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January 31, 2007

ACLU Loses One, Wins One

A federal judge has struck another blow against Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist gay-hating church, ruling that the "God Hates Fags" activists cannot shout out their beliefs at the funeral services for our fallen soldiers. The group had taken to protesting at these services, claiming the soldiers' deaths were God's retribution on the U.S. for tolerating homosexuals. The Court in essence ruled that one person's rights under the First Amendment can't be allowed to negate another's right to the "free exercise of religion." Because the homophobes had plenty of other times and places in which they could express their views and the state's law barring protesters from military funerals did not reference the content of the speech to be regulated, the Court ruled the state can rightfully deny Phelps's followers (and everyone else) the right to protest at soldiers' funerals. I believe the Court made the right choice here, even though the ACLU sided with Phelps.

Courts have ruled similarly in the past in cases where the recipient of the speech was unable to escape or avoid the speech (a captive audience), such as when protesters gathered on a sidewalk in front of someone's home, directly outside abortion clinics, in or near a courthouse, in or near a polling place, or on public transportation vehicles.

The US Supreme Court has interpreted the First Amendment to mean that speech may be lawfully regulated as to time, place and manner, but that regulation must be content-neutral, narrowly tailored to address a provable significant governmental interest, and may go no further than necessary to achieve that interest. Additionally, the government must opt for the least speech-intrusive means possible to achieve that interest and leave open ample alternative means for the speaker to effectively speak.

The Westboro Baptist Church case is a very different one than the the other anti-gay free speech case the ACLU was involved in and won this week. It the second case, the ACLU defended a Christian protester carrying a sign in front of Wal-Mart that read, "Christians: Wal-Mart Supports Gay Lifestyles and Marriage. Don't Shop There." The protester was ordered by a police officer to stop until he had obtained a permit. The permit application languished for weeks and the mayor failed to approve it, so the man sued. The Court determined that his right to free speech was infringed.

The key difference between these two cases is that in the first, the speakers' message interfered with the First Amendment rights of others, while in the second, no one's First Amendment rights were harmed in any way by the protester's expression of his opinion.

Judicial Watch, which successfully challenged the ACLU in the Westboro Baptist Church case, is, of course, trumpeting its defeat of the ACLU, but has remained mum in the second case. To tout it would not help their current message that the ACLU is a radical group that has no sense of decency. And it would certainly not help them prove that the ACLU is anti-Christian.

Posted by Becky at 02:12 PM |

January 30, 2007

SDA Opinion Piece Faces an Ugly Truth

Here's an awesome article written by some folks from the religion of my childhood – Seventh-Day Adventists – about how the mixture of politics and religion is betraying the Christian message. For all of you who have been interested in our frequent discussions about the issues of theocracy, right-wing Christian Republicans, and what is true Christianity, this article is one you don't want to miss. It is good news indeed to see this matter frankly addressed in a Christian publication. I hope their readers hear the message.

Posted by Becky at 01:53 PM |

Environment All Over the News

Four environmental stories caught my eye today. In the first one, we have just learned that – surprise – the Bush Administration has been lying to us about global warming. According to the scientists whose papers have been relied upon by the government, the Administration has been subjecting them to political pressure to downplay the threat of global warming. Two-fifths of the 279 climate scientists surveyed (who work for NASA, the EPA, and departments of Agriculture, Energy, Commerce, Defense, and the Interior), said their scientific papers had been edited in a way that changed their meaning. Almost half of these scientists said they were told to eliminate phrases like "global warming" or "climate change" from their reports.

The second story is an update on the complaint filed with the USDA by the Cornucopia Institute two months ago that Wal-Mart was using the placement of "organic" signs in its produce section to mislead people into believing foods were organic when they were not. Guess what. Wal-Mart hasn't stopped its mis-labeling, and its buddies at the USDA have done nothing about it. The Cornucopia Institute is asking consumers to boycott Wal-Mart. If you're not into boycotts, perhaps just don't buy your produce there – after all, it isn't really organic.

The third story really frightens me. It would seem that we are 2-5 years away from being able to synthesize any virus. In other words, very soon we will be able to create designer self-replicating viruses that never existed before. And within 5-10 years we can expect that this technology might either fall into the wrong hands or even be used by our own country to create horrible bioweapons that could threaten the entire planet. The ETC Group has released a new report that is free to download from theirwebsite called "Extreme Genetic Engineering: An Introduction to Synthetic Biology."

Finally, if you want to do your part to stop global warming, becoming a vegan will help even more than buying a Prius. The UN is reporting that livestock production creates more greenhouse gases than automobiles. Every calorie of meat you eat uses ten calories of fossil fuels to produce it. Even if going vegan is over the top for you, simply reducing the amount of meat you eat will make a tremendous difference. To give you some idea of what we're up against, the 10 billion land animals slaughtered for food every year in the U.S. produce 5 million tons of manure every day. So stop the bullshit and eat a vegetable - it's good for you and for the planet!

Posted by Becky at 01:41 PM |

January 29, 2007

Walker Not Walking the Christian Line

Knowing that the man who heads up FreedomWorks, Russ Walker, is a devout Christian, I am certain his testimony in opposition to the Healthy Kids Plan on Friday must have been misunderstood. Walker says he opposes the plan to use cigarette taxes to pay for children's health insurance because he doesn't think it's fair to target people who smoke cigarettes and leave other unhealthy activities alone. It sounds to me as if he is advocating for sin taxes on all unhealthy activities to pay for children's health insurance. What a wonderful idea! We'll have plenty of money for the effort that way!

What's that you say? That's not what he meant?

Yep, the fact is that Walker, in a wonderful example of Christian principles in action, is heading up a group that has been secretly taking vast amounts of money from Phillip Morris, and as a result he is compelled to make a priority of what is good for Big Tobacco over what is good for Oregon's children. Maybe he misunderstood Jesus's admonishment to "suffer the little children…" and thought it meant "let the little children suffer."

Posted by Becky at 03:30 PM |

Hartmann Interview Does Libertarians a Disservice

I heard about the latest escalation in the infighting in the Libertarian Party of Oregon this morning on Thom Hartmann's show in an interview he had with Wes Wagner, who has filed a lawsuit over what he feels are illegal and unethical goings-on in the party's state committee. Hartmann didn't seem to know anything about the history of the Libertarian Party of Oregon or the players involved and did not even seem know what sort of meaningful questions to ask Wagner. It almost seemed to me that he was uncharacteristically taken in by Wagner. The complaints may or may not have merit, but I am troubled over the lack of appreciation that both Hartmann and Wagner displayed for what Richard Burke's Mainstream Liberty Caucus has done for the Libertarian Party – progress that could never have been achieved through politeness and open arms to those who wanted to keep the status quo (think about the hardball politics that go on between the Democrats and the Republicans in the State Legislature, and how the process is used to keep power in the hands of the majority and you can understand what has occurred within the Libertarian Party).

Back in 1998, at a gubernatorial debate that included Bill Sizemore and John Kitzhaber, I heard Richard Burke, the Libertarian candidate, speak for the first time. I had never previously been exposed to the Libertarian philosophy, and was fascinated to hear what seemed to me at the time to be real common sense, offered in an engaging and intelligent manner. I felt then that Richard Burke had real political talent and I wanted to learn more about the party. Eventually, Richard convinced me to switch my party affiliation from Republican to Libertarian. I then became involved, albeit rather casually, in his Mainstream Liberty Caucus and efforts to take control of the Libertarian Party of Oregon in order to move it forward. Eventually, I realized the Libertarian philosophy was not a good fit for me, and I have not been involved in the party for about four years now. But that does not dim my respect for the dedication of many of the activists involved in the party. They are often underestimated by the general public, who still often view Libertarians as being a bunch of pot-smoking anti-establishment types.

It has been Richard Burke's burning desire to change that misperception and to make Libertarians relevant in the public debate. My recruitment by Richard Burke was part of a greater effort in which he and several other very bright individuals were engaged to try to bring some credibility and forward motion to the Libertarian Party. Because of this effort, Libertarians were represented in statewide elections in recent years by such quality candidates as Mitch Shults and Tom Cox, both of whom would probably have been in the midst of outstanding political careers by now had they been willing to compromise their political views by joining one of the major parties instead of devoting themselves to the advancement of the Libertarian philosophy. In fact, Shults, while running for State Treasurer, actually won the endorsement of The Statesman Journal - a very proud moment for the Mainstream Liberty Caucus (MLC).

Under Richard's leadership and the prominence of the MLC, the Libertarian Party has undeniably influenced Oregon elections – by throwing its weight one way or the other, or threatening to do so, it has been able to advance its limited government agenda. In other words, it has become meaningful, as opposed to the pre-Burke days when the party was too often disorganized or ineffective so that it was simply laughed off or ignored by most people.

The MLC, at the time I was involved, was a group of very dedicated individuals who, under the leadership of Richard Burke, used the process and some very clever maneuvering to take over the party and turn it around. Old school Libertarians, who it seemed to me viewed the party as more of a club of ideologues than an agent for real change in the real world, were taken by surprise and quickly became very resentful. I was uncomfortable about some of the tactics we used and voted against some of the agenda items of the MLC because I'm actually uncomfortable with confrontation and overly-concerned with fairness, but I never believed legal lines had been crossed. Of course, Burke was not opposed to pushing right up to the line. Nothing is wrong with that.

Richard soon became the paid Executive Director for the party in Oregon. Two of his closest allies, Adam and Chris Mayer, eventually became Chair and Treasurer of the party. Adam and Chris both supported Richard faithfully. Chris, a very loyal and sincere person who worked for a short time as my secretary at Oregon Taxpayers United, was unflinching and enthusiastic in her devotion to the cause. All three were determined to take the Libertarian Party to the next level – making it a party that actually mattered and was credible. For some time, that seemed to be occurring.

I have lost touch with the party in recent years and from an outsider's point of view it seems to me the party has nearly dropped off the face of the earth. Perhaps it never gained the credibility I thought it had when I was involved, I don't know. But certainly the current lawsuit and squabbling within the party will not help its image unless Burke and the MLC are able to use the lawsuit to frame their efforts for the public. Unfortunately, the Mayers have resigned, for reasons I do not know, meaning their ability to continue to advance the vision that Burke has symbolized is significantly diminished. At the same time, Wagner has been granted a golden interview opportunity with a nationally-known radio celebrity who apparently did not do his homework.

Wes Wagner is complaining that the party's state committee has no principles and is unlawfully manipulating the process to retain power. He claims bylaws were ignored to preserve the existing power structure and claims Richard Burke and Chris Mayer have manipulated campaign finance reports to cover up Richard's improper personal use of the party's debit card. Wagner has plainly stated that he does not care if his lawsuit destroys the party. A former Secretary for the Party, Jerry DeFoe, recently posted an open letter to the party's members defending himself against Wagner's "unjust and wrongful dirty tricks and character assassination tactics." He says when Wagner convinced Libertarian hero Tonie Nathan to join his effort, it was the last straw (Tonie Nathan was the first woman to ever receive an electoral vote during her run for Vice President of the United States in 1972).

This is a stain I surely intend to clean. Now I am standing up. I will defend my reputation and honor by marching on a road of bones and squashing these evil demons like puny warm grapes. I am wound up and I’m not going to slow down. I am one who has been first drawn upon so I have the responsibility to myself to press my rights by defending these principles of reputation and honor that mean much more than mere words to me.

As you can see, passions in the party run deep, and you can't piss off a life-long Libertarian activist and former member of the Army like DeFoe, for whom freedom, loyalty and country are everything, and expect not to face consequences (incidentally, DeFoe was the only candidate for Congress in the 5th District in 2004 to take a public stand against the Iraq War). Both sides in the struggle for control of the Libertarian party are passionate about how best to advance their beliefs. Hence, the ten-year effort by Richard Burke to mainstream the party, despite the opposition by some of the more traditional members, was destined for a major explosion at some point.

Thom Hartmann would do well to read DeFoe's treatise and see what level of dedication is involved in this debate, rather than readily accepting the word of one individual who is willing to see the party destroyed to get what he wants – and who, as it turns out, seems to be quite two-faced in the process, not to mention unwilling to gracefully accept defeat.

Wes Wagner and the “Oregon Libertarians for Reform” have not utilized proper, prudent procedural use of the LPO State Committee, the Judicial Committee, Conventions, Bylaws, etc.. Wes Wagner and “Oregon Libertarians for Reform” have chosen not to utilize LPO procedures or anything near due process such as making productive motions, building coalitions, organizing members and obtaining the votes necessary to shape the change they desire. Instead they choose to make a “dirty politics” video for general public consumption, send out press releases meant to damage individuals via various media outlets. They frivolously overload LPO Officers, Staff and Judicial Committee members. They issue numerous edicts and statements meant to induce fear concerning issues with what they want the membership to perceive as having grave ramifications for the LPO to further their own agenda. And anyone who disputes them on their use of methods must side with their enemies. Remind you of McCarthyism?

One of the more interesting portions of DeFoe's post has to do with the supposed pending "criminal investigation" of Richard Burke that Wagner has emphasized at every turn:

How has “it become known that the executive director is under criminal investigation is by the Secretary of State” as Wes Wagner’s petition states? This is a bald faced lie. I surely do not know of any criminal investigation underway. Can Wes Wagner tell us what he knows so that we too can know too? I'm feeling left out of the loop on this one. I've questioned numerous people in Salem but can't find anyone that seems to have any clue. These are some pretty serious allegations Wes Wagner is perpetuating and I will try to get to the bottom of it down here.

What I have been able to derive and if I understand correctly, is any time that a complaint is filed it is sealed for obvious reasons and the Secretary of State has a responsibility to investigate all complaints. What this means is that if someone were to file a criminal complaint against you, you too would be under criminal investigation as well one would suppose.

After reading DeFoe's post, I admire him. He actually does not support the positions of Richard Burke's Mainstream Liberty Caucus. But he is outraged by the refusal of dissenters to use the process to make legitimate change. I am outraged that such efforts would rise to the level that people like the Mayers felt they had to resign their positions in the Party. And I am, again, very disappointed that Thom Hartmann did not dig deeper into this story before putting Wes Wagner on the air this morning. No matter what you think of the Libertarian Party and its views, the devoted activists who work within the party deserve more respect than that.

That said, I am troubled by some of what Wagner reports. If events did, indeed, transpire as he says, then perhaps the individuals involved should be investigated – perhaps they went a little further than right up to the line, though I personally doubt it. Wagner's group, Oregon Libertarians for Reform, offers links to several documents, including a recall letter for Adam Mayer. It lays out several incidents in which proper procedure may not have been followed by Adam Mayer. A second recall letter lays out complaints against Richard Burke. Having been involved in many political disputes, both within the traditional political realm and within the corporate political realm, I know that even seemingly good people will lie, exaggerate, and hide the truth. But generally, the duly elected power structure of the organization dealt with the incidents as they saw fit and their decisions were not to Wagner's liking.

If he does not like the decisions that have been made by the individuals his own party has elected to represent it, he and his allies should take DeFoe's advice and use the legitimate process to form a coalition and attempt to retake control of the party, as the MLC did several years ago under the leadership of Richard Burke. They should not undo the heroic efforts of thousands of dedicated people by trashing the party in public. Such behavior is shameful.

Posted by Becky at 01:06 PM |

January 28, 2007

Tourism the Jesus way

Not being a Christian perhaps my lack of understanding when it comes to these tourist destinations is simply born of ignorance.

After all, what vacationer doesn't long to experience the threats of burning in Hell at the Cross Garden or sink a hole in one at Golgotha Biblical Mini Golf while a staid figure of The Christ watches lovingly over the cup?

And nothing says fun like watching costumed Romans whip the crap out of Christ while munching down a foot long hot dog and a scoop of delicious Edy's ice cream.

Posted by Carla at 04:24 PM |

January 27, 2007

When racism isn't exactly racism

I've long maintained that at least some of what gets popularly labeled as racism in America is actually classism revolving more around issues of relative economic wealth than issues of ancestory. Ironically, much of the supposed anti-classism rhetoric coming from the ideological right is itself inherently classist prejudice. But that's another issue entirely.

A new study by Joni Hersch, a law and economics professor at Vanderbilt University, appears to show a skin tone prejudice in America which isn't racist.

Joni Hersch... looked at a government survey of 2,084 legal immigrants to the United States from around the world and found that those with the lightest skin earned an average of 8 percent to 15 percent more than similar immigrants with much darker skin.

"On average, being one shade lighter has about the same effect as having an additional year of education," Hersch said.

The study also found that taller immigrants earn more than shorter ones, with an extra inch of height associated with a 1 percent increase in income.

Still seems like racism, huh? That's what I was thinking too. But read on...

Hersch took into consideration other factors that could affect wages, such as English-language proficiency, education, occupation, race or country of origin, and found that skin tone still seemed to make a difference in earnings.

That means that if two similar immigrants from Bangladesh, for example, came to the United States at the same time, with the same occupation and ability to speak English, the lighter-skinned immigrant would make more money on average.

"I thought that once we controlled for race and nationality, I expected the difference to go away, but even with people from the same country, the same race — skin color really matters," she said, "and height."

Although many cultures show a bias toward lighter skin, Hersch said her analysis shows that the skin-color advantage was not due to preferential treatment for light-skinned people in their country of origin. The bias, she said, occurs in the U.S.

I wonder if this bias plays into our attitudes towards Europeans too? How often have we seen the socialistic tendencies of France, Italy and even Spain highlighted by conservatives while other arguably equally socialistic nations which just happen to be dominated by lighter skinned citizenry are virtually ignored? By any measurement I would think that Sweden is every bit as socialistic as France is, yet conservatives never cite Sweden when they want to demonize socialists. They usually pick on France with Italy and Spain appearing to be close seconds.

Is it just coincidence that the French, Italians and Spanish have darker skin tones then the Swedish?

Just to add a possible twist... When was the last time you saw a Swedish restaurant? An Italian or French restaurant? Admittedly there don't seem to be many Spanish restaurants. But I wonder if that can be at least partially attributed to the popularity of hispanic restaurants. To take the cuisine of another very light skinned people, Germans; we do see German restaurants. But they are vastly outnumbered by Italian and Mexican restaurants.

Hypothesis: At some level we tend to equate darker skin with being both "different" (along with whatever prejudices are involved with that) and also somewhat exotic, and thus desirable.

Of course one would think that if it were just skin tone then we should be awash in African restaurants. We aren't, although I suspect that Soul Food restaurants are more popular in other parts of the country. But look at the popularity of Asian restaurants, hispanic restaurants, Southern European cuisines and even Middle Eastern restaurants.

There is something there. Not sure exactly what or that all of these issues are necessarily related. But it seems clear to me that, with the possible exception of Africans and Native Americans, we white Americans seem to have a clear love/hate relationship with darker skinned people. For all that we seem to view ourselves as superior to them, we also find them fascinatingly exotic and spend lots of time, energy and money attempting to vicariously experience this exoticness via cuisine at the very least.

Further hypothesis: If the preceeding makes sense then I wonder if Africans and Native Americans are gastronomically treated differently then other darker skinned people because we view them as indigenous and thus somehow less exotic?

Your thoughs?

Posted by Kevin at 01:43 PM |

January 26, 2007

Washington State grapples with banning paying by the signature for initiatives

On the other side of the Columbia River, Washingtonians are beginning to tackle something we Oregonians dealt with a number of years ago: banning the practice of paying initiative signature gathers by the signature.

In November of 2002, Oregonians passed Measure 26, a constitutional amendment banning the "pay by signature" initiative process.

