The appalling thing about Conservative Republicans in the “old time values” vein is that they can make up all kinds of excuses for the Southern Strategy or DOMA but it still boils down to good old fashion bigotry.  Why not just own up to it?

Here’s one from Matt Frassica at the New York Observer on Ross Douhthat and some of the ‘promising’ young hate mongers up next in the so-called intellectual wing of the ‘conservative’ movement.  These are the ones that still consider promoting theocracy to be an American value and distort history to do so.

The question came from Christopher Glazek, a fact-checker at The New Yorker, who wanted to know whether Mr. Douthat and Mr. Salam believed that former RNC chairman Ken Mehlman, who has apologized on behalf of his party for the Southern Strategy, should also apologize for the Republican party’s gay politics.

At first Mr. Douthat seemed unable to get a sentence out without interrupting himself and starting over. Then he explained: “I am someone opposed to gay marriage who is deeply uncomfortable arguing the issue in public.”

Mr. Douthat indicated that he opposes gay marriage because of his religious beliefs, but that he does not like debating the issue in those terms. At one point he said that, sometimes, he feels like he should either change his mind, or simply resolve never to address the question in public.

He added that the conservative opposition to gay marriage is “a losing argument,” and asked rhetorically if committed homosexual relationships ought to be denied the legal recognition accorded without hesitation to the fleeting enthusiasms of Britney Spears and Newt Gingrich.

After the panel, Mr. Douthat told the Observer: “If I were putting money on the future of gay marriage, I would bet on it.”

He added: “The secular arguments against gay marriage, when they aren’t just based on bigotry or custom, tend to be abstract in ways that don’t find purchase in American political discourse. I say, ‘Institutional support for reproduction,’ you say, ‘I love my boyfriend and I want to marry him.’ Who wins that debate? You win that debate.”

Okay, riddle me this.  WTF is institutional support for reproduction and why on earth is it necessary unless you’re trying to control women?    Is this basically a movement to keep women barefoot, pregnant, in the kitchen and attached legally to a man?  Institutional support for planned pregnancies?  Nope, no support there.  Institutional support for abused women and children?  Not on the same level as institutional support for dropping bombs on other countries.  But, we need an agenda for institutional support for reproduction?  What is this?  Government via Papal edict or perhaps we’re supposed to watch the hyper-reproductive Dugan Family and get with the Quiverfull movement? It’s bad enough we provide tax deductions for families that basically litter the country with children they can’t take care of, now we have to stop gay people from marrying to encourage it further?

What on earth kind of frame is that for a modern nation to adapt?  Why not just be honest and say we get votes by pandering to misogynists, homophobes, theocrats, and racists and just be done with it?  Why the need for stupid terms?

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Coming of age in the 70s with Shirley Chisholm (my all time shero) Bela Abzug, and a lot of other women politicians to serve as role models, my first instinct as a new voter was to check off every female name on the ballot. That was until I heard of and listened to Phyliss Schafly. I happened across her smug smile on C Span last night accepting some award and was reminded how there are women who are not the friends of other women. She’s the reason I always check for certain things whenever I vote for a woman. Phyliss Schafly advanced her career and made a name for herself by selling out other women.

This woman politician pictured to the right appears not to be the friend of reality and probably is an Eagle Forum member. She’s running for the mayor of Tulsa, OK which is very close to where I was born. Frankly, I wouldn’t vote for her to be in charge of the Sanitation Department. There would be too much stuff to shovel and I doubt she’s up to it.

Republican mayoral candidate Anna Falling said Tuesday that putting a Christian creationism display in the Tulsa Zoo is No. 1 in importance among city issues that include violent crime, budget woes and bumpy streets.“It’s first,” she said to calls of “hallelujah” at a rally outside the zoo. “If we can’t come to the foundation of faith in this community, those other answers will never come. We need to first of all recognize the fact that God needs to be honored in this city.”

Falling, who has founded several Christian nonprofits and is a former city councilor, also said the next mayor needs to appoint people to city boards, authorities and commissions who will “honor God.”

