Rush to Judgment

On Wednesday Rush Limbaugh said:

What does it say about the college co-ed Sandra Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex, what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex. What does that make us? We’re the pimps.

What right does Rush have to judge this woman? What Sandra Fluke actually said is that women need to use contraceptives for more than one reason. In particular, Fluke has a friend who used the pill to control ovarian cysts, and not prevent pregnancy. The friend was denied coverage, couldn't afford the drugs. A cyst developed and grew to the size of tennis ball. It had to be surgically removed along with her ovary.

This whole argument over employers covering birth control is bogus. Practically speaking, since contraceptives are medicine, they need to be dispensed under the supervision of a doctor. Therefore they need to be part of health insurance, and it would be stupidly bureaucratic to require a separate policy to cover it. Aren't Republicans against stupid bureaucratic nonsense?

What's more, as I (and Jon Stewart) have pointed out before, the employer is paying for birth control whether it's through health insurance or the employee's salary. This is inconsistent, unless they're also arguing that they have the right to fire anyone who uses contraception. Is this moral objection to birth control really just the first domino in the conservative plot to allow employers to discriminate against people they don't like, be they contraceptive users, Muslims, Baptists, Mormons, atheists, blacks, Latinos and women?

It's particular ironic that Limbaugh is making a big deal out of this. In 2009 Limbaugh was stopped by customs when he returned from the Dominican Republic for having a bottle of Viagra that was made out in his doctor's name. (He should have used the alias "Rash Limp-bough".) This was after he was caught abusing prescription drugs, doctor-shopping and skirting banking laws by withdrawing cash from his banks just below the threshold that would require it to be reported. He then sent his housekeeper out with shoeboxes full of money to buy prescription drugs illegally to support the addiction that may have cost him his hearing, requiring him to have cochlear implants.

At the time of the Viagra bust Rush had been divorced from his third wife for five years and was seeing the woman who would become his fourth wife, Kathryn Rogers, who is 26 years younger than he is. They have no children, so, as Rush would, I'll just assume that she was using the pill to prevent pregnancy (I can't imagine someone like Limbaugh even considering a condom or diaphragm). I'll also assume her employer was paying for her health insurance, which in Limbaugh's fantasy world would mean she is a slut and a prostitute, her employer is a pimp and he is a john. As well as a fornicator.

Why isn't Rick Santorum holding up Rush Limbaugh as Exhibit A for all society's ills?

Sandra Fluke's motivation for speaking out appears to be outrage over the injustice that caused her friend to lose an ovary. Rush Limbaugh's motivation seems to be to slap down another slutty "feminazi" because she dared speak up instead of just lying there and taking it.

No wonder this man has gone through four wives.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

The best answer yet to Rick Santorum's snob comment....

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A Friday Challenge

John Waxy, a sadly seldom author here, is a professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin. He's also an owner of a 20 million dollar manufacturing concern there but that's a post for another day (see: intimately familiar with the concerns of business owners in the 21st century even though a few mouth foamers who post here are under the mistaken impression that I am not).

John an I have known each other for 33 years and I count him as my closest friend. We talk at least once a week and, sadly more often than not, he tells me the same story about his Intro To Anthropology class that he teachers every semester and it goes something like this: A few weeks into the quarter, a third of his class will be failing. When I ask him why, he tells me that those failing students all essentially have the same problem.

They don't "believe" in evolution.

In fact, many of these students have told John that they needn't bother learning the required class because "It's all lies."

So when I saw this post  on Kevin Baker's site, The Smallest Minority, I became curious as to what his response would be to such willful ignorance by John's students, given that his protestations fall along his usual line of  "Every School Is Failing Everywhere Because of the Communist Take Over of Schools And Look At How Stupid The Kids Are As A Result of This and The Coddling." Certainly, this does not fit Kevin's (very much fictional) narrative!

Yet, if recollection serves me, there was a post a while back about the Constitution and how it was also being destroyed by liberals, commies, proggies, and the Ladies Auxiliary of New Prague, MN. I hadn't commented in a while but honestly felt it was necessary given how (ahem) off the mark he was in his assessment.

During the course of comments, I got the Sybil-like "You're a chicken"-"Get the Fuck Out of Here" nonsense that I always get so I put it to a vote: Yes, for me to stay...No, for me to go and never comment again. The vote was for the NO's 2-1 with several people abstaining. I will, of course, continue to abide by that decision and since have noticed several commenters (including Kevin once) posting here.

Despite this, Kevin continues to put up posts about education which he clearly does to bait and taunt me, trying to get me to comment. Other commenters mention my name and do the same. Don't they know that I am a man of my word and would not comment unless a new vote is taken and I am voted back on the island?

Of course, my promise does not extend to this site (my own, after all) and that's why today I am commenting on his last post on education. In fact, I'm going to do much more than that. I am officially challenging Kevin and any other commenter from his site or here to an ongoing debate on education. It's come to the point where I simply can't allow such a colossal amount of lying to go on by someone who very clearly has not set foot in a school in a long time. That goes for most of his commenters as well. You want to know why schools are failing? Ask me. I'm a teacher so I am an authority as to what is going on. And then go spend a week in a school (preferably a junior high for the real action) so you can gauge if what I am saying is true.

To put it simply, start learning something, get some actual first-hand experience, and then you can run your mouth. After that, I'm hoping that we can have a substantive discussion about how much our society has changed and how incredibly naive (see: FUBAR) it would be to try to "go back to the old days."

To kick off this challenge, let's get back to that video he put up. First, anyone ever hear of the concept of editing? Obviously, it can make people look at stupid or smart as possible. Jay Leno does it all the time. In this case, it's stupid and, because Kevin eternally embraces confirmation bias (especially when it comes to schools), he believes that all students are this "stupid." I guess I'm wondering what ended up on the cutting room floor and how many answered the questions correctly.

Second, for every school that is "failing," there are schools like this one that are turning around. 

Booker T. Washington High School’s graduation rate went from 55% in 2007 to 81.6% in 2010. The school has taken steps such as establishing separate freshmen academies for boys and girls to help students adjust to the school culture and creating an atmosphere where teachers take personal interest in seeing students take pride in their schoolwork. Students can now take AP classes, learn about engineering through robotics competitions, and earn college credits. 

Every time Kevin puts up something on his site about "failing schools," I'll be putting up a post here about successful ones. I have plenty. This is going to happen even if my challenge is declined or ignored. Because the simple truth is that there are many schools that are doing well already or improving. If he and the others set aside their irrational hatred of  Barack X, they would see that he and Secretary Duncan are pursuing many of the same goals as they are. If they did that and spent some time in a school, then they would see that this remark from the comments of that post

They are not being taught history anymore. It's all part of the Socialist Plan.

is beyond laughable. In fact, I question whether or not it was intended in jest.

So, the challenge has been extended. The gauntlet has been thrown down. This is a chance here (and in future education related threads) to have a dialogue with someone who has been in the education system for the last 9 years (public and private).

If you really care about the future of education in this country and are serious about improving the system, this is an opportunity to do so.

Wow.

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At least now, Fox News is admitting it...

And I wonder what last in line thinks about the guy from Fox saying, "Regardless of the numbers, it's how you feel..."

Stunned

The news just came over the wire that conservative blogger Andrew Brietbart, whose name I invoked quite a bit in comments, has died. He was only 43 years old. The cause of death is unknown. Apparently he does have some underlying health issues and he suddenly collapsed so hopefully we will know more soon. 