The bill in Washington had a committee hearing today in which testimony was taken from a raft of folks who are in no mood to have their gravy train of pay by signature halted:

Word is that the hearing room is packed with opponents of the bill, a crowd organized by Tim Eyman and his signature gathering contractors at Citzens Solutions. Of course they’re crowding the hearing room. This isn’t democracy or free speech that’s at stake for them, it’s their livelihood.

And apparently their arguments on the topic are as shallow as their motives for appearing:

There are really only two arguments against HB 1087. 1.) There is no evidence of signature fraud in WA state, and thus this bill is an unconstitutional restriction on free speech; and 2.) this bill is intended to destroy the initiative process.

The "no evidence of fraud" argument has also been buffetted by Oregon's own initiative scammer Bill Sizemore:

Before Measure 26, when initiative sponsors were allowed to pay circulators by the signature, Oregon had a small problem with petition signature forgeries. During a typical election cycle, two or three forgers would be caught; the other 99 percent of petition circulators played by the rules. Professional circulators knew that they would be blackballed if they were caught forging signatures -- their careers would be over.

Measure 26, on the other hand, has attracted a whole new breed of petition circulators. During this election cycle, nearly 20 signature forgers have been caught and turned in. That's approximately 10 times more forgers than when petition sponsors were allowed to hire professionals who were paid by the signature and had reputations to maintain.

The problem Sizemore (and Eyman in Washington) have is the phrase "were caught". Prior to Measure 26, it was the campaigns who were scrutinizing their signatures. Once people were caught from outside the campaigns forging the signatures, then it became obvious that the "pay by signature" was simply feeding that beast. Oregon's Attorney General has said as much. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals happens to agree.

Its laughable for Sizemore to make the argument that pay by the hour is bringing in more forgers. The reason more people are caught is because of the scrutiny that M26 has brought to the process. Grassroots organizations are paying much closer attention.

Posted by Carla at 03:35 PM |

We Know it's a Lie, But ...

Here's a big surprise for you: Sean Hannity of Fox News is going to feature the deleted portions of "The Path to 9/11," a made-for-TV docudrama that aired a few months ago, on his show "Hannity's America." I guess he has his own country, so he can do whatever he wants. Never mind that the deleted scenes were pulled specifically because they were inaccurate; they help deflect blame for 9/11 from President Bush and place it all back on President Clinton. And never mind that former national security advisor Sandy Berger said the unedited film "flagrantly misrepresents my personal actions," and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said it was "false and defamatory." Fox News and Sean Hannity know the material is dishonest, but they want their loyal right-wing viewers to see it anyway. The propaganda must go on.

Posted by Becky at 01:08 PM |

A Call for Intellectual Honesty

If the tax-activist, limited-government right-wingers were being intellectually honest, they'd be raising holy heck about this. But seeing as how it's one of their own doing it, they will no doubt find some way to justify taxpayers funding a biased political blog.

Posted by Becky at 12:41 PM |

Bush's Grammar Improves

President Bush, who a while back used a made up word to describe himself ("I'm the Decider"), has apparently been the recipient of a much-needed grammatical lesson because now he is calling himself "the Decision-Maker." Whew, that's a relief. Now if we can just get him to stop saying "nukular."

Posted by Becky at 09:03 AM |

Coddling of Parents' Beliefs Goes Too Far

The reaction of some parents in Washington state to the announcement that their children would be shown Al Gore's film, "An Inconvenient Truth," in school brings up a fascinating question: at what point does society have a responsibility to insert itself into the parent-child relationship?

One parent, a Christian named Frosty Hardison, protested loudly when he heard his daughter would be shown the film at school. "Liberal left is all over Hollywood," he said. In an email to the school board, he wrote, "No you will not teach or show that propagandist Al Gore video to my child, blaming our nation -- the greatest nation ever to exist on this planet -- for global warming." Forget science; he says he believes that global warming is "one of the signs" of the impending Second Coming of Jesus. I know many good people who hold that view. Are they right to protest the teaching of science in their children's school?

No question, the film is controversial. But why is it controversial? Two reasons, neither of which is fully understood by most Republicans: first, it is associated with that flaming liberal Clintonista, Algore, an association that carries an entire package of prejudices along with it; and second, a whole lot of corporate polluters have managed to find unscrupulous "scientists" to write "scientific" papers arguing against the theory that man's activities have resulted in rapid climate change and that the situation is urgent. Your average Republican, like most people, doesn't realize that real science is peer-reviewed and published in reputable scientific journals. If a person claiming to be a scientist says that global warming isn't occurring, or that what we are experiencing today is a purely cyclical, natural phenomenon, most Republicans will accept it as truth it because that's what Republicans are supposed to believe, and to think otherwise is to be a traitor to all that is good in America.

The interesting question here, really, is whether it is appropriate, when the future of the planet is at stake, for schools to continue to coddle right-wing parents who rely so heavily on faith or biased partisan views that they will flatly deny sound science and refuse to allow their children, whose responsibility it will be to deal with the problem, to be exposed to the information that will help them deal with it. You could ask similar questions in the debates over homosexuality and discrimination, birth control education and abstinence education, and evolution and intelligent design.

Here's my opinion. The school system has no business interfering with what a parent teaches a child about these controversial issues until high school. But at that point, parents need to recognize that their children are about to enter the real world where they will be exposed to all sorts of ideas. If they have not by that time taught their children how to think critically and argue convincingly for the positions they hold dear, if they have not developed the sort of relationship with their child that would result in their child discussing controversial issues with them at home and asking them questions about what they are being taught in school, then too bad. That simply indicates that the parents gave up their parental responsibilities long ago. If they want to shelter their children from reality into their teen years, parochial schooling or home schooling are available. But in the public school system, it is appropriate to teach kids what peer-reviewed, reputable scientific research has to say about these controversial issues. Too much is at stake to allow another generation to grow up ignorant of the facts.

Posted by Becky at 08:11 AM |

January 25, 2007

Say what?

Saturday is Holocaust Memorial Day in Britain and elsewhere around the world. Not surprisingly some enterprizing pollsters decided to survey British opinions and knowledge of the Holocaust.

Forty-one percent of Britons believe that an event like the Holocaust could happen in the country today, given the depth of intolerance and prejudice, according to a new survey.

Furthermore, 36 percent thought that most people would do nothing about it if it did happen, in a poll released ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day on Saturday.

The YouGov poll of 2,400 Britons found that 50 percent did not know that as well as Jews, homosexuals, disabled people and the Roma community were also targeted by Nazi Germany.

A further 79 percent were unaware that black people were persecuted and killed under the Nazi regime in Germany, which ruled from 1933 to 1945.

The "alarming" results beg the question "have we really learnt anything from the genocides of our recent past?", said Stephen Smith, the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust chairman.

Indeed! Didn't somebody once say something along the lines of, those who do not learn from history are bound to repeat it?

I wonder how American views and knowledge of the Holocaust stack up compared to the British?

Posted by Kevin at 02:46 PM |

Of Honor Killings and TheoConservative notions

For a long time now I've found it both perplexing and amusing that president Bush has so often touted "liberal democracy" as a value to be striven towards around the world while he and his political base remain steadfastly dedicated to a brand of TheoConservatism which has more in common with those pesky "islamofacists" than with anything resembling a liberal value.

A disturbing news report this morning got me to thinking about this issue once again. A father in Jordan shot to death his 17 year old daughter whom he suspected had been engaging in premarital sex. This despite the fact that doctors had examined her the week prior and vouched for her virginity. An autopsy on the dead girl confirmed that she in fact had never had sex.

Now I know that the popular conception in America, particularly among conservatives, is that this kind of honor killing is an Islamic issue and just one more evidence of the uncivility of Muslims. But in fact not only is it "the antithesis of Islamic morality", but it's far from limited to just Islamic cultures.

In several of the overwhelmingly Christian nations in Latin America one can find similar honor killings. Mexico in particular has a culture which places a very high value upon family honor in the context of women and sexuality. And even where there are laws against such gender-based violence the courts are often reluctant to do anything to enforce those laws.

In Brazil up until 1991 killing one's wife for any reason or for no reason at all was legally considered "noncriminal." In just one year nearly 800 Brazilian men killed their wives. In Columbia, until 1980, a husband could legally kill his wife for adultry without any legal onus to prove her guilt. Legislative decisions allowing a partial or complete "honor" defense could be found in most Latin American countries as recently as 2002 and perhaps still can be today.

Even here in the United States it was perfectly legal for most of our history to mistreat wives and daughters, from severe beatings all the way up to murder. Again, for any reason or for no reason at all. He was the husband/father and that was all the right that his Christian neighbors considered necessary.

Mind you, those are the good ol' days which a multitude of American TheoConservative groups swear that we as a nation must get back to for "moral" reasons.

The irony here of course is that moving away from such archaic views on women in America was an act of liberal democracy.

If allowed free reign to impliment their TheoConservative ideas, how long do you suppose it'd be before it was once again legal to abuse and murder wives and daughters in America?

Posted by Kevin at 02:45 PM |

Obama Takes on Fox News

Barack Obama has come out swinging against Fox News's repeated assertions that he is a closet Muslim. Though CNN has already debunked the false rumors about his childhood education in a Muslim madrassa, Fox News has continued with their attack. Finally, Obama's staff today issued a memo calling the statements "malicious, irresponsible charges" that "are precisely the kind of politics the American people have grown tired of, and that Senator Obama is trying to change by focusing on bringing people together to solve our common problems."

Insight Magazine, which is owned by the Moonie Times, published an article last week erroneously claiming Obama had spent "at least four years" studying in a madrassa that espoused Wahhabism. Despite any sources for such assertions, Fox News picked up the story and ran with it, never even attempting to verify it independently. So much for "fair and balanced."

From Obama's press release:

To be clear, Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian who attends the United Church of Christ in Chicago. Furthermore, the Indonesian school Obama attended in Jakarta is a public school that is not and never has been a Madrassa.

The article offers some great new links that help debunk the Fox News take.

So why is Fox News so focused on smearing Barack Obama? Obviously, it is because Republicans view a Hillary Clinton candidacy as their best hope for winning the White House in 2008. They are completely focused on ensuring Hillary Clinton is hated and, at the same time, nominated as the Democratic candidate because they know nobody can rile up the right and get them motivated to work for their candidate like Hillary. Honestly, why else would Rupert Murdoch be helping her?

Obama has begun to peel off financial support from Clinton, and though he hasn't yet managed to top Clinton in the polls, at least not according to TIME, he has a real shot at taking her out if he plays the game correctly.

[T]he survey found that Senator Clinton would beat him for the Democratic nomination by a margin of 40% to 21%. Senator John Edwards is a distant third with 11%. Obama clearly suffers a disadvantage in profile among likely voters, with only 51% indicating that they knew enough about him to form an opinion, compared with 94% saying the same of Hillary Clinton. In Obama's favor, however, is his far lower negative ratings. While 58% of voters familiar with Hillary Clinton have a positive view of her, 41% give her negative marks, for a net favorability score of +17. By contrast, Obama's net favorability score is +47. …

Clinton's popularity within her party does not translate as easily across party lines as Obama's does. Only 58% of the total sample of respondents had a very or somewhat favorable impression of her, compared with 82% for Giuliani (including 7 out of 10 Democratic voters), and 70% each for Obama and McCain — both of whom showed strongly among independents.

Note that this poll was conducted before a clear debunking of the madrassa story had occurred (and, of course, it has yet to occur on Fox News).

Posted by Becky at 01:23 PM |

The Vanguard Takes on MoveOn

A new conservative effort to take back Congress in 2008 is quietly underway in the form of a website called The Vanguard, which is intended to be the Republican's counter to MoveOn.org. Like MoveOn, The Vanguard was started by Silicon Valley talent and money. The site is headed up by Rod Martin who, by all accounts, is a charismatic rising star on the right. He is joined by an impressive Board that includes Grover Norquist, Marvin Olasky, and Jack Wheeler, among others. And just this week, he has been joined by Jerome Corsi, the man who wrote "Unfit for Command," the book that unraveled John Kerry's presidential campaign. Corsi will be focusing his efforts on bringing down Hillary Clinton.

Martin is a true insider on the right. He is a member of the Board of Governors of the Council for National Policy – a group that was founded by Tim LaHaye (author of the Left Behind books) and was called the "club of the most powerful" by the New York Times. Martin also, thanks to the personal recommendation from James Dobson, is a member of the Arlington Group, which coordinates the most senior leaders of the Christian Right. So it is no surprise that Norquist's desire to keep Christians in the Republican fold is shared by Martin. This morning, the sparse offerings featured on the front page of the website include an article advocating for Congress to "uphold the partial birth abortion ban" and an advertisement for the book "Help! Mom! The 9th Circuit Nabbed the Nativity." Yes, the phony War on Christmas continues to work its organizational wonders.

Martin offers an interesting quote: “The left has always been better at coalition building.” I've heard Democrats say the same thing about Republicans. If you want to know a little secret, the right isn't any more organized than the left. They just know how to use multiple entities, their noise machine, and a blustering air of confidence to make it look like they have their act together. But the grassroots are simply not there. The one exception is the Christian right. They are activated at the grassroots level. That is very likely a big part of why they matter so much to people like Norquist.

It doesn't take long to see that The Vanguard is offering the same core rallying messages as all the other leading right-wing Republican efforts – support the President's "war on terror," protect gun rights from the rabid liberals who want to take them away, stop killing pre-born babies, and return our culture to one based on Christian values as overtly expressed by government. What fascinates me is that these people actually believe that simply working harder and smarter at conveying the same tired messages they have delivered for years will somehow win them back Congress. Perhaps they convinced themselves that President Bush has messed everything up for them at the ballot box simply because he's a moderate; therefore, the electorate's rejection of the Republican party has actually been a rejection of moderation and the answer is a return to far right conservatism. How that explains the move by swing voters to the left last November is beyond me. But looking back over my life, I see now that I really never have thought like a Republican. That's probably why I don't get it.

Posted by Becky at 09:32 AM |

January 24, 2007

Beaverton Replica Toy Gun Ban a Good Idea

It looks like Beaverton is getting closer to banning toy guns that look real. I am very much a gun rights person. Our family has a lifetime NRA membership and we give to the Oregon Firearms Federation every year. We have a membership at a rifle range. Both our boys have been taught how to respect and handle a gun properly from a very young age. But I don't have any problem with Beaverton's proposal. I have always thought it was a bad idea for kids to be carrying real-looking toy guns around in populated areas.

The only concern I have with it is based on the comments of the Beaverton Police Department spokesman, Sgt. Paul Wandell, regarding the question of whether the proposed law goes far enough: "It's a start," he said.

My kids have airsoft guns, both the handgun variety and the automatic rifle variety. Since the only real damage the guns can do is sting your skin or put out an eye, they wear protective glasses whenever they use them, as do all their friends, and they have to promise not to be a baby when they get hit. The latter is usually no problem, as both are having too much fun to worry about it. We have always stressed gun safety with our kids, whether they are playing with water guns, potato pellet guns, paintball guns, pop guns, nerf guns, or real guns – all of which they own and enjoy. They are naturals at proper gun handling and know never to touch a real gun when they are not under our direct supervision. I do not believe my children are in any danger from guns and our family has a lot of fun with guns. So I don't want to see a law banning toy guns go any further than banning the ones that look real from public spaces. Anything more would be paranoid, intrusive overkill.

A strong case can be made for banning the real-looking toy guns:

Online retailers brag about the authenticity of the reproductions. Many are so close to the real thing that police agencies use them for training. And criminals use them in robberies.

The fakes are often mistaken for real weapons by police responding to calls from worried residents.

And there have been numerous cases in which police have shot people because they mistook their toy guns for real ones. In Beaverton, police have received several calls from concerned citizens about young people carrying weapons near schools, only to find the weapons were realistic-looking toys. There is simply no reason for parents to put their kids in a situation where a mistaken report of an armed youngster results in that youngster being shot by a cop.

Funky multi-colored or clear toy guns work every bit as well as real-looking guns and prevent tragic mistakes. I see no reason why this reasonable law shouldn't be passed – so long as it isn't carried to the next level down the line with a banning of all toy guns in public.

Posted by Becky at 12:44 PM |

Come to Jesus for Better Sex

Well, if this isn't one of the oddest things I've seen lately: disgraced evangelical pastor, the Rev. Ted Haggard, who was booted out of his position of leadership for having gay sex with a gay prostitute and using meth, is now claiming in a documentary that Christians have the best sex life of all groups. If that doesn't bring people to Jesus, I don't know what will.

Haggard appears in Alexandra Pelosi's new HBO documentary, "Friends of God." Pelosi, incidentally, is the daughter of the new speaker of the House and has done two political documentaries prior to this documentary on Christianity. She says her motivation was to find out how the "other side" lived – the other side being those who live opposite to her liberal "blue" upbringing. Haggard acted as her tour guide through the evangelical community.

I just have to wonder how he got that gig. Did either Pelosi or HBO approach him, or was he recommended for the job by someone else? Because if Pelosi and/or HBO approached him and said, "Hey, Teddy boy. You're obviously a hip and happenin' dude. Hows about you show me around and tell me about what it's like to be a Christian?" then I have to wonder about Pelosi's and/or HBO's motives here. Did they want to show off the seamy side of the Christian right? Did they honestly believe Haggard was representative of Christianity? Did they see him as a conveniently needy vehicle that would enable them to get an inside peek at the workings of a particular theocratic-political group? Or did they want to portray Christianity as offering no greater level of morality than agnosticism?

If, on the other hand, someone from the Christian community recommended Haggard for the job, then one must wonder whether his personal troubles are an indication of a serious problem within the evangelical movement. Either the individual who recommended him is so naïve as to be unable to recognize the damage Haggard did by cheating on his wife and using illegal drugs while professing to be living a godly life, or that person is consciously working to undermine and smear true Christians, for whom morality actually still matters.

No matter how I look at this, it feels very wrong.

Posted by Becky at 11:27 AM |

January 23, 2007

Dig a Little Harder

I had to chuckle when I read Dave Hogan's article about Sizemore's new ballot measures and new home in Klamath Falls. First, it was funny that Patty Wentz did such a better job at uncovering what's up lately with Sizemore than one of The Oregonian's top reporters. Plus, I've been doing some digging of my own. It's not that difficult to do.

So the big news Dave Hogan reported was that Sizemore has moved his family to Klamath Falls because "his wife wanted to try living east of the mountains," and Sizemore earns enough money to pay for his 3,000 square foot, $600,000 home by selling real estate in the Southern Oregon and Portland area. Wrong and wrong again. As Patty found out, Sizemore moved to Klamath Falls because Jeld-Wen owner and gazillionaire Dick Wendt is almost certainly paying him to advance Wendt's own conservative and self-interested political agenda. Moreover, the real estate market has cooled significantly, so that I doubt Sizemore, a newbie in real estate, could actually afford the lease on the $750,000 home (not $600,000) he is currently occupying.

Hogan also reported on Sizemore's new corporation – the Oregon Homeowners Association, Inc. – and his new LLC – The Oregon Homeowner. Sizemore says he has not decided what he will do with those entities. Can you believe that? He sets up a company but doesn't know what it's going to do. Right.

I don't know what Sizemore's plans are, but I do know that he is tucking himself nicely into bed with Dick Wendt and his good buddies Ted Abram and John Courtney. Back in the day when I was working with Sizemore, I heard these names quite frequently, so this relationship has been a long time in the making. But what is really interesting to me is the Howard Rich-like web of entities surrounding this bunch.

