Baggage

Whores and Vampires

Crass, lacking in empathy and compassion; factually deficient; media vampires and whores who make their living off of deceiving people, and exploiting tragedy and fear. They have no conscience, no character, no ethics or values, no soul. This is true of those who listen to them, believe them, choose to be led by them into extremism and factually-deficient ignorance.

CPAC 2013 and the continuation of white supremacy deeply embeded in conservatives

We have seen chronic terrible excuses made for slavery and white supremacy by the right, from claims that black Americans were better off under slavery because of their families being together (except when they were separated and sold off, or when children were conceived by black women raped by white masters), that they were fortunate to be slaved so they could be indoctrinated with Christianity, and of course, the assertion by tea party assholes like Rand Paul or right wing activist judges and justices like Scalia who want to dismantle the Voting Rights Act and other civil rights legislation. We have seen it as well in the desire uncovered by opinion polls, to re-criminalize mixed race marriage in the south.

The core of conservatism is racist; and they consistently whine and claim to be victims -- oh WHINE, the poor pitiful advantaged dominant white male!  I'm heartily sick of the whiny indulgent victim claims of the right. The reality is that we are not a white nation, we are not a male nation, we are not a European nation, we are not an English-only speaking nation, we are not a Christian nation or increasingly a nation of any religion at all. The hell with the fake denials about racism; this IS racism.

The dog whistle about opposing 'big government' and standing up or states rights is nothing more than an attempt to reverse the federal enforcement of voting rights and civil rights. The right wants to keep any federal government out of their desire to do bad things like deny science, teach creationism, impose indoctrination in Christianity - a particularly virulent, dominionist, oppressive fundamentalist version of religion that gives white males back a form of a whip hand. The conservative right has always been the party that takes away liberty, and runs up the debt, gets into wars, and raises taxes -- but supports racism and misogyny.

Apparently that includes a desire to bring back the bad old days of segregation and Jim Crow laws:

“In all things social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.”― Booker T. Washington

And denial of the atrocities of slavery, like this quote from perennial dim-bulb racist tea party popsie Michele Bachmann which was blissfully ignorant of how many black couples are two parent middle class households in the late 20th and early 21st century:

 "...black child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African American baby born after the election of the USA's first African American President."

And of course her mistaken notion that the founding fathers were slave owners trying to end slavery (- they were slave owners, ending slavery not so much) and her must-read book list that included statements about how happy AND fortunate slaves were to be slaves -- not unlike the comment in the clips below about how slaves should have been thankful to their masters they were fed and housed and clothed.

Slavery, as it operated in the pervasively Christian society which was the old South, was not an adversarial relationship founded upon racial animosity. In fact, it bred on the whole, not contempt, but, over time, mutual respect. This produced a mutual esteem of the sort that always results when men give themselves to a common cause. The credit for this startling reality must go to the Christian faith. . .  The unity and companionship that existed between the races in the South prior to the war was the fruit of a common faith.

The very roots of CPAC, its founders and core organizers are and always have been racists and white supremaciss (from Mother Jones): 

For the past week, the American Conservative Union, which founded and is the primary organizer of CPAC, has showcased on its website an article from its newsletter, the Conservative Battleline, headlined "Debating Liberal Tactics" and written by Robert Weissberg. The ACU identifies Weissberg as a professor from Cornell and the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign and the author of 11 books. What it doesn't mention is that Weissberg has long been affiliated with a pseudo-think tank called the New Century Foundation. This foundation publishes a magazine called American Renaissance and hosts conferences under the same name, promoting the theory of "scientific racism" and providing a forum in which Klan members, neo-Nazis, and David Duke followers can mix it up with the intellectuals of the white-nationalist movement. The Southern Poverty Law Center describes the foundation's founder and American Renaissance editor, Jared Taylor, as a "courtly" white supremacist, who once wrote in American Renaissance, "Blacks and whites are different. When blacks are left entirely to their own devices, Western civilization—any kind of civilization—disappears." Weissberg has been writing for Taylor's magazine for years and has spoken at American Renaissance conferences. The Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights (IREHR), a nonprofit social-justice organization that tracks far-right groups, has been sounding the alarm about Weissberg this week and first called attention to his work on the ACU website. It has assembled a history of his racist work here. Among the highlights—or lowlights—is a speech Weissberg delivered at a 2012 American Renaissance conference on a "Politically Viable Alternative to White Nationalism," in which he argued that white racism needed an image update. He suggested that white people retreat into "Whitopias" that carry zoning codes and other subtle requirements that would keep out the "undesirables," according to IREHR. IREHR dug up a video of Weissberg, who is Jewish, giving a speech in 2000 entitled "Jews and Blacks: Everything the Goyim Wanted to Know But Were Afraid to Ask," in which he puzzled over Jewish support for civil rights—a problem he dubbed "an affliction"—and suggested that non-Jewish whites and Jews should team up to fight against the blacks and what he termed African Americans' hatred of education and learning. Here's that speech:

continuing from Mother Jones:

Following up on that theme, Weissberg recently published a book called Bad Students, Not Bad Schools, which blames black and Latino students for wrecking the American public school system with their genetically low IQs. (On Amazon, the book features a glowing review from fellow white nationalist John Derbyshire, and is "frequently bought" with a book on education by Bell Curve author Charles Murray.)

