STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES – AND IN THIS CASE, DANGEROUSLY

I’ve pretty much given up on expecting sense and, more importantly, COMMON sense, out of the ReThugnican Party these days. I mean, you’ve got a man running for President who thinks that it’s perfectly OK to monger another war in the Middle East. What I didn’t expect – and indeed, I don’t think ANYBODY expected this or saw it coming, is the sheer, unmitigated gall as well as the cynical, self-righteous BS that Mitt Romney got up after our consulate in Benghazi, Libya was stormed and our ambassador and 3 other folks that worked with and for him were brutally murdered on Tuesday.

By now, we all know the story. On September 11th, during a “protest” about a film that demonizes Islam, the consulate was stormed by a group of armed men who used RPGs to blow up the walls and set the place on fire, after which they brutally murdered Ambassador Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, a foreign service information management officer, and two others whose names are being withheld because their families haven’t been notified yet. This is the first time since 1979 when Adolph Dubbs died in Afghanistan that an American Ambassador has been killed in the line of duty.

And of course, Mitt Romney just HAD to yap about it. HAD TO. He’s got NO foreign policy experience, he is a completely tone-deaf person when it comes to diplomacy, and he’s just plain . . . well, STUPID. This is a man that goes to the Olympics and manages to insult one of our closest allies, for cry-yi-yi (and I won’t even go into what happened in Poland!). Of course, that doesn’t keep him from having and disseminating his opinions. He shut have kept his indiscreet mouth firmly shut rather than opening it and proving to the world that he’s a complete and utter fool, braying like a jackass about something that he knows absolutely nothing about.

I’m with James Rainey (http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-mitt-romney-pastor-jones-20120912,0,884310.story?track=rss); “Mittens” should just triple down with “pastor” Terry Jones. You remember him, don’t you? He’s the braying jackass that was going to burn Korans at his “church” on the anniversary of 9/11 in 2010. Seems that “pastor” Jones is the main person that promoted the low-budget, anti-Muhammad film that sparked riots and triggered the killing of the U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens on Tuesday. Known as “Innocence of Muslims” or “Muhammad, Prophet of the Muslims,” the incendiary flick depicts Muhammad, Islam’s holiest prophet, as a thuggish womanizer, and Muslims as homosexuals, child molesters and madmen. SUPPOSEDLY this film was done by an amateur film-maker named Sam Bacile.

So, just who IS Sam Bacile, and what on earth did he think he was doing? Interesting question, isn’t it? What he thought he was doing, of course, was fomenting exactly the sort of reaction that he got with this atrocious piece of crap. He got the Religious Reichians© all stirred up in all of their smug, self-righteousness, and he got the Muslim world all stirred up to violence. And he got a big dividend as well: he managed to get an Ambassador and 3 other folks killed as a result. WHO he really is, is a question that a WHOLE lot of people would like to know. Because, you see, *HE* doesn’t seem to exist (http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/13/world/anti-islam-filmmaker/index.html).

AND, in the meantime, Mitt “WEATHERVANE” Romney, as I said, just HAD to comment about what happened at the Egyptian Embassy as well as comment on the deaths in Libya. Just HAD to. First he tried to bitch-slap the President for “a lack of clarity on foreign policy” (when he hasn’t got any experience in that particular field of endeavor), and then he further criticized the White House for a supposed apology issued from the embassy in Cairo after protesters first gathered there. “An apology for America’s values is never the right course,” Romney said. Here’s the statement that was issued:

“The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims — as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions. Today, the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Americans are honoring our patriots and those who serve our nation as the fitting response to the enemies of democracy. Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.”

So, where’s the apology? I don’t see one.

His own church issued a statement condemning what he said – and, when your OWN church condemns you for intolerance, that proves that you’ve gone too far. And that’s what “Mittens” did. He went a long way past too far. His cynical, self-serving attempt at politicizing a real tragedy caused in part by the very people that he’s been so assiduously wooing is contemptible. Worse that that, it was wrong – and worst of all, it has served to put embassy staff in the Middle East at far greater risk of being assaulted, hurt or killed. All because he could NOT resist jumping in, off script, and “proving” that he’s his own man, and damn the facts in the case, which he knew NOTHING about except that he wanted to embarrass the President and try to beat up on him for “apologizing” to a religious organization about which he knows nothing and cares less about.

All I see here is a stupid, small-minded, narrow souled religious bigot who has been more than willing to whore himself to a narrow-minded, small-souled group of religious, racist bigots. For votes. I wonder if he even cares that he has sold out everything that he ever professed to believe in when he was running for, first, Senator and later, Governor of Massachusetts. Or did he ever really believe it in the first place?

Here’s what he said in his news conference: “The embassy in Cairo put out a statement after their grounds had been breached, protesters were inside the grounds. They reiterated that statement after the breach. I think it’s a — a terrible course for America to stand in apology for our values. It’s their administration,” said Romney, referring to the embassy in Cairo. “Their administration spoke. The president takes responsibility not just for the words that come from his mouth but also from the words of his ambassadors, from his administration, from his embassies, from his State Department. They clearly sent mixed messages to the world. The statement that came from the administration – and the embassy is the administration – the statement that came from the administration was a statement which is akin to apology. And I think was a severe miscalculation.”

Nope, it wasn’t a miscalculation on the administration’s part, honey. It was a complete and total miscalculation on YOUR part, fired by your desperate need to make people notice you and your opinions.

Gangers, I don’t know about y’all, but here’s what I think: This is NOT a man that I want answering the red phone at 3:00 AM.

WHEN STUPIDITY IS INEVITABLE . . .

I’ve heard a lot of politicians say some pretty stupid things in my time – but Todd Akin of Missouri really, REALLY takes the prize for stupidity.

 In an interview that aired on Sunday, Representative Akin made what has GOT to be one of the stupidest, most misogynistic statements that I’ve ever heard (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2012/08/19/todd-akin-gop-senate-candidate-legitimate-rape-rarely-causes-pregnancy/). His statement, said in an interview airing Sunday that “legitimate rape” rarely causes pregnancy, is, frankly, beyond stupid. It’s egregious, it’s horrendous, and he is now reaping the reward that he so richly deserves, that of scorn, rage from women of all walks of life and disbelief. Off-the-cuff remarks, my ass. He was simply stating what he deeply believes, that only sluts get raped, and that rape rarely results in pregnancy anyhow, so why should there be legal abortions for the victims of rape to begin with?