My thoughts and prayers are with his family as should all of yours. I am very much going to miss his hyperbolic appearances on Real Time with Bill Maher.

Snowe Fall

Mark expressed pleasure at the announcement that Olympia Snowe is retiring, but I wish she could stay. And I wish there were more Republicans like her. With the fall of the last Republican moderates, I fear more deadlock in Congress in the near term, but the eventual fall of the Republican Party in the long term.

It's a common trope that both the Republican and Democratic parties are gathered at the extremes of the political spectrum, but it's the Republicans that have all clustered in the deep end of the ideological pool. The truth is, there are almost no liberals in the Democratic Party anymore.

You need look no further than President Obama for an example. Republicans insist he is a radical socialist, but he has compromised on dozens of issues, agreeing to solutions Republicans once embraced wholeheartedly just a few years ago. Including, but not limited to, the health care mandate, which Obama strongly opposed during the 2008 election campaign but agreed to in a compromise with the health care industry.

Democrats generally reflect the political bent of the districts they represent, ranging from right of center (there are dozens of Blue Dog Democrats like Jim Cooper of Tennessee, Collin Peterson of Minnesota, Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona until she resigned, and so on), to liberal few (Dennis Kucinich). Even though they don't agree on every little issue, the common thread among Democrats is that they want government to work for the people they represent.

But the vast majority of Republicans in government are now radically conservative no matter where they come from. They have either always been that way, or have been forced to change (like John McCain) or face being "primaried" by the Tea Party and Grover Norquist. Republicans like Snowe and Arlen Specter are being drummed out of the party. The only real exception is Scott Brown, because half a Republican senator from Massachusetts is better than none. (But if he loses, Republican pundits will say it's because he was too liberal and didn't do enough to "differentiate" himself from Warren.)

Republicans constantly carp about "political correctness," but they've got their own ideological enforcers who will viciously destroy any Republican who dares stray from the one true faith of Grover Norquist.

There are dozens of pro-life Democrats in Congress, but almost no pro-choice Republicans. Even though a thoroughly convincing libertarian argument can be made against the government telling you what you can do with your own body. There are hundreds of anti-gun control Democrats, but no pro-gun control Republicans. There are hundreds of Democrats in Congress who agree that we need to do something serious about Social Security and Medicare to avoid a future default, that we need to plan for balancing the budget and reducing the deficit, that we need a strong defense. But there are essentially no Republicans who will admit that real taxes on corporations (not the official rate, which almost no one pays) and the wealthy—especially capital gains taxes—are too low and a combination of budget cuts and selective tax increases are needed to fix our long-term problems.

The dictatorial nature of the Republican Party does not bode well for its long-term survival. Americans actually believe in freedom, and will grow tired of being constantly lectured about it by people who want to take their right to self-determination away, to be told when and with whom they can have sex, when and how they can have kids and who they can marry.

If one good thing comes of the bile and sewage the Republican primary campaigns and their Super PACs spewed over the airwaves, it will be a reversal of the Supreme Court's Citizen's United decision. Perhaps then Republican candidates can focus on what their constituents want and need, instead of the demands of the cabals at Grover Norquist's Wednesday meetings, corporate board rooms and Fox News.

It's A Fine Line, My Friends, A Fine Line...

Breaking...

Maine Senator Olympia Snowe has announced she is retiring which puts Maine in play now for the Democrats. I'd say there is a very good chance they take that one back. They are certainly going to need every chance they have with the way things are looking in the Senate.

Goodbye Hello!

Well, I had to wait 15 years and, even though it was due to redistricting and not an election, I am FINALLY represented by a Democrat, Keith Ellison. And the 1st Muslim in the US Congress!

Goodbye CD3. You are now more conservative and Erik Paulsen will be your representative for as long as the Democrats continue to nominate people who have never been elected to public office. Hello, CD5, perhaps you may end up being too liberal for me?

The Anti-College Crusade

The other day Rick Santorum said:

Not all folks are gifted in the same way. Some people have incredible gifts with their hands. Some people have incredible gifts and ... want to work out there making things. President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob.

The fact is, Obama said that he wants everyone to go to a university or two-year community college or vocational school of their choice. In this modern world of computerized cars and highly-automated factory floors that require the people running those machines to have programming skills, you need to know more than just readin', ritin' and 'rithmetic. After the tea-party crowd finished applauding, Santorum continued:

There are good decent men and women who go out and work hard every day and put their skills to test that aren’t taught by some liberal college professor trying to indoctrinate them. Oh, I understand why he wants you to go to college. He wants to remake you in his image. I want to create jobs so people can remake their children into their image, not his.

Santorum went to Penn State (I wonder if he knew Jerry Sandusky?). He also got an MBA and a law degree. He seems to have escaped his indoctrination by liberal secular state university professors. Santorum also seems to be unafraid of his own children being indoctrinated: his two oldest have started college, though they're taking a break to work on his campaign.

The fact is, on average people with college educations make a lot more money than people who don't. The unemployment rate among the college-educated is half that of the rest of the nation. Their divorce rate and out-of-wedlock birthrate is much lower. They have better health and live longer. People make connections at college that will set them up for life, even if they drop out like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.


For a long time now Republicans seem to have been striving to become the party of stupid. Now they have a candidate who's actively denigrating getting a college education. It seems crazy for the party of the rich and soon-to-be rich to advocate against the best track to wealth and influence.

Is Santorum off his rocker? Or has he unwittingly revealed the Republican party's real agenda?

Two camps of Republicans have long been at odds. The first camp is big business and its frontmen, guys like Rick Perry, George Bush and (until recently) John McCain. These businesses have relied on large numbers of illegal aliens to pick tomatoes, clean hotel rooms and butcher chickens. The same group has been relentlessly busting unions, most recently with states like Wisconsin and Indiana gutting the ability of unions to even exist.

The second camp is relatively uneducated lower- to middle-income, blue-collar, union-hating, anti-amnesty Republicans who are afraid that illegal aliens will steal their jobs. Because the only real qualification the aliens lack is the ability to speak English. So they want the aliens out now, though they aren't interested in taking the aliens' jobs because they don't pay enough to live on.

Is the real Republican agenda to encourage the economic descent of the average American so that they will fill the void left by all those deported illegals? To get this to work, Republicans have to make low-wage blue-collar Americans feel smug and superior and that they're somehow more authentic than college-educated politicians (and their multi-millionaire CEO buddies, but let's not mention them). Santorum and Sarah Palin seem to be doing just that.

Or would we be better served by sending more people to college who will study computer science and engineering to fill the hundreds of thousands of current high-tech job vacancies here in the United States? Jobs that are now going to foreigners with college educations. These well-educated Americans could start companies that build machines that pick tomatoes, butcher chickens and clean hotel rooms, eliminating the need for illiterate aliens who can't speak English. Maintaining and programming those machines would create decent-paying jobs for Americans who like to work with their hands. This would also increase the productivity of the American economy and allow us to beat out China, which still relies on prison slave labor and low-wage workers stacked eight to a dorm room.

Will all these Tea Party Republicans still feel proud and smug when it's their kids lopping off their fingers on the meat-packing floors instead of illegal aliens or shiny metal robots?

Maher on the Bubble

This is the bubble they live in. It's hard to get actual facts into this impermeable membrane. They are running against a fictional president. A president who has slashed defense, who has raised taxes, who goes around the world apologizing to different countries, who coddles terrorists, all of which, of course, never happened. But that's who they think the president is. And it's very, very hard. That's why we have this bubble we built on this show to physically illustrate this.---Bill Maher on "The Bubble."

