The Harm the Catholic Church, the Religious Right, and the Political Far Right Culture Wars Does to Women with It's Contraception Policies and Economic Policies

I am sick and tired of men on the right waging culture war on women, whether it is restricting abortion rights choices, whether it is restricting contraception, whether it is trying to re-define rape so as to exclude statutory rape and rape where a woman is incapacitated by rape-drugs or other substances, whether it is dictating that state mandated medically inaccurate information be given to women, including in your horrible abstinence only sex ed curricula.  I am tired and mad as hell at those states where the political right have passed legislation which REQUIRE medically unnecessary medical procedures such as invasive or other ultrasound be performed, even when contrary to a woman's desire or the best judgment of her doctor. I am deeply angry at those states - like Minnesota - which have tried to repeal protections for women, like equal pay laws.

I would argue that whether this is recognized by all supporters or not, the position of the culture wars devalues women as human beings, and effectively - and in some cases intentionally - is about dominion over women, control over women, including through government.

Dear religious tyrants, dear religious right, dear political right - GET THE HELL OUT OF OUR BODIES AND OUR RELATIONSHIPS, including our relationships and decisions with doctors and clergy and our families.  You may believe you are responsible for our souls, but ultimately that is our choice, our free will, our freedom of religion.  Your belief doesn't make it so.

The anti-abortion position is NOT supported by all religions, nor is the notion that contraception is abortion, among all versions of Christianity.  You do NOT have a political consensus, you do NOT have a moral consensus, and you sure as hell do not have OUR permission to interfere in our relationships with our families, especially our spouses, or with our clergy of choice, or with our medical advisors.  You are jack-booted thugs who are pushing in where you have neither right or business in order to do ONE THING and one thing ONLY - enforce YOUR ideas, your beliefs on others who do not share them.  GET OUT.  You have narrow minded scientifically invalid beliefs, that are that and ONLY that - disputed beliefs, not fact.

The rest of us do NOT think sex is dirty, or that it is only for reproduction; that is your problem, your hang up. Keep it to yourself.  We can make our own choices. Stop trying to take them away from us.

If you can't make your point by persuasion - and clearly you CAN'T, you've failed to do so - then stop doing it by force, DAMN IT.  Damn YOU, for being fascist authoritarian bullies under the guise of religion.

EVERY single tyranny, every form of dicatorship has to pretty itself up by some claim to being for a worthy cause, most often religion or patriotism. That claim doesn't make it so.  We are calling you what you are, not what you try to claim you want to be.  We don't believe you. We know you by your actions.  As the Bible tells us in  Matthew 7:20, "By their fruits you will know them".  You are not the only ones who know religions, our own and others.  You are not the final authority, except for those who choose to accept you as such, and who choose to conform to your views.

Many women I have known over the reproductively active period of my life have been prescribed birth control for other reasons than contraception, either entirely or in part.  Like the woman described by Sandra Fluke in the video below, my own mother - my adoptive mother - required hormone replacement therapy in the form of birth control, in her case after a hysterectomy and radical mastectomy surgeries for cancer.  The same was true for one of my maternal aunts, and for many other women I have known.   Approximately  44% of women who are  menopausal and peri-menopasual women use some form of hormone therapy that is in the form of hormone birth control.  I've known many women of reproductive age who took birth control for problems ranging from skin conditions to prevent disfiguring acne scars, or for treating difficult or irregular menstrual periods.  The very notion that some religously dictating administrator could DENY necessary therapy to any woman because they don't agree with that woman's choices, over-riding HER decision and her doctor's decision, is deeply disturbing, and even more deeply offensive under guise of religious conscience.  It is not appropriate for any bureaucrat or religious administrator to second guess the choice of a woman and her doctor.

The positions on the right, including religious conservatives in the Catholic church, have shown us that they hold women's lives too cheaply.  They deny women abortions or other necessary reproductive care even when it results in the death or subsequent disability of women.  This was clearly demonstrated in the case of a Catholic nun, Sister Mercy Margaret McBride who participated in the decision made by an ethics board to allow a woman who would have died without an abortion to have that procedure.  Without it, she would have died, leaving her four children without a mother; without it, the fetus she was carrying would have died anyway.  Sister Mercy Margaret McBride was excommunicated for her participation:.  The positions of the right wing candidates for president are no better, and just as extreme, all of them.  They are wrong. They are bad.  And they are about to find out they represent a very small minority.

Allowing political and religious extremists to dictate medical coverage and medical care choices kills women, it injures, disfigures and disables women, it makes women sick who could be well, it can cause tremendous pain and suffering.

It is NO ONE'S BUSINESS but theirs why they want any form of reproductive care.  The Catholic church, or any other church, has no business dictating business matters, be it hiring or promoting women if you are dominionists, or meddling with their medical benefits, to impose YOUR preferences, DON'T.  Stop imposing a religious institutions views on catholic women, protestant women, women of other faiths, atheist or agnostic women. Don't. Your rights are that you can practice for yourself whatever you wish; when you start enforcing that in any way on others, you have exceeded YOUR rights and BEGUN TO VIOLATE OTHER PEOPLES' RIGHTS.

Shame on you - now GO.  You are dangerous and unhealthy and anything but holy.