Such work, and Weissberg's affiliation with American Renaissance, got him booted from the pages of National Review last year after IREHR raised the issue. Editor Rich Lowry explained at the time:

Unbeknownst to us, occasional Phi Beta Cons contributor Robert Weissberg (whose book was published a few years ago by Transaction) participated in an American Renaissance conference where he delivered a noxious talk about the future of white nationalism. He will no longer be posting here. Thanks to those who brought it to our attention.

An ACU spokesman hasn't responded to a request for comment from Mother Jones.

Maybe it's progress that Weissberg is only on the ACU website and not speaking at CPAC. Last year, the ACU gave a microphone to several white nationalists who headlined a panel titled, "The Failure of Multiculturalism: How the Pursuit of Diversity Is Weakening the American Identity." Among the panelists was Derbyshire, who also has been kicked out of the National Review editorial lineup for his racist writings; Peter Brimelow, the founder of the nativist site VDARE, which publishes the work of many other anti-Semitic and white-supremacist writers; and Robert Vandervoot, who's also affiliated with American Renaissance and the nativist group Pro-English.

Two board members of Young America's Foundation, which cofounded and sponsors CPAC along with the ACU, run a political action committee that gave money to a white-nationalist group, as my colleague Nick Baumann documented earlier this year here. As Baumann noted, Ron Robinson, one of the YAF board members in question, is also on the ACU's board.

The conservative movement will continue to have a tough time appealing to minorities if it keeps cavorting with these folks, no matter how many African Americans appear on their panel discussions.

Faux News, Failed Conservative Values, Failed War on Women

Its AUTONOMY, stupid

Autonomy means to have independence, and control, over one's body and one's actions and choices.
Cross posted from MN Progressive Project:

It’s the Autonomy, stupid!

by Dog Gone on March 18, 2013

During the Clinton campaign for President against incumbent George H. W. Bush, he used the campaign slogan created by James Carville, “It’s the economy, stupid.”

We are in great need of a revival of that phrase, with a revision to “It’s the autonomy, stupid” to push back against the attempts by the right wing to impose their authority over the bodies and the behavior of women.

This weekend the verdict came in against the two defendants in Steubenville Ohio, for the crime of raping a young woman and posting the details all over social media.  Their defense? She didn’t say no (because of being unconscious), so it wasn’t rape, and that she consented because she drank alcohol.  The ‘poor rapists’ were actually given far too much positive spin by mainstream media, while the victim was blamed for her own rape, because of drinking.

Last week, the heir to the Max Factor cosmetic fortune was given re-sentencing for being a serial rapist convicted of some 87 counts of drugging three women, raping them, and making video recordings of the sexual assaults.  He is alleged to be a serial rapist of many, many more women. The presiding judge had sentenced him to 124 years in jail; that was overturned by another, more conservative and sympathetic judge who felt that all those 87 separate counts should have concurrently running sentences rather than consecutive sentences, because the judge hadn't explained sufficiently why the harsher consecutive sentences should apply.  Seriously? Because what, drugging and raping multiple women, and videotaping the assaults on unconscious women isn't bad enough? Could we have a better example of not acknowledging the right of women to their bodies, or of protecting powerful men who commit heinous criminal acts? This is not justice; this is misogyny of the worst kind. This is right wing protection of males and male dominance over women. This is unacceptable, this is wrong; this is culture war on women.

In the preceding week, Reuters reported that one of the Cardinals who participated in the election of the new pope claims that pedophilia is not a crime, that it is an illness. Really? For the victim it is certainly a crime.  It is not an excuse for any criminal conduct because of a mental health issue if the person committing the crime is capable of knowing what they are doing, and able to discern right from wrong. This is an attempt to provide more sympathy and justification for hiding the crimes of predatory clergy, while NOT facing up to the criminal aspects of the sex predators or the harm done to the many, many victims.

At the same time, as we saw from the 60 minutes interview on Sunday, “American Nuns struggle with the Vatican for change” in support of social justice, and much needed internal reform in the church, that the church hierarchy has no trouble sending a man to whip the nuns into conformity with church authority and to bring them to heel to be submissive, regardless of what their conscience tells them. Uppity nuns get censured and harshly corrected, but male sexual predators get sympathy and obstruction of justice to protect them? Can anyone think of a case where a Nun was the sexual predator? Me neither, but if they did, I’d bet the nun would be disciplined, probably kicked out of her order, not had excuses made for her.

And in the same week came the reports of pedophilia rings in the Baptist church, where the clergy obstructed the criminal justice system to protect the perpetrators, both the male  members of the congregation and the male clergy – but did not protect female members or children.  This was true both inside the borders of the United States, and in their missionary efforts.  As with the Roman Catholic church conservatives, the reasoning was that as God represents authority, and the church represents authority, and men as head of the family represents authority, so pretty much anything they do is excused.  Sexual molestation of children, incest, wife beating – ANYTHING is excused, if you are a man.  If you’re a woman, or a girl, or a child, too bad for you, and it’s mostly your fault for causing those poor good godly men to sin, and/or commit a crime. And under all circumstances, hide the crimes from law enforcement and prosecution – those men must be protected.