It's Not Just Fox News

I'd add in the Right Wing Blogsphere as well. In fact, it's really more appropriate for them:)

Interesting....

The Keystone Fight Is Uniting Tea Partiers With Environmentalists. 

I knew it was only a matter of time before there was some crossover. It makes sense when you really sit back and think about how one could make a case for the government failing to protect property rights.

Uh...Huh?

Some liberal college professor trying to indoctrinate them? Into what exactly? Someone who can think for themselves? Good grief...

No Shit

Sunday's Epistle

Social issues have once again come up in the political dialogue and with many states taking up the issue of gay marriage now and in the fall, Lisa Cressman's recent piece in the StarTribune is quite timely. More than that, it's wonderfully welcome in its elegant way of expressing several simple truths. And, coming from an assistant priest at St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Lake Elmo, MN, it carries with it a great deal more weight.

Gay marriage opponents had put up a questionnaire titled ""Six questions for supporters of same-sex marriage to answer" and so, Cressman did. I have decided to reprint her entire response here as it is just that good.

1. Were our ancestors all dumb and bigoted? 

Our ancestors knew many truths, but not all. A common example of what our ancestors held to be self-evident, biblically sanctioned truth, which we now hold in abhorrence, is slavery. It's appropriate to ask ourselves whether a particular societal tradition is the best way for us to continue. 

If the Bible condoned slavery, doesn't that mean that the authors may have not been completely accurate about everything?

2. Don't our sexual organs exist for reproduction? 

Reproduction is one of their purposes, but so is intimacy. If our sexual organs existed solely for reproduction, couples would have sex only at the times necessary for procreation. Moreover, if this were the case, physical fulfillment in marriage wouldn't be enjoyed by couples who cannot have children (for medical reasons or by virtue of advanced age) or who choose not to do so. 

3. Do we just give in to our sexual desires? 

Our sexual desires have been channeled through the worthy tradition that people choose one mate and make a promise of fidelity through marriage. A mutual, joyful and public commitment, permanently held, one to another, is the healthiest way to build stable families and a stable society. This would argue for encouraging members of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community likewise to make a commitment of marriage as the appropriate avenue for their sexuality. 

4. Adultery, pedophilia and bestiality are wrong. So homosexuality? 

Adultery is a problem because of the trust shattered when marriage vows are broken. Pedophilia and bestiality are anathema because there cannot be mutual consent -- an adult always holds power over a child or an animal. Homosexual commitment is mutual between consenting adults. 

Consenting adults is the key here. You don't have that with children, animals or inanimate objects.

5. Changes in norms require universal acceptance. Prevalent homosexuality will not work. 

Many changes in our country have taken place without universal acceptance. Indeed, many laws in our country were designed to protect the very people who do not receive universal acceptance. As to prevalent homosexuality, the long-held estimate is that roughly 10 percent of the population is homosexual. No law has the ability to increase or decrease those numbers. 

Civil rights, anyone?

Now the best one...

6. The religious question: Shouldn't we be trying to encourage others to repent of a wrong? 

The assumption is that homosexuality is wrong. Assumptions are fair to question, even religious ones. We understand now, in a way our biblical ancestors could not, that medically and psychologically, homosexuals are born, not made. Would a loving God deliberately create someone who is fundamentally a mistake?

This is the very essence of the debate. Gay people don't learn to be gay or give in to their "sinful desires." They are born that way. That's how God made them.

If it's a question about "love the sinner but hate the sin," the way we discern whether something is, in fact, sinful, is to look at its consequences. The consequences that result from committed homosexual relationships are as positive as they are for committed heterosexual relationships: stable, tax-paying, caring-for-one-another-through-thick-and-thin families. These are the kinds of consequences that benefit all of society.

This brings up an issue that I have never understood. If the anti-gay crowd thinks homosexuals are engaging in deviant behavior, why are they against them trying to change that into something much more healthy? Like a marriage?

Personally, I think it's because the anti-gays are (surprise surprise) paranoid that accepting homosexuals will push they themselves over the edge into sin. You know how those folks love to have people all thinking the same way (due to massive insecurity).

Marriage matters to the GLBT among us as much as it does to the rest of us. Surrounded by family and friends, to make a promise to cherish that one other person until parted by death, matters. 

This is a big change, surely. I am persuaded, however, that change based on a commitment, a lifelong commitment of mutual joy, will benefit us all. 

It's obvious that those benefits are quickly becoming economical:)

Gay hair stylist drops New Mexico governor as client because she opposes same-sex marriage 

Man, I love the free market!

Why is it OK when he says it?

If You Are Really Concerned About The Debt and The Deficit...

...then the person you should be supporting is Ron Paul. After that, it's Barack Obama.

A recent report by the non partisan U.S. Budget Watch, a project of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, showed that Mr. Paul's plan would only add less than 500 billion dollars to the deficit by the end of 2016. President Obama would add just a little more than that with 649 billion.

Yet, Mitt Romney would add 700-800 billion dollars to the deficit with 2.6 trillion added to the debt by 2012.  Rick Santorum would add over 1 trillion dollars to the deficit by the end of 2016 with the debt rising to 4.5 trillion dollars by 2021. The worst offender, Newt Gingrich, would add 1.5 trillion to the deficit with a whopping 7 trillion dollars added to the debt by 2021.

So, why so much under the plans of the GOP hopefuls? Tax cuts. Well, they worked so well before...

Now that I think about it, they did work. The tax cuts have enabled the right to blame President Obama for all our economic problems.

Have All the Wrongs Been Righted?

Recently the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case on affirmative action at the University of Texas. The legalistic argument usually made against affirmative action is that racial preferences are bad no matter what, even if they exist to right historical wrongs.

But when you dig a little deeper, the general sentiment of many who oppose affirmative action is actually, "Get over it! Slavery ended almost 150 years ago. How long are you going to make us feel guilty for what our great-great-grandfathers did?"

But the surprising fact is that slavery did not really end until 1941! The Thirteenth amendment abolished it, but left an exception for punishment, which was widely abused in the South until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. At which point Roosevelt ordered a crackdown to avoid a propaganda attack by the Axis. The Thirteenth Amendment states:

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. 

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Everyone knows about chain gangs and share-croppers in the South, which were effectively slave labor. But after Reconstruction whites in the South used the Constitutional exception to falsely imprison millions of blacks and force them into slavery in industries such as logging, manufacturing, construction and mining.

This practice, known as convict leasing, is the subject of a PBS documentary called Slavery by Another Name. It's based on a book by The Wall Street Journal's Atlanta bureau chief Douglas Blackmon. Blackmon, a white southerner, wrote an article in 2001 about how many companies, including U.S. Steel, used convict leasing in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He expanded his research into a book in 2008.

It worked like this: whites passed laws against vagrancy, loitering, gambling, spitting and so on. They also turned lesser crimes, such as stealing a pig worth one dollar, into felonies. Blacks were stopped on the street and if they couldn't prove they were employed, they were arrested on the spot. The state then sold the labor of prisoners, the vast majority of them black, to companies for a few dollars a month. The slave economy was back in full force, just in time to create an economic boom in the South as the industrial revolution hit.

Convict leasing was in some ways worse than slavery. It's in the best interests of slave owners to avoid abusing slaves because they have a lot of economic value: a slave can labor for decades. But convicts were leased by the month. If one died you just got another one. Many convicts were forced to work for 16 and 20 hours at a stretch at filthy, dark, cold, and wet jobs at coal mines, lumber camps and railroad lines. Overwork and mistreatment killed them by the thousands.