Women are full and equal human beings; we are not subordinate to men, we are not subordinate to reproduction, and we are not subordinate to far right wing or extreme religious domination, not politically, not educationally, not economically.  Respect; there are more of us than there are men in the population, and more of us vote.   You ignore that at your peril in the 2012 election cycle.

Romney Campaign Departure over Hypocrisy and Sexual Orientation

Romney has been courting the Log Cabin Republicans, the gay conservatives, but at the same time he has expressed some anti-gay positions, trying to have it both ways.

This is, I believe, the sheriff who was in the 'wall' campaign video made with John McCain in the 2010 election cycle.  Pinal County is NOT a border county with Mexico in Arizona, which was the source of a certain amount of criticism, as the ad implied he had direct border experience.

The scandal is not only that the sheriff is gay, something he has only admitted because of the scandal, but that his lover was a Mexican citizen whom he attempted to deport to enforce his silence about Babeu's sexual orientation.

This is a perfect example of how sexual identity intolerance forces people to lie about themselves,and possibly worse.  I don't know if the claims about the attempts to use deportation, or the threat to misrepresent the legal status of the sheriff's lover is true; time will tell. But clearly there did appear to be an issue of secrecy over the sheriff's orientation. Anti-homosexuality is an issue of ideological purity on the right, it is a position of many of the campaigns for the conservative presidential nomination.  John McCain is one example of the homophobe right politically.

This is exactly the kind of thing that the Bush era RNC chair, who is himself gay, came out to apologize for in previous elections, using homophobia as a wedge issue.

It is time and past time to stop demonizing people for the sexual orientation with which they are born.

This is the reality of the right wing.

From MSNBC.com:

Ariz. sheriff quits Romney campaign, says: 'I'm gay'


Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu speaks at a news conference on Saturday in Florence, Ariz. Babeu was forced to confirm he is gay amid allegations of misconduct made by a man with whom he previously had a relationship.

By msnbc.com staff
Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu speaks at a news conference on Saturday in Florence, Ariz. Babeu was forced to confirm he is gay amid allegations of misconduct made by a man with whom he previously had a relationship.
By msnbc.com staff

A sheriff has stepped down as Arizona co-chairman of Mitt Romney's presidential campaign amid allegations of misconduct made by a man with whom he previously had a relationship.


At a press conference Saturday outside his office in Florence, Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu called the man’s allegations, published Thursday in a Phoenix New Times story, "completely false."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
He said the only information mentioned in the article that's true is "I'm gay," The Arizona Republic reported.

Babeu, who is also running for Congress in Arizona’s new 4th Congressional District, quit his position as Romney’s Arizona co-chairman but vowed to stay in the congressional campaign.
"Sheriff Babeu has stepped down from his volunteer position with the campaign so he can focus on the allegations against him," Romney spokesman Ryan Williams told The Arizona Republic in a statement. "We support his decision."

Babeu, who was elected in 2008 as the first Republican sheriff of Pinal County, has gained national media attention for speaking out against illegal immigration and the unsecured U.S. border with Mexico.

The Right Wing Racism of Pat Buchanan

No matter how many denials they make, racism is racism, and the right can't honestly deny it in their ranks.  You can see it in the old timers, like Pat Buchanan, and you can see it in some of the statements made by the crop of contestants for the GOP Presidential nomination for 2012.

Pat Buchanan, a lifelong conservative political figure, was let go from MSNBC as a political commenter for his recent book, and for appearing on right wing supremacist radio shows to promote it.  He is now complaining across the conservative media that he was treated unfairly, that he was the victim of a witch hunt.

I signed that petition to MSNBC that may have contributed to his being let go. 

I don't blame the petition or the organizers however for the result.  I blame Buchanan for the hateful views and where and to whom he promoted them for the termination, not the people who complained or objected or signed petitions.  Buchanan is failing to properly take responsibility for his own positions.  He is of course entitled to any hateful position he wishes.  But he should recognize that if it offends the way he has, it will have an effect on his employment as a political analyst.  This would seem to be so obvious, so axiomatic, that Buchanan's reaction is incomprehensible, and would appear to be a failure on his part to take responsibility for his views and actions having so deeply offended people.

Media Matters covered pretty thoroughly the racist views of the radio show in question, and the position of Buchanan in his book which asserts that the U.S. is 'disintegrating' because of the loss of status of white people.  He also ascribes to the idea that white Europeans are genetically superior to other brown and black races, and that we can never have racial equality through the efforts of education, effectively, because of that innate inferiority.  Buchanan believes that too many black and brown people will turn us into a third world nation.

According to the NY Daily News

Pat Buchanan will not be returning, the network announced Thursday. The decision comes just four months after MSNBC suspended the former Republican presidential candidate following the publication of his latest book.

"After 10 years, we have decided to part ways with Pat Buchanan," the network said in a statement. "We wish him well."

The book, "Suicide of a Superpower" contains chapters titled "The End of White America" and "The Death of Christian America" and was ripped by critics as racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic.

MSNBC President Phil Griffin said recently he didn't think Buchanan's book should be "part of the national dialogue, much less part of the dialogue on MSNBC."

Pat Buchanan is credited with being part of the writing of the Southern Strategy of the Nixon White House, the one that deliberately tried to use race and the civil rights legislation to turn formerly conservative Democrats into newly minted Republican voters.