While there is some hand wringing over our ‘rape culture’, what is wrong with our culture is that we do not value women, we do not protect women and children from violence and sexual predators, we do not provide them support from a strong social support net. Most of all we do not have respect for the autonomy of women to control their own lives and bodies.

Instead we have slut shaming, we have women who are forced to undergo the violation of transvaginal ultrasound that is not medically required or useful. We have legislation mandating lying to women about their health in the name of respecting the morality and religious belief of doctors. (Can you imagine passing legislation denying men the right to insurance coverage for what are colloquially called boner pills, or passing legislation giving doctors the right to lie to men about their reproductive health – say their prostate or testicular health, or cutting funding for it? Hell No.)  We have the right wing obstruction to the passage of the Violence Against Women Act – because the religious right has been opposing it from its inception because they believe the solution to domestic violence is for women just to be more submissive, and to put up with having the crap beaten out of them or being killed, rather than break up a marriage by leaving it.  Never mind that all the evidence shows that doesn’t work, never mind how many women are killed, or injured or threatened every year by their intimate partners – including a large number of husbands. The important thing to them is what men want, the important thing they consistently support is male authority, dominance and control over women, over women's bodies, over women's reproductive options.

We have conservative efforts to obstruct the raising of the minimum wage, with the majority of those wage earners are women, and we have the efforts by conservatives to repeal laws against paying women less than men for the same work.  The justification? Men are the breadwinners, and their work is more important to them, so they should be paid more. Does THAT reflect a respect for the independence, the autonomy, the control over their bodies and lives by women? It is an attempt to keep women more dependent, more vulnerable, and more submissive.

We have the attempt to pass the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, which would have redefined rape to be limited to forcible rape, making statutory rape no longer rape, making giving a woman a drug to render her unconscious and then raping a woman no longer rape.  That legislation was co-sponsored by CD 6 Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, a ‘dominionist’ of long standing, who has actively and frequently asserted women should be submissive and subordinate to men. It was also co-sponsored by CD 2 Congressman John Kline, and by CD 7 representative Collin Peterson, the only democrat from Minnesota to join in support of this legislation.  We have 31 states which give rapists the right to exercise parental rights over a child resulting from a pregnancy that resulted from rape, and to prevent a woman from having an abortion through the exercise of their rights.

We need support for the autonomy of women, the right for women to control their lives, including their reproductive choices.  We allow no person to force or coerce another person to submit their bodies to save the life of another person against their will – EXCEPT in pregnancies.  We are allowing the conservative anti-abortion fanatics to do exactly that when they legislate against abortion — they force women to submit to a pregnancy for an entity that is not even a person.

Why are women expendable? Why do we value women LESS than men? Why do we force women to submit control of their bodies to the will of another person? How is this not a violation of their constitutional rights and their right to physical autonomy – the independence of their bodies and minds, and the exercise of their own choice and conscience? How can we expect boys and men to respect women as their equals when the most conservative members of our culture so clearly do not? Rape is a crime not of sex, but of dominance that uses sex to assert that dominance. At issue is dominance, and autonomy.

In setting up our state mechanism for an insurance exchange that is part of Obamacare, abortion coverage was cut out; apparently women are not allowed to exercise their reproductive autonomy as full and competent moral and ethical human beings in Minnesota; instead the immoral religious right is allowed to impose their beliefs on all of us. The conservative message is clear; women should be controlled, and female sexuality is evil.  Neither is true, and this should not be allowed to be how we implement Obamacare.

In the national rankings comparing countries with each other for how women fare in terms of health, and power and fairness, like elected office or education or equality of economic compensation, the United States does not rank well.  In the ranking of states, we compare better; Minnesota is 6th out of the 50, in part due to the number of women we have in elected office. But we still are not doing enough to promote full equality, full autonomy, full value of women as human beings.

We ended slavery for people of color in 1865; isn’t it time that we grant women full autonomy as a group? When we do, when we REALLY do that, when we end the subordination of women to men, then and only then will we have genuine equality — and an end to the rape culture in the United States, both direct rape, forcible and otherwise, and the less obvious indirect rape by conservative misogynist politics.
 

Who is the BIGGEST Iraq war liar? The original liars, or the second-hand liars?

No longer the party of Lincoln, No longer the party of Eisenhower, now just the party of angry old frightened white racists and homophobes with failed ideas

Raise the minimum wage - to $22 an hour!

This is what the minimum wage should be if compensation kept up with productivity, per this newest study.

Happy First Day of Spring

Not that you could tell looking out any window in Minnesota, but happy first day of spring from the Penigma blog.
From dictionary.com, and appropriate word of the day!

Word of the Day for Wednesday, March 20, 2013

primaveral \prahy-muh-VEER-uhl\, adjective:
of, in, or pertaining to the early springtime: primaveral longings to sail around the world.