Another common practice in the South was peonage, or indentured servitude, where people were enslaved to work off debts. This practice was common in Mexico and supposed to be illegal in the United States. But in the South it was common for debtors to be forced to sign contracts to provide labor. Even worse, there were cases where law enforcement would round up blacks, claim they owed them money, get a justice of the peace to falsely "legalize" the claim, force them to sign a "contract," and then force them into slavery for money they never owed.

In one famous case in the early 1900s the U.S. government convicted the leader of one of these gangs, John W. Pace, of peonage. On appeal Pace claimed he was innocent because the people he enslaved didn't really owe him money, so he couldn't be guilty of peonage. And since there was no actual law against slavery—Congress didn't think to pass one since it was a Constitutional amendment—Pace's lawyers said he'd done nothing illegal. Teddy Roosevelt later pardoned Pace who went back to using peons.

Now, blacks weren't the only victims of these outrageous crimes, through they were in the vast majority. In 1923 a North Dakotan named Martin Tabert was arrested in Florida for vagrancy by Sheriff J.R. Jones. Jones had a contract with Putnam Lumber: he received $20 (plus expenses) for each prisoner he turned over to the company. Tabert had pleaded guilty to riding a freight train through Tallahassee, and was sentenced to pay $25 or serve three months of hard labor. He didn't have the money and was sent to the prison camp, where they worked him from 4 AM to 6 PM. One Friday Tabert was whipped 100 lashes for failing to keep up with the other prisoners as they marched back and forth to a swamp where they often worked in hip-deep water. He died four days later. Perhaps the worst thing is that Tabert's parents had wired their son some money but, as Sheriff Jones wrote in a letter, "it was sent in his name—I therefore returned it."

This sort of thing happened every day to blacks. But only when convict leasing killed a white man from North Dakota did it draw the attention of the New York Times (the full story is behind a paywall at the Times), and things start to change.

Perhaps the most vile aspect of this whole sorry episode in American history is the corrosive effect convict leasing had on the general impression of blacks. The PBS program points out that before the Civil War blacks were perceived as loyal and hard-working (as they are portrayed in movies about the era). Afterwards, subjected to massive unemployment and false arrest on trumped-up charges, they came to be viewed as lazy and criminal. Which makes me ask: was the pattern of absentee black fathers that society has decried for the past 50 years set in place when young black husbands were abducted off the streets by white sheriffs and sent off to slave labor camps?

There are Americans still alive today who were once enslaved by our justice system. There are Americans still alive today who were systematically prevented by their government from voting and using the same lunch counters, restrooms, buses, classrooms and drinking fountains as the rest of us. And there are Americans still alive today whose fathers and husbands were systematically murdered by their white neighbors while law enforcement participated or stood by and watched. Hell, these lynchings have occurred in my lifetime.

That means there are Americans still alive today who perpetrated those crimes. Can we really say all wrongs have been righted when there are still Americans alive today who feel those crimes were justified?

Barack Obama's Army Of Gun Grabbing Robots

Remember when all those people ran out to buy guns and ammo when President Obama got elected because they were afraid he would take away their guns?

Yeah, that never happened.

But at least the guns and ammo places weren't hurt too much by the recession. I wonder if they will thank the president....

Moreover, my own home state legislature just voted to give the use of deadly force anywhere the thumbs up. This is one of many examples in which the president has largely left the issue of gun rights up to the states. The results of this hands off policy has seen a great loosening of gun laws that honestly haven't been seen in decades. So you think they would be happy, right?

Nope. 

They say that President Obama is a Muslim, but if he isn’t, he’s a secularist who is waging war on religion. On some days he’s a Nazi, but on most others he’s merely a socialist. His especially creative opponents see him as having a “Kenyan anti-colonial worldview,” while the less adventurous say that he’s an elitist who spent too much time in Cambridge, Hyde Park and other excessively academic precincts. 

Yeah...which is it again? I can't keep track.

Whatever our president is, he is never allowed to be a garden-variety American who plays basketball and golf, has a remarkably old-fashioned family life and, in the manner we regularly recommend to our kids, got ahead by getting a good education. 

Isn't he a model that we should point to and say to our kids, "Hey, be like this guy?" After all, he fulfills the checklist of the base in terms of family values and working hard to get himself ahead. In so many ways, he is illustrative of the opportunity that comes with this great country. And yet, they shit all over him.

It’s simply astonishing that a man in his fourth year as our president continues to be the object of the most extraordinary paranoid fantasies. A significant part of his opposition still cannot accept that Obama is a rather moderate politician quite conventional in his tastes and his interests. And now that the economy is improving, short-circuiting easy criticisms, Obama’s adversaries are reheating all the old tropes and cliches and slanders. 

That's my favorite bit of the whole piece. It's so fucking accurate. And so fucking sad. It's likely that the rest of this election year is going to see them descend into deeper and heretofore unfathomable paranoia.

But there is something especially rancid about the never-ending efforts to turn Obama into a stranger, an alien, a Manchurian Candidate with a diabolical hidden agenda. Are we trying to undo all the good it did us with the rest of the world when we elected an African American with a middle name popular among Muslims?

Yes. Yes, they are. Why? Because THEY LOST THE ARGUMENT AND ARE CHILDISH.

It makes me wonder what will happen if the president wins a second term. I honestly wouldn't be surprised they started saying that the president is building an army of killer robots that are going to take away their guns.

Another Energy Milestone

For the first time in more than 60 years, The United States has become a net fuel exporter."It looks like a trend that could stay in place for the rest of the decade," Dave Ernsberger, global director of oil at Platts, told The Wall Street Journal. "The conventional wisdom is that U.S. is this giant black hole sucking in energy from around the world. This changes that dynamic." All of this is happening because of new sources of oil in North Dakota and Texas as well as new opportunities in Canada.

But......anyone notice a drop in gas prices?

Nope.

That's because, as I have stated many times, world demand has been rapidly rising in emerging markets. Brazil used to export fuel to the United States but now they import over 100,000 barrels a day. Singapore has quadrupled its imports from the US.

So, while this is a wonderful opportunity for oil companies, we won't see any difference at the pump, as the Wall Street Journal notes.

But U.S. drivers aren't seeing much benefit in the form of lower prices because refineries on the Gulf Coast are shipping much of their output to places where demand is strong, keeping prices high.

So, we can "drill, baby, drill" all we want but with demand falling off here in the US and rising abroad, it won't matter one bit how much fuel we export.

Suddenly, As If Out of Someone's Ass...

A recent discussion regarding racism prompted me to do a little research on the phenomenon known as denial. I chuckled when I ran across the concept of DARVO which stands for Deny the abuse, then Attack the victim for attempting to make them accountable for their offense, thereby Reversing Victim and Offender.

Yeah, that sounds about right.

Further, psychologist Jennifer Freyd explains. 

The attack will often take the form of focusing on ridiculing the person who attempts to hold the offender accountable. [...] [T]he offender rapidly creates the impression that the abuser is the wronged one, while the victim or concerned observer is the offender. Figure and ground are completely reversed. [...] The offender is on the offense and the person attempting to hold the offender accountable is put on the defense.

Exactly. This is essentially what happens when folks bitch about "playing the race card." Suddenly (as if out of someone's ass), the person who is obviously being racist is now the victim. How ingenuous!

A Serious Commitment

Lost in all the political news over the last few weeks was this announcement.

NRC approves first new nuclear plant in a generation.