Pat Buchanan was terminated for inappropriate, factually inaccurate, and highly offensive views, specifically those which are understood to promote white supremacy, anti-semitism, and racial hatred.  Buchanan has defended the actions of Nazis involved in forced labor slavery and defended Holocaust war criminals.  In 2010, Buchanan objected to the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Kagan because she was Jewish, and he felt that would create too Jewish an element on the Court. 

William F. Buckley, who I credit for his condemnation of the bigot group, the John Birch Society, also condemned Buchanan.  Again from wikipedia:

In 1991 William F. Buckley, Jr. wrote a 40,000-word National Review article discussing anti-Semitism amongst conservative commentators focused largely on Buchanan; the article and many responses to it were collected in the book In Search of Anti-Semitism (1992). He concluded: "I find it impossible to defend Pat Buchanan against the charge that what he did and said during the period under examination amounted to anti-Semitism."^[18][19] The Anti-Defamation League has called Buchanan an "unrepentant bigot" who "repeatedly demonizes Jews and minorities and openly affiliates with white supremacists."^[20] Neo-conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer said about Buchanan that "There's no doubt he makes subliminal appeals to prejudice."^[21]

Buchanan coined the term 'silent majority', and takes pride in his assertion that he was part of the 'Southern Strategy', and that he thinks there is nothing wrong with 'prefering his own race.  He has long been a fan of racist writers and broadcasters.

He ran for the office of President in 1992, 1996, and 2000.
From wikipedia.org on the Southern Strategy:

In American politics, the Southern strategy refers to the Republican Party strategy of winning elections in Southern states by exploiting anti-African American racism and fears of lawlessness among Southern white voters and appealing to fears of growing federal power in social and economic matters (generally lumped under the concept of states' rights). Though the "Solid South" had been a longtime Democratic Party stronghold due to the Democratic Party's defense of slavery prior to the American Civil War and segregation for a century thereafter, many white Southern Democrats stopped supporting the party following the civil rights plank of the Democratic campaign in 1948 (triggering the Dixiecrats), the African-American Civil Rights Movement, the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, and desegregation.

The strategy was first adopted under future Republican President Richard Nixon and Republican Senator Barry Goldwater[1] in the late 1960s.[2] The strategy was successful in some regards. It contributed to the electoral realignment of Southern states to the Republican Party, but at the expense of losing more than 90 percent of black voters to the Democratic Party. As the 20th century came to a close, the Republican Party began trying to appeal again to black voters, though with little success.[2] In 2005, Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman formally apologized for his party's use of the Southern Strategy in the previous century.[3]

It should be noted that Republican National Committee Chair Ken Mehlman also has apologized for the right wing making a wedge issue of gay rights, particularly poignant, given Mehlman is himself gay, and that he was part of demonizing other gays.

The Southern Strategy section in Wikipedia goes on to state:

Although the phrase "Southern strategy" is often attributed to Nixon's political strategist Kevin Phillips, he did not originate it,[4] but merely popularized it.[5] In an interview included in a 1970 New York Times article, he touched on its essence:

From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.[6]

and


Lee Atwater


Bob Herbert, a New York Times columnist, reported a 1981 interview with Lee Atwater, published in Southern Politics in the 1990s by Alexander P. Lamis, in which Lee Atwater discussed politics in the South:

Lee AtwaterYou start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.[35]

And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger".[7]

Herbert wrote in the same column, "The truth is that there was very little that was subconscious about the G.O.P.'s relentless appeal to racist whites. Tired of losing elections, it saw an opportunity to renew itself by opening its arms wide to white voters who could never forgive the Democratic Party for its support of civil rights and voting rights for blacks."[36]

Buchanan was also a part of the Reagan White House, which has not been free from the tar brush of intentional racist strategies.  Reagan's War on Drugs, launched at a time when actual drug use was declining anyway has been analyzed by some historians, legal academicians, and sociologists as an effort that was both a calculated political expedient, and a means to disproportionately target minority communities.  Typically those communities of color have voted primarily Democratic.  As a result of the War on Drugs, a disproportionate number of people who are non-violent criminals have had the same offenses which were previously misdemeanors raised to the level of felony convictions.  The number of people in our prisons is twenty times what it was in the 1920s, with by far the greatest increase occurring in the Reagan era of the 1980s, as a direct result of the War on Drugs.  It is more dramatic in the visual depiction than words can convey.
From Wikipedia's article on Incarceration:


Number of inmates. 1920 to 2006.^[1][2] (absolute numbers) General US population grew only 2.8 times in the same period, but the number of inmates increased more than 20 times.

