Code Pink, Arrest Bush, the Coalition for Peace and other liberal activist groups plan to jam the Mall and line the parade route on Inauguration Day. They will hoist banners, wave signs and call for action. It might look a lot like a protest rally. But don't call it that.
"It's not a protest; it's a celebratory event," said Jose Rodriguez, a longtime activist who is coordinating an Arrest Bush demonstration in front of the FBI building Tuesday.
...snip...
"We don't want to be seen as protesting against [Obama] so much as pushing him to fulfill his promises," said Medea Benjamin, founder of Code Pink. "It's totally, totally different."
I, for one, am always impressed by the bold actions they have taken on behalf of those that think just writing about all of these problems will make things happen. Actions that some of these same "thinkers" would denigrate because they think things will just suddenly change if we ask nicely. Politics in the USA is a push and shove game and the media will ignore those that are passively watching the real shakers and movers that bring much needed attention to these thoughtless idealists. You need to take a carrot and stick approach. And CodePink is the stick that has been shoved so far up the asses in Washington - much to others bemusement and my admiration.
Dissent is patriotic and these ladies are some of the most active patriots in modern American history.
Think Progress has provided an in depth study of Lieberman's betrayal of progressives. The information will not come as a shock to anyone on the left that has followed him closely and recognized this unholy alliance early on as Lieberman pledged his allegiance to the warmongering neoconservative whack jobs and their likudnik/AIPAC allies. Lieberman's story is a bizarre combination of apologist for their neoconservative failures and an accomplice in covering up their crimes.
“I’m a Democrat with a 35-year record of fighting for progressive causes, for the middle class, for civil rights, for women’s rights, for human rights and a lot more. I voted with my Senate Democratic colleagues 90 percent of the time.” — Joe Lieberman, 7/6/06
“I want Democrats to be back in the majority in Washington and elect a Democratic president in 2008.” — Joe Lieberman, 7/7/06
While Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) has fought for progressive policies in the past — such as protecting the environment and expanding civil rights — his recent record demonstrates that he’s a progressive no more. As this report documents, Lieberman has embraced the right wing on far more than foreign policy. In fact, he has betrayed progressive principles on a variety of domestic issues. As he has lurched to the right, Lieberman has actively worked to undermine the progressive agenda.
Daschle, the point man for Obama's campaign to revamp the health care system, supports the concept of "a government-run insurance program modeled after Medicare." It would, he says, give consumers, especially the uninsured, an alternative to commercial insurance offered by companies like Aetna, Humana and WellPoint.
But the proposal is anathema to many insurers, employers and Republicans. They say the government plan would have unfair advantages, like the ability to impose lower fees, and could eventually attract so many customers that private insurers would be driven from the market. "The public plan option is a terrible idea — one of our top concerns in the health reform debate," said James Gelfand, senior manager of health policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Why would employers object to a public plan that would be better and cheaper for their workers?
Here, not only do we have the right wing Chamber of Commerce health care Czar telling you flat out that the for profit health care providers can not compete in a free market with Medicare, a government run single payer program... But the fact that it starts with a Tom Daschle hint of things to come that damn near made me have a heart attack.
If this is the starting point of the health care debate than it is already over...(And, for a change of pace from the last 8 years, America wins!)
Slowly, though, something is changing. As Israel pulverises Gaza, questions and doubts about Israeli policy are becoming more prominent in the American media. The failure of the war in Iraq and the attendant discrediting of neoconservatism has opened up new space in the American conversation. With the American right dejected and weakened, there's less pressure on the press to display the kind of boorish one-sidedness that self-congratulatory conservatives like to call "moral clarity". Israel's disproportionate retaliation in Gaza is increasingly recognised as both brutal and, in all likelihood, ultimately futile. In destroying Gaza, Israel is also destroying the American taboo that has ensured the country such unstintingly favourable media coverage.
On December 31, CNN took on the contentious question of whether Israel or Hamas broke the ceasefire, precipitating the current fighting. First, the network aired a clip of the liberal Palestinian legislator Mustafa Barghouti saying: "The world press community or media community is overwhelmed with the Israeli narrative, which is incorrect. The Israeli spokespersons have been spreading lies all over. The reality and the truth is that the side that broke this truce and this ceasefire was Israel. Two months before it ended, Israel started attacking Rafah, started attacking Hamas and never lifted the blockade on Gaza." Ordinarily, TV journalists would follow such a clip – if they even aired it in the first place – with one of Israel making its case, and would stop at that, leaving an audience already predisposed against the Palestinians to sort out the truth. Instead, anchor Rick Sanchez did something that should be commonplace, but sadly is not: he endeavoured to find out who was right.
"And you know what we did? I've checked with some of the folks here at our international desk, and I went to them and asked: 'What was he talking about, and do we have any information on that?'" said Sanchez. And he reported that his sources confirmed that Barghouti was right.
Which leads me to wonder if Wolf AIPAC Blitzer's head will explode live and on the air sometime soon or will he simply continue to dance around the issue while the rest of the world, his coworkers included, already recognizes the truth? Here is my best guess...
On an equally serious note as the situation in Gaza, will fact checking become a regular part of CNN programming? I would gladly welcome the opportunity to say that facts no longer had a liberal bias and that the media no longer danced to an AIPAC and neoconservative choreographed tune. Something they seem to be showing some minor signs of, recently.