Sizemore's Oregon Homeowners Association is registered at 2636 Biehn St. in Klamath Falls. So is Dick Wendt's American Institute for Full Employment (AIFE), a non-profit headed up by Ted Abram and focused on welfare reform. So, too, are Transition Wear, a thrift store that is tied in with AIFE, and Jeld-Wen Public Affairs, both of which list John Courtney as the contact person.

Wendt has some friends in common with Sizemore. For one thing, his AIFE is listed on Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform state groups page – a list of like-minded astroturf groups around the country. And Ted Abram serves alongside Dick Armey and Steve Forbes on the FreedomWorks Foundation Board. FreedomWorks and Wendt – and, of course, Abram - share a few legislative priorities: privatization of Social Security, loosening environmental regulations, and welfare reform.

In case you've forgotten, FreedomWorks in Oregon is headed up by Russ Walker, a party loyalist who teamed up with Sizemore on two ballot measures in the 2006 general election - using funding from ATR and FreedomWorks. Coincidentally, before FreedomWorks and Citizens for a Sound Economy merged and before Russ Walker became the brown noser for the boys back east, Cathy Epley, who had worked on Sizemore's gubernatorial campaign, which was funded by a good chunk of Wendt money, headed up the organization.

To give you some perspective on who this Abram character is, he was an advisory board member of Brainstorm Magazine, a conservative news magazine in Oregon, for a long time. And he is a Senior Advisor to the Center for Global Economic Growth, which works to push the free market limited government philosophy all over the world and works closely with groups like the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, Americans for Tax Reform, and many others.

So back to the interconnected entities. Sourcewatch puts it like this:

Boundaries between Jeld-Wen, JOBS Plus and AIFE are very blurry. Jeld-Wen executive Hobbs, a former Reagan Administration official, described AIFE as a "not-for-profit subsidiary of Jeld-Wen." Phone calls to the AIFE phone number are sometimes answered "JOBS Plus." Anita Moore, a Jeld-Wen employee, works full time recruiting businesses to JOBS Plus. Jeld-Wen executive Bob Kingzett also has a voicemail box at AIFE. When AIFE staffers lobby in Salem, they speak as Jeld-Wen employees. Bill Early, executive vice president of Jeld-Wen, has served as chair of the state JOBS Plus advisory board from the beginning, and Richard Wendt himself sits on the Klamath County JOBS Plus advisory board.

Other examples include:

Allan Craigmiles posts a message claiming to be a Fellow with the American Institute for Full Employment and provides his email address at Jeld-Wen.

Craigmiles had a different email address when he responded to a survey for the Manhattan Institute in 2005 as a representative of AIFE. This time his email address was at Hire Calling. More on that entity in a minute.

Both Craigmiles and John Courtney, attorney for Jeld-Wen, serve as contact people for AIFE and list their Jeld-Wen email addresses for events at which AIFE is hosting the author of "Release of Street Saints: Renewing America’s Cities And Equipping the Saints: A Guide to Giving to Faith-Based Organizations."

John Courtney – Jeld-Wen Attorney – also serves as the contact person for Hire Calling Public Affairs – which incidentally is also at 2636 Biehn St – the same location as Sizemore's new business. Hire Calling (a double-entendre with religious overtones) is a placement agency for temporary low-wage workers. Other related entities include Hire Calling Staffing Solutions and Hire Calling Inc., both located at 3815 S 6th St. in Klamath Falls, and Calling Inc. and Hire Calling Holding Co. and Hire Calling Staff Solutions, both at 720 E Jackson St. in Medford.

Allan Craigmiles is a retired bank president who writes about why we need to privatize Social Secuirty. He is also the head of a non-profit called Good Soil Ministries Inc. at 5009 Bryant Ave. in Klamath Falls. His wife, Jane, is vice president of Oil of Grace, located at the same address. Oil of Grace sells anointing oils "with fragrances that come directly from the Word of God" and, when accompanied by a special "designer vessel," make an "excellent gift to your pastor or church." Another company, J and J Creative Associates, is also located at 5009 Bryant Ave. in Klamath Falls. It appears to sell fragrances.

Craigmiles brings to Wendt access to the national Christian movement. He is the National Facilitator of City and Community Ministries and National Resources for the Mission America Coalition.

The Coalition is developing effective regional and local leadership toward the goal of identifying and equipping key leaders in each of the 2,600 cities of over 10,000 people in population. As leaders are identified, they are networked with other leaders for encouragement, collaborative projects and the exchange of ideas.

Mission America Coalition partners and staff are strengthening grassroots efforts by offering monthly communiqués to these city leaders (550 local pastors and leaders of citywide ministries). Over 75 of these leaders have consistently participated in monthly conference calls offering training and equipping opportunities. In addition, city/community leaders receive regular email updates.

National Coalition initiatives are impacting local areas by generating enthusiasm, providing resources and launching citywide efforts. Key collaborative efforts include Coalition partners bringing churches together in 29 cities to distribute over six million Scripture portions with an invitation to local Easter Services and equipping seminars in 151 cities for church leaders committed to strategic partnerships in prayer and evangelism. Under the name City Impact Roundtable, a learning community of national and local ministry leaders has formed to seek sustained spiritual, moral and socio-economic transformation in American cities.

It's fairly easy to see why Sizemore wants to tap into a group with connections to FreedomWorks, Americans for Tax Reform, and the Mission America Coalition. Obviously, Wendt has lots of money, and Sizemore loves other people's money. But there's also something else. Sizemore, who earned a degree in Theology at Portland Bible College, considers himself a deeply committed Christian (part of that cognitive dissonance thing) and loves to be around other believers. It makes him feel better about himself. All of the players in this group are also overtly Christian – Russ Walker, included. Even Dick Wendt is a gung-ho Christian. He and his wife gave a very substantial endowment to the University of Dubuque to create the Wendt Character Initiative (to help instill a good Judeo-Christian character in young people). But why would Wendt want to bring Sizemore on board?

Sadly, things have gone very wrong at Dubuque since Wendt donated all that money and some at the university have become disillusioned as to the sincerity of Mr. Wendt's Christian belief. This may be part of why the What Wendt Wrong blog was established.

It seems that Richard Wendt, multi-millionaire and benefactor of UD's Wendt Initiative, has been involved in many other sorts of initiatives, many of which seem to be quite opposed to the Christian social justice mission.

In 1999, the Northwest Labor Press (NLP) reported that Wendt was intimately involved in passing the so-called "JOBS Plus" measure in Oregon: "[T]he measure, as written, was to abolish unemployment benefits, food stamps, and welfare benefits, and use the money to put the former recipients to work in subsidized or unsubsidized jobs at 10 percent less than the minimum wage. Wendt gave over $180,000 in cash and in-kind contributions to the campaign for the measure" (emphasis added). The measure was "[b]ased on an idea Wendt had been mulling over for 20 years [...]."

The arguably immoral and economically dubious plan was slightly modified after Barbara Roberts was elected governor. "Under the terms of the compromise," NLP reports, "unemployment, welfare and food stamps would not be abolished. Instead, a portion of their funding would be diverted to fund a subsidy for employers who would hire from the unemployment and welfare rolls."

One such employer was JELD-WEN, Inc., the company founded by Richard Wendt in the 1960s, and the source of his wealth. According to NLP's 1999 report, "Since the statewide JOBS Plus program began in July 1996, 130 workers have been placed in 13 Jeld-Wen companies. That amounts to between $600,000 and $800,000 in welfare, food stamp and unemployment benefits converted to a wage subsidy for the largest privately-owned company in Oregon. Just under half of the JOBS Plus placements were hired permanently by the Jeld-Wen companies at the expiration of their subsidized term; most of the remainder have found jobs elsewhere."

It certainly seems that Dick Wendt recouped his $180,000 investment in the measure.
It is striking that this shrewd business move was the brainchild of the man who is effectively bankrolling the University's "ethics across the curriculum" initiative. Would our UD business professors, who are to incorporate ethical teaching in their class sessions, recommend such a cunning and profitable maneuver? We certainly hope not.

Now I think it becomes more clear why Wendt would be interested in bringing Sizemore on board - particularly in light of Patty's article. A pattern has emerged – one that involves multiple entities, some of which are designed to convince people that Wendt's effort is moral and good, and some of which are designed to capitalize on the efforts once they have been successful. Sizemore fits in between, taking Wendt's ideas and converting them to legislation. And Sizemore's a man with conveniently flexible personal principles. It's probably a lot less expensive to buy Sizemore and set him up in a mansion than to have to lobby a lot of politicians to write those "common sense" laws that the voters are so much more likely to approve. With all that money behind him, Sizemore might very well be right when he says 2008 will be "the most interesting initiative year in the last 20 years."

Posted by Becky at 03:18 PM |

The Onion of all YouTube videos

Lyrics excerpt:

“Lord you are my strength, fill me with your love, help me fight these feelings… God hates a fag, God hates a fag, God hates a fag… To enter heaven, there is no back door…. Righteous man, get on your knees, there is no virtue in sodomy! Jesus my savior is the only man for me!”

Its got a great beat, you can dance to it AND kick ass lyrics!!

Posted by Carla at 01:33 PM |

Christian=Nigger?

This headline seems to suggest as much.

(Via Furious Nads)

Posted by Carla at 01:26 PM |

2008

As the race for the White House in 2008 begins to percolate have you wondered just who all is running or who all is considering running? Oh sure we hear of the big names on the news and on a wide variety of blogs. But those are just the famous ones. Whom else do we have to choose from?

Well look no further than Next Prez. There you'll find that Doug has a comprehensive listing broken down by party affiliation, status and links to official web sites where those exist.

On the Dems side I like Bill Richardson. On the Republicans side I like Chuck Hagel. I'm honestly not familiar enough with any of the others at this point to venture an opinion of any kind.

I would point our Oregon readers to a local candidate: Michael Smith, a Republican from Corvallis. Smith floated a very intriguing idea this past May of MicroCampaigns. The gist of which is centered around the idea of eliminating the winner takes all model of selecting convention delegates. Imagine a convention hall full of delegates belonging to dozens of different candidates... Heady stuff!

Posted by Kevin at 09:20 AM |

January 22, 2007

Hillary and me

Hillary Clinton entered the race for President on Saturday. She enters the contest as the apparent Democratic front-runner.

Unfortunately, I will not vote for Hillary Clinton.

My disdain for Mrs. Clinton stems not from the fact that I find her stated stance on the Iraq War cowardly. Nor from her other stated positions on various issues.

I can't vote for someone who I perceive as so cravenly hungry for power that she'll do absolutely anything to obtain it.

Back in the late 90s, Hillary Clinton's husband had a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky. I'm not going to rehash the details here as I'm sure its unnecessary. But as that story unfolded, Hillary Clinton was publically humiliated in such a devastating manner--and her husband allowed it to go on.

Bill Clinton allowed his wife and the mother of his child to undergo a brutal and ugly humiliation when he could have stopped it.

I can't pretend to understand the goings on in people's marriages. Each of us makes our choices for whatever reasons. If Hillary Clinton wants to stay with her husband after having been the beneficiary of such abuse, that's her perogative. But I can fathom no reason for staying in such a dysfunctional situation except to stay next to power.

I've considered that this is an unfair and judgemental assessment of the situation. Maybe Hillary feels that she has no choice--that she couldn't make a go of it on her own. But that leads me back to the issue of power--she wants to be next to power and she'll do anything to ensure that she is.

This is a trait that I find unacceptable in a Presidential candidate.

I recognize that people who run for President of the United States are likely in general to step on a few heads to get to where they are. But to ruthlessly sacrifice oneself in an effort to build a power base demonstrates to me an ugly characteristic that we can't have in the Leader of the Free World.

It seems to me (based on past history) that if Hillary Clinton becomes President and is forced to choose between what will give/keep her power and what is best for the United States of America--Mrs. Clinton will choose power.

We've spent the last six years with a President who has ignored what's best for his country to assuage his personal demons. We can't endure more of it.

Posted by Carla at 10:30 AM |

Will "Zoo" End Zoo Taboo?

A new documentary on bestiality has just premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. And interestingly, it is being described as "remarkably, an elegant, eerily lyrical film" and "a poetic film about a forbidden subject." This review of the film seemed particularly apropo, considering the discussion last week about people and dolphins and whether such unions would ever become socially acceptable. The director himself said of the film, "I aestheticized the sleaze right out of it."

"Forbidden subject" sounds to me like a phrase one would use to describe a film about an older woman and a younger man, or maybe even a gay love affair. Perhaps that is merely a sign of my naivete. Bestiality always seemed to be beyond forbidden to me. The filmmaker decided to explore the psychology of "zoos" - people who have a thing for animals - after hearing about the man in Seattle who died in 2005 after having sex with a stallion at an animal farm for people who love animals a little too much. He defends his documentary by saying he thought artists had a right to explore whatever they wanted to. I'm an artist, and I have never seen it that way. I think artists ought to work to uplift, not degrade the human race.

It seems to me we are hearing more and more about bestiality and I must say I have often wondered lately whether an effort is underway to make it more socially acceptable. Mini-clips are circulated widely by email showing attractive women getting it on with various animals, and jokes about it are becoming more common, too. I fear films like "Zoo" will take away some of the taboo that prevents people from trying it. And it is the animals that will pay the price.

I don't much care to understand the psychology of zoos any more than I do pedophiles. They're sick. They should not be allowed to do what they do - have sex with partners who cannot consent.

Posted by Becky at 06:07 AM |

January 21, 2007

Are Hate-Crimes Laws Inherently Biased?

The Catholic League is making a very interesting observation: that hate-crime laws demonstrate a certain inherent bias. After reading their rationale, I think they may have a point.

Yesterday, the New York Times ran a story about two 20-year-olds, and an 18-year-old, who were arrested for stealing statues of baby Jesus from nativity scenes over the past two years. They hit the New York-suburban communities of Suffern and Haverstraw several times in 2005 and 2006. The police said they will not charge them with committing hate crimes; each is being charged with 14 counts of petty larceny.

Yesterday, WNBC.com reported that a 20-year-old was arrested for kicking a menorah in the New York suburban community of St. James. He is being charged with a hate crime and could face seven years in prison. He is being charged with a felony.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue commented as follows:

“This is so interesting. The reason the menorah is allowed in New York City public schools is because the authorities have branded it a secular symbol, and the reason the crèche is barred is because the same authorities have branded it a religious symbol. Yet when a 20-year-old man vandalizes a menorah outside New York he is charged with a hate crime and may spend seven years behind bars for his felony, while three others of the same age who vandalize several crèches outside New York—over a two-year period—are given a slap on the wrist.

“We have long maintained that hate-crime laws evince a bias of their own. This proves it.”

What do you think? Is this merely an anecdotal case, and meaningless in the big picture, or is it typical and significant?

Posted by Becky at 08:33 PM |

Impeach the "Insane Criminal"

Paul Craig Roberts has dropped yet another bombshell on President Bush with his latest editorial, in which he asks, "When are the American people and their representatives in Congress and the military going to wake up and realize that the US has an insane war criminal in the White House who is destroying all chances for peace in the world and establishing a police state in the US?" This new editorial is extremely disturbing, explaining the Bush Administration's manipulation of the Iraqi people and the propaganda being dished up to the American people in an effort to prepare for war on Iran. If Roberts is right in the details of his argument, then one has no choice but to answer his opening question by agreeing with his conclusion that it is time to impeach the President.

Several people have guessed at what the war is all about. Some say it's about oil. Others have said the Saudis are in control. Roberts offers his own conclusion:

Nothing can stop the criminal Bush from instituting wider war in the Middle East that could become a catastrophic world war except an unequivocal statement from Congress that he will be impeached.

Bush has made the US into a colony of Israel. The US is incurring massive debt and loss of both life and reputation in order to silence Muslim opposition to Israel's theft of Palestine and the Golan Heights.

That is what the "war on terror" is about.

Personally, I am less concerned about why we are at war than I am about the damage the war is inflicting on the world and the desperate need to stop it from growing any worse. Worrying about why our President is busy destroying our freedoms and peace in the world is as pointless as trying to determine why a serial killer kills. What matters is that he kills and he must be stopped. Sure, our economic future is growing bleaker by the day, but that is nothing compared to the human toll of depleted uranium on the people of Afghanistan and Iraq and the likelihood that our President is willing to inflict that horrific damage on the people of Iran and Syria, as well, sentencing most of the Middle East to a virtual eternity of cancer, lethal disease, and ghastly birth defects. If impeachment is what it will take to end this madness, then bring it on!

Posted by Becky at 08:18 PM |

A surfin' we will go, a surfin' we will go...

One of the interesting things about being associated with this blog and with being a compulsive hit counter watcher has been the slow but steady trickle of hits coming to PK from folks surfing through Carla's Progressive Women Bloggers Ring.

Not being vaginally endowed, or self-identifying as a Progressive, I've never had the time or the inclination to personally surf through the (currently) 397 member sites in her Web Ring. But as I say, I do like to watch our hit counter here to see where our traffic is coming from. And so it is that my native curiosity has led me to follow the odd hit back to a member blog of her Ring. And the one that I found this morning has impressed me.

In general terms I've long been pretty open and relaxed, not to mention curious, about human sexuality (how can one improve one's own skills without being curious and open to new ideas?). That trait led me some months back to follow a hit back to Feminism Without Clothes - the blog of a young woman who is both an interesting and provocative writer and who also intersperses her posts with nude pictures of herself from her vocation as a nude model.

So this morning when I was looking through PK's hits I saw a visit from the URL: http://www.padandpanty.blogspot.com/

My first thought was, "oh... how kinky. This could be interesting." It also seemed a self-evident hit from another of Carla's sister Progressive Woman Bloggers. So I clicked on the link to check it out.

Not exactly on par with Feminism Without Clothes. Which is to say that my initial assumption proved incorrect - no kink. But I was curious about the URL because I'm familiar enough with Blogger and BlogSpot to know that a person creating a new blog has complete control over what to name it and, except for the obligitory proprietary suffix, complete control over what the URL will be. So I looked around and read some of the posts by Working Girl, the nom de plume of the apparently sole author of this blog which is actually named Mostly True Stories.

It turns out that Working Girl is apparently a student in Nursing School and appears to be specializing in obstetrics. She writes quite frankly about all kinds of things revolving mostly, but not exclusively, around obstetrics. Things like Trimming the Hedges which is largely on the topic of the trimming (or lack thereof) of a pregnant woman's pubic hair and what the Nurses who take care of her might think of her style.

What really struck me though, and served as the impetus for me to write this post (which really is out of character for me here at PK) is that Working Girl is a truly gifted story teller. Most of the posts there, written more dryly, would have quickly bored me and I would have moved on to something more interesting elsewhere. But this woman writes in a very engaging manner which just sucks you into the post as if reading an interesting story. It's a gift that I recognize from my own father. Not everyone tells a good story (whether fact or fiction). In fact, few people seem to possess the natural ability to tell a story in a manner which keeps the audience riveted, almost regardless of the content of the story. Working Girl, like my own father, clearly has this gift.

For example, she has a post up from a week ago called Code Brown which is about poop in an obstetric setting. Now scat just is NOT something that interests me at all. So my first thought upon seeing this particular post was, "ewwwww... gross!" But the next thing I knew I was reading the last sentence of the post! I thought, "damn! She's pretty good. Few writers could have sucked me into reading something like this." But not only did she manage to hook me but I found it entertaining to read! I even identified with it in my own way, having had limited experience with being all doped up post-surgery. LOL I even paused to wonder if I'd inadvertantly made life unpleasant for the professional nursing staff who took care of me after my back surgery a decade ago.