 From the wikipedia article on Race and Crime:

As of 2001, the chances of going to prison in percentages for various demographic groups

From the section on Prison Data, correlating to the above graphic:

According to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) non-Hispanic blacks accounted for 39.4% of the prison and jail population in 2009.[27] Hispanics (of all races) were 15.9% of those incarcerated in 2009.[27] Hispanics comprised 16.3% of the US population according to the 2010 US census.[28][29] According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics from 2000 to 2008 the rate of prevalence of incarceration for blacks declined to 3,161 per 100,000 and the white rate slightly increase to 487 per 100,000[30]. In 2009 American Indians and Alaskan Natives were jailed, paroled, or on probation at 932 per 100,000, 25% higher than for non-Indians/Natives (747), up 5.6% that year and 12% higher than 2007.[31]. However, crime in general declined during this time down to near 1970 levels, an 18% decrease from the previous decade.[32]

Many people incorrectly believe that the War on Drugs was a response to the problems in the 80s from crack cocaine.  While that was a huge part of the crime increase in the 80's, the surge in crack cocaine did not occur until AFTER the War on Drugs was started.  While I cannot directly link a specific person, like Buchanan, to the War on Drugs policy, there is a significant viewpoint that it was not so much a response to a problem as it was an attempt to promote a law-and-order position for political expedience, and that at the very least secondary to that expediency was the shift in voting patterns that resulted, which favored Republicans.  Certainly the Reagan White House promoted terms commonly considered to be 'code' or 'dog whistles' such as 'Welfare Queen' and any number of nouns combined with the word 'Crack' to refer primarily to blacks.  An example of scholarship on the topic is University of Dayton's Kenneth Nunn's work, "The Drug War as Race War" from 2002, which makes the connection quite clear.

An example of an analysis of policies NOT as a response to crime, but rather as an aspect of racial fears and an effort to counter 1960s increase in black voters that resulted from the civil rights legislation are works like U of MN Sociologist Chair Chris Uggens', in Ballot Manipulation and the "Menace of Negro Domination": Racial Threat and Felon Disenfranchisement in the United States, 1850 - 2002.  Professor Uggen has been quoted here before for his other studies which indicate that felons - who are mostly black - have been disenfranchised to such a pronounced degree that it has altered the result of elections.  It is Republicans who have largely been responsible for the black and felon disenfranchisement, and who are fearful of minority votes for Democrats, including voting by former felons.  The correlation between restricting voting, drug policies, and race cannot be denied.  Nor can the argument that this is a long term pattern by conservatives, whether they are more recent conservative Republicans, or the formerly conservative Democrats who switched to the Republican party, in part through the efforts to play on their racism by people like Buchanan through a range of Republican and other right wing political campaigns from the mid 20th century to the present.

No War on Religion, Just Another Right Wing Conspiracy Hoax

If one army faced another army, and the generals of the opposing army came forward to parley, and all the soldiers ran away, the other army including their generals, and any neutral observers, might fairly doubt that the lone generals legitimately spoke for their military force.  In this case, for purposes of analogy, the one army is wearing blue, the one with the most people on that side, and the other side is wearing red.  Many of the people now streaming over to join the blue army have taken off their red uniforms, at least for this battle.

When you have 98% of the women in the Roman Catholic church who are sexually active - which is at some time in their lives most of them, overwhelmingly - then I think it is fair for the rest of us, including the Obama administration, to recognize that the hierarchy, the Bishops of the Roman Catholic church are not speaking for the body of their own church, any more than generals without soldiers could legitimately speak for an absent / dissenting army.

Obama is clearly not waging war on religion; and he is no more waging war on Roman Catholicism than generals and an army are waging war on dissenting soldiers for a conflict with a few in the hierarchy - and even the hierarchy is far from unified on this point. Some f the ranking officers, so to speak, dissent as well. The scope of the generals whose soldiers have left them in dissent is covered below, but for those of you who wish to read the LA Times article referenced in the video below for yourselves, it's here.

 

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

And if you doubt the analogy I made above about contraception, also on the topic of the fabricated war on religion is this, from the Maddow blog author, Steve Benen which you can read here (the original has the actual poll links):

Ignoring a consensus on contraception

By Steve Benen - Wed Feb 15, 2012 10:09 AM EST.Critics of the White House's policy on contraception access have been pretty aggressive of late, with a coordinated attack both on the policy and President Obama's compromise, but the campaign has failed miserably to persuade the public.

The latest New York Times/CBS News poll included a straightforward question on this:

"Do you support or oppose a recent federal requirement that private health insurance plans cover the full cost of birth control for their female patients?"

Support: 66%

Oppose: 26%

Don't Know: 8% 

And what about a requirement on religiously-affiliated employers to cover contraception in their health insurance plans? Support drops a little, but it's still 61%. I thought the inclusion of the phrase "federal requirement" might affect the results a bit, but apparently not.

By the reasoning of many congressional Republicans, nearly two-thirds of the country likes contraception access so much, they're willing to endorse an outrageous assault on religious liberty.

All kidding aside, these results are consistent with other recent polls, all of which point in the same direction: the American mainstream agrees with the administration on this issue.....

Update: Greg Sargent has some additional details, including the fact that self-identified Roman Catholics agree with Obama's line, 67% to 25%, and even a majority of self-identified Republicans feel the same way.

Don't look now Catholic Bishops, but your church is not really behind you for the most part.  Don't look now Republicans, but the rank and file of your political party isn't behind you EITHER. You might want to think about that a bit further before you start getting too free with the whole 'War' thing.  You are clearly on the losing sid of that battle.

Climate Change Denials Are Just Fossil Fuel Corporation Propaganda

When facts don't fit their ideology, their preference for delusion over reality, the right responds by simply lying.  It is a tragedy that the right is not more adept, more intent on fact checking and on insisting on operating from a foundation of fact, not their paid-for-by-big-oil and religious fictions.