The Republicans -- who had just finally won control of the State House for the first time in 40+ years – were suppose to elect their Speaker of the House today. And failed!
Anaxamander has the details in his/her diary. The Tennessee State House has 50 Republicans and 49 Democrats. Well, Rep. Kent Williams (R-TN) got the support of all 49 Democrats plus his own vote to put himself in the Speaker’s chair.
Not a high paying lobbying job working for Hartford. We can't get rid of these corrupt GOP cling ons in Connecticut. The voters flush them and they recycle as lobbyists or in other places of influence that they do not deserve given their complete and utter failure to represent the people while in office.
Ruh roh...another Coulter voter fraud issue...will she be able to weasel out of this one too? News Hounds:
Ann Coulter was cleared in a 2006 voter fraud investigation in Florida after an FBI agent/friend "intruded," but new questions have arisen about her previous voting record in Connecticut. The New York Daily News reports that Coulter voted there via absentee ballot in 2002 and 2004 while records show she actually lived in New York City. Given FOX News' obsessionwithvoterfraud, can we expect an investigation from the "we report, you decide" network? A prime time discussion covering one of their most frequent guests on the "fair and balanced" network? Don't hold your breath. The Daily News reports that Connecticut will begin a formal investigation if they receive a complaint under oath.
I thought I should point out that the Hartford Courant is inflating their website stats, Drudge-style, by including this on their homepage:
< : meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="900" / : > (Ed Note: slightly and symbolically modified with two colons to make the code viewable here- CM1)
They should knock it off.
How low do you have to sink to have someone honestly and factually compare you to Drudge?
If you can't trust them when it comes to something as basic as their web stats, how in the hell can you trust anything they have written on those inflated websites of theirs? That goes for both Drudge and the Courant. I don't need nor do I want them to refresh my page for any reason whatsoever. Though, I don't read Drudge because he is just plain stupid. You have to be completely brain dead to think he has anything of value to offer on those wingnut fantasy pages of his.
The Founders, who were awed by the presidency and who made it a point, the early ones, to speak in their inaugural addresses of how unworthy they felt, would be astonished and confounded by the over-awe with which we view presidents now. We treat them as if they are the Grand Imperial Czar of the Peacock Throne, and we their 'umble servants. It's no good, and vaguely un-American. Right now patriotism requires more than the usual candor. It requires speaking truthfully and constructively to a president who is a man, and just a man. We hire them, we fire them, they come back for photo-ops. They're not magic.
Yep, presidents are just ordinary, regular schmoes who we hire and fire every 4 years.
Conceding that it has long been viewed as Republican-dominated, the industry's lobbying arm plans to spend tens of millions of dollars on an advertising blitz promoting Obama-style health coverage for every American. The first spot -- sponsored by the drug lobby, consumer and labor groups, and health providers -- will be unveiled today.
Stop buying crap from dope heads...
Nothing less than H.R. 676, single payer universal health care, will solve our problems.
While I originally wrote this in January of 2007, concerning the cost of health care to consumers and service provided, it is equally applicable to the savings for the auto industry. And that is not my opinion, that is the opinion of the successful auto industry management. The ones that aren't asking for a bailout. At the time I wrote this in 2007, each vehicle assembled in the United States cost GM $1,525 for health care; those made in Canada cost GM $197. Probably more savings now since this was written nearly two years ago:
In U.S., it's pay more, get less: "A RELATIVE BARGAIN: George Mercieca, a worker at a GM assembly plant in Oshawa, Ontario, shows off his Canadian health care card. GM spends an average of $1,385 a year on medical bills for hourly workers in Canada. An American autoworker costs the company about $5,000, but studies show Americans are no healthier than their foreign counterparts."
He is smiling because he has a great job with better medical benefits than most Americans could ever hope for under our failed health care for profit system. The kind of job that Connecticut , and the USA as a whole, can never hope to attract under our current system. If you do not believe me then ask yourself "what does the manufacturing industry have to say about this?"
While training issues are less of a problem here in Connecticut, because we have a decent educational system, health care is cited as a major issue for Toyota's decision to chose Ontario as the location of a new factory for their Rav-4s slated to open in 2008:
"The level of the workforce in general is so high that the training program you need for people, even for people who have not worked in a Toyota plant before, is minimal compared to what you have to go through in the southeastern United States," said Gerry Fedchun, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association, whose members will see increased business with the new plant.
Acknowledging it was the "worst-kept secret" throughout Ontario's automotive industry, Toyota confirmed months of speculation Thursday by announcing plans to build a 1,300-worker factory in the southwestern Ontario city.
"Welcome to Woodstock - that's something I've been waiting a long time to say," Ray Tanguay, president of Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada, told hundreds gathered at a high school gymnasium.
The plant will produce the RAV-4, dubbed by some as a "mini sport-utility vehicle" that Toyota currently makes only in Japan. It plans to build 100,000 vehicles annually.
The factory will cost $800 million to build, with the federal and provincial governments kicking in $125 million of that to help cover research, training and infrastructure costs.
Several U.S. states were reportedly prepared to offer more than double that amount of subsidy. But Fedchun said much of that extra money would have been eaten away by higher training costs than are necessary for the Woodstock project.
He said Nissan and Honda have encountered difficulties getting new plants up to full production in recent years in Mississippi and Alabama due to an untrained - and often illiterate - workforce. In Alabama, trainers had to use "pictorials" to teach some illiterate workers how to use high-tech plant equipment.