 His assertion that a woman’s body has ways to shut down and prevent pregnancy is all bullshit, not borne out by the FACTS. Fact is, if a woman is fertile, and a lot of times even when she isn’t, rape can and in about 35% of cases DOES result in pregnancy (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8765248). Now, admittedly, this is an old report, from 1996, but if even ONE unwanted, forced pregnancy results from an incident of forced intimacy, like rape, that’s at least a THOUSAND too many.

 Regardless of anyone person’s position on abortion (and I am not an abortion proponent, but that’s a thought for another column), this crap is not something that should be part of the national debate on abortion. In point of fact, there shouldn’t BE a debate on abortion, since Roe v Wade is the law of the land, regardless of what the Republican Party and the ReThugs© that are running it nowadays think. I want somebody to explain to me what the difference is between “legitimate” rape and rape. Rape is the forcible physical penetration of an unwilling victim by a sexual predator, and it doesn’t matter whether the victim is a male or a female. The key word here is “forcible”.  So, is this the thought process that all Republicans and Rethugs hold, or is this just the abberant thought process of one nasty man who doesn’t know what he’s talking about? 

Well, let me make one thing crystal clear: Rape is not about sex, it’s about power. Period. Tell me, Mr. Akin, have *YOU* ever been forcibly penetrated? And, “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” REALLY? In what alternate universe does this happen?

I’ve been raped twice. Both times, it took extensive psychotherapy to deal with the shame and the fears that came with this, even if I was the victim. Used to be, if you reported a rape, the first words out of the cop’s mouth were “and just what were you doing to cause this?” Most women rarely reported rapes precisely because they couldn’t deal with the scorn, the shame and the notoriety of being that sort of victim. I can’t even begin to imagine what I would have done myself had I gotten pregnant from either rape. 

Politicians and activists who espouse this view often suggest that women who haven’t been raped will claim to have been raped in order to obtain an abortion. An Idaho state lawmaker apologized earlier this year after urging doctors to make sure women who claimed they had been raped were sure of that fact. Representative Akin himself has suggested in the past that women may claim to be raped as a strategy during divorce proceedings. Needless to say, this is territory that GOP leaders would rather not have Representative Akin wander into. Getting into the particulars of “legitimate rape” (as opposed to what? ILLEGITIMATE rape? do they mean spousal rape? Incest? WHAT?) and the female reproductive system has the potential to make this a headache for the GOP.

GOSH, I hope that happens. Really. 

What a completely contemptible person he is – and I’ve got to wonder just how he would react if one of his female family members had been raped and impregnated as the result. Would he cast them out as unclean? Insist that they bear the “child of shame”? What WOULD he do? 

Representative Akin should look up Clayton Williams and his run for Governor in Texas back in the 1990 race. During the campaign, Williams publicly made a joke likening rape to bad weather, having quipped: “If it’s inevitable, just relax and enjoy it”. That remark cost him both the race and his would-be political career.

We’re all supposed to just sit back and, like most Republican women, pretend that there isn’t a war on women and women’s rights going on right now in this country. Of all of the hard-won rights that we’ve got, access to abortion is one of the most divisive – and the most necessary. As I said, I personally don’t believe in abortion, but, damn it, I am NOT the person that has been divinely appointed to point the finger of shame at a scared 13 year old whose father has raped her and who is now pregnant with a child that she not only doesn’t want but whose conception can actually physically threaten her health, not to mention what it’s already done to her mind. Eugene Robinson had this to say about the subject (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/eugene-robinson-todd-akin-comment-brings-war-on-women-back-to-prominence/2012/08/20/c4570fae-eafd-11e1-9ddc-340d5efb1e9c_story.html?wprss=rss_homepage):

“That “female body” line is not only a frightening glimpse at the dangerous nonsense rattling around inside the heads of some on the far, far right. It is also — in its sheer, befuddled, clueless anatomical ignorance — an illustration of why we need more women in public office. When Akin says “ways to try to shut that whole thing down,” what exactly does he mean? What does he envision happening inside that mysterious, unknowable realm? Is it sorcery? Witchcraft? Akin, by the way, is a member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. I am not kidding.”

I find that even more frightening than I do the fact that this contemptible male person thinks what he has said in public. He’s on the House Committee on SCIENCE? So where is he GETTING his science? And there’s more: less than week after he won the Republican nomination in a three-way race, Akin was being asked repeatedly by high-level fellow Republicans to drop out of the contest. And that’s despite his attempt to back away his initial comments. About the only good thing that’s come out of this horror is that both the Republican candidates for President and Vice-President have openly condemned his remarks. And they didn’t even have the courage to do it in person, either. Nope, they issued statements through their spokespeople. Unlike President Obama, they didn’t have the guts to come out against one of their own.

President Obama said today (http://news.yahoo.com/president-obama-calls-akin-comments-offensive-declares-rape-182741585–abc-news-politics.html):

“The views expressed were offensive. Rape is rape and the idea that we should be parsing and qualifying and slicing what types of rape we’re talking about doesn’t make sense to the American people and it certainly doesn’t make sense to me. What I think these comments do underscore is why we shouldn’t have a bunch of politicians, the majority of whom are men, making health care decisions on behalf of women.”

At this juncture, there is a huge outcry against Representative Akin. He’s being pressured at this point to get out of the race for Senator from Missouri. I hope that he does bow out of the race. And I also hope that he withers away as he deserves to, into a mean and dishonourable silence.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RELIGIOUSITY AND SPIRITUALITY

I belong to a very interesting group on Linked In, and there’s been a discussion about religion, spirituality and christian belief systems on there that I have found to be absolutely fascinating.

I don’t consider myself a religious person but rather a spiritual one. There have been more truly horrific things done in the name of “religion” than can be ennumerated here. The slave trade, for one, was justified by biblical quotations, and the same thing is going on today in the GLBT community.