It's actually two nuclear reactors that will be located in Georgia. Thomas Fanning, Southern Co.'s chief executive Officer, called the license a "monumental accomplishment" and said the new Vogtle plants would provide cheap, reliable power to Southeast residents for years to come.

The Obama administration has offered Southern and its partners $8.3 billion in federal loan guarantees as an incentive. Fanning said he expects the U.S. Energy Department to finalize the loan in the second quarter of 2012. For those of you keeping track, that's 16 times the amount that was loaned to Solyndra and ultimately lost.

I'd say that represents a more serious commitment to nuclear power and energy overall considering that this plant will be the first since 1979.

The Maltese Candidate

Remember the creepy bad guys in The Da Vinci Code, the ones who flagellated themselves and wore spiked chains called cilice to inflict pain on themselves? Well, those guys aren't some mad conspiratorial raving of Dan Brown—they're a real organization called Opus Dei, which is Latin for the work of god.

In 2002, while a US senator, Rick Santorum went to Rome to celebrate the centenary of Opus Dei's founder, Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer. At the meeting he held an interview with the National Catholic Reporter:

[Santorum] told NCR that a distinction between private religious conviction and public responsibility, enshrined in John Kennedy’s famous speech in 1960 saying he would not take orders from the Catholic church if elected president, has caused “much harm in America.” 

“All of us have heard people say, ‘I privately am against abortion, homosexual marriage, stem cell research, cloning. But who am I to decide that it’s not right for somebody else?’ It sounds good,” Santourm said. “But it is the corruption of freedom of conscience.”

Santorum told NCR that he regards George W. Bush as “the first Catholic president of the United States.”

Brown's fictional depiction of Opus Dei contains exaggerations, according to an ABC story from 2006. But the reality isn't much better:

There have also been claims of excessive control. Tammy DiNicola was a freshman at Boston College when she went on her first Opus Dei retreat. She says what began as as opportunity to deepen her faith quickly accelerated into involvement in an all-controlling group.

"Everything becomes gradually controlled," DiNicola said. "Your mail is read. Your salary's handed over. Your reading matter and your movies, all of this is controlled." 

Opus Dei acknowledges that many members hand over portions of their salaries, but says that there is no truth behind allegations of excessive control and that its only intention is to teach and coach.

It sounds very much like a cult. And the cilice? They're a form of hair shirt, and members of Opus Dei really do wear them, though usually only two hours a day.

According to the NCR article, Santorum isn't a member of Opus Dei, just an admirer of its founder. But Santorum is a member of the Knights of Malta, an organization that goes back to the Crusades.

In 2004 Rick Santorum and his wife Karen were invested in the Knights of Malta as Knight and Dame of Magistral Grace. The full name of the organization is "Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta^SM". At the time Santorum was still a US senator representing Pennsylvania.

The Knights of Malta, or Knights Hospitallers, originally provided medical care for Christian pilgrims in Jerusalem. In the First Crusade they became a full-fledged military order. After they were ejected from the Holy Land, they governed the island of Rhodes as a sovereign state, and then the island of Malta. After Napolean kicked them out, they went to Rome.

The Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM) claims to be a sovereign state in the same way that the Vatican does, though it has no actual land other than its offices:

SMOM has formal diplomatic relations with 104 states and has official relations with another six countries and the European Union. Additionally it has relations with the International Committee of the Red Cross and a number of international organizations, including observer status at the UN and some of the specialized agencies. Its international nature is useful in enabling it to pursue its humanitarian activities without being seen as an operative of any particular nation. Its claimed sovereignty is also expressed in the issuance of passports, licence plates, stamps, and coins.

SMOM issues passports, currency and license plates! It has diplomatic relations with Italy, Spain, all of South America, almost all of Eastern Europe, including Russia, and half of Africa and Central America.

This means that Rick Santorum accepted a title of nobility from a self-proclaimed sovereign state, whose sovereignty is recognized around the world. Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution states:

No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States: and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.

Now, since the United States does not recognize the SMOM's sovereignty claim, so Santorum may not technically be in violation of the Constitution. (And Congress may have consented to it and I simply can't find it on the net.)

But SMOM is a foreign organization that purports to be a sovereign state. And it has the express intent of influencing political outcomes in the United States. If you look at look at the PDF file announcing Santorum's knighthood, you will find it filled with condemnations of gay marriage, dictates over end-of-life care, and overt political statements such as the following:

MAY CATHOLICS VOTE FOR A PRO-ABORTION CANDIDATE? There are several
non-negotiable tenets of the Catholic faith which hold, unequivocally, that these actions,
which involve the destruction of innocent human life, are intrinsically evil and, therefore,
are prohibited:
• abortion at any stage of life
• embryonic stem cell research (from fetal tissue)
• euthanasia/assisted suicide
• human cloning

Curiously absent from this "pro-life" list is any mention of the death penalty, "preventive" war like Iraq, shooting guys who ring your doorbell, and similar acts which the Catholic Church is supposed to oppose. It's fine to vote for politicians who condone killing living, breathing human beings, but blastocysts are sacred! The pro-life proclamations are really just a very narrow agenda to restrict individuals'—and especially women's—health care choices.

A lot of Americans are uneasy about Mitt Romney's Mormon faith. But Santorum's connections to Opus Dei and SMOM put him ever further out on the fringe.

Does Santorum think of himself as a latter-day crusader? Would he literally be taking marching orders from the Sovereign Military Order of Malta in Rome? Would he have an Opus Dei consigliere at his right hand and a papal nuncio on his left? Would he be incapable of separating his fealty to the Catholic Church from his loyalty to the Constitution of the United States of America? Is Rick Santorum a Manchurian Candidate, brainwashed by the Sovereign Military Order of Malta?

Many will complain that asking questions like this about Rick Santorum is a blatant attempt at character assassination and guilt by association. But Perry's now-defunct campaign did the same thing to Romney with his Mormon faith, and Newt Gingrich and the Republicans have been doing this to Obama incessantly for years, trying to link the president to Saul Alinsky (who died when Obama was 10), Jeremiah Wright, and Obama's dead Kenyan father's Muslim roots.

The difference is that Obama has consistently disavowed or disparaged the very ideas that Republicans try to link him to. Obama has time and again shown that he will work out a reasonable compromise to try to accommodate other Americans' views, though his efforts are constantly thrown back in his face by Republicans who feel that eternal political conflict is beneficial to their cause.

Santorum, on the other hand, has parroted the standard Catholic line, and worked tirelessly to force his beliefs on the rest of the country, especially in the area of women's health care.

When John F. Kennedy answered the question about his fealty to Rome and his loyalty to the United States, he answered forcefully and forthrightly: he was an American first. By repudiating Kennedy, Santorum has answered the question equally clearly.

The Church of The Blessed Skeptic

Rick Santorum on climate change

An absolute travesty of scientific research that was motivated by those who, in my opinion, saw this as an opportunity to create a panic and a crisis for government to be able to step in and even more greatly control your life.

Hmph. Sounds exactly like the voices inside my head that post here.

President's Day Calvacade

President's Day Calvacade

President's Day Calvacade

President's Day Calvacade

President's Day Calvacade

Mind-Reading Republicans

After apologizing on CBS' Face the Nation for saying that President Obama had a "phony theology" Rick Santorum said:

This idea that man is here to serve the Earth as opposed to husband its resources and be good stewards of the Earth--I think that is a phony ideal. I don't believe that that's what we're here to do. That man is here to use the resources and use them wisely, to care for the Earth, to be a steward of the Earth. But we're not here to serve the Earth. The Earth is not the objective. Man is the objective. And, I think a lot of radical environmentalists have it upside down.