"The educational level and the skill level of the people down there is so much lower than it is in Ontario," Fedchun said.
In addition to lower training costs, Canadian workers are also $4 to $5 cheaper to employ partly thanks to the taxpayer-funded health-care system in Canada, said federal Industry Minister David Emmerson.
"Most people don't think of our health-care system as being a competitive advantage," he said.
It is clearly an advantage for any company that wants to open up a business in any industry... A 4 to 5 dollar per hour advantage. An advantage so great that any state that passes true-single-payer Universal Health care first will be positioned to become a mecca for any company considering opening any kind of business.
We already have an educational advantage over the most of the USA, having a highly rated school system and a high rate of college graduates. Why the hold up on giving these businesses the real money savings that Universal Health Care would provide and the other best reason to set up shop in Connecticut?
Because of lobbying from the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. We need to take them out of the loop in the decision making process for this issue since we know they will fight it tooth-and-nail. We need to look at what is best for the people of Connecticut and for all industries, not just those two lobbying behemoths.
And just how much more is health care costing us?
Medical bills soar
Divide the nation's medical bill evenly across the population, and each of us paid $6,102 in 2004, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. That's 50 percent more than the residents of the country with the next-highest health care bill, Switzerland ($4,077), and more than double the average for industrialized nations ($2,546).
...snip...
Those countries provide health care for all their residents for less money than the United State spends while it leaves an estimated 46 million without insurance.
That's contradicted by studies conducted by Gerard Anderson, director of the Center for Hospital Finance and Management at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. "We have about the same number of MRIs and CT scanners as Canada, the U.K. and France, and far fewer than Japan," Anderson said. "We have the same number of doctors, doctor visits, hospitals and inpatient days at hospitals.
"The difference is we pay two to 2 1/2 times more for virtually identical services."
The average U.S. physician earned $180,000 in 2004, Anderson said; in Canada, it was $100,000 (in U.S. dollars).
Even after adjusting for the higher income of U.S. residents, Americans pay on average $2,000 more per year for health care than the residents of the next-highest paying country, Anderson said.
One out of every seven dollars spent today in the United States goes for health care -- a record 15.3 percent of the gross domestic product in 2004, the latest year for which statistics are available. By comparison, Canada spends 9.9 percent of its GDP; Japan spends 8.0 percent.
By 2015, one out of every five dollars spent in the United States will go for health care, according to projections by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. If those projections hold, the average American's share for medical needs alone will be a staggering $12,320.
For all that money, you would expect Americans to be healthier than their foreign friends. The opposite is true.
Whoa! They are healthier than us, and they pay less? And it is not just a monetary cost:
If you're born in the United States, chances are that you'll die younger than people born in other industrialized nations. The United States has the lowest life expectancy of 14 nations measured by the World Health Organization. U.S. life expectancy in 2001 was 77.1; Canada, 79.7; Italy, 79.8; Japan, 81.5
The infant mortality rate is higher in the United States than in other industrialized nations. In 2003, seven infants died for every 1,000 live births in the United States -- the worst rate of 19 countries measured by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
I am thinking that anyone that is really PRO-LIFE, and not just talking about it for political reasons, would have to be shocked by those infant mortality rates. Why aren't they screaming about this issue? If they are really honest about being pro-life than they should be our allies on true Universal Heath Care.
As for manufacturers, just how much profit margin can health care open up for them?
Those vehicles, often parked on the same dealer lot as identical vehicles produced in U.S. plants, have one notable difference: Each vehicle assembled in the United States cost GM $1,525 for health care; those made in Canada cost GM $197.
The higher salaries of Canadian autoworkers offset much of the health care savings for the company, said Jim Cameron, labor relations director for GM Canada. But at the cash-strapped automaker, such a huge health care cost differential is hard to ignore. The difference is primarily a result of Canada's national health care system, in which most medical bills are paid by the government. Most countries have similar systems.
WHAT THE FUCK!!! The GM employees get higher wages up there too? And GM still racks up more profits from production up north in Canada then they can down here? How much more of this are you Nutmeggers willing to take?
Can you imagine the shockwave across the nation if a car manufacturer or some other large industry chose to locate in Connecticut over other states or countries... And it could happen.
Do you want to continue to pay more just to get less? Less healthy workers, less money, less jobs, less profit for industry as a whole.
Why not get more? More people that actually have coverage? More healthy workers that are more productive? More savings in health care for us and for industry? More manufacturers picking Connecticut as their destination of choice? More smiles on Nutmeggers' faces.
Universal Health Care is the answer to everyone getting more.
_______________
It might be the answer to save US industry.
There is an off the shelf answer sitting there getting dusty. Ask Rep. John Conyers, Rep. Dennis Kucinich and the other cosigners about H.R. 676. It would be a huge step towards helping every industry in this nation become competitive.
What We Can Do to Protect US Jobs, Accomplish Universal Health Care, and Hold the New President Accountable.
Get the information about single payer health care and spread what the corporate media won't.
Be a frequent visitor at the web site of Physicians for a National Health Care Plan, http://pnhp.org. There you will find research material, talking points, frequently asked questions and answers, press releases and new information every day, enough to answer anybody's questions on single payer, and to provide answers to all the lies and propaganda spread by the insurance companies. This is the stuff to write about, to blog about, to send and forward to everyone on your email list.