We have long contended that the right wing position on fossil fuel was propaganda, not good science, and generally a load of crap.  It is sad that the right wing has been bought and paid for, and that the low information voters who subscribe to their ideology have been conned when they should know better.

Now that hoax has been further exposed by Media Matters with internal documents leaked to them from the Heartland Institute, a right wing conspiracy-theory generating front for corporate greed.  Among those notably associated with Heartland are the Koch Brothers,  others known for generous right wing PAC support and campaign donations to keep themselves rich by disproprortionately influencing public policy and legislation. And now apparently they are hoping to influence our schools, by teaching them crap science that is factually inaccurate and pathetically poor scientific theory. 

Ecological pollution is not bad enough; now they're working their way down the alphabet to Education pollution, all for greed.  When lies don' work, they go to thuggery, as was the case when the documentary film maker of the movie Gasland was arrested for trying to record a public hearing in Congress, at the insistence of Republican Representatives.  To hell with freedom and the First Amendment, when big oil feels threatened; and the Tea Partiers and extreme right can't be quick enough to appease their buyers.

It is not chance that our nation has slipped badly in comparison to other nations in reading, math and science.  The extremist ideology driven right wants to control, and to some extent destroy, any form of control over education so they can substitute religion for fact, and intrude ideology in history.  Just recently the Tennessee Tea party was trying to remove references in history books to quite a number of the founding fathers having been slave owners.  They in fact wanted to remove references to slavery, and to any negative or unpleasant treatment of native americans as well, because it might give students a negative opinion of their country if they knew the truth.  They prefer a filiopietistic (look it up) approach to history, instead of admitting flaws in our great historic figures.

Texas has long tried to alter text book content to be less than factual.  Slavery is not being revised out of the American Revolutionary era; right wing politicians and others have tried to remove any mention of slavery as well from the Civil War.  They don't like the facts, so instead of presenting the reality, they choose to lie. Subjects like economics, and science, notably as it relates to topics like the religion masquerading as false pseudo-science, in the guise of creationism and intelligent design are just a few other examples.

And then we have climate change, global warming, man-made causation, about which there really IS NO controversy except where big oil money has faked a controversy.   I have long contended that we will not bridge the divide in American partisan politics until we begin from a basis of facts; only from that basis can we hope to achieve a consensus, a meeting of the minds.

Except that the right has lost their collective minds, or more precisely sold their minds and consciences.

Here is the first story in a series from Media Matters; it should be noted for those who discount anything no matter how factual if they don't personally LIKE the reality, that the facts in the Media Matters series on Heartland have been independently verified by the AP:
INTERNAL DOCUMENTS: The Secret, Corporate-Funded Plan To Teach Children That Climate Change Is A Hoax

By Brad Johnson on Feb 14, 2012 at 3:10 pm

The first in a series of posts about the Heartland Institute’s inner workings, from internal documents acquired by ThinkProgress Green. Heartland has issued a press release claiming that some of these documents were sent to an outsider under false pretenses and that one document in the set is a fake.

Heartland Institute's secret plans for a K-12 climate-denier curriculum.

Internal documents acquired by ThinkProgress Green reveal that the Heartland Institute, a right-wing think tank funded by the Koch brothers, Microsoft, and other top corporations, is planning to develop a “global warming curriculum” for elementary schoolchildren that presents climate science as “a major scientific controversy.” This effort, at a cost of $100,000 a year, will be developed by Dr. David E. Wojick, a coal-industry consultant.

“Principals and teachers are heavily biased toward the alarmist perspective,” Heartland’s confidential 2012 fundraising document bemoans. The group believes that Wojick’s project has “potential for great success,” because he has “contacts at virtually all the national organizations involved in producing, certifying, and promoting scientific curricula.” The document explains that Wojick will produce “modules” that promote the conspiratorial claim that climate change is “controversial”:

Dr. Wojick proposes to begin work on “modules” for grades 10-12 on climate change (“whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy“), climate models (“models are used to explore various hypotheses about how climate works. Their reliability is controversial”), and air pollution (“whether CO2 is a pollutant is controversial. It is the global food supply and natural emissions are 20 times higher than human emissions”).

Wojick would produce modules for Grades 7-9 on environmental impact (“environmental impact is often difficult to determine. For example there is a major controversy over whether or not humans are changing the weather“), for Grade 6 on water resources and weather systems, and so on.

Wojick will receive $5,000 per module, with twenty modules produced a year. Wojick, who manages the Climate Change Debate listserv, is not a climate scientist. His doctorate is in epistomology.

The Heartland Institute also runs the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, a conspiracy-theorist parody of the Nobel-prize-winning U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Heartland’s NIPCC project “pays a team of scientists approximately $300,000 a year to work on a series of editions of Climate Change Reconsidered.” Their climate-denial work is funded anonymously.

James M. Taylor, a senior fellow at the Heartland Institute, told ThinkProgress Green in an e-mail why the group is developing its denier curriculum:

We are concerned that schools are teaching climate change issues in a manner that is not consistent with sound science and that is designed to lead students to the erroneous belief that humans are causing a global warming crisis. We hope that our efforts will restore sound science to climate change education and discourage the political propaganda that too often passes as “education”.