“We will also look for people who want to characterize the origins of both man and animals in a way that honors Judeo-Christian science that proves God as the creator,” she said.

When asked whether she meant she would recruit Christians to serve the city, Falling said she was talking about “people committed to their churches,” and when asked whether she meant Christian churches, she said, “churches, yes.”

Falling’s campaign has been overtly Christian-themed. But she said she wants to embrace people of all religions, not alienate them.

Well, she’s certainly alienated me and probably any one that attends a mosque, a synagogue, a dharma center, or any other religious facility that’s not a church. Tulsa’s a university town so there has to be quite a few of all kinds of folks there.  That would include humanists and atheists.

So, what’s a zoo got to do with proselytizing creationism any way?  That’s one thing I’d like to know.  Oh, well at least it’s an equal opportunity zoo.

The zoo does have displayed an elephant-like sculpture said to depict the Hindu god Ganesha and an exhibit that deals with the creation of the earth from a scientific point of view.

Tulsa’s a pretty good size town. I’d also like to know why she thinks this is the city’s foremost concern, also. This is the problem that comes with just voting for some one based on some specific trait. Some times, they package is not what you expect once you’ve opened it.

You can treat this like an open thread.  I’m going to go get a bottle of wine.  Now that I’ve written this, I need it.

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I’m going to bring out some information I put out on Bobby Jindal in December of last year so you’ll know exactly how little to pay attention to this man.  Jindal is obviously positioning himself for a run at national office which doesn’t surprise me at all, because the guy’s been a bigger job hopper than our current POTUS.  It’s evident that anything to be learned from any of those short-lived jobs is lost on him because he never puts facts, people, or effectiveness before ideology. He’s a faith-based ideologue.  He’s totally convinced of the ‘rightness’ of his view regardless of what the facts are on the ground.  Contrary to his insistence that Louisiana is improving when it isn’t, and contrary to his insistent that he’s cut state bureaucracy when the payrolls have gone up, he’s still just a man that never lets facts get in the way of a good dogmatic speech opportunity.  I don’t think the man exactly lies, he just appears to be totally delusional.

I’ve written two things on him.  One being his insistence that the state of Louisiana is all hunky dory just cause he’s in office.   It’s not, our unemployment statistics are moving up now like the rest of the country because the FEMA and Federal Hurricane monies that were stimulating our economies are running out.   We’re getting our dose of recession and it’s not going to improve for us any time soon. Of course, it goes against his ideology to suggest that government funding may have actually helped our state, so he just prefers to take all the credit himself.

He also has been insisting he’s passed these tough ethic laws, which is true, but he conveniently forgets to mention he’s exempted the governor’s office.  Ask Jindal about those tickets to see Miley Cyrus at the SuperDome if you’re a reporter and you get a chance.

Governor Bobby Jindal, in the midst of Day 4 of a special session on ethics, is having to deal with a controversy surrounding Disney sensation, Hannah Montana. 9NEWS has learned that Governor Jindal’s chief of staff and several state legislators were able to get tickets for free. WAFB’s Jim Shannon has the story.

Much has been said down at the legislature about free tickets and lavish meals for lawmakers and appointed state employees. Granted, all of that talk is for future legislation. However, the governor’s office is not ignoring the perks that come with being governor. Governor Bobby Jindal’s special session on ethics is moving through the legislature on a fast pace. Amid cries of no more fat cat meals or tickets to sporting events and concerts, the governor is dealing with a ticket controversy within his own office.

So now, he’s up there talking about Bipartisan Health Care. This from the guy who took over Louisiana’s Health Care and immediately turned all the mentally ill on Medicaid out into the streets without even saying boo to their families and called it a quality enhancement.

State Sen. Walter Boasso, D-Arabi, contends the Rhodes scholar made budget cuts at the state Department of Health and Hospitals that show he has a big brain but little heart. Boasso aired a commercial that blames Jindal’s Medicaid cuts for the eviction of a mentally disabled man from a New Orleans nursing home.