I often have wondered how it is that people can justify hand-picking, often out of context, what they want FROM the Bible to justify whatever they want to bolster their own prejudices. It clearly states IN THE BIBLE: “There is no God”. Of course, put it into context and use the entire quote, and it’s entirely different: “The fool has said, there is no God.”

The mainstream religions got into the business of religiousity and out of the art of spirituality a long time ago. Making religion a business brings both money and power which is of course the object of the exercise. Look, for example, at the R/C Church. I am not longer permitted to practice as a Roman Catholic because I’m a lesbian. According to Leviticus, I and my wife – to whom I am legally married IN THE STATE OF TEXAS – are fornicators, adulterers and abominations. Once again, hand-picking the scriptures/strictures that conform to the people in power’s prejudices to justify oppression and exclusion. Old covenant vs New covenant – and which one do most mainstream religions follow? The one that brings them in the most money and power, of course. Check out Jim Jones and The Peoples’ Temple.

This country was NOT founded on religious principles since most of the founding fathers were very careful public christians while their preferred POV was that of deists. This country was founded as a secular nation without a state religion, which is one reason the founding fathers set things up the way that they did. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have the doctrine of separation.

This is something that I feel very strongly about. I (along with approximately 4 million OTHER Roman Catholics) was excommunicated from the church – for the “sin” of being GLBT. The word “sin” means an offense against god, which was the basis for their justification but if you have the premise that god is all-powerful and all-knowing, then his creations are neither sinful nor imperfect. We are as he made us. So, how is this a sin?

I have often been confronted with religious fundamentalists whose sole rationale is the Levitican stricures, and I have always asked them if they follow all of the strictures, and not just a few. For example, a person is supposed to walk a mile outside the city limits to dig a toilet pit. How many people do that these days? And just how long would it take somebody in, say, Houston, to get to the city limits, on foot? I can’t think of any. Neither can I think of people that stone their children to death for said children being disrespectful.

Read the whole of Leviticus some time. It will give you nightmares. It does that to me.

THE COMING GLOBAL FOOD CRISIS

I don’t know if the rest of y’all have been watching commodities prices lately, but I have, and what I’m seeing is starting to really scare me. A lot.

The Great Drought of 2012 hasn’t yet come to a conclusion, but we already know that its consequences are going to be pretty devastating. With more than one-half of America’s counties designated as drought disaster areas, the 2012 harvest of corn, soybeans, and other food staples is going to fall far short of predictions. This is going to boost food prices, both domestically and abroad, to go through the roof, and it’s going to cause increased misery for farmers and low-income Americans and far greater hardship for poor people in countries that rely on imported U.S. grains.

Unfortunately, this is only the beginning of a pretty nasty scenario for the entire world, not just this country. Look back at what history tells us about what the lack of good, abundant food leads to: violent social unrest and even more violent confrontations. After all, you can have all the money in the world, and if it won’t even buy enough food to feed your family, what good does it do? Food, by which I mean clean, affordable food, is essential to human survival and well-being. Take that away, and people become anxious, desperate, and angry. In the United States, food represents only about 13% of the average household budget, a relatively small share, so a boost in food prices in 2013 will probably not prove overly taxing for most middle – and upper – income families. It could, however, produce considerable hardship for poor and unemployed Americans with limited resources. “You are talking about a real bite out of family budgets,” commented Ernie Gross, an agricultural economist at Omaha’s Creighton University. This could add to the discontent already evident in depressed and high-unemployment areas, which might actually prompt an intensified backlash against incumbent politicians as well as other forms of dissent and unrest – like food riots.

People don’t remember or even seem to care that there were serious food riots in a double dozen Third World countries in 2007 – 2008. After all, who CARES what those smelly, non-English speaking, non-white folks are up to? And if a bunch of them die, well, so what? Just leaves more room for the rest of us, right?

WRONG. If food riots could happen there, what makes any of y’all think that it couldn’t happen here?

We’re diverting a lot of food resources into the making of biofuels, for example. That means that there are fewer raw materials, like corn, wheat and soybeans, to feed people and a lot less silage from those same raw materials to feed animals. The next price spike in 2010-11 was, however, closely associated with climate change, unlike the price spike in 2007 – 2008, which was blamed on the high price of oil. An intense drought gripped much of eastern Russia during the summer of 2010, reducing the wheat harvest in that breadbasket region by one-fifth and prompting Moscow to ban all wheat exports. Drought also hurt China’s grain harvest, while intense flooding destroyed much of Australia’s wheat crop. Together with other extreme-weather-related effects, these disasters sent wheat prices soaring by more than 50% and the price of most food staples by 32%.

Oops.

And now, to the Arab Spring, where a huge surge in food prices resulted in widespread social unrest, this time concentrated in North Africa and the Middle East. The earliest protests arose over the cost of staples in Algeria and then Tunisia, where (no coincidence) the final straw that broke the camel’s back and which was the seminal even that precipitated the riots was a young food vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, who set himself on fire to protest government harassment. The Arab Spring was the direct result of several factors: anger over rising food and fuel prices combined with long-simmering resentments about government repression and corruption. The rising cost of basic staples, especially a loaf of bread, was also a cause of unrest in Egypt, Jordan, and Sudan. Other factors, notably anger at entrenched autocratic regimes, may have proved more powerful in those places, but as the author of Tropic of Chaos, Christian Parenti, wrote, “The initial trouble was traceable, at least in part, to the price of that loaf of bread.”

If this was just one bad harvest, occurring in only one country, the world would undoubtedly absorb the ensuing hardship and expect to bounce back in the years to come. Unfortunately, it’s becoming evident that the Great Drought of 2012 is not a one-off event in a single heartland nation, but rather an inevitable consequence of global warming which is only going to intensify. As a result, we can expect not just more bad years of extreme heat, but worse years, hotter and more often, and not just in the United States, but globally for the indefinite future.

When we think seriously about climate change (if we think about it at all, and most of us don’t), we think about rapidly rising temperatures, prolonged droughts, freakish storms, hellish wildfires, and rising sea levels. Among other things, this will result in a seriously damaged infrastructure and pretty badly diminished food supplies. Of course, these manifestations are of warming in the physical world, not the social world we all inhabit and rely on for so many aspects of our daily well-being and survival. The purely physical effects of climate change will prove to be catastrophic.