Right-wing ideologues, fueled by the fossil fuel industry, have been increasing their efforts to pollute science education in elementary schools. These attempts to hijack children’s education piggyback on the religious right’s war on biology education and the science of evolution. The National Center for Science Education, which has long led the defense of evolution education in elementary schools, has begun a new program to fight global warming denial in textbooks and classrooms.

___________________
 
Any doubt that the right is in the pay and the pocket of big oil?
 
I have written about the Keystone XL pipeline debacle, which directly benefits not only the Koch Brothers, but also a number of right wing politicians both directly and indirectly.  If you remember the disaster, including loss of lives, from the BP Oil incident in the Gulf of Mexico not that long ago, the lack of transparency, the lack of honesty should sound famliar.  If you have doubts, I encourage you to fact check all the happy happy propaganda ads that BP is running, trying to cover their oily backsides for that incident, so they can keep drilling, more and deeper, despite a complete lack of preparedness that is any better than they had in that last disaster.
 
Also from ThinkProgress Green:
 
House Passes Section Of Transportation Bill Consisting Only Of Earmarks To Big Oil

By Public Lands Team on Feb 17, 2012 at 1:27 pm
By Jessica Goad, Manager of Research and Outreach, Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Last night the House of Representatives passed part of the behemoth transportation bill it is considering over the next month on a 237-187 vote. This section consisted solely of earmarks to Big Oil including drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, opening Florida coasts to offshore drilling, a plan to develop oil shale (which isn’t even commercially viable), and building the Keystone XL pipeline. A Congressional Budget Office analysis shows that the drilling proposals together generate only approximately $2 billion, far less than the $50 billion funding gap needed for transportation projects over the coming years.

Even if the drilling could pay for the costs, linking oil and gas development to long-term highway funding is just bad public policy, as Ryan Alexander of the nonpartisan group Taxpayers for Common Sense has explained:

Paying for a couple of years of transportation funding with expected revenues from an increase in oil and gas drilling that will likely take many years to get rolling is not a responsible budget approach… It’s like buying the Ferrari tomorrow because you are sure a raise is coming sometime in the future.”

Originally the transportation bill (H.R. 7, American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act of 2012) was one large bill that included transportation funding, drilling, and changes to federal pensions. However, Republicans realized that they would not have the votes for the bill, and so split it into three bills to be voted on separately that will then be spliced back together and sent to the Senate. This was an unusual procedural move designed to shield Republicans from having to take tough votes that won’t be popular with their constituents but also force the bill through.

What is most galling is that none of these bills alone or combined would be able to pay for the costs of transportation generated by this bill. Traditionally, improvements to roads, bridges, and public transportation are funded by the federal gasoline tax, but GOP leaders in the House are taking the unprecedented step to tie funding to an unnecessary and ineffective increase in fossil fuel production. Since it doesn’t even begin to fund our highways, the bill can be considered nothing more than a series of earmarks for Big Oil.

The proposal to fund oil shale from Congressman Doug Lamborn (R-CO) is a particularly nasty earmark. The Congressional Budget Office found the bill would generate no revenue over 10 years and in the short term would cost money to implement the leasing program. The Checks and Balance Project detailed this “boondoogle” in an online ad.

Last night’s vote saw some crossing of party lines, particularly 11 Florida Republicans angered by proposals to drill off of the state’s coasts who voted no on the bill’s passage.

Breitbart Is Anything But Bright - or Honest

Andrew Breitbart had to back away from his protege James O'Keefe when it became apparent that O'Keefe had altered and changed and misrepresented the coverage of ACORN.  He has become no more honest, no more factually accurate, and certainly no more civil or clever since then.

While I usually find the following source to be heavily biased, in this case it appears that Keith Olbermann has soundly and factually called out Breitbart for the lying ass that he is.  Sadly, the right is so enamored of being lied to so long a it is a lie they find palatable, that it doesn't care if Breitbart, or the rest of the right wing media and blogosphere is any more accurate. 

Breitbart is deplorable and he deserves condemnation for this. 

Sadly the right is NOT willing to be against rape, unless they think they can find a way to exploit it against a political opponent.  It is the right that is trying to redefine rape as only violent events, not as non-consensual sex.  That would rule out rape of a woman who was incapacitated by a date rape drug, it would rule out the inability of a child to fully consent in statutory rape cases, it would rule out so many instances where rape is the coercion of  non-consensual sex, that the Republicans and the other conservatives who support this should be ASHAMED.  They are the aiders and abetters of rape, not the Occupy movement.

And double-shame on them for doing their best to deny women an abortion for rape, incest or to save the life of the mother as well.

From Current TV:

and  and

The Nut Gingrich, on Facebook, Hypocrite AGAIN, STILL

I doubt that the Nut has a prayer, of any kind, at being the candidate.  But sadly, none of the other candidates are any better on the right.

But still, this was funny as a reality to check to conservatives:

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Jon Stewart NAILS IT!