Just sayin'

Any Doubt the GOP supports a pro-rape culture?

This is the work of anti-choice anti-abortion conservatives who have given rapists the right to force women to carry a pregnancy to term, and then force them to have to interact and co-parent with them.

This is wrong, this is the conservatives eroding our liberty and justice, this is the conservative hatred of women, culture war on women, in action. They can pretend, they can deny, but not credibly, not plausibly, and women will NOT as a demographic vote for them or any of their policies. The longer they continue these policies and pushing this legislation, that is how long it will take in decades for women to ever trust them again, even after they finally wake up and smell the coffee of being losers.

Payback is going to be a bitch.

From a Dying Iraq Vet : Dear Bush and Cheney, you damned war criminals

From MoveOn.org, via Truthdig:

Tomas Young

A Message to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney From a Dying Veteran
To: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney
From: Tomas Young
I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.
I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.
I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens,along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.
Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage.
I joined the Army two days after the 9/11 attacks. I joined the Army because our country had been attacked. I wanted to strike back at those who had killed some 3,000 of my fellow citizens. I did not join the Army to go to Iraq, a country that had no part in the September 2001 attacks and did not pose a threat to its neighbors, much less to the United States. I did not join the Army to “liberate” Iraqis or to shut down mythical weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities or to implant what you cynically called “democracy” in Baghdad and the Middle East. I did not join the Army to rebuild Iraq, which at the time you told us could be paid for by Iraq’s oil revenues. Instead, this war has cost the United States over $3 trillion. I especially did not join the Army to carry out pre-emptive war. Pre-emptive war is illegal under international law. And as a soldier in Iraq I was, I now know, abetting your idiocy and your crimes. The Iraq War is the largest strategic blunder in U.S. history. It obliterated the balance of power in the Middle East. It installed a corrupt and brutal pro-Iranian government in Baghdad, one cemented in power through the use of torture, death squads and terror. And it has left Iran as the dominant force in the region. On every level—moral, strategic, military and economic—Iraq was a failure. And it was you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who started this war. It is you who should pay the consequences.
I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded fighting in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the attacks of 9/11. Had I been wounded there I would still be miserable because of my physical deterioration and imminent death, but I would at least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of my own decision to defend the country I love. I would not have to lie in my bed, my body filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away, and deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire.
I have, like many other disabled veterans, suffered from the inadequate and often inept care provided by the Veterans Administration. I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental and physical wounds are of no interest to you, perhaps of no interest to any politician. We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned. You, Mr. Bush, make much pretense of being a Christian. But isn’t lying a sin? Isn’t murder a sin? Aren’t theft and selfish ambition sins? I am not a Christian. But I believe in the Christian ideal. I believe that what you do to the least of your brothers you finally do to yourself, to your own soul.
My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.

GOP = Hypocrisy, Tea Party = LOSERS, Epic FAIL

And even with a script and a teleprompter, she's an ignorant popsie and a failure who keeps getting fired from the jobs she doesn't just quit part way through.

Seriously - this woman faulted those who vet candidates for the GOP for picking losers?

You mean -- like HER? She hasn't succeeded at anything for a long, long time.

Bush and Cheney LIED, a lot of people died -- and we're all paying for their lies, and will be for decades

The neo-con right is trying to claim we invaded Iraq to liberate them. That is just a new lie piled on top of the old lies. We invaded Iraq because then President Bush and his administration LIED about what they knew, and had been planning to invade Iraq all along. There were NEVER any weapons of mass destruction, and they were so advised. They did not care. We did a very bad thing by invading Iraq, and the majority of Americans agree. I vividly remember discussing the decision at the time, and asserting that if Bush was lying, neither history or the American people would forgive him for it.

That is only part of the "Bush baggage" that guarantees there will not be another Bush in the White House, not Jeb, not his son, not a generation after. This is going to be the shame, the legacy, that will follow this family for a long, long, long time to come --- and will drag down the GOP with it until they stand up, admit they were wrong, abandon what they call their core principles that are such an epic failure, and instead come up with new ideas, and valid values instead of their warped and corrupt priorities and failed policies.

The new catchphrase is male, pale and stale -- it should include 'failed', as in EPIC fail. They lie - and other people die, other people suffer, other people pay. Time to make THEM carry that burden, not the rest of us.

And that wasn't the ONLY lie that is stuck to the Bush legacy like a big ugly tumor - a self-inflicted tumor:

A position we should share in the face of right wing efforts to erode our liberties

Ah, Conservatives, the facts are not their friends: Katherine Kersten - Bunkum Award

Hysterical apocalyptic fear mongering, and propose solutions which create the worst possible outcomes. Facts are not the friends of conservatives.

Hell, Kersten is probably proud to be able to tell people her work has received an award, and as so many conservatives like to do when cherry-picking, will leave out that it was an award for being not just bad, but incredibly, awesomely, extraordinarily bad.

Although she is not as bad as the Jeb "no baggage" Bush education adviser who has earned a (Get a) life time achievement award for being bad.  Yes, our own Kkkkrazy right wing extremist still has something for which she may aspire. 