Jindal, R-Kenner, responded to the criticism with a commercial featuring a Richland Parish physician who praises him for rescuing a Medicaid program teetering on the brink of collapse from corruption.
Jindal reined in a runaway Medicaid budget and landed a position on Capitol Hill. But it casts a shadow over him as a campaign issue.

He contends he cut Medicaid spending by $300 a person without sacrificing care. His political opponents say that is not possible. Lois Simpson, executive director for The Advocacy Center in New Orleans, said the budget cuts affected people and included “ridiculous” proposals, such as severely limiting Medicaid patients’ prescriptions.
“Thinking back it seems like there were a lot of across-the-board kind of cuts instead of looking at individual needs. It’s very wonkish,” Simpson said.

If you really want to get me started on the worst policy ever, we could talk about his repeal of the Stelly Tax which eliminated the most regressive parts of our sales tax.  Just exactly what’s needed during a recession!!  Just transfer the tax burden from the wealthy to the poorest of the poor!

The first of 2009 initiates is the Stelly tax repeal. The Stelly Plan eliminates sales tax on food, drugs and household utilities, and replaces them with income tax. The Stelly Plan was approved by voters in 2002. During the 2008 legislative session the Stelly Plan was repealed, which reduced the two highest income brackets to the level they were prior to the implementation of Stelly.

Governor Jindal never met a person needing any government service that he wasn’t willing to kick to the ground (except the Saints Football Team and rich Republican Business interests, oops! that’s probably redundant).  Then there’s what he did to our state’s higher education system which was insist on 20% across the board cuts even to those of us that work in universities with growing student populations.

And yet, in the WSJ, he has the audacity of accusing others of ‘lying’.  That is the proverbial pot calling the kettle black.  This guy excels at believing his own delusions.  It’s not even subtle.

Jindal negotiated giving Foster Farms, a private chicken processor, $50 million in taxpayer funds to purchase a chicken processing plant owned by bankrupt Pilgrim’s_Pride allowing Foster Farms to open the plant with less than one half of the employees Pilgrim’s Pride employed. Pilgrim’s Pride founder Lonnie “Bo Pilgrim contributed $2500 to Jindal’s campaign in 2007. Other contributors to Jindal’s campaign who received economic development payments or benefited from economic development spending include Albemarle and the owners of Edison Chouest Offshore.

Let me just restate some information about Jindal that I put out last December.

Jindal is a throwback to the Dark Ages (oh, make that social conservative). The Republicans can be certain of that. The first time he ran for governor against Kathleen Blanco I remember watching their debate and hearing him talk about the most important time in his life was when he became a Catholic Christian while witnessing an exorcism. He’s actually witnessed and written about the topic. ( For those of you cynics: here’s his published article: Jindal, Bobby (December 1994). “Beating a Demon: Physical Dimensions of Spiritual Warfare“. New Oxford Review. “I began to think that the demon would only attack me if I tried to pray or fight back….Did I witness spiritual warfare? I do not have the answers…” )

He is hyperCatholic as only the recently converted can be. He also was brought to the American myth by The Brady Bunch. His name is actually Piyush and much like Obama, he tries to mimic the American experience in a way only those who try to forget their past mimic the American experience. He is definitely in love with the zygote nation–he is for a myriad ‘rights’ for protohumans but is fine with state sanctioned deaths of criminals and zygote-saving deaths of women. He does voice knee-jerk negative reaction to gay Americans (against even civil unions), and support flag burning amendments, human life amendments, and marriage defined as man and wife amendments. But remember, there is supposed to be more to being a Republican than being the country’s leading Christian Cult Leader, let’s look at his record.

I want you to see the actual record before thinking this guy is anything but a religious nut on steroids who is a curiosity because of his ethnic background and charming speech. He can charm people to the point they believe what he says and not what he’s done. In this manner, he is very much like Obama which is why my Puma friends, beware of Republicans offering up Jindal horses.