However, – and this is more frightening to me at least – the social effects including, somewhere down the line, food riots, mass starvation, state collapse, mass migrations, and conflicts of every sort, up to and including full-scale war, could prove even more disruptive and deadly. We’ve got a real danger here of being IN a real-life version of the Hunger Games, folks. And not just in the Third World countries, either. We have a real danger of that right here, RIGHT NOW, in this country. There is a day coming when there are going to be wars over both arable land and potable water – and I’m very much afraid that they are going to happen in our lifetime.

So, what’s the solution? I haven’t got a clue. Neither does anybody else, for that matter. WonderWife and I have a garden this year, and I’m canning fruits and vegetables for all I’m worth. I’m also drying foods like corn and beans and making dried meat jerkies. We’ve got a cistern in the back yard to catch whatever rainfall there is to water our garden and our yard. We also bought reloading equipment for our guns. If nothing else, we will at least be able to shoot meat animals for food.

Desperate times are coming, folks. Kinda makes the survivalists look sane, doesn’t it?

“BECAUSE I FELT LIKE IT . . .”

I, like the rest of the world today, woke up to the sickening events in Aurora, Colorado. I lone gunman went to the movie opening of THE DARK KNIGHT RISES and shot up the theatre, killing 12 people and injuring 59 more. He wasn’t trying to commit “suicide by cop”, either – he surrendered without a fight. So, what’s the reasoning behind his actions? 

Let me say at this point that I am a member of a group called PINK PISTOLS, which is a GLBT shooting club that is also a member of the NRA. I take my 2^nd Amendment rights very seriously; the one recourse that all people of the United States have access to combat tyranny is the right to keep and bear arms. However, an armed citizenry and a RESPONSIBLE, well-educated citizenry are two separate things. Most people aren’t psychologically capable of shooting to wound or kill even in defense of their lives.

I know a lot of people that think that gun control laws in this country are too draconian and far too strict. They believe and often say that they should have the right to have any sort of gun that they want to have, up to and including automatic weapons with ammunition drums, to defend themselves from . . . whatever. A lot of the ill-informed also use those automatic weapons to hunt creatures like deer and so on. I won’t debate the merits of using an automatic weapon on an herbivore, since I bow-hunt. The fact remains that using an automatic weapon for anything other than its’ designed purpose is pretty stupid. 

Check out what an automatic weapon is designed to do: Throw multiple rounds at a fast rate of speed at a designated target that is moving quickly. Well, that makes it OK to use for hunting, right? Wrong. An automatic weapon is designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to disable, wound or kill a very dangerous predator, another human being. That’s its’ only purpose. That is the rationale behind the armed services having such weapons. Even if a person armed with an automatic weapon doesn’t kill or wound the person or people that she/he is shooting at, just the sound of the weapon’s firing is enough to scare that person into taking cover. 

Most people that have and use automatic weapons haven’t taken a gun safety course, they don’t know how to effectively use such a weapon, and, in most cases, they think that using the weapon means treating it like a garden hose and spraying the bullets around. Thus, we have the horrific massacres in places like Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Chechnya – or Aurora, Colorado. 

It’s easy to squall and bawl about our 2^nd Amendment rights – but what about our 2^nd Amendment RESPONSIBILITIES? We have the right to keep and bear arms, and very few checks on who is allowed to buy and keep them. The only check required in most states is that licensed gun dealers must keep up-to-date records of their gun sales, including the name, address and occupation of the person to whom they sell the weapon and request a background check on anyone buying a gun. The NRA shrieked to high heaven when the Brady Bill requiring a 3 day waiting period and a background check became law – and that was just for HANDGUNS. Professor Paul Campos of the University of Colorado Law School had this to say about the tragedy (http://www.salon.com/topic/gun_control/page/2/): “Today, murder in Aurora, CO. is an interesting topic.” 

Yup, I guess that you could characterize this as an “interesting topic.” Rep. Louis Gohmert of Texas had this to say about the tragedy (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/20/louie-gohmert-aurora-shootings_n_1689099.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular):  “Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) said Friday that the shootings that took place in an Aurora, Colo. movie theater hours earlier were a result of “ongoing attacks on Judeo-Christian beliefs” and questioned why nobody else in the theater had a gun to take down the shooter.” 

What a chuckle-headed fool. If anybody else had had a gun, all that probably would have happened would have been that far MORE people would have gotten hurt and killed. Just because a person has the Constitutionally-protected RIGHT to keep and bear arms, DOES NOT MEAN that that person has the right to open fire in response to a perceived or real attack. That’s just like yelling “FIRE” in a crowded enclosure. More people are hurt and killed trying to get OUT of the enclosure than are ever saved. 

And what about the shooter? What about HIS reasons for doing what he did? 

I expect that he’s going to try and plead insanity, and what he did was certainly insane. By any definition of insanity, he was unbalanced to even contemplate what he eventually wound up doing. However, he planned what he did with immaculate precision. Apparently, from the early reports, he had been planning to do something like this ever since he dropped out of medical school in May. And, in my view at least, that makes him sane. I also expect that, when all is said and done, his reason is going to be something along the lines of “I felt like it”, or “because I could.” 

How contemptible.

 My heart goes out to the parents and families of those who died this day, and to those whose loved ones are still alive. I wish that there was something that I could do to mitigate their pain and sorrow. There isn’t – and there never will be.

APARTHEID NATION?

Something that was discussed in great detail on Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry’s program yesterday was Attorney General Eric Holder’s speech to the NAACP convention held here in Houston this week past. He brought up some interesting points, which made me think. A lot. 

With the advent of voter ID laws here in this country, we’re heading backwards on voters’ rights, according to Mr. Holder. Mandating that EVERYBODY has to have a valid photo ID of some sort, issued by the state in which that person is voting, Mr. Holder said, was like unto the reintroduction of poll tax laws. Me, I think that the situation is a lot worse than people realize. I think that we’re trying to institute apartheid into this country.