I'm sure the right wing think tank she works for doesn't care if what she produces is total CRAP; they probably pay extra for it.  But I haven't seen any acknowledgment by the STrib of the award - unless they buried it so deep that I missed it.

Three cheers for the consistency in intellectual dishonesty that is the far right wing; they're still awful at facts, still reject real science, they continue to produce policy plan failures, and they're still racist.

We all know who the party of stupid is....

Nostalgia? Retro? DO SOMETHING

Simply, what we need to do

Just because

Katherine Kerstin : cheater, fraud, and epic right wing FAILURE

Ah, the right wing nuts; the facts are not their friends. They can't win on merit, so they make up shit, and hope no one will catch them at it --- but they DO get caught.

The only remaining question is, do they have sufficient remaining character to at least be ashamed, or are they too far gone, too corrupt for that?

From the Bible?

The new miniseries features an actor in the role of Satan that bears an uncanny resemblance to an older President Obama.

I think the image below is superb, as a satiric, sarcastic response.

GOP= Failure to represent everyday Americans instead of Corporate special interests and the 1%

We need to stop people using expanded capacity magazines

Jared Loughner was stopped, by a woman more than 60 years old, when he had to change magazines in the mass shooting in Tucson AZ that injured Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and many others, and which killed others, including a judge and a little girl.  ENOUGH.

The one-trick pony thinkers like the NRA try to argue for more guns, more bullets, more gun violence as the solution to every problem. THAT is not the answer, LESS gun violence, fewer guns, fewer bullets, and limits on magazines IS the answer - along with mandatory universal background checks.

Our gun culture is an epic failure. It is time we changed it, aggressively changed it.

Popes and Snopes

Thanks to our commenter democommie for calling my attention to a hoax, an urban legend, an error.

Snopes discovered that a quotation attributed to the new Pope Francis was not strictly accurate.  That quote, attributed to the Argentine news service, said:

"Women are unfit for political office. Both the natural order and facts show us that the political being par excellence is male; the Scripture shows us that woman has always been the helper of man who thinks and does, but nothing more."

While it is true that there is no apparent quote, no failure of translation or transcription, this appears to be a very accurate reporting of actions that speak louder than words, and more clearly, on behalf of the establishment of conservative religion - which appears quite thoroughly to include the past and the current pope.

As I write these words, in the background Scott Pele on 60 minutes is doing a segment on the Vatican, their representative in the U.S. who has been sent to bring the nuns in the U.S. to 'heel', and the Nuns of 'Nuns on the Bus' fame in their "American Nuns struggle with the Vatican for change" segment run on March 17, 2013:


It would be fair to say that the conflict with the nuns reflects a greater conflict within the Roman Catholic church and the 'women religious' of more than just the United States -- and the church is losing.

The church is losing, because the church is wrong, unjust, and not particularly godly, pious, or holy in their condescending and dismissive, condescending and authoritarian patriarchy and hierarchy. This is a church which puts their authority - and wealth - ahead of all other considerations, and which values and gives authority to men, at the expense of women, and children. One cardinal, Cardinal Napier of South Africa, was even quoted as asserting that pedophilia was not a crime, as reported by Reuters.

Calling pedophilia an illness - it is more correctly a psychiatric disorder - IS a mental health issue for the perpetrator.  It is a CRIME for the victims. There is nothing about pedophilia which precludes it being BOTH a mental disorder AND a crime. Mental illness is ONLY an excuse in committing a criminal act when it precludes the perpetrator understanding what they are doing AND being unable to distinguish right from wrong. It is a terrible mis-statement of fact to claim that pedophilia is not a crime, but this seems to reflect the attitude of the Roman Catholic church in their failure to adequately and willingly compensate the victims of clergy who molest and sexually abuse children, as well as engage in other sexual misconduct, and who have obstructed criminal investigation and prosecution.

I'm not aware of any priest or religious figure, or other pedophiles, who was unaware that their actions were wrong, were illegal, or most of all, an abuse of their authority and trust. Certainly, there are groups of pedophiles, who are more often heterosexual than homosexual or bisexual, that try to justify what they do by denying that it is harmful or sick. We should expect AND DEMAND better from powerful religious institutions.

Unfortunately, this appears to be part of the problem with male dominated patriarchal institutions. They consistently justify protecting and excusing male abusers, while failing to protect women and children, and by re-victimizing the victims in doing so.

The bizarre and unreasonable opposition to renewing the Violence Against Women Act was a perfect example.  There has been opposition to that legislation from the beginning, from the hard right conservatives, both men and women, including the religious right who support dominionism. They promote the idea as a traditional value that women should be submissive and subordinate to men in every way, and that to oppose that is to be in opposition to the dominance of god.  Their 'natural order' is that as God stands to everything, men - and religious institutions - are superior and dominant to women and children, and that to object to any bad or abusive behavior by men is to challenge that superiority and dominance of men, the church and GOD. The VAWA has been opposed from the beginning, not just the last year or two, by groups like the Family Research Council, and the Eagle Forum.