So at any rate... for those of you PK readers who enjoy reading a really well-crafted post by a truly capable writer, regardless of what is being written about, go check out Mostly True Stories. I still don't know how she came to choose such an interesting and provocative URL. But I suppose that's just more incentive to follow her writing and perhaps she'll eventually reveal the connection.

Enjoy!

Posted by Kevin at 01:15 PM |

January 20, 2007

My Pet Peeve

It seems more and more often these days I find myself looking at menus, signs, blogs, and advertisements in which people have misused apostrophes, and it really makes me crazy. I have been known to decide not to eat at a restaurant or buy from a business simply because their apostrophe ignorance has irritated the hell out of me. So here is a little lesson in proper use of apostrophes.

The most common misuse of the apostrophe is when people use it in plural nouns. For those of you who don't know what "plural nouns" are, they are multiple persons, places or things. Too many would write that as "person's, place's and thing's." Down the street from me is a place that sells "box's." I cringe every time I drive by. It's "boxes," dammit!

Okay, so here's how it goes. If you have more than one thing, you NEVER use an apostrophe. You just add an "s" or an "es" to the end (of course, there are exceptions, but generally this is the case). If you have more than one cat you have cats. If you get more than one kiss you get kisses. More than one house makes houses. More than one mouse makes mice. Oops. But you get the idea – no apostrophes!

Apostrophes are used to fill in spaces for missing letters (for example, "have not" becomes "haven't") or to show possession (if it belongs to Mary, it is Mary's). The cat that belongs to Jim is Jim's cat. If Jim has more than one cat, they are Jim's cats (not Jims cat's). The only common exception here is with pronouns – he, she, and it. If he owns something it's "his," not "he's." If she owns something, it's "hers," not "she's." And if it owns something, it is "its" not "it's." "It's" means "it is."

The most confusing use of apostrophes comes when you have multiple owners or the owners have a name that ends in "s." If you have one owner whose last name ends in "s" you would add an apostrophe and an "s" to show ownership. For example, the reindeer that belong to Santa Claus are Santa Claus's reindeer. For multiple owners, you want to make the word plural first and then deal with the apostrophe, which always goes after the "s." For example, if several cats share the same dish, it would be the cats' dish. If the reindeer belonged to both Santa and his wife, they would be the Clauses' reindeer.

I hope that clears this matter up for everyone out there. Maybe I can convince the Legislature to pass a law requiring this concept to be mastered before one can receive a high school diploma. Then I wouldn't have to be driving down the road and see a nice company truck going by with a logo on the side reading, "We mow lawn's."

Posted by Becky at 12:28 PM |

January 19, 2007

Conservative Kulongoski comes out of the closet.

Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski intends to fight hard this session to raise cigarette taxes a whopping 70% to provide health insurance for 117,000 low- and moderate- income children who now are uninsured. Over at Blue Oregon they have a poll on the subject which is currently running in favor of Kulongoski's proposal 77% to 23%.

Normally one wouldn't associate regressive taxation with a Democrat, particularly one in such an overwhelmingly Blue state. But that's exactly what this new tax is. Oh sure, it sounds all warm and fuzzy on the surface. I mean, who wouldn't want to help those poor underpriviledged kids enjoy the benefits of health insurance? And don't cigarettes cost about $3.50 per pack (2002) in medical expenses? Seems like a slam-dunk... right?

But, why don't those kids already have health insurance?

Well, because they're in the low and moderate socio-economic demographic which can least afford to pay for health care. And this is where Kulongoski's proposed regressive tax rears it's ugly head.

According to Oregon's own statistics (pdf warning), which mirror national statistics (pdf warning), smokers are disproportionately financally poor and under-educated compared to nonsmokers.

29.9% of Oregonians who smoke earn less than $15 k per year and another 30.2% earn between $15k and $25k. At the other end of the spectrum, among Oregonians who earn $50k or more per year only 11.4% smoke.

Compounding this data is research showing that the gap in smoking cessation rates between those below the poverty line and those above it actually increased between 1983 and 2002, with those above quitting at an increasing rate while those below quit at a decreasing rate. Which gets us well within the modern move to use cigarette taxes to reduce smoking. So draw your own conclussions.

Not surprisingly the Oregon educational stats correlate strongly with the income stats. 29.5% of HS drop-outs smoke and 28.4% of those who only achieved a HS diploma or GED smoke. While only 9.6% of college graduates smoke. Not only that, but the cessation rates (nationally) are progressively tilted in favor of those with a higher level of education too.

But at least increased taxes on cigarettes prevent kids from becoming smokers in the first place, right? Wrong. Studies show that higher cigarette prices simply cause many teens to put off starting smoking until they are adults.

Turning back to the official Oregon stats, among those who have health insurance 17% smoke compared to the 33.6% of uninsured who smoke.

So essentially what Governor Kulongoski wants to do is to force economically disadvantaged Oregonians to pay for health insurance which many of them couldn't afford in the first place.

I thought those kind of tactics were the domain of conservatives...

Posted by Kevin at 03:45 PM |

Two Birds with One Stone

Last week I received an email on the right-wing forwarding chain about the terrifying prospect that Barack Obama was a closet Muslim and implied that he was even intended to be a Manchurian candidate. Fortunately, Snopes has debunked the email very well. Unfortunately, the right wing isn't done with the story - and now they've even found a clever way to use it to make Hillary Clinton look bad.

Are the American people ready for an elected president who was educated in a Madrassa as a young boy and has not been forthcoming about his Muslim heritage?

This is the question Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s camp is asking about Sen. Barack Obama.

An investigation of Mr. Obama by political opponents within the Democratic Party has discovered that Mr. Obama was raised as a Muslim by his stepfather in Indonesia. Sources close to the background check, which has not yet been released, said Mr. Obama, 45, spent at least four years in a so-called Madrassa, or Muslim seminary, in Indonesia. …

Sources said the background check, conducted by researchers connected to Senator Clinton, disclosed details of Mr. Obama's Muslim past. The sources said the Clinton camp concluded the Illinois Democrat concealed his prior Muslim faith and education.

It's hard to believe that Hillary Clinton would dig up dirt on Barack Obama, give the scoop to the right wing media to break, and then claim to have discovered it herself. However, by claiming she was the origin of the research, the right wing can wash its own hands of the dirty politics and make Hillary out to be a bitch who so wants to be the first female President that she would do anything to stop us from having the first black President. Not that I would put it past her, but really, the right wing had this story first. It's been a wonderful addition to their "Osama – Obama" thing, and their "Barack HUSSEIN Obama" thing.

And it's a nothing story. Read the Snopes article and you'll see Obama hasn't hidden anything at all. In fact, he's been quite frank.

But that won't stop bloggers from accusing him of beingA Sleeper Cell of One.

Posted by Becky at 01:25 PM |

Believing the Unbelievable

Both Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter claimed to have seen them. My very reliable brother-in-law has seen one. Thousands of people have. But for as long as I can remember, people who claim to see UFOs have always been treated in the media as being a bit kooky. So I was surprised when not too long ago several United Airline employees made headlines with their claim that they had witnessed a UFO hovering over O'Hare international airport and were taken seriously. Then a few days ago, a retired Air Force colonel photographed some mysterious lights he was watching over Arkansas and brought them to the press. Now a "digital expert" has analyzed the photographs and has found that within the lights one can see the silhouette of the pilot of the vehicle.

Several people are coming forward claiming to have seen lights behaving in the same manner as the ones photographed by Col. Brian Fields, who flew fighter jets for 32 years, near his Arkansas home. Of course, none of them reported their sightings previously. Some are saying the lights were simply illumination rounds, which is what I believe is most likely. They are shot up into the sky where they hover and then fade out, and each wave of the lights will create a different formation – triangular, stacked, scattered, etc. As for the photos showing the "pilots" in the mystery lights, I don't put a lot of stock in digital photograph enhancement. Maybe I've just seen it over-played in B movies too many times.

But some believe the UFOs are piloted by demons, and they use the Bible to back them up, claiming fallen angels in past times came down and inter-bred with humans, creating a super-race and thereby polluting humans' genes with their sinful natures. Setting aside all appearance of logic and assuming the tale is true of "demons" (or aliens) inter-breeding with humans, it could explain quite a lot. Such as that sense so many people have that we are very different from all the other species on the planet, or that we really belong somewhere else (such as in Heaven). It could explain the ancient tales of wizards and magic. It could explain why the ancient civilizations knew so much about the stars and planets. It could explain why some people have a higher level of artistic genius – and why those people are so often straddling the line of sanity. Okay, maybe I've gone too far.

If you get your kicks by checking out conspiracy theory websites as I often do, you also know that many people believe a ruling elite, known as the Illuminati, are planning to capitalize on the UFO phenomenon to stage the coming of their messiah – the anti-Christ. They are responsible for constructing the UFOs we have been seeing and making sure people see and report them so that people will accept a world leader that comes from outer space. It is rather interesting that these stories are suddenly garnering large amounts public attention at the same time that people are concerned about Armageddon and a crescendo is building about how all three of the major world religions are expecting their messiah's return at any time. Okay, I've gone too far again.

I will admit I leave a little corner of my mind open to believing the unbelievable. It makes life more interesting.

Posted by Becky at 12:31 PM |

January 18, 2007

What a Mess

In May, 2004, Secretary of State Colin Powell said U.S.-led coalition forces would leave Iraq if a new interim government should ask them to, and L. Paul Bremer, the top U.S. administrator in Iraq, told a delegation from Iraq's Diyala province that American forces would not stay where they were unwelcome. "If the provisional government asks us to leave, we will leave," Bremer said. Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman had told the House International Relations Committee that although it was unlikely, the Iraqi interim government could tell U.S. troops to leave. Even President Bush promised if a democratically elected government or the Iraqi people were to ask us to leave, we would do so.

Well, we haven't been asked to leave yet, but Nouri al-Maliki is saying we could begin pulling out in three to six months if we would simply part with sufficient guns and equipment to arm Baghdad's security forces so they could take care of their own problem. He said our failure to do so has prolonged the insurgency and resulted in greater death. But would that be a good idea?

Maliki believes America's refusal to share weaponry is a boon to terrorism, which is, as we all know, the reason we supposedly went into Iraq when we did. He said:

I wish that we could receive strong messages of support from the US so we don’t give some boost to the terrorists and make them feel that they might have achieved success. I believe that such statements give moral boosts to the terrorists and push them towards making an extra effort and making them believe that they have defeated the American Administration, but I can tell you that they haven’t defeated the Iraqi Government.

I don't put much faith in anything an Iraqi official says, to be frank. It hasn't been that long ago that we were watching Saddam's hilarious Minister of Information claim the Iraqis were defeating the Americans while in reality they were surrendering or running away. Iraq is chock full of corruption and many fear any weapons handed over to Iraqis would wind up in the hands of insurgents or be used to wage a civil war. Additionally, Iraq has been cozying up to Iran. And Iran's nuclear ambitions are, in large part, responsible for the advancement of the Doomsday Clock by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, in a symbolic act reflecting nuclear risk in the world.

To make it worse, Greg Palast doesn't even believe Bush is calling the shots.

Who asked for the 21,000 soldiers?

We know the US military didn’t ask for the 21,000 troops. (Outgoing commander General George Casey called for a troop reduction.)

We know the Iraqi government didn’t ask for the 21,000 troops. (Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is reportedly unhappy about a visible increase in foreign occupiers).

So who wants the occupation to continue? The answer is in Riyadh. When the King of Saudi Arabia hauled Dick Cheney before his throne on Thanksgiving weekend, the keeper of America’s oil laid down the law to Veep: the US will not withdraw from Iraq.
According to Nawaf Obaid, a Saudi who signals to the US government the commands and diktats of the House of Saud, the Saudis are concerned that a US pull-out will leave their Sunni brothers in Iraq to be slaughtered by Shia militias. More important, the Saudis will not tolerate a Shia-majority government in Iraq controlled by the Shia mullahs of Iran. A Shia combine would threaten Saudi Arabia’s hegemony in the OPEC oil cartel.

In other words, it’s about the oil.

Meanwhile, we have radical Islamicists brainwashing children to become martyrs for Islam and referring to Jews as pigs who will go to hell. This while Iran is calling for the eradication of Israel.

I'm glad I don't have to sort this mess out.

Posted by Becky at 11:10 AM |

January 17, 2007

Virginia Politician Insults Blacks and Jews

A Virginia lawmaker has just stepped in a big pile of it. The Virginia House of Delegates is scheduled to consider a resolution to have the state apologize for slavery. Del. Frank D. Hargrove, a Republican, said, “I personally think that our black citizens should get over it.” He then went even further, saying, "How far do these calls for apologies go? Are we going to force the Jews to apologize for killing Christ?” Coming from a politician, from whom at least a minimal level of polish is expected, the comments are outrageous. He may believe an apology for slavery is political correctness gone too far, but a more sensitive and intelligent argument could have fairly easily been made. Instead, he has stepped all over two major segments of America's population.

Posted by Becky at 10:33 AM |

Iran and Israel

Al Jazeera is asking, "Could it be true that President Bush may have started a new secret, informal war against Syria and Iran without the consent of Congress?" Of course, a good number of Americans are wondering the same thing. A second battle carrier group is on its way to the Persian Gulf. The President has just announced he will send over more troops. Opponents of attacking Iran have been removed from the Administration - General John Abizaid and John Negroponte have both said attacking Iran is not appropriate at this time. The British Royal Navy has two minesweepers on the way to the Gulf. And in his latest speech Bush talked about the need to stabilize the region, beginning with "addressing Iran and Syria." He accused Iran and Syria of providing support to terrorists and insurgents in Iraq and then said, "We will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.” The same day he gave the speech, U.S. forces attacked an Iranian consulate in Iraq.

The American President’s speech also implied intensifying the U.S. efforts to lobby support against Syria and Iran even among Arab states, or rather, Arab U.S. friends:

“We will use America's full diplomatic resources to rally support for Iraq from nations throughout the Middle East. Countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and the Gulf States need to understand that an American defeat in Iraq would create a new sanctuary for extremists and a strategic threat to their survival. These nations have a stake in a successful Iraq that is at peace with its neighbors, and they must step up their support for Iraq's unity government.”

A lot of people are wondering whether the President is answering to Israel, rather than to Congress. This view, for some reason that I personally do not understand, is seen by some as anti-Semitic. It only makes sense that Israel would pressure the Administration to support its own interests in the region. The problem, really, is whether Bush's priorities are to help Israel or to protect the interests of the United States.

Meanwhile, retired general Wesley Clark blamed escalation with Iran on “New York money people,” which has been interpreted to mean the numerous Jews who contribute generously to political campaigns, but negative reactions have Clark trying to convince Jewish groups that he wasn't trying to promote any anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. I would have though he was referring to the banking industry, which would be more in line with accusations of promoting conspiracy theories, as opposed to political contributors, but that just shows what I know. Interestingly, Raw Story is reporting that ING Group, a major investment bank, has issued a warning that investors might be "in for a shock," due to a preemptive strike by Israel with American backing to hit Iran's nuclear program.

Of course, Israel has been pushing publicly for the U.S. and others to take a hard line against Iran's efforts to build nuclear weapons. And Jewish groups in the U.S. have lately been full of praise for the Bush Administration because the U.S. Treasury Department banned a state-owned Iranian bank from doing business in America. Israeli leaders have gone so far in their posturing as to confirm the country has nuclear weapons and many fear Israel would use them if attacked by Iran. Additionally, Benjamin Netanyahu has compared Iran's President to Hitler.

Israel is right to be concerned about the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran – after all, Iran's President has made numerous public statements to the effect that Israel has no right to exist and should be wiped off the map. In other words, if Jewish groups are pushing for an escalation between Iran and Israel's ally, the U.S., it would not be a big surprise. That doesn't mean it's a good idea for the U.S. I don't have a problem with our taking out Iran's capacity to build nuclear weapons and its supply lines to terrorists, but I certainly would not support all-out war, particularly considering Iran is allied with China and Russia. Talk about bringing on Armageddon – is our Christian president intentionally trying to provoke the "kings of the east"?

Posted by Becky at 10:14 AM |

January 16, 2007

Is This Really the Government's Business?

With the help of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a Muslim has filed a legal challenge to the Bush administration's funding of "Bible-based" marriage counseling. Education and research grants totaling $750 million over the next five years are at stake. The lawsuit alleges that grant-recipient Northwest Marriage Institute advocates religious beliefs that "derive from a specific form of biblical literalism particular to fundamentalist Christianity." The Institute has already received $100,000 and is slated to receive $1.25 million over five years.

Americans United says the Institute cites God and the Bible in counseling against premarital sex, encourages wives to submit to their husbands, and teaches wives to maintain a "quiet spirit." Many liberated American women would certainly be outraged that their tax dollars are being used to teach these Bible-based marriage principles. Those who aren't ought to ask themselves how they would feel if Koran-based marriage counseling was being supported by their tax dollars. You know, notions of marriage such as not being able to choose your own spouse, the need to cover yourself entirely from head to toe while in public so that only your husband, who will someday be rewarded in heaven with 70 virgins, will see your beauty, the duty to devote yourself totally to your husband and children and to sacrifice your own wishes, and the occasional need to be beaten by your husband for being disobedient. I would wager they would object to such a program, as well they should to the one already being funded.

Posted by Becky at 03:26 PM |

Single Men Should Leave Attractive Women Alone

A new study has found that women tend to try harder to look attractive when they are fertile than when they are not. For some reason, even women who are in committed relationships go to the trouble of dressing better and fixing themselves up better when they are fertile. In fact, when fertile, women are more attracted to men other than their partner. So here's some advice for all you married men. If your wife is trying to look nice, keep a good eye on her. And for all you single men, don't sleep with hotties. They're just trying to get knocked up.

Posted by Becky at 03:25 PM |

Rep. Butler's Bill Well-Intended, but Wrong

Normally I'm all for anti-drunk driving legislation. And normally I'm not a big fan of new gun legislation (which is why I pretty much don't care for Sen. Ginny Burdick). But my opposition to new gun restrictions isn't why I'm conflicted about a new bill Rep. Tom Butler of Ontario (Oregon) has introduced. Butler's bill, HB 2415, would ban the sale or transfer of guns, explosives and vehicles to visibly intoxicated people. It would also ban selling gas to drunk drivers. As Rep. Butler said, “It’s illegal to serve alcohol to a visibly intoxicated man, but it’s legal to sell him a gun and fill up his gas tank.” That certainly sounds reasonable – at least until you think it through.

In Lacrosse, Wisconsin, state law prohibits serving alcohol to an intoxicated or near-intoxicated person, and bar owners and bar tenders can be cited if they continue to serve drinks to a person who has already had too much to drink. But one bartender has decided to challenge his citation, saying it's unfair to take the word of a drunk as proof that he was the last person to serve him drinks. The case is sparking discussions there about the fundamental fairness of the law itself.

Many people believe such ordinances are too difficult to enforce, and others believe that it places an unfair onus on a bartender to expect him or her to judge when someone has had too much to drink, in part because different people can tolerate different amounts of alcohol. For instance, I'm a tall woman and can drink four drinks over the course of an evening before it starts to show. But I know at least one woman who is shorter and smaller than I who can drink a dozen. And I have girlfriends who start slurring at two. My brother, an alcoholic for years, could at one time down a fifth and a two six-packs of beer and you'd never know he'd had a drink. My husband, who is about the same size, begins to be embarrassing at seven drinks.