 Here’s the Webster’s dictionary definition of apartheid:

 a·part·heid ( ah-pärt heit )

n.

 1. An official policy of racial segregation formerly practiced in theRepublic ofSouth Africa, involving political, legal, and economic discrimination against nonwhites.

 2. A policy or practice of separating or segregating groups.

 3. The condition of being separated from others; segregation.

 And, here we go again. Backwards into the old-time abominable practice of Jim Crow laws and segregation.

 Mr. Holder said Tuesday he opposes a new photo ID requirement in Texas elections because it would be harmful to minority voters; he also told the NAACP in Houston that he will do everything he can to make sure the law doesn’t stand, adding that the Justice Department “will not allow political pretexts to disenfranchise American citizens of their most precious right.” Under the law passed in Texas, Mr. Holder said that “many of those without IDs would have to travel great distances to get them — and some would struggle to pay for the documents they might need to obtain them. We call those poll taxes,” Mr. Holder added spontaneously, drawing applause as he moved away from the original text of his speech with a reference to a fee used in some Southern states after slavery’s abolition to disenfranchise black people.

Mr. Holder spoke a day after a trial started in federal court in Washington over the 2011 law passed by Texas’ GOP-dominated Legislature that requires voters to show photo identification when they get to the polls. UnderTexas’ law, Holder noted, a concealed handgun license would serve as acceptable ID to vote, but a student ID would not. He went on to say that while only 8 percent of white people do not have government-issued photo IDs, about 25 percent of black people lack such identification.

“I don’t know what will happen as this case moves forward, but I can assure you that the Justice Department’s efforts to uphold and enforce voting rights will remain aggressive,” the attorney general said, adding that the arc of American history has always moved toward expanding the electorate and that “we will simply not allow this era to be the beginning of the reversal of that historic progress.”

 “I will not allow that to happen,” he added.

 OK, but I’m wondering just how he plans to stop it. Yeah, yeah – I know, we’ve got a Constitutional amendment saying that things like literacy tests and poll taxes aren’t legal any more, but, sheesh, people, this is happening right before our eyes, and we’re not doing anything to stop it for the most part.

 I grew up in Texas during a time when there was segregated EVERYTHING: restrooms, lunch counters, drinking fountains, busses – you name it, we had it. Well, folks, South Africa had it too, for a long time, and it was finally (mostly) gotten rid of, thanks to courageous people like Nelson Mandela. There is still a lot of racism there, but eventually, through generational change, it will finally die almost completely out.

 We had (and truth be known, still do have) our own version of apartheid here in this country, beginning after the Civil War. Couldn’t call the freedmen slaves any more, so they were called sharecroppers or tenant farmers, and they were herded into neighborhoods kept far, FAR away from the white people. There were/are 2 kinds of segregation, and what we see now and what is still endemic in this country is something called hypersegregation.

Hypersegregation is a form of racial segregation that consists of both unforced and forced geographical separation of racial groups. Most often, this occurs in cities where the residents of the inner city are African Americans and the suburbs surrounding this inner core are often white “European American” residents. The idea of hypersegregation gained credibility in 1989 largely due to the work of Douglass Massey and Nancy A. Denton and their studies of “American Apartheid” when whites created the black ghetto during the first half of the 20th century in order to isolate growing urban black populations by segregation among inner-city African-Americans. It has also been called “white flight” because the white people that lived in the inner cities ran like hell to get AWAY from the black people that were moving into their enclaves. There was a phrase that defined that era – and it’s as disgusting today as it was then: “Well, I don’t really have anything against n()s but I sure don’t want to live next door to them.”

 It’s a vicious, vile practice. Know what’s the saddest thing about it? Racism and segregation are alive and well right here, RIGHT NOW, in this country.

Take a look around you, gangers, and tell me that what’s going on in this nation right now isn’t sickening. We have, for the first time, a black man in the highest office in the land. We have a smart, shrewd, thoughtful, well-educated BLACK MAN IN THE WHITE HOUSE. Black people had the temerity to actually VOTE for this man, and the white ReThugs have been trying to get rid of this uppity n() ever since. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has publicly stated too many times to count that the one and only thing that the Republican Party should be focused on is defeating Barack Obama. To that end, both the Senate and the House Republicans have stalled or defeated legislation all in the name of making sure that the President is a one-term President. What’s the best way to do that? Disenfranchise people that would vote for him.

We now have the resurgence of segregation by way of required voter IDs. Not only coming back into style, but actually being pushed by white people. Never mind that the Voting Rights Act says that this sort of crap is illegal, there are very inventive people finding very inventive ways to stop both old and new voter registration. The three worst states areTennessee, Florida andPennsylvania– andTexas isn’t far behind. Alabama has one, and Arizona, of course, has their “PAPERS, PLEASE” law in effect as well.Wisconsin has one, as does Mississippi. Add Indianato the mix as well. Are you seeing a pattern here?

 I didn’t expect anything better out of the Southern states than what’s been transpiring – but I honestly thought that the Northern states were a bit more intelligent.

This is being done, as the ReThugs will tell you, to stop voter fraud. Well, guess what? In the past 2 general elections, there have been less than 1000 case of voter fraud recorded in the entire country.THE ENTIRE COUNTRY. The BrennanCenterfor Justice has published two papers about this (http://www.truthaboutfraud.org/), and even the Republican Party has admitted that voter fraud isn’t as wide-spread – MAYBE – as they first thought.

 We SO don’t need a return to the days of voter suppression. That’s just another form of institutionalized denial of rights. We no longer have organizations that are even willing to try and register voters. The League of Women Voters gave up on registering voters inFloridabecause some of them were arrested for it. We no longer have ACORN, thanks to the contemptible efforts of James O’Keefe and his corporate shills. So, what’s going to happen?

 I don’t know. All I can do is put this up:

 First They Came …. poem by Martin Niemöller

“In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.”

He wrote this while he was in Dachau.

 Can’t happen here again? Think again, people. Think again. 

THINK.

Yet ANOTHER thing I never thought I’d live long enough to see . . .

Let’s face it, I am a news junkie. I watch all sorts of news/infortainment/opinion programs every day, and I’ve been increasingly distressed to see the news programs degenerating into infotainment, more and more slanted to reflect the host’s prejudices, and rarely being newsworthy to boot. 