Email, call and visit your member of Congress about single payer health care and saving US jobs.
Whether they already support HR 676 or not, remind your elected representative that US industries cannot compete with those in societies which offer free health care. Demand that single payer health care ought to be part of any legislative deal to save US auto companies.
Phone calls and emails are good. Letters and faxees are better. But group visits of five or more people to district offices are the most potent weapons of persuasion. Organize one. Nearly all members of congress have open hours during which constituents can make an appointment with or drop in on the Great Man or Woman to discuss issues of importance. If you video any of these visits, we will be happy to post them here, and in some cases if you organize the visit, we can arrange to shoot the video. Email us for details.
Call a public meeting or teach-in at your school or neighborhood to talk about single payer health care.
Pnhp.org and others can help you arrange authoritative and knowledgeable speakers. Video that too so others not present at the event can see it.
This is not the time to lay back, to wait and see what the new administration does or wants to do. Every day we wait before organizing to inform each other and publicly pressure the new president and his party to keep their promises is a day that the parasitic private health insurers enjoy unrestricted and unfettered access to the new administration behind the scenes. Elite pressure occurs behind the scenes. Pressure in the public interest is --- well --- public.
This won't be easy. Nearly every Democratic president since Harry Truman has aimed at some kind of solution to the health care mess. Producing an aroused public makes it easier for the new administration and its party to do the right thing. But if we don't get loud about the link between saving jobs and delivering health care early in an Obama administration, a precious opportunity will be lost that we may never see again.
And... Just to be clear on what the auto industry really thinks about single payer universal health care, from tiggers thotful spot at TPM:
This is from a letter that the Big Three executives SENT to the Canadian govt:
The public health care system significantly reduces total labour costs for automobile manufacturing firms, compared to the cost of equivalent private insurance services purchased by U.S.-based automakers; these health insurance savings can amount to several dollars per hour of labour worked. Publicly funded health care thus accounts for a significant portion of Canada's overall labour cost advantage in auto assembly, versus the U.S., which in turn has been a significant factor in maintaining and attracting new auto investment to Canada...
For both employers and workers in the auto industry, it is vitally important that the publicly funded health care system be preserved and renewed, on the existing principles of universality, accessibility, portability, comprehensiveness, and public administration...
Single payer healthcare means replacing the present patchwork quilt of payment mechanisms for the cost of health care with a single point source payer. That single payer is responsible for defining the benefits package that is covered, actuarial predictions of what the cost would be for those services, collecting the money required to cover those costs, and disbursement of the money. The single payer obviously has a great amount of power and responsibility for health care. There may or may not be the addition of other payers for services that are outside of the benefits package chosen by the single payer. Some single payer systems have also allowed people to "opt-out" of being covered by a single payer system and go it alone, with or without the help of other insurance companies or plans.
Why is single payer advantageous? There are a number of ways that single payer plans (can potentially) improve care and reduce costs:
When all people are in a large common pool, the single payer has enormous leverage to negotiate prices.
When all people are in a common pool, the single payer can prospectively look at the relative values provided by different modes of treatment and decide which modalities are most cost effective for the populace at large.
The single payer can preferentially fund and reward preventive care (which may even include preventions typically not thought of as "health care" like smoking cessation), which frees up resources that may otherwise be wasted.
The single payer can reduce greatly the amount of resources required to get reimbursement for service provided, freeing those resources to be used for other health care services.
The single payer can reduce geographic maldistribution of health care resources.
The single payer has no fear that money invested in services that keep people healthy will become a reward for someone else down the line as people change health care plans.
Being involved in a single payer system raised the awareness and accountability of all of participants in the system. It quickly becomes clear that it is in your interest to make sure that your neighbors take advantage of preventive services and behaviors because everybody wins.
A single payer plan can (if properly designed) be more responsive to local needs and variations, and more locally accountable.
A single payer system can improve the use of health care technology for information use that will give us a clearer picture of how to allocate resources for the best return on investment.
A single payer system can greatly reduce the percentage of the total GNP that health care consumes, benefitting all industry.
Now, there are going to be a lot of anecdotal replies to this about this description. I admit that not all single payer implementations realize these potentials. But nonetheless these are the possible benefits in a well designed system.
I'll count Medicare (parts A and B) as continuing to exist, because they would likely form the basis of the single payer system. If the single-payer system was "built fresh" they would go away too.
(1) All private insurance companies, including all HMOs and PPOs. There might be a small number left to provide "supplemental" insurance.
(2) Medicaid. Subsumed by single-payer.
(3) S-CHIP. Subsumed by single-payer.
(4) Medicare [Dis]Advantage. This is private companies.
(5) Medicare Part D. Elimination of private companies.
(6) Health care compensation from auto insurance. (Compensation for lost wages and "quality of life" would continue, but would be much simpler to adjudicate; premiums would drop).
(7) Health care compensation for 'worker's comp'. (Compensation for lost wages and "quality of life" would continue, but would be much simpler to adjudicate; premiums would drop.)
(8) "preferred providers", doctors accepting some insurances and not others, and all similar doctors' office paperwork. Every doctor would either be "in the national system" or not, and very few would not.
(9) State and local health insurance systems for their employees. Subsumed by single-payer.
(10) Self-funded insurance schemes from corporations (like GM) and universities (like Cornell). Subsumed by single-payer.