Yes, Rick, it's phony because you're presenting a phony strawman. President Obama has never said that we're here to serve the Earth like satyrs servicing Mother Gaea.

Does Santorum believe he's reading Obama's mind to learn the president's secret thoughts about man's place in the universe? All Republicans -- Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann and Newt Gingrich -- claim the supernatural ability to channel the president and tell us what his ultimate goal is, be it death panels, reeducation camps and massive gun confiscations. Well, let me get out my crystal ball and see if I can read the president's mind too.

Ommm... Mene, Menu, Tekel u-Pharsin. Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres. Yes, it's becoming clearer now...

President Obama believes that the Earth is the place where we live. He believes we shouldn't foul our own nest. The president wouldn't fill his basement with toxic sludge from a coal-fired power plant, incinerate mounds of trash in his kitchen, store radioactive waste in his refrigerator, run an oil pipeline through his living room, or frack for natural gas in his front yard, poisoning his well water. But the president knows that all of these things have to happen in someone's back yard, and he thinks we should take a conservative approach and exercise discretion and judgment when considering such developments, rather than letting power plant owners and oil companies ram through whatever projects they want for a quick buck regardless of what's good for the long-term health of the country.

In fact, my crystal ball tells me that Obama thinks exactly the same thing that Rick Santorum is saying about being a good steward of the Earth. And it tells me that 99.9% of environmentalists think the same thing.

What Santorum and his ilk completely misunderstand about environmentalists and climate science is that it's not really the Earth that they're concerned about. It's about us and our kids, and the kind of place we'll live in. Heavy metals from leaded gas and coal plant emissions cause brain damage in children and those fetuses that Santorum is hell-bent on protecting. Polluted air causes asthma, emphysema and heart disease. Lakes, rivers and groundwater tainted with toxic chemicals cause cancer and other insidious diseases. Heavy industry produces poisons that sicken and kill people as well as frogs, snail darters and cute baby seals with big eyes.

No matter how much crap we put into the air and water, the Earth will still be here, it will heal itself over the millennia, and some form of life will survive, evolve and eventually thrive again, just as it has after several asteroid strikes and massive volcanic eruptions. But if we screw things up bad enough, our complex technological civilization will collapse.

Climate change will cause severe weather, floods, drought, famine, rising oceans, and mass migrations. Coupled with global pandemics, mutated tropical diseases, fuel shortages, depleted natural resources and ultimately global war, billions of people may die. If the war goes nuclear the planet could be shrouded in a cloud of radioactive dust that ushers in a new ice age.

On the grand scale of things, I don't really care if the last polar bear dies off. I'm more concerned about the welfare of future generations of Americans and their place in a world of ever-declining resources where the population is pushing nine or ten billion people. So does the president and so does Rick Santorum.

There are plenty of real ways for Santorum to disagree with the president. There's no need to invent phony ones.

Yep.

Click on image for larger size.

Well, That Didn't Take Long

We knew it was only a matter of time.

Santorum says Obama agenda not 'based on Bible'

No, that's not a headline from the Onion. It's real, folks!

Obama's agenda is "not about you. It's not about your quality of life. It's not about your jobs. It's about some phony ideal. Some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible. A different theology," Santorum told supporters of the conservative Tea Party movement at a Columbus hotel.

This sounds so familiar....I can't quite place my finger on it...hmm....oh yeah....

10. Invoking the Christian God. This is similar to othering and populism. With morality politics, the idea is to declare yourself and your allies as patriots, Christians and "real Americans" (those are inseparable categories in this line of thinking) and anyone who challenges them as not. Basically, God loves Fox and Republicans and America. And hates taxes and anyone who doesn't love those other three things. Because the speaker has been benedicted by God to speak on behalf of all Americans, any challenge is perceived as immoral. It's a cheap and easy technique used by all totalitarian entities from states to cults.

We're The Ones Who Should Bitch (But We Don't)

A few days back I posted this graphic which ruffled a few feathers. I always chuckle when this happens because the more acute the mouth foaming, the closer I know I am to reality, facts and bursting the bubble that surrounds the conservative utopia that the base has created for itself. The land where Ayn Rand and Jesus are worshiped side by side every night while the Constitution and the Bible are never EVER questioned. And liberals are statist thugs bent on penetrating that bubble-taking away guns, rights, and letting their women use contraception in their never ending pursuit to bankrupt this country with social welfare programs that take the fruit of hard earned worker's labor and give it to black people who use it to get a flat screen TV.

The simple fact is, as I pointed out the other day, the people who bitch about government handouts are usually the ones that benefit from them the most. 

Yet this year, as in each of the past three years, Mr. Gulbranson, 57, is counting on a payment of several thousand dollars from the federal government, a subsidy for working families called the earned-income tax credit. He has signed up his three school-age children to eat free breakfast and lunch at federal expense. And Medicare paid for his mother, 88, to have hip surgery twice.

Oh really? Was this before or after he made his Tea Party T-Shirts? In fact, it was both.

More interesting is this map which shows the areas of the country that take the most money from the federal government. Let's see we have darker red in Mississippi, Alabama, Arizona (really, Jan Brewer?), Florida, Texas, Alaska (hee hee), Kentucky, Tennessee, and Oklahoma-states that always or mostly deep GOP. Scroll over Oklahoma, for example, and see the various counties that are receiving over 30 percent of personal income from programs like food stamps and Medicare.

Dean P. Lacy, a professor of political science at Dartmouth College, has identified a twist on that theme in American politics over the last generation. Support for Republican candidates, who generally promise to cut government spending, has increased since 1980 in states where the federal government spends more than it collects. The greater the dependence, the greater the support for Republican candidates.

Conversely, states that pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits tend to support Democratic candidates. And Professor Lacy found that the pattern could not be explained by demographics or social issues.

As I have suspected, these people are completely full of shit. Bitching about the government is like a hobby for them and, if their little slice was taken away, they'd shit themselves silly. Of course, this is another shining example of the adolescent who bitches about his parents but then comes running to mommy and daddy when he or she gets into trouble.

Lately, the government has been very good, indeed. The county, with federal financing, bought a corner of Mr. Peterson’s farm to build a new interchange for Interstate 35. He used the money to open a gas station at the edge of the farm in 2008 to serve the traffic that rolls off the new ramp. The business is prospering, and he no longer worries that he will need to depend on Social Security.

Yeah, they're "independent" alright.

Given this data, shouldn't Democrats be the ones that bitch considering that OUR taxes are actually paying for several million conservatives on the dole? Nope.

Because we understand what it means to be a grown up.

Yeah...No...Not Really

If I had a buck for every time I heard a conservative whine to me in the last couple of years about how "the president and the Democrats haven't passed a budget in a thousand days," I'd be a millionaire (and I'd still be a Democrat with all my money:)). The problem with this ripe of piece of poo (like most of the other things they say) is that they aren't really telling the whole story and (as usual) are being childishly dishonest.

To begin with, budget resolutions aren't binding. They're simply parameters for the House Appropriations Committee to use when they actually pass their various bills and spend money. Their actions are what ultimately execute the budget and guess what? They've been doing it all along even with all the acrimony that's been taking place since the GOP took back the House.

More importantly, when the Senate passed the Budget Control Act last summer that resolved the debt limit battle, they passed an actual binding bill that set binding appropriations caps for this fiscal year and the next and instituted a mechanism to contain spending on domestic discretionary programs — education, research, community health programs and the like — through the next decade. This would be why Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid won't bring the president's budget to the floor of the Senate: it's redundant.