Wisconsin has classes for bartenders to teach them how to tell when to cut someone off, based on speech and body language, and bartenders are encouraged to call the police of someone gets belligerent about it. But if they fail to recognize that a person should not be driving and they continue to serve them, they risk being fined if that person is later stopped for drunk driving. The fine is generally in the ballpark of $200, so it's enough to say "ouch," but not enough to be unduly punitive. Considering how dangerous drunk drivers are, I think it's a good idea to have a designated responsible educated adult looking out for trouble and keeping it minimized. Without the education, I would say it is unfair to put that burden on the bartenders.

Educational safeguards for people selling gasoline, automobiles, or weapons aren't included in Rep. Butler's bill, however, so I think it's a bit harder to justify holding them responsible for what their drunk customer does later on. And I'm not sure there is even a burning need for this legislation. I don't see a lot of drunks going out and buying weapons, for example. Though I've been to many gun and knife shows, and beer is routinely available at them, I've never once seen a drunk on the premises. As for serving gas, with the enormous turn-over in gas station employees, it hardly seems fair to expect station owners to pay for their employees to take a course in recognizing when a driver, who typically stays seated inside the car while waiting for his or her gas to be pumped, is drunk.

In short, Rep. Butler has good intentions, but I don't think he really thought this one through. Hopefully, the Legislature will either plug the holes or let this bill sink.

Posted by Becky at 02:24 PM |

January 15, 2007

Kidnapper Stole Much More than 4 1/2 Years

When I heard of 15-year-old Shawn Hornbeck's rescue from Michael Devlin, who had held the boy captive for almost five years, I was elated. Contrary to the assertions of Condoleeza Rice, I don't believe a single, childless woman can actually grasp the depth of love a mother has for her children. I am entirely devoted to my own to boys – far beyond any love I could have imagined before they were born – but I can only imagine the sheer joy Shawn's parents felt when they heard the news. Their son was alive! But the more I have heard about the story, the more I fear their nightmare is hardly over.

When a child spends all his or her time with a bad person for years, going through who knows what, that child is forever changed. And as we saw so clearly with the tragic story of Steven Staynor, who was abducted at age 7 by child molester Kenneth Parnell and kept for 7 years before escaping, the pain of the loss and the suffering of the parents can devastatingly harm their remaining children. Steven's brother Cary became a serial killer, and though that certainly isn't something one would expect would happen on a routine basis in such cases, it speaks to the impact of this sort of crime on the family whose child has been taken.

As a mother, I cannot help but imagine myself in the position of Shawn's parents. One of my sons is the same age Shawn was when he was kidnapped, and the other is the same age as the boy who was taken last week. Parents understand the importance of the right – or wrong – influences on kids at that age.

The news reports have offered plenty of reason to be concerned about Shawn's future and the challenges that his family will face. He is a 15-year-old who has not been to school since 6th grade. He has lived for the last 4 1/2 years with a man who threatened to shoot him if he ran away, who convinced him his parents didn't want him back, who was known to have a bad temper and who was even heard hitting the boy. Of the household, one neighbor described it like this: "A lot of vulgarity. A lot of cursing." And pardon me for being a prude, but it's a really bad sign when a 15-year-old boy is wearing black fingernail polish, sporting a pierced lip, being repeatedly stopped by police for being out alone late at night, and writing online under the nicknames Devil and Vampire.

And we might as well admit it: we're all waiting for the child molestation charges – why else would the boy be taken, and why else would a second younger boy have been abducted last week? The New York Post is saying that child pornography was found on Devlin's computer. Regardless of whether Shawn was sexually abused, however, his treatment has to have left deep scars.

I've known a number of women who were molested for years at the hands of their fathers or uncles. Not a one of them has been able to fully function as an adult, and one of them is so badly scarred by it that her life today is marked by poverty, alcoholism, drug abuse, and neglect of her own children, even though she is trying very hard to succeed. At best, their insecurity with intimacy has posed very real difficulties in their marital relationships, and they have been robbed of a joyful sexual life with their partner. No amount of punishment of the offender can ever pay for the damage such crimes inflict on a child whose view of the world and his or her place in it is still being formed.

Shawn looks very happy in the photographs with his parents, and I sincerely hope that he can bounce back from this. But moving from a home that is oppressive, abusive, and at the same time permissive back to one where he is expected to go to school and follow household rules will be a real challenge. I don't doubt his parents are happy to take that challenge on. But his being brought home is not the end of the story. The permanent impact of the last four and a half years on his psyche is, in my opinion, the very worst of the crimes Devlin committed against this boy and his family. In my opinion, it is a crime worthy of the death penalty.

Posted by Becky at 01:47 PM |

Get to Know Some Real Americans

Vice President Cheney needs some new friends. Badly. He just told reporters that Scooter Libby is "one of the more honest men I know." Libby is currently facing charges of perjury, obstruction and making false statements for trying to prevent the truth coming out about how the Administration had outed Valerie Plame as an undercover CIA agent in retaliation for her husband's revelation to the press that no evidence existed of Saddam Hussein's having attempting to buy yellow cake uranium in order to build nuclear weapons. The revelation undermined the case for going to war in Iraq.

Posted by Becky at 10:01 AM |

January 14, 2007

Iraq War Fueling Resentment Against US

Not that anyone who has two brain cells to rub together didn't already know this, but now even Negroponte outgoing State Department terror coordinator Henry Crumption are on board:

An ex-CIA operative, Crumpton told NEWSWEEK that a worldwide surge in Islamic radicalism has worsened recently, increasing the number of potential terrorists and setting back U.S. efforts in the terror war. "Certainly, we haven't made any progress," said Crumpton. "In fact, we've lost ground." He cites Iraq as a factor; the war has fueled resentment against the United States.

So for those of you still under the delusion that somehow we're "saving lives" and making headway on the alleged "War on Terror", time to wake up.

Posted by Carla at 10:28 AM |

January 13, 2007

Freedom Fries guy sees the light too

Former Iraq war supporter and "Freedom Fries" dude Walter Jones, Jr (R-NC) is teaming up with one of the House's most liberal members, Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) as well as Neil Abercrombie (D-HI) to sponsor a resolution to withdraw from Iraq.

Jones' support of an Iraq withdrawal isn't coming without serious consequences. His party is punishing him by passing him over for a choice committee assignment:

House Armed Services ranking member Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., has disciplined one of his party's most vocal anti-war members by denying him a minority leadership position on the powerful defense committee.

Hunter, a loyal supporter of President Bush and an outspoken hawk on the Iraq war, recently told Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., that he would be passed over for the Readiness Subcommittee ranking member slot because of his stance on the war, Jones said in an interview Thursday.

Jones, in his seventh term, rose quickly in seniority on the 61-member panel after two more-senior GOP members suffered election defeats and former Readiness Subcommittee Chairman Joel Hefley, R-Colo., retired.

Now the eighth-ranking Republican on the committee, Jones was in line to be ranking member on one of the seven Armed Services subcommittees. Instead, Rep. Jo Ann Davis, R-Va., will serve as ranking member on the Readiness panel. Davis, in her fourth term, ranks 11th in seniority among 28 Republicans.

"We have to pay a price, from time to time," Jones said of Hunter's decision. He added that he is "disappointed, but not angry" at Hunter.

Jones has frequently butted heads with Hunter, GOP leaders and the Bush administration, often siding with a handful of Republicans and most Democrats on the Iraq war.

I don't agree with Jones on much. But it seems to me that after the ringer some of these conservatives have been through, they'll get to the point where they can no longer consider themselves conservative.

Being punished for questioning authority is going to shove them away from the GOP. Or if it doesn't, it should.

(via The Carpetbagger Report)

Posted by Carla at 04:30 PM |

I Smell Grover Norquist

Two seemingly unrelated stories today tell me that Grover Norquist is busily at work capitalizing on Christians' fear of impending persecution to try to help Republicans win back power. This sort of broad-based effort is what his famed "Wednesday Group" is all about.

The first story talks about John McCain's efforts to win the Presidency in 2008. Keep in mind that the ongoing feud between McCain and Norquist is in large part over campaign finance reform, and Norquist has been clearly implicated in the Jack Abramoff scandal, which revealed problems that this legislation is designed to fix. As Norquist once said, the power of religious right groups "has always been ministers who let the coalition hand out materials." Political materials, that is. Things like voter guides.

When asked in a radio interview to comment on the early lead of John McCain and Rudy Giuliani in the polls for 2008's Republican nomination for the presidency, James Dobson said he would not vote for John McCain "under any circumstances." He said that McCain is joining with Democrats in supporting pending legislation to require groups like Focus on the Family to report expenses and contributions any time they try to get their members to contact members of Congress or engage in many other activities that are commonly used to influence elections and votes. The legislation, he claimed, would silence Christian voices and keep them from being able to communicate with Congress.

American Family Association Donald Wildmon, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins and American Values President Gary Bauer (all of whom you may remember from last fall's Republican Christian event, the Values Voters Summit), are also asking their members to oppose the legislation, saying it is an effort to silence Christians. If having to report their contributions and expenditures makes it impossible for them to speak, however, one must wonder what they are hiding.

Dobson launched into a tirade about how Republicans blamed Christians' heavy involvement in government for their defeat and said, "Values Voters are not going to carry the water for the Republican Party if it ignores their deeply held convictions and beliefs." He has previously said that without Christians, Republicans would have fallen in a hole in 2004 and John Kerry would be president right now. Then, perhaps unwittingly revealing the person pulling his strings, Dobson said, "Republican leaders in Congress during this term apparently never understood, or they forgot, why Ronald Reagan was so loved and why he is considered one of our greatest presidents. [Norquist is Chairman of the Reagan Legacy Project] If they hope to return to power in '08, they must rediscover the conservative principles that resonated with the majority of Americans in the 1980s – and still resonate with them today. Failure to do so will be catastrophic." Not coincidentally, the President of Dobson's Focus on the Family is Don Hodel, a former Reagan Administration cabinet member. And it was Reagan who tapped Norquist to run Americans for Tax Reform, an in-house Administration effort to build support for his tax policies.

The Norquist-Christian Right anti-McCain dynamic is nothing new. The same tactics were used in 2000. McCain wants to stop the use of these sorts of groups to hide political contributions and expenditures. The right wing, under the leadership of Norquist, wants to take advantage of Christian groups to conduct political campaigning off the record. Recently, Norquist had this is to say about James Dobson:

"As someone who’s interested in trends, the most important effect he has on politics is not that every once in a while he’ll endorse candidates, although I understand he doesn’t do a lot of that, but he has done some in the past. But the fact is that people who get married and stay married and have kids vote Republican. For every intact family he’s helped create, promote, or prolong, he’s actually created more small “c” conservatives. So the private is public. The personal is political.… If a baseball player said, 'Write your congressman,' I’m not sure if people would listen. The level of trust that he has and respect people have for him over time gives him a fairly powerful voice."

And there is no better, more "personal" way to scare Christian voters away from a candidate than to have a religious leader that they trust tell them that candidate is trying to prevent them from speaking out about politics – trying to shut them up and make them go away.

The other article that caught my eye today was an op-ed by Rabbi Daniel Lapin warning Christians that they are indeed under attack by liberals and urging them to "resist." Lapin has previously been very active in raising the alarm over the phony "war on Christmas." Comparing the "attack" to the efforts of Hitler to end the English way of life and the terrorists' attack on the United States on September 11, 2001, he says:

[A] serious war is being waged against a group of Americans. I am certain that if we lose this war, the consequences for American civilization will be dire. Phase one of this war I describe is a propaganda blitzkrieg that is eerily reminiscent of how effectively the Goebbels propaganda machine softened up the German people for what was to come. There is no better term than propaganda blitzkrieg to describe what has been unleashed against Christian conservatives recently.

Lapin writes that the potential loss of Christians in America terrifies him. You really have to read the editorial to believe it. It is fearmongering of the worst kind.

Where does Norquist fit in with Lapin? Well first, I happen to know that one of Lapin's staffers at his group Toward Tradition, Elie Pieprz, used to work for Norquist at Americans for Tax Reform (I worked with Pieprz during the time Norquist was laundering money for Bill Sizemore). But that in itself isn't terribly significant. Neither is the fact that Lapin is "close friends" with Tom DeLay and frequently meets with Karl Rove or stays with Jack Abramoff, all of whom are tightly linked with Norquist.

The direct connection actually began when Norquist, before focusing his efforts on bringing Muslims into the Republican fold, worked with Rabbi Lapin to win over Jews for the GOP.

Norquist is one of the undisputed masters of Republican coalition building. And so it is no surprise that he has turned his attention to America's fast-growing Muslim population, which by some accounts now stands at seven million strong. (Although two other recent reports suggest it is less than three million.) "He's worked with [Rabbi Daniel] Lapin to bring Jews into the fold," says one Norquist associate. "That was an uphill effort. So he figured that he could turn Muslims into the obvious counterweight to the relationship between the Jews and Dems."

The relationship between Norquist and Lapin is so close that Lapin was reported by the Washington Jewish Week to have formally introduced Norquist and his new Muslim bride to attendees at their 2005 wedding reception.

Norquist has, in short, been working for years to bring together members of the world's three great religions - Christianity, Islam, and Judaism - in a political movement in support of the GOP. Now, as he senses the desire of the Christian community to pull away, having been burned by Bush, he is working to keep them in the fold. Fear is his ally.

Norquist is the consummate strategist. He does not allow decency to get in the way of his efforts. And so he is now orchestrating, with the complicity of his close political friends and allies, a complex plot to convince Christians that their very existence and religious freedom depends on defeating moderate Republicans and all Democrats and their efforts to clean up the political system – efforts that could interfere with the dirty right-wing's attempts to retake control of this country.

Posted by Becky at 01:23 PM |

In which another conservative sees the light

Having been against the Iraq invasion and occupation from the outset, I've had a lot of affirmation on my position. Despite being called an unpatriotic, traitorous, anti-American coward..I have not waivered from my belief that this adventure absolutely immoral and unjustified.

Had I been wrong, I'm certain I'd have reexamined by beliefs and adjusted them accordingly. But I don't think I'd have felt the kind of Richter Scale shift as this:

As President Bush marched the country to war with Iraq, even some voices on the Right warned that this was a fool's errand. I dismissed them angrily. I thought them unpatriotic.

But almost four years later, I see that I was the fool.

In Iraq, this Republican President for whom I voted twice has shamed our country with weakness and incompetence, and the consequences of his failure will be far, far worse than anything Carter did.

The fraud, the mendacity, the utter haplessness of our government's conduct of the Iraq war have been shattering to me.

It wasn't supposed to turn out like this. Not under a Republican President.

I turn 40 next month -- middle aged at last -- a time of discovering limits, finitude. I expected that. But what I did not expect was to see the limits of finitude of American power revealed so painfully.

I did not expect Vietnam.

As I sat in my office last night watching President Bush deliver his big speech, I seethed over the waste, the folly, the stupidity of this war.

I had a heretical thought for a conservative - that I have got to teach my kids that they must never, ever take Presidents and Generals at their word - that their government will send them to kill and die for noble-sounding rot - that they have to question authority.

On the walk to the parking garage, it hit me. Hadn't the hippies tried to tell my generation that? Why had we scorned them so blithely?

Will my children, too small now to understand Iraq, take me seriously when I tell them one day what powerful men, whom their father once believed in, did to this country? Heavy thoughts for someone who is still a conservative despite it all. It was a long drive home.

This commentary is from Rod Dreher, a long-time conservative columnist.

I recognize that Mr. Dreher still considers himself a conservative. But after reading this essay I believe that Dreher has taken the first important steps away from that ideology. He's articulating the need to question authority and never take things at face value.

Those are the traits of a liberal.

Dreher isn't just reexamining beliefs and making minor shift adjustments. He's having to dissect all that he's embraced and realize that its folly. And he's doing it at a time in his life that's fundamental: as a father of young children.

He's not just changing his belief set to satisfy himself. He's doing it because he's a father who wants to raise his children.

Dreher is growing up and moving away from his childish beliefs of conservatism because he has no other moral choice. And he knows it.

(via Glen Greenwald)

Posted by Carla at 09:02 AM |

Its been so long since we had oversight that no one remembers what its like

Now that the Dems actually get to do stuff like say, OVERSIGHT, its making things uncomfy in some circles of the Executive Branch.

So uncomfy in fact that the Republicans are rallying all of their media to pounce. They seem to be directing their angst at a couple of the more outspoken women in the Democratic Party.

As the post below this one indicates, they went after Nancy Pelosi in a hail mary move of epic stupidity.

During a hearing on Thursday, Senator Barbara Boxer said the following to Secretary Rice:

“Who pays the price? I’m not going to pay a personal price. My kids are too old and my grandchild is too young. You’re not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, with an immediate family. So who pays the price? The American military and their families. And I just want to bring us back to that fact.”

This prompted Rice to run sniveling to the New York Times that Boxer had set feminism back.

I had no idea that stating matters of fact about the war in Iraq were such a blow to feminism.

Boxer's point to Rice is completely valid. Neither of them will feel the loss of a child to the civil war in Iraq. Boxer is trying to show Rice how important it is to have empathy for families who will.

Far be it for Republicans to actually give a shit about the pain experienced by families who lose loved ones in Iraq, eh?

This escalation of the Iraq Civil War has the potential to impact me. If a draft is instituted and US involvement in the war continues just a year past Bush's term, my son will be old enough to be drafted.

Don't think that doesn't scare the crap out of me.

Of course, the moment they institute a draft for this mess--that's when I think the American people may just take up arms and overrun the Executive Branch and kick Bush's sorry ass out altogether.

Either that or they'll be an American family exodus out of this country of people who won't allow their children to be involuntarily slaughtered for this President.

Posted by Carla at 08:40 AM |

January 12, 2007

The conservoblog hand wringers screw up another one

Update: Over at Kos, dday's diary has a good explanation of this. Better than mine, actually.

Conservative bloggers all over this Moonie Times piece bellowing that Nancy Pelosi is exempting a big tuna company from the new minimum wage law because the corporation is based in her district:

On Wednesday, the House voted to raise the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 per hour. The bill also extends for the first time the federal minimum wage to the U.S. territory of the Northern Mariana Islands. However, it exempts American Samoa, another Pacific island territory that would become the only U.S. territory not subject to federal minimum-wage laws. One of the biggest opponents of the federal minimum wage in Samoa is StarKist Tuna, which owns one of the two packing plants that together employ more than 5,000 Samoans, or nearly 75 percent of the island's work force. StarKist's parent company, Del Monte Corp., has headquarters in San Francisco, which is represented by Mrs. Pelosi. The other plant belongs to California-based Chicken of the Sea.

The wingers are going apeshit:

Iowa Voice:

I hate to say I told you so, but….I told you so. Democrats practice a form of double standards and hypocrisy like nobody else on earth. And it doesn’t even faze them. I’ve said many a time over the past year or so on this blog that for them to stand there and complain about how “poorly” they were treated in Congress, how the Republicans shut them out, how corrupt Republicans were, blah, blah, blah, was the biggest load of manure ever manufactured by man or beast in this country. And again, I’ve been proven correct.

Blogs for Bush(that they can still use this name shows how shameless they are):

That's right, something is fishy. Anyone who has any basic understanding of economics knows that raising the minimum wage results in higher prices and job losses... It is no coincidence that Samoa has been exempt because Nancy Pelosi doesn't want a company in her district to be adversely affected by a minimum wage increase.

Outside The Beltway:

Well apparently everybody who works for minimum wage will get a pay increase except for those living in America Samoa. And ironically, the biggest employer in America Samoa? StarKist Tuna. StarKist is owned by Del Monte and is headquartered in San Francisco in Pelosi’s district. I’m sure it is a complete oversight. Oh and if you are wondering whether or not your typically cannery worker earns more than the minimum wage, the answer appears to be, “No.”