(11) Special "flu clinics" and other such schemes for getting basic preventative medicine to everyone. Everyone would have a regular doctor in the system and that doctor would offer preventative medicine for free.
(12) Health care aspect of disability insurance for business. (Compensation for lost wages would continue, but would be much simpler to adjudicate; premiums would drop.)
(13) Federal government employees insurance system. Subsumed by single-payer.
(14) Charity care budgets at emergency rooms. Subsumed by single-payer.
It would instantly save many corporations, hospitals, and individuals from bankruptcy.
Current estimates are that the tax increase needed would be very small. The administrative savings from combining Medicare, Medicaid, S-CHIP, and the Government Employees insurance program is substantial; the savings from pricing power are large; and the government already covers all the people with the highest health care costs (children, the elderly, the poor, and the military), so adding all the "cheap" people costs a lot less proportionally. Estimates are that the government already pays 7/8 of all health care spending in the country, so that gives you a good sense of the necessary increase.
People relatively well-to-do would presumably see their taxes go up slightly, as would well-to-do businesses. However, almost anyone who is actually paying for their insurance would end up saving money. Only people who are uninsured and healthy (who benefit by getting coverage), or who have their insurance entirely paid for by employers (which is very rare these days) would have a net increase in costs.
What it would require is firing a lot of people -- the people working for the health insurance companies, or working in other offices to deal with the health insurance companies. That's where the out-of-pocket savings for most Americans would come from: the fired paper-pushers. That is the actual downside: elimination of jobs, but since they're wasteful make-work, or even make-trouble, jobs, I think it's worth it. We could come up with a job placement program for them.
While it would eliminate insurance company jobs that PRODUCE NOTHING (except for the leeching effect off of our paychecks) these jobs would be replaced by more productive jobs in the health care industry. More Doctors, Nurses, technicians and other supporting jobs for hospitals, clinics and industries that produce health care products.
Jobs that would be more beneficial to individuals, industry and to society as a whole.
Ms. Pascoe is Associate Professor and Beekman Chair of Northwest and Pacific History at the University of Oregon. She is completing a book on the significance of miscegenation law in United States history.
We are in the midst of an attempt to ground a category of discrimination in the fundamental social bedrock of marriage law. I would argue that it is virtually impossible to understand the current debate over same-sex marriage without first understanding the history of American miscegenation laws and the long legal fight against them, if only because both supporters and opponents of same-sex marriage come to this debate, knowing or unknowingly, wielding rhetorical tools forged during the history of miscegenation law. The arguments white supremacists used to justify for miscegenation laws--that interracial marriages were contrary to God's will or somehow unnatural--are echoed today by the most conservative opponents of same-sex marriage. And supporters of same-sex marriage base their cases on the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, echoing the position the U.S. Supreme Court took when it declared miscegenation laws unconstitutional in the case of Loving v. Virginia. Both sides confront the structures of marriage law exclusion that were also forged during the history of miscegenation, including, as I show below, the legal maneuvering over the seemingly minor bureaucratic practice of issuing marriage licenses.
Yet, so many don't understand that rights in America are to be universal; guaranteed to every citizen under the law. Equal under the law is the other way it is expressed. Somewhere along our journey a percentage of Americans got confused, brainwashed, left-behind, whatever...And began to think of marriage as a religious doctrine not a civil construct. This misunderstanding of the nature of marriage is what has gotten us to this point.
Now, combine our need for salvation with our hate for things we don't' understand, and you have a straightforward American debate; rooted in puritanical history, conflated by individual moral superiority. This is a classic cycle we have played out over and over in our history. Whenever we are afraid of something or someone we don't understand we isolate them. Americans are not the fair-minded individuals they always claim to be. There is always some class of people unworthy of what the others have. We have lost our way, and that is why I speak on this so much.
Consider this: Marriage gets to party at the church. It gets a dress. It gets guests in pews. When the party is over, people will turn to God for guidance, but they turn to the state for a divorce!
To review; you come to the government to get married, and you go to the state to legally dissolve your marriage. You may go to church in between to help you nurture a loving relationship, but that is about as far as the relationship between faith and marriage goes.
According to reports and after having served a tour in Iraq, Riviera said:
"The war was immoral and that she could not participate in it"
Considering the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq by the USA, Riviera is 100% correct and is standing on the higher moral ground, for certain, and the legal higher ground if bush and his fellow neoconservative criminals were rightfully prosecuted for their war crimes and other criminal enterprises and activities both here at home and around the world.
It is a very rare day when I click over to dKos and almost every single diary on the recommended list is about issues that are so serious I would recommend reading almost every single one. Too often the rec list is littered with the type of "rah-rah Democratic party cheerleading" junk and campaign fund raising that, while compatible to Markos stated goals for the site, are of little interest to everyone that is not in the Democratic party and that read and participate there simply because of the high quality thinking that gets put into so many issues.
Yeah... I know that we just got out of an election cycle and that is the main reason it has been so long since this is the case, but take a look at the diaries here:
Prosecutors on Monday said disgraced financier Bernard Madoff violated bail conditions by mailing about $1 million worth of jewelry and other assets to relatives and should be jailed without bail.
"The defendant's recent actions amount to obstruction of justice," Assistant U.S. Attorney Marc Litt told a judge at a hearing in federal court in Manhattan.