I nearly always find Stewart hilarious, but also on a different level, very serious.  This was clearly from the heart as well as the head, and not only comedic, but also sincere.  I particularly share his sentiments that there is NO war on religion, not by the Obama administration or anyone else in this country.  And we appear to have triggered 'Godwin's Law' to come into effect as well, underlining the stupidity, and the deliberate manipulation of the situation for political traction, no matter how ludicrous.  Faux news triumphs again for being factually inaccurate while being at the same moment hideously and hilariously biased.

From the February 13, 2012 edition of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart (click on the link to play the episode on the Daily Show site, if you have trouble playing the video here):

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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and

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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A Reprise and Update of an Old Post, One of My Favorites

As the culture wars against women waged by the right accelerate in this election cycle, I think it is worthwhile to recycle an old post of mine from 2010 that I think pertains to our current events in 2012. The figure that 98% of women have used artificial contraception has been in the news. I wanted to know where that number came from; I also like fact checking. So I was pleasantly surprised to find a good challenge that substantially approved those numbers at politifact.com, along with the study itself that was mentioned - which saved me further checking on my own.
I personally have always found the Guttmacher Institute to be an excellent research organization in the past, and have read other studies as well as this one. I'm not the only one who finds the Guttmacher Institute to be reliable. The politifact.com article noted that the Catholic Medical Association has found the source credible in earlier studies of the same question, and found a pretty consistent percentage of use of contraception among Roman Catholics over time.
This is not a new development or trend. While the Roman Catholic bishops may oppose the Obama administration, not all of the Roman Catholic hierarchy does so. The Catholic Hospitals Association, the Catholic Health Association, and Catholic Charities all support the Obama accommodation, including a petition signed by 600 doctors and medical students doctors, including 70 doctors who specifically identify themselves as Roman Catholic, who support the Obama administration's position on contraception.
So as I watch the GOP presidential candidates trying to exploit for their own political advantage the very real health and family planning concerns of Catholic Hospitals, Catholic health care providers, and the overwhelming rank and file of those who are the Roman Catholic church in this country as congregants, I am appalled that a few bishops and some prudish antiquated out-of-step politicians are trying to make this an issue about religious freedom.
It is entirely about religious conscience, including following one's conscience to differ with their church hierarchy's dictates, as clearly a huge number of Catholics actually do. I would argue that the right to religious freedom is a right of the individual, not institutions. Institutions, including religious hierarchies, are not people any more than corporations or other organizations are people.
I would argue that Obama should not have caved in to the minority position of the Bishops at all, but that he did so in a way that embraces tolerance for a spectrum of religious belief and practice, including the ACTUAL spectrum of belief and practice among Roman Catholics. The representations made by the right are false, misleading, and their usual bullshit misrepresentation, not an honest engagement over the role of religion in our society or government. Shame on them, and shame on the Bishops, and for that matter, shame on the Roman Catholic church which is promoting a policy that is not founded in either the Bible, or any real traditional teaching. For example, the Roman Catholic church didn't make masturbation - relating to the issue sex must be for reproduction - a sin until the 6th century. The legitimate argument that the Roman Catholic church is interested not in the status of their follower's souls as much as in maintaining their numbers regardless of the personal harm to their coreligionists in contending with hardships due to an inability to exercise effective control over their reproductive choices. I find that the right, particularly the religious right, as personified especially in this election cycle by Rick Santorum, are waging a war not only against women, but apparently against people enjoying sex, except on their narrow small-minded and intolerant terms. I don't mind a Roman Catholic in the White House; I have no fear of this country having policy dictated by the Pope. The Pope isn't successful at dictating the sex life of his own church members. But I have no patience or tolerance for anyone, of any religion or no religion, who would so deeply restrict the freedom of Americans to follow their own conscience. I personally am strongly opposed to the imposition of the views on sex of hypocrites like Gingrich or apparent prudes and sexually uneducated asses like Santorum trying to dictate to men and women that they must conform to religious views of when and how and with whom to engage in sex. Rather I would argue that my sex life is my own, and so long as no one who is vulnerable or unable properly and fully to give consent is involved, everyone else but particularly the right and the religious right should BUTT OUT of sexual matters and reproductive matters. Get the hell out of my body and out of my bedroom and quit violating my right to follow my conscience in these matters. The right is all about dictating to others a conformity to their ideas and conscience, denying those who differ with them the right to their own choices. So, without further ado - here is Sex and Windex:

Sex and Windex

"Cleanliness is next to Godliness." 2nd century Hebrew proverb Rabbi Phineas ben-Yair (per Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 14th ed.) "Honni soit qui mal y pense." Motto, English chivalric Order of the Garter, founded 1344 King Edward III of England