Not that rightwing bloggers can be counted on to DO ACTUAL RESEARCH ON A TOPIC...but for crying out loud. This one is too easy.

American Samoa is already covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act, which means they already have to pay the minimum wage designated by the Department of Labor.

In addition, Pelosi's office has directed the Chair of the Education and Labor Committee to direct American territories to use the same standard.

This exact minimum wage bill has been introduced since 1999. DelMonte apparently didn't purchase their factory in American Samoa until 2002. Pelosi supposedly set this up just to help DelMonte? LOL wow..what foresight she must have!

Given the fact that the bill doesn't name StarKist, DelMonte or any particular company specifically..the Republicans are once again left grasping at straws.

Its as if they set this stuff up on purpose to give us liberal bloggers something to hit out of the park.

Posted by Carla at 04:30 PM |

Six Times Not Charming for Dobson

Six researchers in three countries in less than a year have come forward complaining that James Dobson is distorting their research in his references to it. Most recently, Dobson wrote a guest opinion in TIME Magazine about Mary Cheney's pregnancy and condemned same sex parenting. To support his view, he quoted two researchers, who immediately issued statements that he had distorted their research. The same week, an author and professor said she was "incensed" that he had misquoted her in another article. Three similar incidents have occurred in the past several months. Dobson's defense: the professors are "liberal" and "politically correct." I'm not sure how that explains either the lying on Dobson's part - six times, or his decision to hold up their work as reliable in the first place.

Posted by Becky at 10:30 AM |

Establishment of State "Unitarian" Religion?

When I first read about a U.S. Navy chaplain who was court-martialed and ejected from military service for violating a direct order and praying "in Jesus' name" I didn't have a real concern about it. After all, his superior had ordered him not to because he did not see the event – a White House rally – as being the appropriate place for an official sectarian prayer. But after reading the chaplain's rationale, I have had to reconsider my position.

Chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt says that by ordering chaplains to pray in a certain way, the Navy (and the government itself) is creating a "civic religion" – an official Unitarian system of religion that discriminates against Christians. He convinced Congress to rescind the Navy policy, but his court battle for reinstatement continues. He is hoping the Supreme Court will have to take up the question of whether the government can dictate how people will pray and whether doing so is establishing a Unitarian religion.

Is it allowed under the First Amendment to dictate to a chaplain acting in an official capacity as a chaplain what he may or may not say in a prayer? Are we becoming so concerned about not offending those who are not Christian that we are actually moving toward the establishment of an official Unitarian religion? Is there some reason to expect something other than a prayer to Jesus when a Christian chaplain is asked to pray? I'm tending to think the chaplain has a very valid point here.

Posted by Becky at 10:22 AM |

January 11, 2007

Former Sizemore Staffer Does Good

Cathy Epley, who once served as a researcher on Bill Sizemore's gubernatorial campaign, has found her niche in life, putting her writing skills to work and launching a company to help her father find the grant funding to turn his life-changing medical invention into a reality. It's been a long road for Cathy, moving on from the campaign to heading up Citizens for a Sound Economy for a short time, and then to working for a medical device start up company that couldn't afford to keep her on full time. Nothing seemed to be working out for her. Then she had a brilliant idea and she made it work. And I've got to tell you, it just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside to see what she's doing with her life now.

Many years ago, Cathy's father, John Epley, came up with a cure for benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, or BPPV. People who suffer from the condition will, at the slightest tip of the head, feel a whirling sensation and be overwhelmed with nausea. Their eyeballs even twitch. It can go on for years, and before Dr. Epley figured out the cause and cure, tens of thousands of sufferers a year had no hope. Unfortunately, he was for years seen by his peers as a quack and forced to legally defend his license to practice medicine. All because his cure was too easy. You just had to tilt and roll the patient in a particular way and the vertigo would disappear, often permanently.

Dr. Epley designed and built a motorized chair that would allow him to treat all his patients with the disorder, no matter their weight or other physical limitations. And here is where Cathy's talents entered the picture. She realized the treatment needed to be more widely available and was determined to see to it that her father could build and sell his amazing invention. She spent months writing up plans, talking to venture capitalists, and seeking grants. Finally she turned to the National Institutes of Health's small business innovation program and everything began to turn around. She managed to secure several federal grants and was able to hire an engineer and technicians to build the chair. Specialists are now conducting clinical trials of the chair and if satisfactory, the FDA might allow sales to begin next year. Cathy is now negotiating with distributors.

Congratulations, Cathy, on your well-deserved success. It is a wonderful thing when people find a way to use their talents to make the world a better place.

Posted by Becky at 01:42 PM |

He's the Escalator

We're in stay the course plus 21,500 mode it seems.

The President and his staff have no plan for this mess. This is a last ditch effort to salvage the unsalvageable.

As of last month, it was reported that our military is stretched beyond its limits. He's asking for troops that don't exist with no timetable and no specific articulated goals.

We're going the wrong way on this Escalator.

Its time for us to bail off.

Posted by Carla at 09:42 AM |

Tasty GM Zombie Animal Clones

Animal rights activist have complained for years about the treatment of factory farm animals who are confined in cramped conditions that are very different from their natural habitat, resulting in aggressive behavior. Now scientists are working on using genetic modification to create farm animals that are basically "animal vegetables" – having had their aggression gene removed, the animals would be "highly prolific and oblivious to their physical and mental status." Problem solved? Not to me. You don't have to be afraid of playing God to be concerned about the implications of this.

Genetic modification is also being used to create much larger animals that produce more meat per animal more quickly. It can take supersizing to levels not possible by selective breeding alone. But genetic modification and cloning are not a panacea:

[M]any of the GM experiments on animals have resulted in cruelty, producing mutants or animals which grow so large in the womb that they can only be surgically removed.

Something about all this is terribly unsettling to me. I'm not a vegetarian, and my primary issue with factory farming is the suffering of the animals. But if the animals are mentally incapable of suffering, does that make the mistreatment okay? I can't help but wonder if the animals would actually still be suffering, but would simply lack the motivation to make it known that they were dissatisfied with their conditions, and simply be resigned to their fate. How would we even know? And I wonder about the impact on their human caregivers – if you can treat an animal any way you like and it will still be compliant and apparently content, will your standard of care stay the same or decline? Will it even matter?

And then there's the whole question of where to place an "animal vegetable" on the food pyramid.

Posted by Becky at 09:20 AM |

January 10, 2007

Urine Test for Public Assistance?

I received an email with a photograph of a letter to the editor purportedly written by Leonard Wilson in Riddle, Oregon proposing requiring urine tests to receive public assistance. Whether the letter was legitimately published or not is hard to say, but it is provocative and I thought it might be fun to discuss here.

It reads:

I have a question, not only for Douglas County, but for the entire state of Oregon. Like a lot of folks in this state, I have a job. I work, they pay me, I pay my taxes and the government distributes my taxes as they see fit. In order for me to get that paycheck, I am required to pass a random urine test, which I have no problem with.

What I do have a problem with is the distribution of my taxes to people who don't have to pass a urine test. Shouldn't one have to pass a urine test to get a welfare check, because I have to pass one to go earn it for them?

Please understand, I have nothing against helping people get back on their feet. I do, on the other hand, have a problem with helping someone sit on their butt. Could you imagine how much money the state would save if people had to pass a urine test to get a public assistance check?

Some might argue that Leonard is displaying the erroneous belief that the welfare system is plagued by good-for-nothing, drug-using abusers of the system. Whether he is or not, I think all can agree that at least a few of such people do manage to obtain assistance. So the question really is whether drug abuse should preclude a citizen's access to the government safety net. One obvious point here is that there is a world of difference between a private company requiring a urine test of its employees in a relationship that is voluntary and the government requiring access to private biological data of citizens for any reason. But is it worth the intrusion by government into the personal privacy of all welfare recipients in order to catch the few who are using illegal drugs? Could that access be abused at any time in the future? If someone was found to be using illegal drugs, would the police be notified? If illegal drug users were dumped from the system, what would happen to their children?

What do you think of Leonard Wilson's idea?

Posted by Becky at 10:10 AM |

Dead Birds Stirring Up Already Spooked Public

After last week's sudden, inexplicable die-off of scores of birds in Austin, Texas, reports yesterday of a massive die-off of song birds around the town of Esperance in Western Australia are getting people rather spooked. Hundreds of carcasses have been found over the past three weeks and now every bird in the area appears to be dead. Autopsies have found no infectious cause. All over the world it seems that people who are already traumatized by unusual weather and unsettling world events are taking an acute interest in the phenomenon.

Several bloggers have posted the story, and the comments being received are both conspiratorial and hilariously funny. Fishgrease at the Daily Kos asks whether the birds are the proverbial canary in the coal mine and notes that around his own home he has noticed a conspicuous absence of birds this winter. So he's asking readers to participate in a survey telling where they live and whether they have noticed any change in bird population.

On Atlas Shrugs, several readers are subscribing to the notion that the bird kills are the result of terrorism:

Maybe the terrorists are doing some dry runs. This could be a result of the "peace dividend" that our new congress brings to the fore.

If the Islamic terrorists think we're going to wimp out in Iraq (they may not be wrong in this), of course they'll see it as weakness and move to his the U.S. for appeasing the Islamic terrorists themselves.

When it comes to the diabolical devious plans of those Islamofacists who want us dead, nothing should be taken for granted.

We should react as if it's intentional.

Somewhere in a cave in Pakistan, Bin Laden is smiling as the world scratches it's ass over the strange smell and the dead birds...

The readers of Dvorak are a bit more creative:

A bunch of birds ate some moldy bird seed out of someones yard and croaked.

Actually, getting rid of the grackles WOULD be a sign of the end-times - at least make Austin a bit closer to heaven on earth.

Quick!! Nuke Austin to stop the bird flu from spreading!

Was this one part of Pat Robertson’s predictions?

Did John take a dump in the port-a-potty again? Those are for the construction workers dude.

And Peonyden takes a more scientific look:

My money is on some form of insecticide spray - but for all the Honeyeaters to have gone first, it requires their food sources (mainly native flowering trees such as Eucalypts and Banksias) to have been poisoned. Why? Has there been an outbreak of spraying of Christmas Beetles in WA [Western Australia]? That my best guess.

Until more reports come to light, we should leave this report up in the air. I would not mind betting that it is some form of human "cock-up" but, those are the hardest cases to prove, because if it is something like that, then the humans responsible will be covering their tracks, and denying any knowledge.

Is it a sign from God? Global warming? The result of electro-magnetic weather manipulation? A communist plot? A carefully crafted lie by the Illuminati meant to further traumatize the public and prepare them for the coming of the false messiah who will take over the world? A heretofore unknown disease? A secret military test gone awry? A sign of alien activity? What do you think caused the bird die-off?

Posted by Becky at 09:48 AM |

January 09, 2007

Lobbying Groups Should Have to Reveal Contributors

Public Citizen has released a list of 12 "Astroturf" groups – fake grassroots groups – that have spent millions of dollars to influence legislation and public policy while effectively masking the contributors whose voices are actually represented. Most of their money actually comes from wealthy corporate interests, and frequently the groups' names mislead the public as to their true intent. Often the groups serve merely as conduits for the purpose of moving money around to keep its source hidden. Public Citizen is calling on the Senate to pass a disclosure requirement for these organizations and the lobbyists who work for them.

The measure under consideration in the Senate would require these groups to report amounts spent on grassroots lobbying if they are already registered under lobbying laws and if expenditures on grassroots lobbying campaigns exceed $25,000 per quarter. A similar bill containing this provision passed the Senate last year, and the House of Representatives will consider the matter as part of its package of legislative changes presented this month.

A few choice members of the list of 12 groups:

21st Century Energy Project
Issue: Energy

Ran television and print ads attacking "liberal elites" opposed to the President's energy proposal. Told the press funding came from its ten member organizations, but eight of those groups denied they had contributed to the project. Research revealed the money came from Enron (after being covertly funneled through Americans for Tax Reform) and Daimler-Chrysler (after being covertly funneled through Citizens for a Sound Economy).

Americans for Technology Leadership
Issue: Microsoft Anti-Trust Litigation

Partially funded by Microsoft, this group orchestrated a letter-writing campaign to attorneys general in 18 states that had joined the Justice Department anti-trust litigation against Microsoft. The group telephoned people "surveying" them on their views of Microsoft. Those were supported the company were then sent individualized letters to sign and send in to various AGs. The letters were written in different fonts on different types of stationery to disguise the fact that they were part of a coordinated campaign. At least two dead people sent letters as part of this effort.

American Taxpayers Alliance
Issue: Energy

Spent $1.8 million on ads attacking California Gov. Gray Davis for his handling of the state's energy issues. The campaign was entirely funded by Reliant Energy and Duke Power, two companies at the heart of the state's energy crisis. Both companies have since agreed to pay more than $700 million to settle allegations they manipulated markets during the state's 2000-2001 energy crisis.

Century Strategies
Issue: Anti-Gambling on Behalf of a Casino-Owning Tribe

Ralph Reed's company, it ran a grassroots campaign to oppose pro-gambling measures. Using money from one tribe (that was covertly funneled through Americans for Tax Reform), Reed coordinated the Christian community to oppose the development of casinos that would have competed with those owned by the contributing tribe.

Citizens for Better Medicare
Issue: Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit

A front group for the pharmaceutical industry. Spent $65 million during the 2000 election cycle to block legislation that would have provided a Medicare prescription drug benefit.

Save Our Species Alliance
Issue: Land Use Issues

Tried to gut the Endangered Species Act.

United Seniors Association
Issue: Medicare Prescription Drug Legislation

Received nearly $50 million in two years from the Pharmaceutical Research Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) to support candidates who supported the Medicare prescription drug legislation favored by PhRMA.

Requiring disclosure of all groups engaged in lobbying is a good idea. As is clear from the names and backers of the groups above, it's not just what someone is saying – it matters who is saying it, too. The corporations who fund these astroturf groups know that - otherwise, they wouldn't go to such lengths to hide their involvement. If democracy is going to really work, then the voters and their elected representatives need to know whose voice they are hearing.

Posted by Becky at 11:24 AM |

Republican Sneak Attack Kicks Off Session

I was disappointed this morning to read how quickly Oregon Republicans started playing games in the Legislature. Last week Republican leaders agreed to support new rules Democrats wanted to limit the value of gifts legislators can receive to $10. Basically, that allows them to accept a souvenir mug or a pen, but not anything of real value. But yesterday, in a sneak attack on Democrats, Republicans put out a press release calling for a total ban on all gifts and then tried to use the issue to paint the Democrats as being insincere about their promises to reduce the power of lobbyists.

NW Republican addressed the matter in a post with the very unfair title of "Democrats Want Lobbyist Gifts To Keep Coming." The fact is, Democrats banned restaurant meals, resort trips, sporting event tickets, entertainment, etc. – everything that has a value capable of influencing a vote. Do Republicans really believe someone's vote could be altered because they received a mug or a pen? Those items are nothing more than glorified business cards.

If Oregon Republicans are worried about their relevance, this sort of childish behavior isn't the answer. What makes them think Democrats will listen to them or work with them on important issues like the reform of Measure 37 if Republicans won't leave their bag of dirty tricks at home and play straight? Some of us out here take these matters very seriously and don't appreciate having to rely on a bunch of clowns to represent our views. It's high time Republicans woke up to the fact that they are not in the majority right now specifically because people are tired of their lying, cheating, and back-door dealing. I hope Democrats heard that message, and based on their passage of this bill yesterday, it seems they did.

Posted by Becky at 10:33 AM |

January 08, 2007

Stem Cell Debate Could Be Over

Could it be that the end to controversy in the matter of stem cell research could be right around the corner? Maybe so, if scientists are right about the newly discovered abilities of stem cells found in amniotic fluid. So far, amniotic stem cells are proving to do as well as embryonic stem cells in forming fat, liver, nerves, blood vessels, and other tissues. But unlike embryonic stem cells, amniotic stem cells don't form tumors, meaning they could turn out to be a better source for the treatment of disorders like Parkinson's and Azheimer's. Scientists say that so far, the cells have been able to do everything they have tried to get them to do.

For those who love debate, the timing of the release of their research couldn't be better; Democrats are just about to introduce legislation to remove limits on funding for research on embryonic stem cells. Let's hope this guy, whose opening comment on the study was, "Oh oh, potential bad news for abortion advocates," isn't an indication of the quality of debate ahead.

Posted by Becky at 11:57 AM |

January 07, 2007

Pay More to Boost Insurance Rates

I'm a bit miffed about talk of adding a surcharge on our automobile insurance in Oregon to pay for more state troopers. Basically, it's going to mean we all have to pay more in automobile insurance so that there will be more cops writing up tickets for us that will increase our automobile insurance rates. What, did the insurance companies donate big to the Democrats this year or something?

Posted by Becky at 11:09 AM |

An ideologue comes home to roost

Not being British and not having lived there its entirely possible that the citizens of that nation are experiencing a raft of religious persecution and subjugation. The possibility of such a tyranny, however unlikely, could happen.

But this hair-on-fire rhetoric by Tobias Jones feels more like a desperate move to sound a hollow alarm:

There's an aspiring totalitarianism in Britain which is brilliantly disguised. It's disguised because the would-be dictators - and there are many of them - all pretend to be more tolerant than thou. They hide alongside the anti-racists, the anti-homophobes and anti-sexists. But what they are really against is something very different. They - call them secular fundamentalists - are anti-God, and what they really want is the eradication of religion, and all believers, from the face of the earth.

"...eradication of religion, and all believers, from the face of the earth..."???

If you're going to make a point about secularists--this is a really lousy place to start. As a general rule, secularists aren't especially interested in the goings on of the religious lives of individuals and their families. As long as you leave religion out of government and governmentally-funded entities, I don't know of a single secularist who gives a rat's ass about the issue.

The "eradication" claim is so heavy handed as to put this paragraph into the rhetorical diarreah dustbin before the reader can move their eyes to the next set of Jones' points.

Worse are Jones' wide-eyed attempts at backing up his points with evidence which is shameful on his part. For example, Jones opines the reaction to the storming of a theatre in Birmingham by Sikhs unhappy with the theatre's production. Jones glosses over the violence at the theatre, depicting the reaction as an attempt to paint the Sikhs as intolerant.

Earth to Jones: the Sikhs who committed this incident painted themselves as intolerant. No massaging of the situation by a secularist is necessary.

Jones further trots out a nasty comment made by secularist Richard Dawkins:

Believers are ridiculed for being, in contrast to the stupendously brainy atheists, very dim. Listen to Richard Dawkins' comment on Nadia Eweida (the BA employee who refused to take off her cross): "she had one of the most stupid faces I've ever seen." Nice.

While out of context, Dawkins comments are certainly unkind at best and certainly not excusable. But the prism Jones uses to view the acts of Dawkins don't seem to include the acts of religious fundamentalists who refer to secularists and liberals as immoral and evil.

Jones' piece is illustrative of an ideologue who has rooted himself firmly on one side of the fence. His view is extreme and unhealthy--and I think it pushes those on the end of the other spectrum into a continuing spiral of extremism on their side.

Its one thing to have a specific set of views and beliefs. Its another thing to become so focused on them to the point of myopia on those of others.

This insular set of beliefs might be a comfy, cozy place to sit in a perfect world but resembles little of reality.

Posted by Carla at 10:57 AM |

January 06, 2007

Bush Explains His Transformation to Fiscal Conservative

A lot of people have been wondering what's up with President Bush's sudden transformation into a fiscal conservative now that the Democrats control Congress. Abstract Nonsense, Berkeley Bubble, Media Girl, and others have noted the irony in Bush's call for Congress to balance the budget in five years, stop funding "pet projects," and adopt earmarks reforms in light of the incredibly out of control spending we've seen so far during his Administration.