To boil down the position of the far right and the religious right, women should just suck up the abuse, and be more submissive to the dominance of their abusers; leaving an abuser leads to divorce and the break up of the family.  The put the blame on the victims, not the abusers for that failure of the marriage and family, despite the number of women killed and injured every year from such abuse.  Staying with abusers has a very low success rate for women -- but objective reality has never been a strong point for the right when it collides with political ideology or religion.

Our own Michele Bachmann, a dominionist who has supported women being submissive to men, was the only member of the Minnesota delegation to Congress who voted against reauthorizing the VAWA.  While she now tries to backpedal that vote, she is on record too many times stating her position for that to be credible.  It is ironic that in her campaign for the presidency, the old, male-pale-and-stale good ol' boys network told her that she couldn't be president because women shouldn't be in that kind of position of authority over men.  (Serves the popsie right; too bad the voices in her head she attributes to God didn't explain that to her when she dumped serving her constituents for her ambition - not that they noticed, since she has never particularly served them well anyway.)

These problems of abusive patriarchy are not unique to the 'RC'; we have seen that in the recent Baptist scandals. There have been organizations formed to combat sexual Baptist predators that closely parallel the organizations for survivors of Roman Catholic abuse. Like the Roman Catholic church, the Baptists have a long-standing problem with covering up their criminal conduct as well, as uncovered in this article by Salon.com.

Perhaps the biggest thorn in SGM’s side has been the spate of former members’ blogs that have cropped up since 2007, starting with SGM Survivors—a site where ex-members have shared numerous accounts of SGM’s cult-like atmosphere, including cover-ups of spousal abuse and sexual abuse of children as young as two.

And in October 2012, three people whose stories were first shared on SGM Survivors formalized their complaints by becoming the first plaintiffs in the current class action lawsuit, charging the ministry and its past and present clergy for complicity in the abuse.

The original lawsuit listed SGM, Mahaney, Tomczak, and six other pastors from CLC and Sovereign Grace Church as defendants. The amended filing added five new plaintiffs and CLC, as well as CLC’s day school, the Fairfax church, and two more pastors as defendants. One new plaintiff, “Paula Poe,” alleged that a pastor and church volunteer together operated a “pedophilia ring” at CLC and its school, and that one of their suspected victims, a pastor’s son, went on to molest a seven-year-old boy in the Fairfax church.

The suit has been filed not only on behalf of the individual plaintiffs, but also on behalf of a much larger class of people allegedly abused as minors in SGM, who do not wish to come forward with their stories. The suit alleges that the potential additional victims are too many to be included as individual plaintiffs in the suit because SGM’s leaders have cultivated an “environment conducive to and protective of physical and sexual abuse of children.”

The stories from plaintiffs who are included describe a church culture where pastors’ sympathies routinely lay with male perpetrators of sexual abuse, particulary married fathers, who were allowed continued access to victims and other children in the church. Victims’ families were deliberately misled to keep them out of legal proceedings, while pastors provided perpetrators with legal support. And families were pressured not to report abuse and to “forgive” perpetrators, with even children as young as three being forced to meet their abusers for “reconciliation.”

Women and children who came forward were threatened and ostracized if they resisted efforts to “restore” their abusive husbands and fathers to a position of “leadership” in the family. One plaintiff, “Robin Roe,” whose sister was sexually abused by their adoptive father, reports that their mother was advised by CLC pastors to send the victim away so the abuser could return as “head of the household.” When Roe’s mother refused to submit to this and other pastoral “attempt[s] to obstruct justice,” the family was kicked out of the church.

Looking at the emphasis on obedience to their authority from the Roman Catholic church, the parallel that puts saving priests from accountability after they have abused women and children, including sexual abuse of their priestly authority, it is no surprise to see the same emphasis in the Baptist churches, quoting again from Salon, where violence is not sin - but sex is, but only for women apparently:

The larger context for corporal punishment is the belief that Christians must cultivate a lifelong attitude of submission to God-given authority. Parents are one such authority; male leadership over women in the family, church, and society is another.

Both women and children are taught that submission is part of a divine plan that should be embraced joyfully, and that even submitting to abusive men is noble and Christ-like. CLC pastor Joshua Harris quotes 1 Peter on this score, praising slaves who obeyed the masters who beat them as following Jesus’ example. Harris interprets this to mean that all Christians are called to submit, even when “suffering” under “unjust” leadership. Therefore wives are called to resist the “sinful” impulse to “fight back” against or even criticize husbands who misuse their “authority.”

These teachings are not unique to SGM. Evangelical leader John Piper—a friend to SGM—has taught that women must maintain attitudes of submission even toward abusive husbands. Wives may, he says, have to,“endure… being smacked one night” if abuse is “simply hurting [them]” and “not requiring [them] to sin” in some way like “group sex.”

If children are taught that assault is divinely sanctioned, and that their bodies belong to adults, girls in particular are trained to see their bodies as male property, starting with their fathers. These lessons come from the top. C.J. Mahaney and his wife Carolyn, herself a popular writer on “biblical femininity,” teach that every piece of clothing girls and married women purchase should be inspected for “modesty” by fathers. And Mahaney encourages his followers to confront girls and women in their congregations whose clothing they find immodest.