Well, on July 9th, 2012, I was galvanized while watching HARDBALL (with Michael Smerconish subbing for Chris Matthews). It’s the second time this month that something has happened that was newsworthy that literally made me cry. And, it’s something that’s been a very long time coming. On June 19. 2012, Mr. Chambers sent out a letter to his faithful followers announcing a new direction for the organization (read it here: http://alanchambers.org/defining-exodus-letter-from-alan-chambers-for-june-2012/) that has stridently embraced a “PRAY THE GAY AWAY” approach to “curing” homosexuality through reparative therapy. On July 9, he appeared on Chris Matthews’ show and discussed this with substitute host Michael Smerconish. 

He chose to do this because he had talked with Mr. Smerconish several times, beginning on Mr. Smerconish’s radio program 3 years ago, defending EXODUS INTERNATIONAL’s stand on (AND USE OF) that most disgusting of practices, reparative therapy. The complete transcript of his remarks can be read here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48134422/ns/msnbc_tv-hardball_with_chris_matthews/t/hardball-chris-matthews-monday-july/

Mr. Chambers said “Well, I want to be clear about what those changes are. The fact is, my life is still as it was when I was on your radio program three years ago, and I still hold to a biblical sexual ethic where homosexuality and other forms of sexuality are concerned. But what I think what`s changed for me is, really, the overemphasis on this issue in ways that we don`t emphasize other issues in the church. And specifically, with regards to reparative therapy, that so much of that type of technique and therapy is focused on changing attraction or changing temptation, when I don`t find that there`s a biblical reality that says people will necessarily change their temptations or change their struggles. So I want to be very, very clear about that.”

Mr. Chambers also stated that he thought that “praying away the gay” was a lazy approach to a complex problem. He also stated that people that were practicing “reparative therapy” and promising a 100% cure were unrealistic.

No SHIT, Sherlock!

He admitted that he still has same-sex attractions but added that he was in love with his wife and that he didn’t act on those cravings – and anyway, that his cravings were always for his wife – and that he was (and this was belligerantly said) very much in love with his wife and that he had a very happy marriage. The difference, he also said, was that, while he still had the temptations, he didn’t act on them. 

In other words – and in my opinion – he didn’t say much of anything that couldn’t be interpreted as his trying to defend his own personal position on “reparative therapy” (which is that it works some of the time, on some people) but that just because somebody identifies as being GLBT, that God doesn’t love them, or that they have no hope of Heaven. He also said that he believes that nurture is more important than nature in how a person is shaped, and who that person turns out to be be it GLBT or straight. 

Here’s what I think – and I’m certainly not alone in this – is that Mr. Chambers and her contemptible organization have finally been defeated by the mountains of scientific evidence that we are indeed born with our sexual identities, and that trying to change the hard-wiring that we are born with is an exercise in futility. Of course, over the years, that philosophy of “pray the gay away” and the use of “reparative therapy” had made him and his organization a literal Grand Canyon full of cash. Some of that cash was used to help defeat Prop 8 in California, and to push the individual states’ and the FedGov versions of DOMA. which defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman, and that GLBT people should never be allowed to marry because after all same-sex unions can’t be fruitful and multiply as all people are called to do in the Bible. 

Mr. Chambers, in other words, along with all the other so-called christian movements that deny us our civil rights, still believes in the Old Covenant with an angry, vengeful God. He is just going to stop trying to force people into a form that he and the others of his contemptible ilk think we should all fit into. He’s trying to cover his and his organization’s collective asses. Not only did Mr. Chambers allow, encourage and endorse reparative therapy, Exodus International allowed as well as encouraged its own staff to use personal stories to promote it and their organization. They all LUUUUUUUUUUUUUURVED the sinner, and hated the sin. I still haven’t figured out how being a loving, kind, compassionate human being who loves somebody of her/his own sex is sinful. This is pure Old Testament nonsense. 

Know what Jesus’s big bugaboo was? Count on it, it was NOT homosexuality. Nope, it was adultery and divorce. 

Andy Comiskey of Desert Stream ministries, writing in his book “Pursuing Sexual Wholeness,” called homosexuality “spiritual disfigurement” and believes that “Satan delights in homosexual perversion because it not only exists outside of marriage, but it also defiles God’ very image reflected as male and female…Another related source of demonization is the homosexual relationship itself…That attachment and communion are indeed inspired, but their source is demonic.”

Demonic? REALLY?

However, that’s not the worst thing that Exodus International has done.During the height of the AIDS crisis in the early 1908s and continuing through the 1990s, Exodus International purposely used scare tactics to recruit new clients. Fear is a great motivator, after all, and by using this abominable tactic and by subjecting terrified people to what amounted to then, and still amounts to today, public humiliation and private torture. There are a lot of GLBT people that went through the “reparative therapy” process more than once – and some of them wound up dead by their own hands, when they couldn’t get rid of their temptations and cravings, as they had been promised would happen if they just prayed enough, were celibate or in a heterosexual relationship no matter how much they hated it. 

If there was ever an organization that should be called a domestic terrorist organization, all of the groups that pushed “reparative therapy” should be labeled as such and prosecuted. Unfortunately, that isn’t going to happen. We – and by “we” I mean everybody that finds this sort of thing completely repugnant – should never forget Exodus International’s past, or that, no matter what they are saying now, they are leopards that aren’t changing their spots, just their rhetoric. There is no way that  Alan Chambers should be allowed to cover up Exodus International’s harmful and in a good many cases lethal history of the use of fear, intimidation, brain washing, and anti-gay propaganda since it was founded in 1976.

As I said when our first Black President was elected, I never thought that I’d live long enough to see that day. Now, here’s another thing that I never thought I’d live long enough to see: A fundamentalist christian group finally admitting that they were wrong in forcing people to pretend to change, in the name of Christ and for the power of the almighty dollar.

Let’s hope that this finally spells the end of that thoroughly debunked method of torture, ‘reparative therapy”.