Now the President has offered an explanation.

Bush, according to aides, feels "liberated" to insist on fiscal restraint. He was more or less obligated--or at least felt he was—to sign spending bills passed by a Republican Congress. But with a Democratic Congress, "he can be bolder than he otherwise might have been," an aide says. That means a willingness--perhaps an eagerness--to use the veto. In his first six years as president, Bush often threatened vetoes but vetoed only a single measure.

"Liberated." The very same word Rush Limbaugh used when he expressed his relief at no longer having to "carry water" for the Republicans. You see, it's not Bush or Rush who were the problem - it was those horrible Republican members of Congress. Getting rid of them was no loss - it was liberating! I smell Karl Rove.

Posted by Becky at 11:53 AM |

Ice cream mountains and cotton candy skies...

For folks who've decided to wed themselves to the President come hell or high water--there has to be some sort of self-imposed exile from reality.

I can find no other plausible explanation for blog posts such as this:

Today’s approval numbers via Rasmussen are:

45% approval for Bush
43% approval for Pelosi

Well, that's half the numbers. Filling in the other half (which, to Surber's credit, is linked from his post), we see that Bush is at 45% job approval and 54% disapproval, while Pelosi is at 43% favorable and 39% unfavorable. So Pelosi seems ahead of Bush (+4 vs. -9) rather than behind. And the talk in the Surber post about the media's "false ... impressions," media "conventional wisdom [being] flushed down the toilet," and media "lies," seems like something of an overstatement.

To take this poll in isolation (especially given Bush's well below 45% approval ratings on every other poll) is ludicrous. The author of this piece can't sincerely believe that the President is sitting on a 45% approval rating unless he's batshit delusional.

The polling on Pelosi is meaningless because her name recognition is low. The stupidity of comparing her ratings to Bush should speak for itself.

Honestly, I'm surprised at the depth this blog writer goes to insulate himself in order to validate his premise.

Posted by Carla at 09:03 AM |

January 05, 2007

Sizemore Has a New Sugar Daddy

I just received the latest news bulletin from Our Oregon, the arch-enemy of Bill Sizemore. As the news it contains does not yet appear to be up on their website [update: it's posted now], I will reproduce it in full here. In a nutshell, it seems Sizemore has found a new sugar daddy: Jeld-Wen's very wealthy owner, Dick Wendt. And it appears to be a mutually beneficial relationship.

Breaking news - Bill Sizemore's new best friend

It seems that Bill Sizemore has planted his flag into the moonscape of Oregon's land use laws and has at least one new sugar daddy to pay the way.

Last year Sizemore moved south to be closer to his BFF, Dick Wendt, the Jeld-Wen window magnate. Sizemore and Wendt aren't new pals, of course. Wendt gave Sizemore more than $40,000 for his embarrassing gubernatorial run in 1998 and has been a loyal funder of his numerous ballot measures. But now the relationship seems to have gone to a new level. They're even living in the same town.

On Dec. 7th, Sizemore started a new company, the innocuously named "Oregon Homeowners Association" based in Klamath Falls. Also located in K-Falls are Wendt, Jeld-Wen, and Wendt's well-funded "think tanks," Americans for Full Employment and For Our Grandchildren. Wendt uses these organizations to spread propaganda for his pet projects such as paying sub-minimum wage salaries to workers who are "in training," and privatizing Social Security for the benefit of investors, not retirees.

Wendt seems to keep his misinformation machines well oiled. Americans for Full Employment had revenues of more than $6 million in 2005. Both of the Wendt groups are housed at 2636 Biehn Street in K-Falls. And in an AMAZING COINCIDENCE, that's exactly the address of Sizemore's new "company."

Hmmmmm....

Well, as The Oregonian recently pointed out, Sizemore is an "initiative peddler," and he certainly has a knack for anticipating political profit centers. Case in point: Sizemore has filed several measures relating to Oregon's land use system at the same time the state legislature is discussing how to make Measure 37 more fair for regular people and stop big land speculators form cashing in on the change in the land use law.

Dick Wendt, one of the richest men in Oregon and an unabashed land speculator. His company contributed $47,000 to pass Measure 37 and Jeld-Wen is part of the Suncadia development group that is working to build 3,200 vacation homes on timberland on the eastern side of the Washington Cascades, near Roslyn. The land was sold to Jeld-Wen/Suncadia by Plum Creek Timber out of Seattle, the largest private landholder in America.

Hmmmmm....Plum Creek. Sounds familiar.

Last month - at the last moment before the deadline - Plum Creek Timber filed the largest Measure 37 claim in the state. They want to put up a housing development on timber land in Lincoln County. If current forest protection rules aren't waived, they claim, the local taxpayers owe them $94.8 million.

So Bill Sizemore is living in K-Falls working on land-use ballot initiatives...probably living off of M37 funder Dick Wendt...who is probably in line to get a juicy development contract...thanks to the biggest M37 claim ever filed. Got it.

And to make things even more interesting, according to the address Sizemore listed on several of the ballot measures filed for 2008, he's been staying in some pretty nice digs for someone who has said under oath that he has no income. The house at the address on Vale Street is a five bedroom, four bathroom $725,000 McMansion. Here's a picture. My golly, you may ask yourself, where did Sizemore get the money for that? It's unclear. The house is currently being leased with the option to buy.

Sizemore is also on the street with several ballot measures not related to land use. Signature gatherers are working in Portland, Coos Bay and Ashland, among other places. Mostly they claim to be employed by the Sizemore & Tim Trickey company, Democracy Direct. Meanwhile, the fraud and racketeering lawsuit against him continues on. Here's the most recent update.

Posted by Becky at 04:53 PM |

What is Happening to Christianity?

So many things about the modern Christian movement puzzle me, most notably its commercialization and loss of focus on the real heart of the faith. A clear example of this is FoxFaith's new film "Thr3e," a thriller, sans sex and gore, being marketed heavily to Christians. I don't get why there would be a market among Christians for a thriller full of dark, gratuitous violence and terror. Moreover, I think the compounded effect of such "worldly" influences is beginning to render Christianity meaningless.

In Phillippians 4:8, Christians are given instructions that one would clearly expect would steer them away from thrillers, even tamed-down ones such as "Thr3e":

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

As entertaining as thrillers and slasher movies are to some people, I don't think any reasonable person would say they are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, of good report, virtuous, or praiseworthy. In other words, they are not the sort of thing the practicing Christian would be expected to spend time watching, as Christians – at least the ones I've always known – strive to maintain a spirit of love, peace, joy, goodness, and kindness.

The plot of "Thr3e" features a seminary student being stalked by a killer who tries to lure him with Bible-based riddles to places where bombs are waiting to kill him. If he refused to solve the riddles, he would stay safe, but he can't help himself and bites on the bait every time, escaping explosion after explosion in the nick of time with the help of two lovely young women.

Because the very nature of Christianity (at least that based on the words of Jesus) is non-violent and innocent, Christians' attempts at worldliness often fall flat, and this film is no exception. One reviewer wrote:

Thr3e" is r3ally, r3ally aw4ul. … If the Riddle Killer just has a thing for psychological torture, so do the filmmakers. … Very little in the movie makes sense, and almost nothing interesting happens. … At one point, Kevin stares off into nothingness, breathes deeply and exclaims, "I'm tired." So is the plot. And the audience.

Another reviewer had this to say:

Near the end of the new psychological thriller "Thr3e," the notorious "Riddle Killer" says, "I hate copycats."

One hopes that screenwriter Alan B. McElroy (adapting the novel by Ted Dekker) and director Robby Henson included this line as a clever, knowing wink. It comes near the end of a film that has spent nearly all of its 105 minutes relentlessly copying such stylish thrillers as "Se7en" and "Saw."

Obviously, the film stinks. But that's not really the point of this post. What bothers me about this film is that the one thing of real value that Christianity historically has brought to our society is its ability to set a higher, more "respectable" standard for thoughts and behavior, to sort of be a model of propriety and kindness for the rest of us (I already know a lot of you will disagree with me on that for any number of reasons, including ideal vs. real Christian behavior, as well as the very legitimacy of the Christian model, but I maintain that this has been historically important in the development of American culture). When Christians allow their faith to turn into meaningless mush by copying non-Christians in every way – i.e., frequent divorce, infidelity and sexual scandal, swinging, nudism, video games featuring the slaughter of non-Christians, and now dark-themed films – it has lost the only positive thing it really brought to our culture. What's the point of it in such a circumstance?

Posted by Becky at 01:57 PM |

Theocratization of Military and Police

Chris Hedges, the former New York Times Mideast Bureau chief and author of American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, has an article posted on Common Dreams this week entitled "America’s Holy Warriors." In it, he warns America "that the radical Christian right is coming dangerously close to its goal of co-opting the country’s military and law enforcement." This is not a knee-jerk conclusion. Hedges was raised a Christian and understands the faith. And he spent two years traveling around the country seeing with his own eyes the efforts underway to use the military and police to turn America into a Christian theocracy.

Of his two-year study, Hedges writes:

I repeatedly listened to radical preachers attack as corrupt and godless most American institutions, from federal agencies that provide housing and social welfare to public schools and the media. But there were two institutions that never came under attack—the military and law enforcement. While these preachers had no interest in communicating with local leaders of other faiths, or those in the community who did not subscribe to their call for a radical Christian state, they assiduously courted and flattered the military and police. They held special services and appreciation days for all four branches of the armed services and for various law enforcement agencies. They encouraged their young men and women to enlist or to join the police or state troopers. They sought out sympathetic military and police officials to attend church events where these officials were lauded and feted for their Christian probity and patriotism. They painted the war in Iraq not as an occupation but as an apocalyptic battle by Christians against Islam, a religion they regularly branded as “satanic.” All this befits a movement whose final aesthetic is violence. It also befits a movement that, in the end, would need the military and police forces to seize power in American society.

Where could this lead, and how close are we to a theocratic takeover?

If the United States falls into a period of instability caused by another catastrophic terrorist attack, an economic meltdown or a series of environmental disasters, these paramilitary forces, protected and assisted by fellow ideologues in the police and military, could swiftly abolish what is left of our eroding democracy. War, with the huge profits it hands to businesses and right-wing interests that often help bankroll the Christian right, could become a permanent condition. And the thugs with automatic weapons, black uniforms and wraparound sunglasses [the Christian Blackwater mercenaries] who appeared on street corners in Baghdad and New Orleans could appear on streets across the U.S. Such a presence could paralyze us with fear, leaving us unable to question or protest the closed system and secrecy of an emergent totalitarian state and unable to voice dissent.

“The Bush administration has already come close to painting our current wars as wars against Islam—many in the Christian right apparently have this belief,” Ratner said. “If these wars, bad enough as imperial wars, are fought as religious wars, we are facing a very dark age that could go on for a hundred years and that will be very bloody.”

Deanna Spingola, a writer on the conservative website News with Views, has just posted part 17 in her ongoing series on "The One World Order" – this one entitled, "The Theocrat in Washington." She shares Hedges's concerns and cites potent examples of how theocratic language has lured the naïve Christian community into the fold. Particularly powerful is this section:

General William G. “Jerry” Boykin, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, appeared at the Good Shepard Community Church in Boring, Oregon in June 2003, not the first or last of such events. During his multimedia presentation he stated: “Now ask yourself: Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him. Why is he there? … He’s in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this. God put him there to lead not only this nation but to lead the world in such a time as this.”

He further stated, “We in the army of God, in the house of God, kingdom of God, have been raised for such a time as this.” This is reminiscent of the Old Testament phrase: “and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” Some commentators, like Patrick Buchanan, saw nothing wrong with what Boykin said. Others viewed any hint of criticism as an attack on Christian values by the allegedly devious Democratic Party.

The concept that “God installed Bush” was disseminated by naïve pastors to numerous congregations. Consequently, prior to the Iraqi invasion, James Merritt, a former Southern Baptist Convention president, confirmed Bush’s self-proclaimed status as “God’s man for this hour” particularly because of the events of 9/11. So God installed Bush as a defender, someone to lead Americans into an immoral war? Yet this concept was disseminated throughout Christendom and Bush became the new leader of the religious right in America.

Both articles should be read carefully if we are to understand where we might be headed, how we got there, and how we can preserve our democracy and Constitution.

Posted by Becky at 10:31 AM |

Just when you thought it was safe to read rightwing blogs....

I've been following the story of Associated Press informant Jamil Hussein, who rightwing bloggers blasted as nonexistent and a sham by the AP to dishonestly tout the situation in Iraq.

Malkin, Powerline, NewsBusters, Jawa Report, etc. dumped a shitload of pixels on this story..trying to buffet their support for a deteriorating civil war in the nation their President chose to invade for no reason.

It turns out Jamil Hussein indeed exists and is under arrest for speaking to the press.

Not that you'll read about it on the righty blogs...cuz Never-Never Land is just too splendid.

Except for The General, of course.

Posted by Carla at 09:46 AM |

January 04, 2007

Norquist Advises Republicans to be Fearmongers

Grover Norquist is telling Republicans that they had better get used to the idea that they are going to lose everything for awhile. In the latest issue of National Review, he writes about the horrors Republicans can expect for the next two years and the strategy he recommends they follow to win back control of Congress.

For the next two years conservatives will not be able to pass any useful legislation through the House of Representatives. Memorize that sentence. Place it on your PC screensaver. Use it as your message on your answering machine. A discreet but easily accessed tattoo would be helpful.

Norquist lists some of the things Republicans won't be able to do now that Democrats are in charge: pass House rules requiring a 3/5 vote to raise taxes, apply term limits to House committee chairmen, propose a tax cut, have a procedural vote, have an actual vote, end earmarks, and write welfare reform part three. Horrors!

The part that Democrats should pay close attention to, though, is Norquist's advice to Republicans on how to change all this:

In November 2006 not enough voters saw a Republican congressional leadership they wanted to vote for and too few saw Democrat party leadership that scared them. The next two years is about changing both of those perceptions.

In other words, the Republicans are going to work overtime to make themselves out to be perfect angels, true conservatives, and trustworthy (a big task all in itself, considering how far afield they have drifted over the past 12 years) and more important, make Democrats out to be very scary. In other words, Republicans will use irrational fear to win back the power that the disillusioned voters snatched from their hands in November.

Posted by Becky at 03:13 PM |

Who Owns the Moon?

I can't help but laugh that someone has claimed the moon as his own and begun selling plots of land on it for $60 per approximately 1/10th acre. Even more hilarious is that he has managed so far to sell 55.5 million acres of land on the moon – in fact, he has completely sold out of current land inventory.

Dennis Hope, the owner of the moon, has also claimed all the planets in the solar system for his own. He has been able to do this because land registry laws allow any citizen to register any property as their own if it is not already registered under someone else's name and no one objects. No one objected, so the land became his. Now that NASA has announced it will construct a manned moon base by 2020, buyers believe their investments will only increase in value.

Posted by Becky at 10:47 AM |

"Zionism" the Real Motive Behind Troop Surge?

Paul Craig Roberts strikes out at Bush again in his latest article, saying the "ignorant and moronic" President Bush should be impeached for putting the "Israeli Zionist settlers" and the military industrial complex ahead of what is best for America. Roberts says that Bush's plan to increase troops in Iraq is really the work of Jack Keane and Frederic W. Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute, the "second most important Israeli lobby in Washington after AIPAC."

Knowledgeable people regard the Keane/Kagan plan as a proposal designed to continue for a while longer the blood profits of the US military-industrial complex and to advance Israel's interests by spreading Sunni-Shi'ite conflict throughout the Middle East.

The neoconservatives' original plan was to give Israel hegemony in the Middle East by using the US military to overthrow Iraq, Iran, and Syria. The failure of US forces to subdue Iraq has led to a new neoconservative plan to give Israel supremacy by spreading sectarian conflict among Muslims throughout the region. No Arab state would be stable, and Israel could proceed with its seizure of Palestine.

Roberts then asks whether Congress will move to stop the President. All things considered, it may very well not. As the Jerusalem Post points out today, a record number of Jewish members will enter Congress today and they will be taking up "unparalleled positions of power" on "committees related to Israel." (For the record, I personally do not buy the notion that Jew = Zionist.)

Six new Jewish legislators will be joining 37 familiar faces as the 110th Congress convenes, making the total the highest-ever, according to Doug Bloomfield, a former legislative director for AIPAC.

"It's unprecedented that there have been so many [Jews] in so many positions of leadership in both houses," Bloomfield said, using a Jewish simile for how that fact will affect support for Israel: Like chicken soup, it won't hurt.

Other political analysts went further, saying that congressional backing of Israel would remain at least as strong it has been, if not stronger.

The issue of American support for Israeli interests, and whether that is a good thing for America, is one that is increasingly being discussed, despite the long-standing taboo on criticism of Israel in the United States – a taboo which former President Jimmy Carter broke recently in his new book. A provocative article on Jews and American policy has this to say:

This conflation of Jewish interests with American interests is nowhere more stark than in present American foreign policy. If ever an image was reminiscent of a Jewish world conspiracy, the spectacle of the Jewish neo-cons gathered around the current presidency and directing policy in the Middle East, this must be it. But we are told that the fact that the Jewish neo-cons, many with links with right wing political groups within Israel, are in the forefront of urging a pro-Israel policy, is but a coincidence, and any suggestion that these figures might be influenced by their Jewishness and their links with Israel is immediately marginalised as reviving old anti-Semitic myths about Jewish dual loyalty. The idea that American intervention in Iraq, the one viable military counterweight to Israeli hegemony in the Middle East and therefore an inspiration to Arab and Palestinian resistance, primarily serves Israeli rather than American interests has also been consigned to the nether world of mediaeval anti-Semitic myth. The suggestion that those Jews around the president act from motives other than those to promote the interests of all Americans is just anti-Semitic raving. And maybe they're right. Perhaps those who promote Jewish interests are in fact promoting American interests because, for now at least, they appear to be one and the same.

The article addresses the reason for the taboo against speaking up on the concerns some have about the Jewish influence in American foreign policy:

[W]hy should … Jews who choose to combine their prayers and their politics be immune while at prayer from our legitimate protests at their politics? And for those few Jews who are really prepared to stand up and be counted for their solidarity with Palestinians, why can we not still give to them due honour and regard as we did to those few Americans who opposed American imperialism and those white South Africans who opposed apartheid?

The answer is that we are frightened. Even knowing that Jews are responsible and should be held accountable, still we are frightened. We are frightened because criticism of Jews with its woeful history of violence and discrimination seems just too dangerous a position to take - it may open the flood-gates to a burst of Jew hatred. We are frightened that if we were to discuss the role of Jews in this conflict and in other areas and begin to hold Jews accountable, we might be labeled anti-Semites and lose support. And, perhaps most of all, we are frightened of the conflicted inner passions that confound us all whenever we come to look at these things.

I have to agree that it is fear that keeps us silent on these issues. I do not have any concerns whatsoever about Jewish people participating fully in our government or the media. But their biases, like everyone else's, must be recognized, particularly when the impacts on American foreign policy may lead us to further stir up tensions in the Middle East. Excellent further reading on this topic includes Syndey Blumenthal's piece in Salon from last August entitled, "The Neocons' Next War."