Before the Republican party became the party of hyperChristianity, it was the party of small government, fiscal conservatism and support of civil liberties outlined in the constitution. (Think Barry Goldwater). Jindal is hyperChristian but he only provides lip service to the other items. The Media Darlings of the Right Wing are very much in love with Jindal the way they used to be in love with Dubya because they believe his rhetoric. But, in this way he is much like Dubya. He’s become an obamafied candidate. Remember, he’s been in office less than a year when you read this and also remember he’s already been in Iowa where the caucuses are just three short years away. Like Obama, Jindal is a job hopper so one complete term as a governor will qualify him as god in his eyes.

Is Jindala a fiscal Conservative or small government Republican?

He is if you listen to the in-love Right Wing Talking heads. Let’s just check the record.

Jindal’s Hiring Freeze to ‘Lower’ the Number of state Employees and ’save’ money

We’ve had TWO hiring freezes since Jindal got elected (10 months). This I can really speak to since I’ve worked for two universities this year and he just stuck a blanket freeze on the entire state system minutes after he took the oath of office. This was a knee jerk, ideological, poorly thought-out action that didn’t produce the desired results. He killed UNO’s chance at getting some key professorships that needed to be replaced badly. Nearly every University here–most importantly the medical centers–are very short on professionals since Hurricane Katrina. The Med centers are dangerously short of doctors and nurses. UNO is struggling to get qualified folks to teach classes and has been using (in UNO’s case) highly questionable and untalented graduate students in their stead. Since Louisiana ranks 50 now in preparation for Higher Ed which negatively impacts the state’s ability to attract companies, you should be able to deduce this is a really bad move. So now, we’re on our SECOND hiring freeze in less than a year. This is because what he says and what he did, are two different things. Let’s look at what Mr. Small government has done here.

The Spin: Jindal cuts jobs. The truth: Jindal cut jobs before he added jobs. Jindal has said repeatedly in press conferences that he cut 1,000 state employee since taking office. Recent questioning by legislators of Jindal’s commission of administration has painted a different story. The state has actually added 2,400 employees. Not only that but, state payrolls are up. Way up. (See infamous Louisiana muckraker C.B. Forgotston’s “Wake up! and I mean fast!” at the monthly satirical paper The New Orleans Levee: we don’t hold anything back; December edition which isn’t up on the site yet as of this posting but should be shortly). Since the initial Jindal freeze, the state payroll has gone from $169 million every four weeks to $176 million every four weeks. It seems Jindal’s hiring freeze may actually be the reason why the state of Louisiana has one of the lower unemployment rates. It’s really unfortunate that they come and go and disrupt the state agencies that really need the employees from getting the folks they need when they are available. Btw, state spending in the current budget increased by $1 billion from the prior fiscal year under Governor Blanco.

AP writer Melinda Deslatte had this to say about Jindal and Louisiana’s overall spending in her Nov. 30 column. Here’s Piyush taking credit for a decrease in the state budget that isn’t exactly of his making. Does this remind Pumas of Obama or what?

Some of the rhetoric bandied about by Gov. Bobby Jindal hasn’t helped matters, particularly about overall spending. Jindal and other administration leaders have talked repeatedly of a multibillion dollar decrease in the current 2008-09 budget.

That’s not false, but it also has nothing to do with the actions of the Legislature and governor. The shrinkage is tied to the loss of one-time federal recovery aid after the hurricanes of 2005, a decrease in the budget that lawmakers did not control.

I’ve been going after Jindal in my economics classes since he first came into office saying he was going to blanket the state with rebate checks and get rid of the income tax system. This was because there was such a huge surplus when he took the oath of office. (The latest estimate we’ve heard this year is there’s about to be a $1.3 billion shortfall in the state budget.) The windfall was the result of all those folks replacing stuff they’d lost in Katrina and paying sales taxes on it as well as the monies coming in from the feds. Jindal, however, wanted to spread the money to even the northern portions of the state while everything below I-12 is pretty much a pile of damaged infrastructure and they are the source of the funds. Can you imagine where the state would be if that money hadn’t landed in the rainy day fund? This is the brainiac trustee of the Reagan Legacy? Well, he may subscribe to voodoo economics, but he certainly has done it without use of a synapse.