Madoff's lawyer, Ira Sorkin, described the items as heirlooms that included cufflinks and antique watches. He said they were not significant assets. The items were sent to Madoff's children and to unidentified friends vacationing in Florida.
Not only should this cretin be jailed ASAP for violating bail, they may as well just throw away the key.
According to a report by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, “the Internet overtook print newspapers as a news source this year.” The popularity of newspapers did not decline, but rather, the number of people naming the internet as their primary news source nearly doubled.
The inerrant ability to fact check instantaneously on comment threads as well as the real clash of ideas that happens there surely added to the internet numbers but there is more to it than that:
Michael Dimock, the Pew Center’s associate director, credited the presidential election, which he said lent itself to online coverage. “People often don’t want the general overview of an election,” he said. “They may want to follow their candidate, picking and choosing what they’re looking at in a way that mainstream media doesn’t allow.”
If I want fluff and fiction I'll buy a tabloid at the supermarket.
As long as we have to suffer through the fact free garbage put out there by the fanatical likes of the Kristols, Coulters, Novaks and Millers of the world they are not producing a product that is even worthy of lining a bird cage with.
We have all heard that Greg Sargent (TPM Media) was just picked up for a new Blog by the WaPo. Now that he has to deal with editors that may refuse to print the truth does anyone here think his work may suffer? I hope not BUT the reality is that the entire newspaper industry structure is, now, a failed one. Adding a few decent and savvy voices and tagging stories on the net with WWW3 compliant tags does not change their structure enough.
Given those views, it should come as no surprise that Warren is also a supporter of the ex-gay movement that tries to cure people of their homosexuality. A reader writes to Andrew Sullivan pointing out that Warren’s Saddleback Church operates a program called Celebrate Recovery that seeks to “help people overcome their hurts, habits and hang-ups” by encouraging people to “grow toward full Christlike maturity.”
Hate like this is more sinful than incest, pedophilia, beastiality and allowing marriages between people that can't procreate - like teh gays, sterile people or people that chose not to have kids.
Say what?
"In short the argument goes, "Marriage exists for the next generation's benefit. Gay marriage shouldn't exist because they can't produce offspring."
At first, this seems, if not rational, at least not insane.
But if you think about it, by that measure, a marriage isn't 'real' until the couple produces a child. If one accepts this argument, one is also saying that people who choose to not have children, or are sterile, don't have the privilege of being married."
Can we find a cure for people like Rick Warren before we have to consider just subjugating these Christianists to second class citizen status by revoking their rights or, maybe even, just castrating those of this sub-human religious species to avoid them reproducing more of their kind?
For over seven minutes last night, Jon Stewart grilled former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee on his oppositiontogay marriage. Huckabee is touring the country to promote his new book, “Do The Right Thing.” When Stewart compared gay marriage bans to interracial marriage bans, Huckabee restated his view that homosexuality is simply a behavior choice:
STEWART: Segregation used to be the law until the courts intervened.
HUCK: There’s a big difference between a person being black and a person practicing a lifestyle and engaging in a marital relationship.
STEWART: Okay, actually this is helpful because it gets to the crux of it. … And I’ll tell you this: Religion is far more of a choice than homosexuality. And the protections that we have for religion — we protect religion. And talk about a lifestyle choice — that is absolutely a choice. Gay people don’t choose to be gay. At what age did you choose to not be gay?
Huckabee tried to insist that “60 percent of the American population” opposes gay marriage. Stewart interrupted him, calling it a “travesty” that gay Americans have to plead for their civil rights... (READ ON)
Who cares... Exercising free will, to make your own choice, is as much a right as it is a personal responsibility or, even, A REAL AND HONEST CHRISTIAN VIRTUE. Like choosing to be part of the GLBT community and choosing to get married. They have as much right to their own free will as you do to yours.
So Listen up all of you khaki-brown shit-head semi-epsilon-moron-minus, speudo-scientific, religiously bigoted, sin projectoralist Christianists... Pull the fuckin' log out of your eye and shove it up yer ass. 'Cause it is giving you all brain damage the way you are doing it.
Maybe? Haven't seen any here in New Milford, Connecticut, YET... And at the current 28 degrees in New Milford I don't think we can be expecting the forecasted "frozen mix" unless the temperature shoots up? More likely one big dump of white crap everywhere. From Weather.com:
Calling someone a dog and showing them the soles of your shoes - especially up close and personal like - are kind of like ultimate insults in their culture. An Iraqi journalist tosses several insults at Bush on his farewell to Iraq tour:
And ya want your So Called Liberal Media? There it is in Iraq... 99% of our right wing corporate owned and controlled media don't have the balls to editorialize like that. Most of them have problems just telling the plain truth.
I had thought that holding a shoe in the air would be a great at demonstrations. One of those few things that the Preznit’s SS wouldn’t take from you as you enter a place where he is scheduled to mangle the English language.
“Bare your sole for Bush!”
But Laura's idea is much more practical...
A lot of people seem to be thinking the same thing here: "He’s got great reflexes for an old dude."
You would too if your BFF was the shotgun wielding neoconservative cheney. Bush is lucky the irate Iraqi wasn't playing horseshoes with hand grenades...
Every once in a while I am going to put up a link here and there to some Blogging friends (well, I think of them as friends? They link, they read and comment occasionally - as do I at their Blogging homes) that have put some serious effort into the causes many of us support and that have something like a book, some art, or maybe something to support a cause dear to their hearts for sale. I don't think it will be more than once a week, give or take, because I don't want to alienate my 3 regular readers (Me, myself and I).