Girls grow up under the sexualizing gaze of men who are free to comment on the sexual response female bodies “provoke” in them. This early training in feminine responsibility for the sexual response of men makes it difficult to recognize and name abuse, and causes further trauma with the implication that being a victim of sexual violence makes a woman “impure.”

These are the same churches which have problems with their missionaries conduct in foreign countries, but which have exported the concepts of execution for same sex relationships to Africa.  When investigations into that conduct don't conform to what they want to hear, it is the investigators who are terminated, not the abusive sexually predatory clergy, as reported by 'Stop Baptist Predators'.

Only a few weeks before the release of a final investigative report on allegations involving a missionary's sexual abuse of kids, the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism (ABWE) has fired the investigative team, Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment (GRACE).

The investigation had been on-going for nearly two years, and GRACE had interviewed approximately 100 witnesses. At issue in the investigation was not only the missionary’s alleged acts of sexual abuse, but more broadly, questions related to how ABWE responded to allegations. In other words, the investigation was also concerned with who at ABWE had knowledge about the accused missionary’s conduct, and with what they did or did not do.

Read GRACE's February 11th letter in response to ABWE’s termination – a letter that sets forth some of ABWE’s conduct during the investigative process – and decide for yourself what you think about this. Personally, I think ABWE’s termination of GRACE gives the appearance that there were likely some officials at ABWE who feared that GRACE’s report would implicate them in a keep-it-quiet cover-up in much the same way that an independent investigation of the Penn State scandal implicated others at the institution in addition to the child molester.

Protecting men from accountability for criminal conduct is given more overwhelmingly more importance, justified on the basis of religious authority, than the well being and safety of women.  This reflects an inherent misogny, a failure to share power, an undervaluing of women, and a profoundly sick misunderstanding of sin and sexuality.  The problem is not sin, the problem is not 'illness', the problem is a deep and profound corruption of institutions, both governmental and religious, that follow right wing deeply conservative 'values'.  These are failed values, in the same way that conservativism is deeply failed.  The two go hand in hand inextricably in the ways that right wing power is reflected in BOTH religion and government, and it needs to be overturned, repudiated, rejected, and exterminated, eradicated. 

This kind of thinking and belief, this kind of misogyny masquerading as any kind of faith or 'values' has no place in the 21st century, any more than human slavery does.

What leadership? CONSERVATIVE Leadership - and what an epic fail they have been.

Anti-science right wing efforts are the worst for this

A little Irish difference

What does it mean to be Irish?

St. Patrick was not native born Irish; he was Scottish. Actually, there were several people who contributed to the legends and traditions of  'St. Patrick'.  I will celebrate the wonderful intellect, artistry, and individuality and independence of the Irish, for it's own value, and because I'm part Irish.


From the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science:
Kansas City Atheists have been rejected from their St. Patrick's Day Parade. The parade organizers had said, "open to all, Irish or not, Catholic or not" -- until they decided to discriminate. NOT welcome would be James Joyce, the Irishman often topping the list of greatest novelists of the 20th Century! (not religious). NOT welcome would be George Bernard Shaw, the Irishman who is the only person to win both a Nobel Prize for Literature and an Oscar. NOT welcome would be Samuel Beckett, the Nobel Prize-winning Irishman, who is one of the greatest playwrights of the 20th Century. (not religious). NOT welcome apparently would be Oscar Wilde, the Irishman often described as the greatest wit of all time. (He was jailed in connection with homosexual acts and said many skeptical things about religion.).

The International House of Prayer, the fundamentalist Protestant group, has been welcomed in the past in the parade. Mark Engle, IHOP's leader, likes the idea of making homosexuality a crime. Another IHOP leader says tornadoes are caused by women's control of their own reproduction.

Yep, the arbiters of morality who run the St. Patrick's Day Parade in Kansas City love everything about Ireland EXCEPT what it means to be Irish -- standing up for those who get the short end of the stick. If you don't understand that, you don't even deserve to call yourself Irish. The parade organizers said, "open to all, Irish or not, Catholic or not." I guess their word is worth...nothing. -- Sean Faircloth, Dir. of Strategy & Policy.

Call me ..........

Point made

Not statistics, PEOPLE

Reality

Rights and Limits

Ah the popsie displays both her stupidity and her paranoia yet again

With every additional crazy, stupid comment, Palin moves herself to an even greater distance from ever being elected to any serious office ever again. When Fox News doesn't want you on the right, well.....you can only sink lower........and lower..........and lower. Here is proof in action of that!

Conservatives, so consistently on the wrong side of history

A fair and honest question

Wings, legs.........how many?

From the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, more information on this here

Research published yesterday suggests that the earliest birds had four wings, not two. An excellent example of transitional fossils between four-limbed dinosaurs and two-winged birds.

High time WE made the most of 100% of our talent

Evolution in action?