This man is dangerously ideological and appears to disarm people with his personal story and his education. Every one is charmed by his personal story then ignores the facts on the ground. (Sound familiar?)   I think my die hard Republican Dad even realizes my governor is a fast-talking empty suit now.  Many of the folks that voted for him are now realizing what a huge mistake he is.  My hope is that the MSM will actually do some research on this guy instead of taking every thing he says at face value.

Today’s WSJ piece is just another attempt to put a reasonable face on an unreasonable ideological scheme.  It suggests ‘reforming’ existing institutions  (like insurance companies) which are the primary source of the market failure.   And, how about this one?

•Refundable tax credits. Low-income working Americans without health insurance should get help in buying private coverage through a refundable tax credit. This is preferable to building a separate, government-run health-care plan.

Let me get this straight.  You’re low income, struggling to make ends meet, you barely pay taxes, and yet magically a tax credit is going to solve everything for you!   If you believe that, I got some swampland right back here to sell you.   This guy doesn’t deserve a national platform, he needs to experience what life is like because of the lousy decisions he’s made.  Ask any student going to University here!  Ask any poor person that is seeing their grocery bills increase by 9% every time they go to the store!  Ask any one who need mental health services, especially if they are on Medicaid (if you can find them out there on the street or in the prisons!)  Jindal’s been a disaster for Louisiana.  He would be a disaster for the United States.  Please, stop giving him a platform to do so!

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The TWITTER heard ROUND the WORLD!!!

For those of you who don’t fully appreciate Twitter:  You can either watch CNN replay Larry King or be part of the twittering of the Revolution in Iran and Tehran.

The opposition leader has been arrested

All phones, lights, and TV are now shut off in Tehran and they have blocked Twittering.

Statistical Anomolies is basically an understatement. More news on a gamed election.

BBC’s camera’s and videos taken but here they say it all:  IRAN is on FIRE.

Further writing on the Iran’s Stolen Election from New Yorker.

More live photos from IRAN as we hear that the government has ordered ballot boxes be burned.

Continuing Update:

The latest news tomorrow might be the complete failure of the MSM to televise and cover what is undoubtedly history in the making.  Desperate Tehran citizens have been uploading media to their Facebook pages,  Twitter and their blogs all night long.  First we heard that all electricity had been shut off in Tehran. This was quickly followed by an immediate shut down of internet and cell phone services.  Those with satellites have had to momentarily scurry as police have started to go house to house in search of satellites.  Thousands of images are making their way across twitter and social networks to a news hungry world as CNN plays Larry King Live and some fat tatto’d guys that build bikes. At Fox,  Crazy Glen Beck spends a day with a high tech chalk board saying I told you so … the BBC is trying but has had both cameras and videos taken.  Jack Tapper reports ABC news is missing equipment but their folks are using cell phone cameras.

If you think the world of information is on TV.  THINK AGAIN!

MORE UNBELIEVABLE NEWS:

Mousavi TWITS his HOUSE arrest :   http://twitter.com/mousavi1388

Dear Iranian People, Mousavi has not left you alone, he has been put under house arrest by Ministry of Intelligence #IranElection

Latest from the BBC:

The BBC’s John Simpson saw secret policemen being attacked and chased away by protesters, which he says is extremely rare.

Some of the protesters in Tehran wore Mr Mousavi’s campaign colour of green and chanted “Down with the dictator”, news agencies report.

Four police motorbikes were set on fire near the interior ministry, where votes had been counted, our correspondent says.

One BBC News website reader, Xenia, went to Vanak Square in Tehran to express anger and said police fired plastic bullets.

“They fired tear gas to scare us away, but it would only be temporarily. We would hide in some corner and then re-emerge angrier than ever.”

One opposition newspaper has been closed down and BBC websites also appear to have been blocked by the Iranian authorities. The AP news agency reports that mobile phone services have been blocked in Tehran.

