we are disappointed in the vote on Question One, we remain committed to marriage as the beautiful and loving union between a man and a woman," said the Rev. Sandy Williams of the Coalition for Marriage, who challenged Gov. John Baldacci to introduce a constitutional amendment to that effect. Williams said his group had no timetable for pressing ahead with its agenda. Baldacci is up for re-election next year.
Voters on Tuesday made Maine the last New England state to bar discrimination based on sexual orientation. With returns from 88 percent of the state's 634 precincts, votes supporting the gay rights law were ahead 55 percent to 45 percent over those seeking to overturn the law that was approved by the Legislature. The count was 200,238 to 164,064.
Dark appropriate humor and good reading
Well, that provided a heckuva laugh!
The Dark Wraith, a fellow
Big Brass Blogger, has more serious fare over at his pad,
The Dark Wraith Forums, that you should check out, including a series on the
Valerie Plame scandal.
Princess Brandi Talibania goes down by 10,000 votes
The results are in for the 2005 election. On the bright side, Democrats won governorships in New Jersey and Virginia, Arnold Schwarzenegger's initiatives were all defeated in Coll-ee-for-nee-ya, and Maine reaffirmed their gay rights laws. On the dark side, Texas passed an anti-gay marriage amendment to their Constitution.
But that's not the election I was following. I was watching the crown princess of the American Taliban,
Generation Life's Brandi Swindell, in her bid to unseat long-time incumbent Boise City Council member Maryanne Jordan.
I was worried about the City Council being her springboard to more influential positions in politics, especially in Idaho, the 2nd-reddest state in the nation. She's been a force behind a fight to restore a Ten Commandments monument in a city park, and that's a very popular position in Boise and the surrounding areas. I really feared that she could be successful in her bid.
Turns out, it
wasn't even close:
Boise Council - Seat 6
Precincts: 81 of 81 (100%) reporting
Winner Candidate Votes Percent
X Maryanne Jordan 22918 70%
Brandi Swindell 9758 30%
BOISE -- Incumbent Maryanne Jordan won her re-election bid against Brandi Swindell for seat number six on the Boise city council.
Maryanne Jordan has been reelected to the Boise City Council.
Jordan is the current city council president and a small business owner.
"Well I'm just so grateful and so pleased I had fantastic help and support and I think that in local elections voters understand the issues that are important to their community, and I think they came through in a big way," Jordan said.
"This has been a phenomenal experience. Obviously, we wish we had gotten a few more votes, but this has been such a positive campaign, my volunteers have been amazing," Swindell said.
Jordan retains her seat with 10,000 more votes than her opponent.
Or as I like to think of it, a better than 2-to-1 margin. I underestimated the votes Jordan would pull from Boise's North End residents, one of the few blue spots in that all red sea of Southwestern Idaho. It's good to know that for every babbling Biblical literalist supporting Swindell, there are more than two other voters with the common sense to choose education and experience over looks and religious credentials.
On the other hand, this frees her up to continue her national anti-woman, anti-sex-ed, anti-privacy, and anti-seperation-of-church-and-state advocacy activities...
'Marriage Protection Act' goes to full committee
Call Specter,
202-224-4254, and let him know you think his decision to stroke Sam Brownback's ego is wrong.
Arlen Specter lets
Sh*thead Senator Sam gets his way, as the discrimination amendment makes its way to the full Judiciary Committee. Specter wants to see it come to a vote on the floor of the Senate, but says he wouldn't vote for it himself. Whatever. (
365gay.com):
The sub-committee voted 5 - 4 along party lines to pass the amendment, called the "Marriage Protection Act". It defines marriage as the union between a man and a woman.
...The amendment is sponsored in the Senate by Sam Brownback (R-Kan). Brownback, expected to be a candidate for the GOP presidential nomination in 2008, is chair of the sub-committee.
...The deciding vote Wednesday was cast by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.). Specter, the chair of the full Judiciary Committee, repeating remarks he made on the weekend, said that while he opposes the amendment he believes it should receive a vote on the Senate floor.
His vote to send the measure to the committee he chairs ensures it will pass the Judiciary and head to the full Senate for a vote.
Specter said that when the amendment comes to a final vote in the Senate he will oppose it.
Don't forget to surf over to
The Anti-Sam Blog.
Killer 'fro: unretouched scan of Sam's Kansas State University 1977 yearbookSen. Sam Brownback303 Hart Senate Office Bldg.