 

 

THE TRIPOD

I have made mention quite a few time over the course of the last several years of an intellectual contraption called “THE TRIPOD”. This evening, WonderWife and I were talking about it, and she mentioned to me that I might want to tell folks what I meant by that. She understands the concept, and I would like everyone else to understand it as well. It’s not a new concept, but I never thought that I’d see it happening here. I was mistaken. And it is leading us all down a very grim path.

It’s a really simple concept. All civilizations fight the same fights all the time, whether anybody pays attention to it or not, between the oligarchs and the plutocrats and the (for want of a better word) plebes. The haves and the have-nots. You can got back through history and find these struggles all over the place. The most recent example of this, of course, is the “Arab Spring” of Egypt and the overthrow of the Libyan dictatorship. It’s happening now in Syria, and we helped to put a stop to SOME of it in Afghanistan.

All of these struggles rest on a tripod base. This consists of the three things that will stop all dissent from taking place. First leg: HUNGER. Keep a population more concerned with having enough food to feed themselves and their families with just enough money to get by. Second leg: IGNORANCE. Make sure that you (the ruling class) dumb down the schools to the lowest common denominator. Third leg: Misinformation. Lie and lie and LIE about what’s going on, and do it so loudly that nobody else can be heard. Turn the news into entertainment to make money.

Leg #1, of course, is getting rid of inconvenient things like labour unions, collective bargaining and minimum wage standards. After all, if a populace actually has enough money to buy food and provide living quarters AND leisure time to self-educate by reading, well, GOSH – they might get uppity and demand things. Like, say, decent educations that are affordable for their children. If there’s not quite enough money to go around without a person working a 60 hour work week, then what do you think is going to be more important to that person, especially if there are children involved? And even now, the Federal food stamp program is under attack – for being too expensive.

Leg #2 is another way to keep a fractious population under control. After all, if the public school system is run by people whose sole job is not to educate, but to teach to a standardized test to graduate students, who are the ones that suffer? I DO NOT BLAME THE TEACHERS. Or the principals of the public school systems in this country, because they themselves are under attack. Surprize, surprize – if not for the labour unions, there wouldn’t be any way for a teacher to be able to do anything about the stupidities that the school administrations are capable of. Look, for example, at Detroit. Or Texas. Make sure that the texts are dumbed down to the point that most of what the kids learn is along the extremely simplistic general lines of “OH OH OH LOOK LOOK LOOK SEE SPOT RUN”, and what do you think happens? Gosh, there are a lot of kiddos graduated that are at best functional illiterates. I do not approve of either the magnet school programs or the charter school programs, because they are private schools that are run at state and taxpayer expense, and which are principally designed to separate the best and brightest students and teachers from the general school populations while leaving the not-so-intellectually gifted behind to wallow in mediocrity.

Leg #3 is slanting the news programs one way or the other. Misinforming people doesn’t always come under the heading of lies. It also comes under the heading of opinions that are pretending to be objective reporting. The only objective reportage that I’ve seen lately has been over the SCOTUS decision about the Affordable Care Act. The only other objective reportage is what’s coming out of the war zones. Then, of course, you also have the “infotainers”, because after all, we’re too STUPID to know what to think until we’ve been TOLD what to think. Incidentally, this is why I worked for, voted for and truly love our President. He expects us to come up to his level of competence.

And this, gangers, is what makes the unelected oligarchs and the plutocrats so very dangerous. I do not like what’s been happening in MY COUNTRY for the last 30 or so years. I do not like people like Paul Ryan saying that the poor and the middle class have too many privileges like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP and food stamps. I don’t like people like the Koch brothers cynically assuming that they can buy the Senate, the House and the Presidency and use those bodies to ensure that we all fall in line in their vision of the future: organized peonage of anybody that isn’t white, rich and religious. I HATE that ACLU backed the Citizens United lawsuit which is making it possible, finally, for the tripod to become an accepted FACT of our lives.

So, what do we do? Damned if I know – but I do know this: An educated populace is anathema to all dictators and tyrants. An educated populace that is engaged in fighting for our rights as guaranteed to us in the Constitution is anathema to those who would deny us the freedom to choose for ourselves where we want to go as a country. An educated, informed populace is an abomination to those who would rather see anyone that isn’t exactly like them dead. We’re already seeing that those who would deny us are not having it all their own way these days, but as Ben Franklin said so many years ago, if we are not prepared to fight for our freedoms, then we will lose them

If we aren’t willing to do away with the tripod, and we aren’t willing to openly fight for ourselves, then we deserve to lose our freedoms. I hope that that doesn’t happen here.

I hope.

 

WEASELS OF THE WEEK, JUNE EDITION

{Just a quick note for all who followed my former blog: This is my new blog on Word Press. Apparently Google doesn’t love me any more because I can’t access my dashboard to put up new posts. Please follow me here, all of y’all that followed The Thorn Bu$h.} 

DON’T go away, it’s time to play (drum roll) WEASELS OF THE WEEK! 

WEASEL OF THE WEEK, #1: Darrell “I HATE ANYBODY THAT’S NOT LIKE ME AND WHO WANTS TO VOTE” Issa. This contemptible critter, a jerk of the first water, instructed his committee to vote to hold Eric Holder, Attorney General of theUnited States, in criminal contempt of Congress in regards to his testimony before the House Oversight Committee about the so-called “Fast and Furious” gun tracking scandal.  While I don’t know FOR SURE that this bunch of crap is racially motivated, I can’t overlook the possibility that it is. After all, Mr. Issa is white. Attorney General Holder is black. So, in a bizarre coincidence, is our President. Mr. Issa has publicly admitted there’s no evidence tying Holder or Mr. Obama directly to Fast and Furious – but gee, he’s still relentlessly pursuing Mr. Holder. H’mmmm 

WEASEL OF THE WEEK, #2: John “WAH WAH” Boehner, for his spirited defense of Darrell Issa’s ramrodding of the VERY FIRST contempt vote involving a sitting Cabinet member, Attorney General Eric Holder. Once again, I don’t know FOR SURE that this is racially motivated, but GOSH, he could have stopped this nonsense if he’d really wanted to – and he didn’t. 