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In 2008, I decided to go from blog lurker, to thread poster, to front-pager.  It has been one strange trip that has been both oddly satisfying and exasperating. I think I popped out of the womb with an opinion and a need to express it.  If my first grade teacher Miss Pearl Jensen of Herbert Hoover elementary school could speak to this, she’d probably say, that child has too much to say and I just felt the need to “shake the toenails off her” all the time.   She used to pick  me up, shake me, and scream that at me. I assume she’d do that again if she met me today.

My mother was always being called to school about me because I was always saying something.  In fourth grade, I refused to say the pledge of allegiance because I saw absolutely no use in it.  I announced in fifth grade, after reading my social studies assignment on eastern religions, that I must be a Buddhist because it’s the first religion I’d read about that didn’t seem less real than ‘The Hobbit’.  I’ve always been in trouble throughout my corporate work life for being ‘verbose’, ‘glib’, and ‘mouthy’.  Thank goodness for academic freedom where I can now get away with it.  So,  I guess you shouldn’t be surprised that I would eventually find a home as a front pager some where.

Since front-paging really doesn’t come with instruction manuals, other than the usual, wow, we like the sound of how you write, knock yourself out here, I’ve had to learn by the hunt and peck method.  I’ve learned which buttons attract what type of nasty comments.  I usually avoid pushing those buttons because frankly, unless it’s really important, I hate doing troll duty.  Some how, there’s just one button I keep pushing.  It is the “I hate your source” so you must be a ______ button.

Look, I’m used to writing scholarly stuff and finance reports.  I recognize that sometimes the people who drive you the craziest can some times come up with a good point and good data.  Other times, the people you really want to support and put forward can come up with some stinkers.  This is a blanket warning to every one who ever reads my stuff.  People that you disagree with can frequently be quotable as more than just examples of wingnuts.  On the other hand, some times people that you disagree with, and get quoted a lot can be very very very wrong and what they say will be printed over and over and over and over.  The only thing I think is completely over the top is taking a comment out of context and creating a moonbat feeding frenzy with it.

With that statement and story, I present to you Michael Tomasky of the Guardian (last time I checked both reliably liberal and credible sources) and ” How they lie: a case study; Did an Obama judicial nominee really express a preference for Allah over Jesus? No, not by a long shot”.  Tomasky basically chases down one of those right wing memes around the web, then exposes that meme as untrue by actually using (gasp) facts  and showing the context.  His gut told him with a title like that,  it was undoubtedly one of those right wing smear jobs, but he didn’t just take it at gut or face value.  He chased down the truth before he pounded out the story.  In other words, he acted like a journalist who writes a blog rather than a blogger that acts out what he supposes is journalism.

From the second I read the sentence, I knew there was something fishy about it. Many years’ experience in reading and then looking into rightwing canards set off the usual alarm bells in my head. So I know how these things work. But even I was shocked after I looked into the truth of the matter.

My daily readings led me to an interview with Newt Gingrich in Christianity Today. The former speaker was asked whether opposition to tax increases was an adequate “uniting message” for his party. Gingrich replied that there had to be more to the party’s story. For instance, he said:

You have Obama nominating Judge Hamilton, who said in her ruling that saying the words Jesus Christ in a prayer is a sign of inappropriate behavior, but saying Allah would be OK. You’ll find most Republican senators voting against a judge who is confused about whether you can say Jesus Christ in a prayer, particularly one who is pro-Muslim being able to say Allah.

That seemed, frankly, ridiculous. I happened to know that the “Hamilton” in question was from Indiana and had a reputation as a moderate-to-liberal jurist. I also happened to know that “her” first name was David, so Gingrich could not get even this basic fact straight (obviously, he assumed, only some sort of Wiccan lesbian could deliver such a ruling!). So I wanted to know more.

I Googled around, and sure enough, a search returned thousands of rabid posts from the wing-o-sphere about this judge who thinks Indianans should be allowed to pray to Allah but not to Jesus. This one apparently set things going. And from there it was off to the races.