Posted by Becky at 10:31 AM |

Parents of Disabled Girl Unjustly Criticized

The parents of a severely disabled girl are the unwitting subjects of a controversial debate over their decision to use a combination of surgery and hormone therapy to prevent the girl's body from growing into that of an adult woman. Their 9-year-old daughter will forever be developmentally on par with a 3-month-old infant, making her care very challenging. She will never be able to sit up, feed herself, communicate, or learn. When she began to enter into early puberty, her parents decided to get her a hysterectomy, remove her budding breasts, and give her a course of hormone supplements that have shut down her bone growth so that she will forever have her 9-year-old's body.

Her parents felt that her rapid growth and weight, as well as the development of breasts, would impair her quality of life by making her more susceptible to bed sores. A smaller size would enable her parents to continue to hold her in their arms and take her out on trips.

Some are arguing that the parents' choice amounts to eugenics. Others say the real answer is more federal funding to take the burden of care off the backs of parents so they do not feel such drastic steps are necessary. Organizations representing disabled people are concerned about the slippery slope – including the possibility of such treatment for people with spina bifida without their consent. I don't see this treatment going there, however, because those people have fully functioning brains and are capable of making their own choices. It would be clearly immoral to impose such a treatment on a person with full mental capacity against their will.

The girl who is the subject of the controversy will never have any idea that she was treated at all. Her experience will merely be that she continues to be cuddled by the people who love her. As for the hysterectomy, it is absolutely appropriate. Dealing with menstruation would be extremely difficult for a woman so severely disabled. My grandparents chose to get a hysterectomy for my aunt, who had Downs Syndrome, for the same reason, and it was the right thing to do.

The parents of this girl obviously love her, are embracing their responsibility for caring for her, and want her to have the best life she can have. They have made decisions with confidence that they believe are the best thing for their daughter, and I support their decisions. The second-guessing busy-bodies ought to leave them alone.

Posted by Becky at 09:05 AM |

Can We Impeach Him Yet?

Forget about being secure in your papers and personal effects. King George has just given himself the authority to open your mail. In his latest controversial "signing statement," this one attached to a postal reform bill and specifically contradicting that bill, the King claims he does not need a warrant to open domestic mail "in exigent circumstances." The bill itself actually prohibited the government from warrantless mail snooping, as court-issued warrants in emergency situations can be obtained very quickly. A career senior U.S. official said of the signing statement, "It takes Executive Branch authority beyond anything we've ever known." Add it to the growing pile of Bush offenses against the U.S. Constitution – and the American people.

Posted by Becky at 08:37 AM |

January 03, 2007

Tomorrow! Tomorrow! I love ya, tomorrow.

You're only a day away......

Yay!

Democrats hope to start the 110th Congress off with a bang, passing an ethics overhaul, stem-cell research legislation, and raising the minimum wage, among other proposals. But Republican House members complain about being shut out of the planning process.

When the new Congress is sworn in Thursday, for the first time in 12 years, the Democrats will be in control. In addition to a historic first -- Nancy Pelosi will become the first woman speaker of the House -- the new Democratic majority plans to bar Republicans from offering amendments to bills the House will take up in its first 100 hours.

Lets get this show on the road.

Posted by Carla at 03:24 PM |

This Case of Muslim Detention Stinks

I hope you're not burned out on the whole conversation about anti-Muslim bias in the airways, because we have another story about Muslims and their problems with flying to talk about. Just as with the Flying Imams, there are two sides to this story. But this time, I think I'll probably be on the same page as Carla and Kevin because as far as I can tell, there is no rational basis for the treatment that German national Majed Shehadeh underwent on his trip to Nevada last month.

Shehadeh's American-born wife of 30 years, a retired U.S. military math teacher, had gone a few days ahead of him to spend time with their daughter in Bakersfield. When she arrived at McCarren International Airport to pick up Shehadeh, he was nowhere to be found. It was hours before she learned he had been detained. The 62-year-old man has a heart condition and needs to take a prescription pill every four hours, so his wife was quite concerned about his well-being, particularly as the hours and then days ticked by and she had only been able to talk to him for two minutes. You need to read the article to understand the run-around she was given by officials for days as she desperately tried to just speak to her husband and be sure he had his medicine. After several days she learned he had been sent back to Germany and released, and that while in detention he had been denied his prescription, resulting in nosebleeds and heart palpitations.

What started it all? An official at McCarran had seen Arabic-looking stamps in his passport. That was all Shehadeh was ever told about the reason he was detained and denied entry. Their attorney asks an interesting question:

"If he was a bad guy, why did they let him go? And if he was a good guy, why didn't they let him join his family?"

Okay, so what is the other side of the story? In a post entitled, "Cry Me a River!", Reality Hammer Blog tells us why we should not feel sorry for Shehadeh and his family:

This man, born in a country that supports terrorism [Syria], arrives shortly before New Year's Eve in Las Vegas, a known target of terrorists. While his story is that he wishes to surprise his daughter in California with a visit, he has arrived in Las Vegas to "visit family", apparently some other family other than the intended beneficiary of his visit. Okay, so why not invite them to California or the daughter to Las Vegas? The "surprise" neatly covers his daughter's expected lack of knowledge of the trip, too.

In addition, we learn the man has an American wife as well as a daughter in the country, yet lives abroad and travels on a German passport.

Well there's another warning bell. A Muslim marries a former member of the military yet lives apart from her...on another continent. A marriage of convenience, perhaps?

Some advice to Muslims with dicey ties to the United States: don't arrive shortly before major US holidays on a "surprise" visit. After 9-11 the pendulum shifted from "bend over backward to not offend anyone ever" to slightly that side of "prudent security measures".

I find a couple of glaring problems with Reality Hammer's narrative right off. First, I don't find anywhere that the visit was a surprise to the daughter, but even if it was, so what? And that his wife spent time with her aunt in Las Vegas before picking him up at the airport there seems completely rational to me. Most obvious to me is the assertion that his wife lives in the United States. From what I read, she lives with him in Germany. The whole "24" plot begins to break down when these pieces are removed (and by the way, none of these extra "facts" are cited).

Really all you have here is an Arab Muslim man who had the misfortune of having been born in Syria being tagged as a potential terrorist and treated like a sub-human. I would have no complaints if he had been detained for a couple of hours for questioning - and apparently, even his wife was fine with that. But to be held in secret for days without an attorney before being sent home is ridiculous. If the government has other information on this guy that would justify the treatment he underwent, why did they allow him to go back home a free man? Why didn't they detain his wife for questioning as well? And if it wasn't anti-Muslim bias, why did they deny him his medication and refuse to allow him to speak to his wife for days? Something smells very fishy here.

Posted by Becky at 01:55 PM |

Obama's Drug Use

I think it is a sign that the older generation is completely out of touch with the drug issue that some are making hay over Barak Obama's admission of drug use in his youth. So he tried cocaine and smoked some pot. Who hasn't?

Well, OK, I haven't ever tried cocaine, but my choice to take better care of my body than that has made me feel like a silly goody-two-shoes my entire adult life. I barely know anyone else in my age group who hasn't tried cocaine. And just about everyone has smoked pot, which is in reality no more dangerous than alcohol. My point is, Obama didn't let the drugs take over and control his life, which is something to be applauded. He recognized that it was an unhealthy escape mechanism and he put it out of his life.

Not having ever been around drugs or used them, the older generation seems to equate pot with heroin. They need to lighten up or they'll find themselves with no one left to vote for but naive home-schooled social misfits.

Posted by Becky at 10:50 AM |

Pride Goeth Before a Stoning

He steered hurricanes Gloria, Felix and Isabel using only the power of prayer. He prayed to God to make vacancies in the U.S. Supreme Court to get rid of radical black-robed tyrants, and God answered his prayers by ousting Rehnquist and O'Connor. And Pat Robertson believes his conversations with God go both ways. Not only does God hear his prayers, God also gives him messages for the rest of us, who are less worthy (probably because we mistakenly see Justices Roberts and Alito as radical black-robed tyrants). God's latest message: He hates America so much that He is going to allow a massive terrorist attack to occur on the United States sometime after September, 2007, resulting in an enormous amount of death.

God didn't tell Pat Robertson exactly where this mass killing would occur, but being particularly talented at putting two and two together and coming up with five, I have figured it out. Back in November, 2006 Robertson prognosticated disaster for Dover, Pennsylvania because the citizens there had voted out the school board for supporting intelligent design. God hates Dover. So I think He will be sending the terrorists over there. And don't doubt that God will get His revenge – after all, thanks to Pat Robertson we now know that Ariel Sharon's stroke a year ago and Yitzhak Rabin's 1995 assassination occurred because they were punished by God for trying to give more land to the Palestinians.

All of this is quite amazing stuff, but there is one very big problem, and that is that Robertson has a habit of telling us God told him something and then having that thing turn out to be not quite right. For instance, in May of last year, right as the History Channel was running a program about the possibility of a west coast megathrust earthquake and tsunami, Robertson said "storms and possibly a tsunami" would hit the Northwest coast during 2006. We did have a pretty hairy windstorm in December, but I don't recall any tsunami, and I'm not sure that the storm we had was worthy of a non-specific warning direct from God. Robertson also said that Bush would "easily" win both his elections, and both turned out to be squeakers. In fact, one would almost have to say Bush actually lost both elections and God Himself had to step in and mess with the voting machines to save face.

Of his prophetic record, Robertson says, "I have a relatively good track record. Sometimes I miss." I have to wonder if the God Robertson is talking to is the same one in the Bible, because that God didn't like people saying He said something, only to have that thing not come true. It made God look bad. He gave pretty clear instructions to the Israelites to kill prophets who "missed," even if they only did it once:

Deuteronomy 18:20-22: But the prophet, who being corrupted with pride, shall speak in my name things that I did not command him to say, or in the name of strange gods, shall be slain. And if in silent thought thou answer: How shall I know the word that the Lord hath not spoken? Thou shalt have this sign: Whatsoever that same prophet foretelleth in the name of the Lord, and it cometh not to pass: that thing the Lord hath not spoken, but the prophet hath forged it by the pride of his mind: and therefore thou shalt not fear him.

I don't envy Robertson right now. If he's right about what he says God told him, a lot of people will die. If he's wrong, Christians are supposed to stone him to death. Fortunately, I have received a message from God about this, and he told me not to worry about Robertson because he will manage to squeak by on this, just as he has on of everything else.

Posted by Becky at 09:36 AM |

January 02, 2007

King James Got It All Wrong

Well, now I've seen everything. A Christian swingers group with more than 3,000 members is spreading the Good News that all those passages in the Bible about fornicators and adulterers are mistranslated and based on a culture that is outdated by thousands of years. And you thought it was all about forgiveness of sins.

You can read all about how the Bible and Christ's message have been perverted (sorry, couldn't help myself) at the group's website. Of course, all you Victorian-era moralists who still read the King James Bible will find plenty of reason to disagree with their premise. If, on the other hand, you are willing to take the time to gently massage the original Hebrew and Greek, you will be able to entice the true meaning into coyly revealing itself. Apparently, where the King James Bible quoted Jesus as saying "Love one another," it was a mis-translation. What he actually said was "Fuck one another."

According to Liberated Christians, "responsible non-monogamy, loving intimacy and other-centered sexual pleasure sharing is much more in line with Christ's teaching that love is the greatest commandment than the repressive traditional teachings which make rules based on false foundations." Thanks in large part to St. Augustine, Christ's loving message was changed into a message of stupefying, dour monogamy and restraint of passion.

So all you privately-masturbating, closet homosexual, hooker-hiring, fornicating-with-the-choir-director Christians, take heart. You aren't sinning after all (but will that take all the fun out of it?).

Unfortunately for one of the two founders of the group, he has to date been unsuccessful in his efforts to find a Christian wife who understands and accepts his views on swinging. Sometimes it's tough being a visionary.

Posted by Becky at 07:52 PM |

When I grow up, I want to be just like Keith Olberman

Just because I want to win this prize.

Posted by Carla at 04:40 PM |

What's in a name?

From Lawrence Siulagi's Odd Blog:

Here's the short version: boy meets girl, girl gets pregnant, boy and girl decide not marry so girl gives birth to a baby girl and gives her her last name from another boy she married and divorced in the past, boy objects, girl refutes boy's objection saying it would cause less confusion with her other kids with the same last name, boy retains lawyer, girl retains lawyer, judge agrees with boy saying, "development of a bond between father and daughter will depend on the love and devotion that father exhibits toward his daughter, not on whether the child bears his name."

Ouch.

Update: Girl appeals so it may not be over.

Oh, and here's the long and more interesting version from The Oregonian.

Judge Pro Tempore Daniel L. Harris, writing for the Oregon Court of Appeals, after reviewing 1000 years of naming customs concluded that neither parent has an advantage because in the latter half of the 20th century the law shifted away from the interests of the parents to the interests of the child.

He then quixotically proceeded to sum up the court's finding on the basis of the interests of the mother.

In the end, the court concluded that two key factors -- the reasonable preference of the custodial parent and the avoidance of confusion or embarrassment -- outweighed giving the girl her father's last name.

"We recognize that having a surname different from the noncustodial father's surname can have an impact on the relationship that the noncustodial parent has with the child. Historically, many courts would require children to take the noncustodial father's surname as a means of maintaining a connection between father and child, Harris wrote.

But "in the final analysis," Harris wrote, "development of a bond between father and daughter will depend on the love and devotion that father exhibits toward his daughter, not on whether the child bears his name."

While I certainly agree that the development of a bond will depend more on the love and devotion that father exhibits towards his daughter, I fail to see how this address the best interests of the child with respect to surname and ancestry.

How many times have we all read about an adopted child embarking on an often life-changing quest to track down a biological parent?

My sole experience is limited to my own two daughters (who have different mothers). But there I can say with no hesitation or qualification that both have consistently demonstrated a keen interest in their ancestral lineage. And I have been the family historian not only of their ancestry through me, but also of their mother's families to the extent that I am familiar with it.

It seems to me that whatever convenience giving this girl the same last name as her half-siblings brings for the mother, it also poses a potential source of conflict for the girl herself. Does anyone on the Oregon Court of Appeals doubt that giving the girl the same last name as her half-siblings won't in the slightest prevent either her or them from grasping that she has a different ancestory from theirs by virtue of the fact of her father's role in her life (which is not a point of contention, by all accounts)?

I just don't see how this ruling can be understood as anything other than acquiescing to the wishes of the mother over the interests of the child. Which is not to say that the two are necessarily in conflict. Rather I don't see how the Court could portray this finding as anything other than affirming the interests of the mother. That the court would couch it that way is disturbingly Orwellian, IMO.

Posted by Kevin at 02:03 PM |

Adrift on the sea of morality

Yesterday I happened across a blog called Uncommon Sense where Rich wrote about the tragic story of Army Reservist James E. Dean.

Dean had already served 18 months in Afghanistan and had become suicidally despondent over new orders for him to leave his new wife to serve a tour in Iraq. His deeply concerned family called police and Dean was ultimately killed by the responding officers.

Rich poses a critical question: What is the moral standing of anyone who attempts to prevent an act of suicide with deadly force? Do you have a moral right to attempt to stop someone from killing themselves with -- completely ironically and self-contradictorily -- deadly force?

Posted by Kevin at 12:40 PM |

Marion County Screwed Up

It was with great interest yesterday morning that I read the front page Statesman Journal article about LeRoy Laack and his Measure 37 claim, which neighbors say could threaten their water supply. And I felt the oddest sense of déjà vu. Back when Measure 47 passed, it was non-stop doom and gloom in the newspapers for the next two years. And it would appear we are in for the same with this measure, too.

The story makes it sound as if Measure 37 claims are threatening the groundwater supply across the state. Only in a sub-article do you learn that Measure 37 contains language specifically exempting laws written to protect the public's health, safety and welfare. That includes laws meant to ensure access to an adequate supply of clean water.

Almost as soon as he could, Laack filed a Measure 37 claim, which was approved by Marion County. The claim is making headlines now as he goes through the process of seeking approval for the subdivision plans. It seems the new development will over-tax the supply of groundwater and dry up neighbors' wells. If this is true, then the County should not have approved the claim in the first place. The blame here should not fall on Measure 37, but on the County for failing to hire competent counsel from the beginning to guide it through the process. Any competent land use attorney would surely have immediately known the claim could be denied on the basis of health, safety and welfare, thereby saving the community from all this unnecessary angst. Fortunately, it seems the County has finally seen the light and is no longer waiving regulations related to sensitive groundwater areas.

I do genuinely feel for Laack. Before Measure 37 passed, he was not allowed to develop the land because it was zoned for exclusive farm use. His land has been taxed at the non-farm rate because he has not farmed it. But the previous owners could not make a living farming the land, which is why they sold it, and Laack has been unable to attract a farmer to farm it, even though he has offered use of the land for free. So the land is doing nothing but sucking tax money out of his pocket. That's wrong.

Unfortunately, Laack and the two other investors, who purchased the property a long time ago, decided to wait to see what development occurred around them before investing in their own development. After neighboring lots were developed and granted water rights, land use laws were adopted to protect those water rights. Those laws took away Laack's rights to develop his own property because there simply wasn't enough ground water to go around. It seems to me he should have known that and protected his own investment by developing first, so as to ensure access to the limited water. But he snoozed and he losed, so to speak. Measure 37 is not about saving people from their own bad decisions.

Posted by Becky at 12:30 PM |

Christmas in the Twilight Zone

I have just returned from spending Christmas with my in-laws. For the record, they are about the nicest, most decent people you could ever hope to know and I love them dearly. But staying with them for a week has been as much a trip into the Twilight Zone as it has been a wonderful experience. The reason is that they are the consummate right-wingers.

Fox News is blaring on the television in their home day and night – every day and night. I was treated to Newt Gingrich's Christmas special on why church and state were never meant to have a wall of separation between them. And I got to hear all about what a wonderful Christian Gerald Ford was – and how, if anyone would be in Heaven, it would be him, though my in-laws didn't think he was conservative enough for that.

We had a riotous good time drinking cranberry and vodka martinis and playing Apples to Apples, though even there the wingnuttery came out. For instance, when I laid down a card saying "Trustworthy," my mother-in-law confidently told me she had the sure-fire winner and laid down the "Far Right" card. My nephew thought he would win with his "Televangelists" card. I chose "Norman Rockwell."

The highlight was opening Christmas presents. My father-in-law gave every adult in the family – three generations worth – a copy of Bill O'Reilly's latest book, Culture Warrior. He said it was such an important book that we all really needed to read it.

I really missed you all.

Posted by Becky at 09:15 AM |

January 01, 2007

Jackson rocks 06....gets ready to kick 07's ass

Our favorite Alabaman (and sometimes PK blogger) Jeff and his wife Dana gave birth in 2006 to one of the toughest dudes on the planet.

"Action" Jackson Jones was rightfully listed by Jill as one of the Brilliant 20 of 2006:

Sure, he's cute in that "He Looks Just Like Old Man Finkelstein" kind of way, but why this particular baby? Well, it's because it isn't everyone who can survive the miscarriage of his twin, hide from a post-miscarriage D&C so that mom doesn't even know you're there, and then hang on for 23-1/2 weeks and survive placenta previa before arriving nearly fatally premature on June 14, 2006, weighing 1 pound, 4 oz. Jackson's proud daddy Jeff has written the family's experiences in a book, which will be available soon. Meanwhile, take a look at this kid, nicknamed "Superboy", because this is one tough little guy who is going to be one badass muthafucka when he grows up. And join me in wishing his parents Jeff and Dana a very, very happy new year. So far they're off to a good start.

Jeff has sporadically sent emails to a group of us, updating on Jackson's progress. Jill's right..he's gonna be one badass muthafucka. Just like his old man.

Posted by Carla at 06:24 PM |