So, the next time you hear some ass hat foaming at the mouth about how the Democrats haven't passed a budget in a thousand days, point out these two facts to them.

And remind them that the Republicans did the same thing 1998, 2004, and 2006.

Bril!

The Obama campaign has seized upon a brilliant way to address the fictional character created by the right known as Barack X. Check out THE TRUTH TEAM.

This site is divided into three sections. The first is AttackWatch which takes all the comments that reside under the "Managing Fantasies" heading and addresses them head on. For example, the Republican Jewish Committee has made the false claim that the president is cutting funding to Israel. Click here and you will see what is actually happening in reality.

The second section, Keeping GOP Honest, looks at their policy points and breaks them down. For example, Mitt Romney has repeatedly said that he would've let GM and the auto industry to fail. Here is some information that illustrates the folly of that idea.

The third section should be dedicated to our very own last in line. Keeping His Word has a complete list of his accomplishments. Click on any of the six sections and see the benefits of his policies.

All in all, a very smart move considering what we all know is coming: more fictional history of the man named (dum dum DAH) Barack X!

If only John Kerry had been smart enough to do this in 2004 then he wouldn't now still be known as a French war criminal.

A Load of Papal Bull

I heard an interview on the radio today with Michelle Bachmann. During her rant against President Obama's decision on birth control, she characterized the regulation as an attack on religious freedom and democracy. But while pretending to call for religious freedom and democracy, Bachmann is actually giving a foreign dictator the power to control the most intimate part of American life.

The big stink began when American Catholic bishops complained about regulations requiring employers to pay for birth control. Obama relented and said that the insurance companies would pay instead. Why do the bishops oppose contraception? There's a papal bull called Humanae Vitae. It was issued by Pope Paul VI in 1968 and condemns artificial birth control.

In the Catholic Church one man dictates all policy. Tomorrow the pope could issue another bull and say birth control is fine and is necessary because we have fulfilled the commandments of the Bible. We have been so fruitful and so successful at multiplying that there are now seven billion of us. To be good stewards of the earth, he could say, we must prevent overpopulation. He could cite Leviticus and Exodus and justify birth control on the basis of the idea that the fields must be allowed to lie fallow for a time: once we've had two kids, we can use birth control. The bishops would reverse course and accept Obama's regulation the next day, with the proviso that they would only pay for contraception for married couples with children. Yes, this whole argument is that arbitrary and capricious.

It's estimated that between two-thirds and 99% of all American Catholics are using or have used artificial birth control. The majority of Catholics think the pope is wrong, and if they were allowed to vote on this issue the pope would lose. Several of the bishops themselves have disagreed with the pope on this issue in the past, but have been silenced by threats or replaced.


But, you say, the Church isn't a democracy. The people don't get to vote on this. Sorry, that's just not true. The people do get a vote, and they vote with their feet. That's why Moses left Egypt, Christianity separated from Judaism, why there was a Schism between the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches, and why Luther had a Reformation. The ban on birth control is a major reason why more than 20 million Americans are lapsed Catholics. That's enough to qualify them as the second-largest denomination in the United States.

Now, on the merits, the scriptural argument against contraception is tenuous a best, usually justified with the injunction to "be fruitful and multiply" and the case of Onan spilling his seed.


Onan's story is particularly interesting: when his brother died the law required him to give offspring to his childless widow to preserve the family line. Onan had sex with her several times, but since he didn't want her children to become his heirs he practiced coitus interruptus, "spilling his seed on the ground." For this Onan was sentenced to death. The Catholic Church cites this in their arguments against contraception and masturbation. But they completely miss the real point of this story.


The crimes Onan committed were lusting after another man's wife, incest, adultery, rape and breach of contract by failing to provide agreed-to natural insemination services. Onan was supposed to deliver the semen into her womb, but spilled it on the ground instead. This says nothing about birth control within marriage, or masturbation for that matter. 


In fact, the Catholic Church does not forbid all birth control—it encourages the use of "natural family planning," an updated version of the rhythm method. By monitoring a woman's cycle, temperature and cervical mucus you can attain 95-99% effectiveness, which rivals artificial means. Only 75-88% is typical, however, which is about the same effectiveness as the withdrawal method that Onan practiced.


If you limit sexual activity to even more specific times of the cycle you can be virtually guaranteed that pregnancy will not result. What is the difference between spilling seed onto the ground and into a womb that you know has no uterine lining and will not receive an egg for two weeks? Well, one could say, you might still get pregnant by a hitch in the woman's cycle or especially hardy sperm. But the same is true of withdrawal, the pill, condoms, diaphragms, and spermicides. All methods of contraception have non-zero failure rates—even the surgical means of tubal ligation and vasectomy.


If avoiding pregnancy by artificial means is a sin, is not the intent to avoid pregnancy by natural means the same sin? After all, if it's God's will that you become pregnant, condoms can break and pills can fail. And if God is demanding fruitfulness, isn't abstinence in marriage is just as much a violation of His will as contraception?


As the religious right keeps telling us, the institution of marriage is having a tough time. It's particularly galling that a pope who's never known the love of a woman thinks he knows what's best for married folks. Sex binds husbands and wives together. Without it they feel unloved, unfulfilled and alone. Just ask Newt Gingrich.


The three main causes of divorce are money, kids and sex. Since sex the papal way causes kids, and kids cost money, one could argue that it all goes back to sex. Couples with too many kids and not enough money are extremely stressed. Now the pope wants to add even more stress by telling these married couples that they can't have sex?


That's a load of papal bull.

Still A Massive Success

General Motors reported its highest profit in the history of the company. 2011 saw earnings of 7.6 billion dollars.Strong sales in the U.S. and China helped the carmaker turn a profit of $7.6 billion, beating its old record of $6.7 billion in 1997 during the pickup and SUV boom.

I wonder how this will be spun in the land where Barack X is president. Ah, I'll just wait for the comments below and I'll get my answer.

The Turning of the Fatherland

Man oh man, people are pissed about Fox News these days. Perhaps Roger Ailes and Co have discovered how far that bearing wall on the right goes before ratings start to suffer.

Adding insult to injury is the latest poll from FOX News. Check out how the president does against any of the contenders in the Dixie States of Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida. And a 50 percent approval rating?

No wonder two thirds of the base want someone else to jump in the race.

Gay And Retarded

There's not a day that goes by that I don't hear the words "gay" and "retarded" in school. In fact, I myself have said them in the past on several occasions while out at the pub or some other such social occasion.. But something clicked in me many months back and I realized that I just didn't want to say them anymore. If you sit back and think about it, if something is "gay" that means it's stupid. That's connecting stupidity to homosexuality. And if something is "retarded," that's belittling someone who has a disability. So I stopped saying them. Most of my students still do although they know I don't like it. I might throw them a look or make a quick comment which usually elicits a quick apology. They don't really mean much by it and, sadly, it is part of their slang these days.

They may not mean much by it but, people being who they are, will always take things further. What happens at that point? Well, this.  I've had several requests to comment on this story and so here it is.

I'll start off by saying that the Anoka-Hennepin School District from the top down has done an awful job of handling this situation. Rather than focus on handling the bullying side of it and adopting a zero tolerance rule for such behavior (as is the case in both my district and my children's district), they chose to give a forum to people who talk of "radical homosexual agendas." (side question: Just what exactly is the "agenda that homosexual activists are seeking to advance?") This lead to the very justified entrance of GLBT and civil rights groups which, in turn, leads to a situation that is FUBAR. In playing the "Cult of Both Sides" game, they ended up losing.