I have been following the Simon-Simpleminded-Simon-purity statements that are enjoying a new resurgence in the right-wing culture wars of the current season of political campaigns with alternating amusement and distaste. While I bless and thank my parents often in my heart for having insisted that an attention span and ability to concentrate is like a muscle which must be exercised to remain strong, a premise I bring to many tasks..........there are certain activities which produce for me a tedium which is almost physically painful to endure. It is just one of the reasons, I - along with many people - dislike the necessary task of washing windows. Unlike other domestic tasks, there is no 'domestic godess' gratification in it; it is an annoying necessity to be reluctantly endured and gotten over with as quickly as possible. Until recently, I just cringed when thinking of the smirking, leering pseudo-purity promoted by professional right wing political parasites like Christine O'Donnell who make a living off of saying any dreck the right wants to hear. Instead, in response to a news item about her anti-masturbation crusade on the news in the background, I played an old CD while washing windows, selecting the most lust-inducing music available in my collection. In this case it was from 1991, a local group, Mick Sterling and the Stud Brothers. My friend Sara introduced me to their music a few years ago (thank you Sara!) simply describing Sterling's vocal quality as 'beefy', but said with an edginess in her expression which implied much more. I would describe the mixture of rough and smooth in his delivery as the auditory equivalent of a caress followed by the feel of a lover's fingernails lightly but firmly dragged across one's skin, making it tingle. The mixture of Sterling and the instrumental accompaniment of 'Squib Cakes' built nicely through 'Turn Me Loose'; but it was the lyrics and energy of of 'Bump and Grind' which carried me through cleaning the big living room window. It was "I want to bump and grind and get on down, hold your body next to mine" that generated the knot of energy just forward of the small of my back, taking me into the moment and away from my usual attempts to distract myself from boredom. I conjugate irregular french verbs while standing in grocery store check out lines waiting for overflowing carts of necessities to be processed through, in order to block out screaming toddlers having temper tantrums, for example. But that doesn't do much to get the blood pounding or the libido blazing. It doesn't have that pounding, elemental power of human sexuality that centers you in the moment, in the wonderful feeling of moving your body it takes to carry you through washing windows. So, as I look up from the computer at the morning sun shining through the oh-so-clean windows, unmarred by even the tiniest streak, I can smile, and raise my cup of black coffee in a toast to Sterling and sexuality. Because the better lessons of sex is not that we are evil for having sexual urges, or that God will frown or punish us for them, but to exalt in the humanity of it, in the energy of it, the JOY of it, because we all share it, so long as we control and direct it positively, and do not lose that control of it. Sex, and even lust is not dirty, especially not if you use it with a little Windex. Because, in the wise words of a religious man from the second century, cleanliness is next to godliness, in mind and body. It is the attitude that sex and sexual impulses are evil except for the narrowest possible expression which makes it dirty and sin-foul. If I may be allowed a somewhat loose translation that conveys the meaning more than the precise equivalent word for word, the motto of the order of the garter is that the evil is in the mind of the person who seeks to find evil, in things, in actions; an example would be the pseudo-purity espoused by people like O'Donnell that equates auto-eroticism with adultery. I hope you enjoyed 'Sex and Windex'; other titles I considered were 'Lusting and Dusting', and ............well, I will leave it to readers to come up with their own, because my list is too long to share here, and in any case was probably deficient in masculine chores that were analogous. Have your own fun with it, and try to be aware of all the ways in which sexuality enriches our lives and mundane experience. Or, if you are having trouble putting down your beverage and walking away from the computer, if you are procrastinating your own tedious tasks, you might want to check out the youtube video of Mick Sterling, performing "You Don't Know What Dirty Is".

A Feminine Perspective on the Culture War on Women

Apparently we have returned to those glorious days of yesteryear, as old-timey radio used to say.

And we have George Carlin's riff on the War on Women, that right wing attempt to keep us barefoot, and pregnant, and in our place, the one that wants to weaken the description of rape, the one that wants to repeal equal pay for equal work laws, the one that wants to make it more difficult and costly to control our reproductive rights.

There is a great deal to be said for the push-back against right wing reactionary politics using humor.

We have the Virginia state senator, Janet Howell who tried to amend legislation that would force costly, non-medical procedures on a woman by linking a similar measure that would force men who wanted erectile dysfunction medication to get a rectal exam.  Actually, that makes sense, because of the typical age of men who actually need, rather than simply want for recreational purposes, that kind of medication and prostate cancer and other diseases.  Lets call out the hypocrisy of the pro-freedom from government intrusion crowd for what they are, liars and hypocrites for interfering with medical care and legal procedures to force their religious beliefs on the rest of us.

Now we have another female state senator who has beautifully used humor again in a similar way.  Constance Johnson, a state senator in the Oklahoma legislature, addressed the insanity of trying to give equal personhood to zygotes at the instant of conception.  As a point against the legislative attempt by the right to wrongly redefine personhood, I would point out that we don't and cannot ever determine the moment of conception.  I could write here at some length about the process known as spermatozoon activation or the acrosomal reaction, because I actually read about things like this extensively in pursuing my interest in theriogenology.  But this blog is about politics and current events (and anything else we feel like writing about) so I will save my other hobbies for a different niche.  The point is -we don't know, and with the exception of some very specific kinds of artificial insemination, NEVER know in the natural course of things, when the moment of conception occurs.  It takes us a while to be able to tell THAT it occurs, and that requires separate processes, including uterine implantation.  So on the face of it, the very premise of this legislation is poor.  But Howell does tie in to the obvious attempt to force on the rest of us, in a violation of church and state, one of the premises of the catholic church, that masturbation is a mortal sin.

I agree with my high school biology teacher, who gave us the most comprehensive sex ed classes imaginable; 95% of men admit to masturbation, and the other 5% are liars.  I would posit that the numbers for women are similar.

Good for Senators Howell and Johnson, we need more humor, we need more reason, and we certainly seem to need more women in our legislative government at all levels.