Just laughing, just sayin'

Sooner, or later, they will come out

Courage in action

Lyin' Ryan doubles down

Just

They won't learn, they just double down on their failures

Just announced, 14 adults cured of AIDS, in addition to an infant

GOP = Failed Policies, Failed Populist Appeal

Lyin' Paul Ryan = GOP FAIL FAIL FAIL

Think again, Jeb. Think again.

GodSpeak and Common Sense

Samual Clemens, popularly known as Mark Twain, was, as nearly everyone is aware, an American writer, philosopher, and hero to many on the political right and left.  He was well-known during his life not just for Huckleberry Fin or Tom Sawyer, but also for his plain-spoken, direct ways.  He was well-loved and well-respected by many in this vast country because, while his words were not always those with which everyone agreed, he spoke to a simple, common-sense philosophy which was hard to argue against.

One quote of his I recently stumbled across is this:

"I am plenty safe enough in his hands; I am not in any danger from that kind of a Diety. The one that I want to keep out of the reach of, is the caricature of him which one finds in the Bible. We (that one and I) could never respect each other, never get along together. I have met his superior a hundred times-- in fact I amount to that myself."

I could hardly agree more with Mr. Twain (Clemens).  Anybody who advocates for religion which elevates itself, trumpets superiority of the clergy or of their religion for that matter in a way which says others are lessers, inferior, even subordinate, is to my mind a person who has severely missed their guess about what was intended.  The greatness of Christianity, where it shines best, is when we recognize that we are asked to treat ALL as equal, to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.  It is not a message of superiority vs. inferiority, it is a message of equanimity and compassion.  Mr. Twain's comments here and elsewhere suggest that a God which by design "tests" us, causes us to suffer, while sitting idley is not one he can respect.  Yet, he believed in God, but he believed in a God that set out a plan where we lived decently, acted decently, and sought not to be uncaring about suffering but to recognize our responsibility was to address it.  If we didn't, and moreover if it was God's design that we were acting upon and which he, the omnimpotent could change, then not only were we currupt, but so was that God.

We run down two paralell paths in this thing we call Christianity,

One elevates God, venerates him as omniscient and all powerful, excuses all suffering as either a test, or a design, elevates itself, elevates it's clergy and says they should not be questioned, doesn't question thier word is the word of God when they say gays are bad but turns a deaf ear when told to not use birth control.  It builds a heirarchical world of Good vs. Bad, Christian vs. Muslim, White vs. Black.

The other feeds the prisoner, doesn't believe the Christian word is the only way in which faith can be expressed, cares about the sick man, the addict, quite simply because it sees the message as one where we are asked to accept the value of all, and through it to care for all as we would want to be cared for and so doesn't build excuses to hate the "lesser" or the other because there are no "others." 

I know which faith I accept and I am reasonably certain I understand which Mr. Clemens seems to embrace.  Do you desire to take money out of the hands of the needy in order that the "great job creators" not feel disappointed they won't pocket 40% return but instead will have to suffer with 35% return, or do you feel asking the poor to pay more is unconcionable and fundamentally against the idea of loving our neighbor as we do ourselves?

Hooray for Senator Liz!

Friday fun from Fiore

"Good guys" with guns

My quote for today is, "There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it ill behooves any of us to find fault with the rest of us." - James Truslow Adams. I have a friend who is a Vietnam veteran, an infantryman. He refuses to discuss his experiences. His service was honorable, and he is often thanked for it, as he should be.

He undoubtedly saw or did things about which he is not proud, nor feels he deserves thanks. That is the essence of war. War reflects life, only magnified to extreme. We ALL do things about which we are hardly proud. We all do things which are honorable. No one believes they fight for the wrong side, it is our restraint and compassion in the face of ugliness which defines us, not our willingness to be brutal "when needed." We all have the capacity for both. When we carve the world up into the "good" guys and "bad" guys, we fail to understand the fundamental humanity of each of us. We also fail to grasp that solutions which demonize our opponents are virtually certain to be unjust, and being unjust, they fail.

No one is excusing the acts of the likes of members of Al Qaeda here by this comment, but that also suggests the following; if you are willing to kill and maim to "hold onto" your guns, or whatever extremism you favor, if that extremism is other than protecting your life and liberty, then you are hardly different than the "bad" guy you supposedly are going to "stand up to."

An extremist Presidential candidate once said, "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." I heard G. Gordon Liddy use this to excuse his breaking into a political headquarters to steal details about the opposition.  He was hardly protecting his personal liberty.  Instead he was illustrating that the "anything in defense of liberty" is the TRUE slippery slope which can (and is used) to justify virtually anything, including many very immoral things, by those who've fallen far from the path of reason.  In fact self-rationalization thinking which justifies more and more vicious acts is inexorable, self-perpetuating, and it sure as hell is a vice.

Fascism USA

Don't be fooled: not all fascism looks like Adolph Hitler.



Thomas Jefferson, one of the founders of the United States democratic system, said "I hope we shall take warning from the example and crush in it's [sic] birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and to bid defiance to the laws of their country".

Project for a New American Century: www.newamericancentury.org

Some things require a different set of assumptions

Just sayin'

Not for lack of trying...

Favorite image of the month