What the school district should have done was tell the No Homo Promo crowd that, under no circumstances, will they tolerate people being treated poorly for any reason. As Howard Stern so eloquently explains at the end of this post, there should be zero tolerance for these people.

Now, to be fair, the situation isn't exactly as depicted as it was in the Rolling Stone article. We have this recent vote in which the policy was changed. And we have another look at the school district in which we see a different angle to what was originally reported. Some of what the school district officials say in this latter article ring true. The original article is distorted and the side of the story that isn't being told is seen in both of above links.

The fact of the matter is that teachers have far too much on their plate to talk as much about sex as all of the stories seem to illustrate. Other than health classes, there really isn't that much cause to talk about homosexuality and kids don't really bring it up-in a bullying environment or otherwise. There is some of random stuff here and there that goes on in most districts but, for the most part, this sort of thing isn't common. Essentially, the Anoka-Hennepin suicides (along with their recently reversed asinine policy) are an anomaly. Just like GSAs aren't "sex clubs," rampant bigotry leading gay kids to suicide is also an outlier.

There are far too many other mountains to conquer such as making sure students achieve state standards, perform well on the various standardized tests they need to take, and trying to inspire and motivate completely checked out parents to give at least one shit about the lives of their children. Tiptoeing around the issue of homosexuality isn't something that most educators have the time for these days. Hell, some days, the simple act of motivating a student to do a simple assignment on the Constitution is nearly impossible. Some are tired, some are ADHD, some are intervention, some are bored, and far too many simply don't care. Again, this all comes back to the parents of the Michael Jordan Generation expecting "The Help" to nanny their kids.

Still, it's tough not to get angry when you hear people like Barb Anderson, the founder of No Homo Promo, Rick Santorum, or Michele Bachmann, whose district is the home to Anoka-Hennepin schools, talk about homosexuals. They sound like fucking Nazis and I'm being kind in saying that. Part of me really struggles to say that this situation is an outlier and I shouldn't take it as the norm which is more or less the reason why I wrote what I did above...to convince myself. And the times they are indeed a-changin' as most younger people don't give two shits about whether someone is gay or not so I'd do better if I thought about that more often.

But 9 kids are fucking dead and people who think that it was their "gayness" that caused it are very, very dangerous people. Gay people used to be subjected to asylums and electro-shock therapy. As Ayaan Hirsi Ali said, "To be tolerant of intolerance is cowardice." Howard Stern expands on this point in this clip.



It's times like this when I have to have patience and remember that one of my biggest heroes is the non-violent Dr. King.

And that people like Barb Anderson, as history has always shown us, end up in a fucking bunker somewhere.

Well?

Using History to Lie

Usually politicians use statistics to lie, but the current crop of Republicans have turned to history. The other day Rick Santorum said:

When you marginalize faith in America,. when you remove the pillar of God-given rights, then what’s left is the French Revolution. What’s left is a government that will tell you who you are, what you’ll do and when you’ll do it. What’s left in France became the guillotine.

Despite what Santorum might think, the French Revolution had nothing to do with birth control: it was about overthrowing a corrupt and absolutist monarchy that was inseparable from the Catholic Church. Generations of Catholic French kings and Catholic bishops had persecuted and murdered thousands upon thousands of French Protestants. This oppression was one of the key elements that sparked the French Revolution.

President Obama is not starting a revolution here. All the regulation does is tell church-related organizations (not churches themselves, by the way), that they can't force their employees to obey the dictates of a bunch of crotchety old male spinsters who are beholden to a pope that lives in Rome.

The bishops who are whining about the new regulation all live in the lap of luxury and have life-time appointments to jobs that they'll never have to worry about losing. Men who, should they happen to lose those jobs because of a scandal like, say, covering up sexual molestation of children, will be able to toddle off to Rome to live out the rest of their days in sybaritic comfort. They don't have to make a decent living to feed their families. Because they don't have families. Many non-Catholics and tens of millions of American Catholics who do use birth control disagree with them on this impractical dogma against birth control. Kids cost money. If you have more kids, that's less money to spend on the kids you already have. Not everyone can afford (or survive) having 12 kids.

The fact is, hundreds of other denominations disagree with the Catholic Church about birth control and abortion on scriptural grounds. The compromise regulation requires insurance companies to pay for the birth control of employees who work for Catholic-aligned organizations. Not Catholic organizations themselves. Employees have religious freedoms too. My medical care shouldn't be dictated by my employer's beliefs.

On a practical level, the regulation helps people afford medical treatment that will reduce health care costs for all of us by preventing unwanted pregnancies. It will reduce the number of abortions. And reduce the number of single mothers and kids on welfare, and reduce the number of disaffected youth who become criminals because their single moms never wanted them. It's a win-win-win-win solution.

Now, if Santorum wants to talk guillotines, let's talk guillotines.

Just as Newt Gingrich does all the time, Santorum is making a historical reference in order to lie. He can do this because he knows that no one will understand the reference in its full context, or even bother to look it up. Like Gingrich, he makes the reference to pretend he's got the force of history on his side. When exactly the opposite is true.

During the Reformation, the Catholic Church was allied with the monarchy in France and used its power to oppress a competing religion that was making serious inroads into its base -- Protestantism, whose members in the 1980s made the Republican Party what it is today.

One famous example of Catholic abuse of power in France is the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, in 1572, when the Catholic king of France had thousands of Protestant Huguenots assassinated and murdered. The Catholic Church was also the biggest single land owner in the country and taxed people as if the Church were the government, while being itself exempt to taxes. The church was an oppressive employer that denied its subjects basic religious freedoms. Thus, the Catholic Church was no innocent bystander in the French Revolution: its persecutions of Protestants were one of the revolution's root causes.

In the broader context of the Reformation the Catholic Church tortured, beheaded, burned or hanged millions of Protestants throughout Europe. The Catholic Church burned people at the stake for saying that the earth orbited the sun. Sir Thomas More, the English Catholic saint, burned people at the stake for denying that the eucharist was Christ's flesh -- even though anyone with taste buds can tell it's not meat (unless the Pillsbury Dough Boy is the second coming of Christ). To be fair, Protestant rulers did the same thing to Catholics when they gained power: witness English history during the period from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I.

The modern secular nations of Europe -- which Republicans insist we are in dire danger of becoming -- have all outlawed the death penalty: their "marginalization" of religion has eliminated the guillotine. Most of the countries where the death penalty is still practiced -- the United States, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Indonesia, China, Viet Nam, North Korea -- are dominated by absolutist conservative religions or doctrinaire ideologies.


Just to be clear, I'm not just picking on Catholicism. Other religions have murdered millions of people as well, and so did Hitler and Stalin and Pol Pot. And, just to be clear, it's not the Catholic faith itself that demanded this murder and mayhem: it was the political hierarchy and moneyed interests who claimed its authority to enrich and empower themselves. Those who demand total obedience to an absolutist interpretation of a faith or ideology to strengthen their grip on temporal power are the ones who ultimately resort to murder to impose their will on others.

The president is doing exactly the opposite. He's saying, "People should be free to use birth control if they want and their employers shouldn't be able to stop them. And, by the way, I'm not gonna make the employers pay for it if they really don't want to."

President Obama is advocating religious freedom for all. The Catholic Church is interested only in promulgating its version of the faith, and denying certain freedoms to others.

Maps Are Always Helpful

Nope, no racism here, none whatsoever, please move along..

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