Some may be doing it for a cause, others may be doing it to pay for their bandwidth, and others may be trying eke out a meager living in this piss poor outsourced and unemployed based economy.
In all of those cases, I think that it makes them worthy of our support. I get absolutely nothing from them for these little blurbs - except, maybe, an "attaboy" and the satisfaction of knowing that the few people that click through here may learn about a new site or a new author/artist/cause.
I figured that I would start with this book, The Pains, written by John and available for pre-order over at The Wetmachine, and since my verbosity is generally limited to and usually starts and ends questionably with 4 letter words ("What the fuck?"), I'll let John's words try and sell you on it:
Let's say you're the Savior, Fred Christ. Would you want your frozen head to be reanimated in 1984?
The book will be going to press in November, 2008, and printed books will be in hand sometime in early-to-mid December, 2008.
This book is way off schedule. Sometimes stuff happens, and since I announced The Pains, stuff has happened in giant bucketsfull. However, the book essentially done. Originally I promised it for Summer, 2006, then I said March 2007. Thank you to those of you who have waited, (sometimes patiently, sometimes not so patiently) and encouraged me to finish writing the book. Well, I have finished. Selah. I hope you like it.
Starting with Chapter 3, attentive readers may notice some allusions to, and borrowing from, the work of the late Chis McKinstry, creator of the Mindpixel project. As far as I've been able to determine, there is no copyright holder. I'll have more to say about this when the final book is prepared for publication, but for now I just want to make this acknowledgment.
I have made fair-use use of songs by Kate Bush, Leonard Cohen and Social Distortion, and I have borrowed themes, characters, and even a bit of prose here and there from George Orwell's 1984. Proper attribution will be given in the printed version.
I hope that if you like the book, you'll buy a printed copy or make a donation using Paypal. Cheeseburger and I could really use the money. Really.
This little story is dedicated to the memory of my late brother Paul Damien Sundman and of my late sister Maureen Sundman Angevine. I know that Paul liked the early chapters, and I think he would have liked the finished book. Maureen probably would have hated it--she didn't approve of blasphemy. But I like to think she's in heaven now, putting in a good word for me on the grounds that I'm too stupid to know any better.
You can even get a peek at the book's contents:
Here comes "The Pains," by me, John Damien Sundman, with illustrations by Cheeseburger Brown. The HTML version is [here]; the PDF version that will be used to create the printed book will be along soon. Feel free to read, save, print, copy and share among your friends.
So you can decide for yourself. A couple of other books by John - Acts of the Apostles, and Cheap Complex Devices - are there to take a look at, as well. Also, I encourage you to poke around the Wetmachine site just to get a better idea of where John and his Blogging friends are coming from and going to. And you may just like the Blog... I do.
Support The Blog!
I am going to be filing these under a convenient tag - "Support The Blog" - so you can find them all as they accumulate. I believe that when you support a fellow Blogger you are supporting everything you are fighting for. My next stops - yeah... I have been thinking about doing this for a while - are going to be in the heart of Liberal America and somewhere around Hooterville... Just so as you know. If you have any suggestions for future features feel free to contact me through my profile email and use the title "Support The Blog" so I can find it easily and pull it out of the spam box if it ends up there. By the way... You can always find something new to read over here. And thanks for reading this!
Jim Rogers is a legendary investor and partner of George Soros. He is known for being blunt, and, I’ve found from watching what he says, usually quite correct. He is now saying most major US banks are bankrupt.
Republicans spent the last eight years like drunken sailors on their first shore leave after years at sea. They wantonly drained the treasury of billions and billions of dollars on harebrained schemes to induce "birthpangs of democracy" around the world, chasing phantom enemies and enriching their defense contractor contributors. They created a lobbying culture so corrupt it finally collapsed of its own weight. They deregulated the financial industry so thoroughly that it created an elaborate ponzi scheme that has just about destroyed the world economy.
They have no standing to lecture anyone about responsibility, fiscal or otherwise, and no right to obstruct the cure for the problem they created.
It's true that Democrats have, over the years, enabled Republicans and helped their ideology to run amock. But right now they are all we've got and their intentions, quite clearly, are to keep the economy from tanking, if only out of self interest.
And, clearly shown, the GOP's hatred of the American worker... They blame you hard working Americans for the banking scams the GOP caused and that flushed this country down the drain.
Fortunately for us in this case... The GOP knows absolutely nothing about winning wars. See Afghanistan and Iraq.
For over seven minutes last night, Jon Stewart grilled former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee on his oppositiontogay marriage. Huckabee is touring the country to promote his new book, “Do The Right Thing.” When Stewart compared gay marriage bans to interracial marriage bans, Huckabee restated his view that homosexuality is simply a behavior choice:
STEWART: Segregation used to be the law until the courts intervened.
HUCK: There’s a big difference between a person being black and a person practicing a lifestyle and engaging in a marital relationship.
STEWART: Okay, actually this is helpful because it gets to the crux of it. … And I’ll tell you this: Religion is far more of a choice than homosexuality. And the protections that we have for religion — we protect religion. And talk about a lifestyle choice — that is absolutely a choice. Gay people don’t choose to be gay. At what age did you choose to not be gay?