{{As an aside here, I firmly believe that this crap is both racially motivated and also the contempt vote is retribution for Holder’s opposition to new voter ID laws that are seen as targeting minority voters in both former Confederate states and states that are now directly controlled by the ToiletPaperPatriots. Such asWisconsin, andMichigan.}} 

WEASEL OF THE WEEK, #3: Eric “I WANNA BE THE BOSS! NOW!!!” Cantor, ReThugnican Majority leader. ‘Nuff said. 

WEASEL OF THE WEEK, #4: Mitt “WEATHERVANE” Romney, for his lies about the Affordable Care Act being something that will cost the US more jobs. PLEASE, Willard. Read the CBO’s estimate of the savings that this act is going to bring to the table – and then SHUT UP. You’ve already made a fool out of yourself, and you know what Abe Lincoln said about fools. 

WEASELS OF THE WEEK, PART I: The 17 Democratic Representatives that also voted with the ReThugs and the ToilePaperPatriots in support of the contempt charge. While I didn’t expect good sense out of the ReThugs, I DID expect that the Democrats would at least abstain rather than put themselves firmly on the side of a party-line vote that is one of the most contemptible things that I’ve seen lately. 

WEASELS OF THE WEEK, PART II: All the ReThugs/RePubs/ToiletPartyPatriots who cheered wildly when they got the erroneous news that the Supreme Court had struck down the Affordable Care Act’s provision for an individual mandate. They all ALSO groaned and moaned when they heard the corrected version, that Chief Justice Roberts had cast the deciding vote IN FAVOUR of the individual mandate making the decision a 5 – 4 vote. 

WEASELS OF THE WEEK, PART III: All the ReThug/RePub/ToiletPaperPatriots who got on national television and whined about SCOTUS finding the ACA to be constitutional. They didn’t like it, and most of them were actually stupid enough to be publicly insulted that the Chief Justice of SCOTUS went out of his way to find a way to make the individual mandate constitutional. 

WEASEL OF THE MONTH: An oldie but a goodie, Sarah “I’M A PIT BULL! HEAR ME WHINE!” Palin. DEAR QUITTER: SHUT UP. NOW. On Monday, Half-Term Governor Palin mad a rather lengthy post on her Facebook page defending her statements that the Affordable Care Act would set up a 15-person panel that would cut Medicare costs,  with potential deadly consequences – the “death panel” option. Hey, Sara? There ARE no “death panels”. Thank you, SCOTUS,” wrote Palin on her Facebook page, after the SCOTUS decision. “This Obamacare ruling fires up the troops asAmerica’s eyes are opened. Thank God.” Quitter Palin is making an entirely political calculation that the survival of the healthcare reform law will spell doom for Democrats in November. NOT going to happen, sweetie. 

WEASEL OF THE YEAR, THE WINNER (AND STILL CHAMPION): George Zimmerman. A murderous, lying weasel who tried to hide the almost 200K that he garnered from his open Facebook appeal for money for his legal defense fund while claiming that he was indigent and couldn’t afford to pay for bail. He got caught. His bond was revoked, and now he’s trying to get another one. Don’t think that it’s going to happen, but we’ll see. 

Thank you to all of you that read and comment on my columns. I appreciate it!

A SOMBER VICTORY, BUT IT’S NOT OVER YET

Well, he did it, gangers. He managed it. We now have universal health care, sort of, counrtesy of our President.

I’ll tell you, folks: this is not what I expected, and I think that we should all e-mail Chief Justice Roberts and tell him “THANK YOU” for his following the law. I’ll admit it, I did not think that he would have the courage to defy his masters, but he did, and I’m glad. He went out of his way to find a way to keep the individual mandate by putting it under the taxing authority of Congress, rather than the Commerce Clause, which basically confounded just about everybody.

It’s unfortunate that the ruling, by a 5-4 vote, also gave Republicans unexpected ammunition to energize supporters for the fall campaign against President Barack Obama, the bill’s champion – and for next year’s vigorous efforts to repeal the law as a new federal tax. The decision meant the huge overhaul, which still taking effect, could go forward and pick up momentum over the next several years, with an enormous impact on the way that countless Americans receive and pay for their personal medical care. Breaking with the other conservative justices, Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority opinion that is allowing the law to go forward. He explained at length the court’s view of the insurance mandate as a valid exercise of Congress’ authority to “lay and collect taxes.” The administration estimates that roughly 4 million people will pay the penalty rather than buy insurance.

Many Republicans oppose the law, including House Leader John “WAH WAH” Boehner and House Majority LeaderEric (I SHOULD CARE WHY?) Cantor, making the argument that it marks a government takeover of health care at the same time it curtails Medicare spending and raises taxes. The ReThugs/RePubs/ToiletPaperPatriots also point to studies that predict private employers will be forced to reduce or eliminate coverage and that the legislation will wind up costing far more than estimated, raising federal deficits as a result.

 

Folks, this is horse hockey – and not even very GOOD horse hockey.Doug Elmendorf, the CBO director, estimated that the bill will cost $829 billion over 10 years and will expand insurance coverage to 94 percent of Americans. Most important for fiscal conservatives, the measure is expected to reduce the overall federal budget deficit by $81 billion over the decade because reforms will cut the cost of health care overall. But in a letter to Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), Elmendof cautioned, “those estimates are all subject to substantial uncertainty.”

That’s REDUCE the deficit. NOT add TO the deficit.

I honestly don’t know if the ReThugs/RePubs/ToiletPaperPatriots ever bother to read what comes out of any of the offices that do research. I do know that they certainly don’t give a damn what happens to the rest of us. Look at Senator Paul Ryan’s budget if you don’t believe me. The first thing that this “fiscal conservative” wants to do is cut Food Stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, AFDC, Social Security and WIC, plus Meals on Wheels and free clinics. Even the R/C bishops are having a hard time stomaching that.

I am still not happy with SCOTUS for their decision on Citizens United, or their reaffirmation of same in re Montana’s ban on corporate spending in elections there, but this decision goes a long way to making me think that maybe, just MAYBE, there are actually people ON the court that can be persuaded to find legal ways to make our lives easier and not harder.

The Affordable Health Care act is constitutional. That’s a victory for us all. Even if the conservatives don’t like it.