Washington, DC 20510
202-224-6521
Thanks to
Gary for the pointer.
Indy protects TGs as the bible beaters burn gay flag
"The elite city of Bloomington harbors an elitist, faggot business called The Inner Chef which openly and unabashedly claim they are against God Almighty" We burned the flag, and we will do it again."
-- knuckle-dragger John Lewis, pastor of the Old Paths church
I'm sure the good pastor also got a bug up his butt after learning that Indianapolis
add transgender to the language of its non-discrimination policy. Hoosiers are going to get tired of sh*t like this after a while. Thumbs up to Bart Peterson.
Mayor Bart Peterson expanded the city hiring policy to include protection for transgender employees, reissuing an earlier executive order last Friday.
Including the phrase "gender identity" in the policy that prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation corrected an oversight from the original executive order issued in 2004, he said. The change brings the city's policy in line with the state policy adopted by Gov. Joe Kernan and kept in place by Gov. Mitch Daniels.
But as you saw in the pull quote, a Fred Phelps wannabe, John Lewis, of the Old Paths Baptist Church, is running around with nothing better to do than sic his flock on the homos. (
365gay.com):
Members of an Indiana church opposed to homosexuality demonstrated on the campus of Indiana University then marched to a Bloomington gay-owned store where they burned the Rainbow flag.
Carrying signs that said "Fags Die, God Laughs" the group of about 25 denounced the university for its LGBT diversity program. The group has held a number of anti-gay protests at UI over the past few years but, the campus newspaper, The Indiana Daily Student, said this was the largest.
Some of the protestors brought children singing hymns. From the university campus the group marched to The Inner Chef a gay-owned kitchen supply store in Bloomington where they set a gay flag called New Glory on fire. New Glory combines the Rainbow flag with the stars of Old Glory in a gay version of the US flag.
Black homo-bigot tossed out in Ohio
Out gay Mark Tumeo unseats the unfortunate homophobe Jimmie Hicks, Jr. in Cleveland Heights.I'm sure we'll be reading about Dem electoral uprisings of this sort from all over the country today, but here's a tasty one out of Cleveland Heights, OH.
Blogger
David Caldwell says homo-bigot City Councilperson
Jimmie Hicks, Jr. who consistently fought a domestic partner benefits ordinance with a very public campaign against gays is probably wondering what hit him last night.
Hicks should have seen the handwriting on the wall in 2003, when the ordinance passed. Yesterday, he was not only tossed out of office,
but he was replaced by an openly gay challenger. Sweet revenge at the ballot box:
May your political career rest in peace, Jimmie. I'll never forget lecturing you about adoption at City Council. And I know that the work I poured so much of my passion into ultimately proved to be your undoing. It's like winning all over again.
...Hicks will probably blame it on his party switch, or mysterious outside pro-gay forces. We did an anti-Hicks mailer to the 5,000 supportive households we identified (painstakingly, door-to-door) in the 2003 campaign, and maybe that made a tiny difference.
But mostly, Jimmie just chose the wrong side in the fight about the gays. He never thought he might lose, and kept digging a deeper and deeper hole as he kept losing. Maybe a tiny wake-up call for others -- maybe it's not safe to pick on the gays anymore, not everywhere. Someday nowhere.
I'm sure it will be no shock to you that
Hicks is also a minister -- yet another one to go on the list of so many
black pastors in favor of discrimination. From a hysterical piece on a domestic partner registry that Hicks opposed -- and ended up costing the city quite a tab. From the
Cleveland Scene (in 2004):
Closet Homo of the Year
When Cleveland Heights decided to create a domestic-partner registry, it was a largely symbolic gesture. The registry offered none of the marital benefits typically granted to breeders. In fact, no one seems to really know what it did, beyond sending homos the basic message, "Hey, you guys are all right by us."
But Minister/Councilman Jimmie Hicks Jr. knew better. Allowing homos even a facsimile of marriage would bring darkness to the fashionable suburb. They would settle down, buy homes, and paint them in far more arresting colors than breeders ever could. Soon, there would be an outbreak of advanced gardening. Someone might even erect a tasteful gazebo.
Hicks vigilantly campaigned against the measure. If the city granted official sanction, he argued, everyone would turn homo. The temptation would be too great -- even for Jimmie Hicks. And since he harbored a modest ability to accessorize, he would likely have to purchase a mail-order boyfriend from Croatia, which could run upwards of 800 bucks.
Still, Hicks was an elected official; he would trust his f