Huckabee tried to insist that “60 percent of the American population” opposes gay marriage. Stewart interrupted him, calling it a “travesty” that gay Americans have to plead for their civil rights... (READ ON)
But they conveniently choose to skip the First Divine Institution in their bankrupt arguments.
Free Will - The one God supposedly gave everyone to choose their own destiny. Religion is quite simply and for certain nothing more than a lifestyle choice...
You aren't born that way. Even if you are a believer - God gave you the free will to choose to believe. In fact some of these religions make a big deal out of converting people into believers. Because. People. Were. Not. Born. That. Way.
They made a choice.
People choose their religions all the time. Often they change their choice of religion on a whim.
Today, the word miscegenation is avoided by many scholars, because the term suggests a distinct biological phenomenon, rather than a categorization imposed on certain relationships. The word is considered offensive by many and other terms such as "interracial," "interethnic" or "cross-cultural" are more common in contemporary usage. However, the term is still used by scholars when referring to past practices concerning multiraciality, such as anti-miscegenation laws that banned interracial marriages.
Christians and their ever changing views on traditional marriage...
I am pretty sure most of them have given up the bigoted views against interracial marriages.
A. Marriage in the United States shall consist of a union between one man and one or more women. (Gen 29:17-28; II Sam 3:2-5)
B. Marriage shall not impede a man's right to take concubines in addition to his wife or wives. (II Sam 5:13; I Kings 11:3; II Chron 11:21)
C. A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed. (Deut 22:13-21)
D. Marriage of a believer and a non-believer shall be forbidden. (Gen 24:3; Num 25:1-9; Ezra 9:12; Neh 10:30)
E. Since marriage is for life, neither this Constitution nor the constitution of any State, nor any state or federal law, shall be construed to permit divorce. (Deut 22:19; Mark 10:9)
F. If a married man dies without children, his brother shall marry the widow. If he refuses to marry his brother's widow or deliberately does not give her children, he shall pay a fine of one shoe and be otherwise punished in a manner to be determined by law. (Gen 38:6-10; Deut 25:5-10)
G. In lieu of marriage, if there are no acceptable men in your town, it is required that you get your dad drunk and have sex with him (even if he had previously offered you up as a sex toy to men young and old), tag-teaming with any sisters you may have. Of course, this rule applies only if you are female. (Gen 19:31-36)
Deuteronomy 22:28-29 NLT If a man is caught in the act of raping a young woman who is not engaged, he must pay fifty pieces of silver to her father. Then he must marry the young woman because he violated her, and he will never be allowed to divorce her.
Just remember that these are precisely the views and lessons that have formed people like Mike Huckabee's "family values and morals" in the religious lifestyle choice they have made.
History will not be kind to you and yours, Huckster...
Time and time again these family values types have had to be forced to re-define their idea of traditional marriage because of what societies morals have defined as abhorrent practices. This time is no different than any of the other times. It truly sickens me that in a nation where all men are supposedly created equal... That we constantly have to sink down to these morally corrupt and repugnant people's level to argue for the most basic civil rights of other men and women. Their right to choose.
Those of you on the other side of these arguments - and I assure you, they are all the same arguments repeated over and over again - will be viewed in the history books as the bigots and haters that you are. But let's be clear on this...
That was your choice.
Not mine. My choice and belief would be that other people have no right to stick their noses in to the love lives, bedrooms and marriages of other adults. And I never had to ask for Mike Huckabee's or any one else, Gay, Lesbian, heterosexual, religious, atheist or other, for permission to get married - other than my wife-to-be at the time. All of you on the wrong side of this argument have been left with the freedom to choose your religion, your morals, your values and even your spouse.
The LGBT community deserves the same rights, the same freedoms guaranteed to them under the Constitution, to make all of these same choices without your 5000 years of traditionally misguided, immoral and bigoted input.
A company managed by the wife of Republic Windows and Doors owner Richard Gillman recently purchased an Iowa plant that manufactures similar products, according to public records.
Gillman has come under fire in recent days for abruptly closing Republic's Goose Island plant and refusing to provide workers there with the 60 days notice and pay required by federal labor law.
Echo Windows and Doors was created two weeks ago and lists Sharon Gillman as its manager, according copies of records obtained by the Daily News from the Iowa Secretary of the State. According to Cook County property tax records, Sharon Gillman is Richard Gillman's wife.
The couple purchased a $2.6 million Oak Street condo together in 2007, according to property records.
Here, in this corner of the recession, the standoff between the workers and Bank of America has quickly evolved into a symbol of the divide between the financial rescue plans for Wall Street and Main Street.
and:
When they heard the news, some workers were furious. Others cried. Rangel panicked. His wife had been sick for weeks and had recently seen the family physician.
"I got a call from the doctors. The insurance company said they won't pay because the company canceled all our policies and didn't tell us," Rangel said. "I have a mortgage. I have a child. What do we do if he gets sick?"
So it turns out BofA may have been right in the first place: it's Republic's problem. Even so, BoA is 'extending credit' to Republic for the employees. 'Journamalism'. Gotta love it. Another story that got phoned in without deep background on the principals.
Get the feeling that BoA's new found interest in extending credit lies in a mix of CYA with the PR and wanting to be able to reason continuing business with the Gillmans and Ecko in Iowa? (Just taking a guess there...)
If it simply came down to the PR aspect I can't see them doing it. There has to be more of a profit motive behind it, IMHO. And YES!I am cynical. lol