Rather than just looking at that first link or checking out blogs that agree with him and comment on the same things, Tomasky went in search of the actual case, the context and the ‘offending’ quote.  He had googled and found hundreds of right wing blogs with opinions about a judge who thinks Indianans should be allowed to pray to Allah but not to Jesus.  (Try it yourself, there’s a helluva lot of them out there and some of them are foaming-at-the-mouth-right wing rabid as well as you may imagine.)

The case in question is  Hinrichs v Bosma and was  decided 30 November 2005.  Here’s the link to where you can read the 60-page decision in pdf form here.   The case is not that unusual these days.  The legislature of Indiana uses ceremonial prayers to open its proceedings.   Also typical, the legislators invite clergy from around the area.  I guess some one counted how many invoked the name of Jesus and complained. The court counted a group of them and found that happened about 29 out of 45  times.  Hinrichs is one of the four Indiana taxpayers filing a complaint that asked for the prayers to be more ecumenical and not favoring one specific religion.

Bosma is the former Speaker of the House who basically turned the original request down and said that clerics could pray any way they wanted to pray and whatever way their community wanted them to pray.  A law suit was filed and Judge David Hamilton got to write the opinion.  I’m not a lawyer, but even given that,  the opinion is fairly readable and the decision approaches the arguments based on the establishment clause in the Bill of Rights. As Tomasky mentions, the most interesting thing about the opinion is that some of the findings are based on a decision from the fourth judicial circuit court which is based in Virginia.  It is widely considered the country’s most conservative court.

Tomasky links the two decisions.

The fourth circuit heard a case called Wynn v Town of Great Falls. The town council opened its meetings with a prayer that regularly mentioned Jesus Christ. The fourth circuit – remember, the country’s most conservative – ruled that Great Falls stood in clear violation of the establishment clause, and that the prayer “promoted one religion over all others”.

Not only did Hamilton rely on the country’s most conservative federal circuit court, he specifically cited an opinion written by one of the most conservative jurists on that court. Judge J Harvie Wilkinson is always on the short list when a US supreme court seat opens up during a Republican presidency. But even Wilkinson wrote, as Hamilton quotes him:

We cannot adopt a view of the tradition of legislative prayer that chops up American citizens on public occasions into representatives of one sect and one sect only, whether Christian, Jewish or Wiccan. In private observances, the faithful surely choose to express the unique aspects of their creeds. But in their civic faith, Americans have reached more broadly. Our civic faith seeks guidance that is not the property of any sect.

That’s a deeply conservative jurist talking, and saying: no Jesus in governmental settings.

So here’s where the lie comes in. Hamilton did indeed rule that Jesus Christ must not be mentioned in legislative prayers. But what did he say about Allah? It practically goes without saying that the decision doesn’t so much as mention Allah. So this is what his wing-nut critics are doing: They’re using the fact that he proscribes mentions of Jesus but does not specifically proscribe mentions of Allah to assert that he thinks mentions of Allah would be perfectly, as it were, kosher.

But in fact, he says exactly the opposite in the decision. Read this paragraph, from page 49:

“The Speaker has also suggested that such an explicit caution about Christian references “would be the first known religious viewpoint discrimination in connection with the Indiana House invocation.” … The criticism is misguided. The decisive point of constitutional law is that a practice of sectarian prayer favouring any particular religion violates the establishment clause.

From the evidence here, it is clear that the letters asking invited clerics to “strive for an ecumenical prayer” have not been sufficient to prevent many Christian speakers from using the prayer opportunity to advance and even to proselytise Christianity. The same strictures will apply to sectarian Jewish or Muslim prayers, for example.

This record, however, shows no efforts by Jewish or Muslim clerics to use the prayer opportunity to advance their particular religions. At this juncture, there is no need to be more specific in the injunction as to what would amount to a sectarian prayer in those traditions.”

The same strictures will apply! In other words, Hamilton wrote that he’d have said precisely the same thing if he’d been petitioned about Yahweh or Allah or any deity. You can see clearly that the wingers have taken the last sentence of this paragraph, yanked it completely out of context, and then taken the extra step (or two or three) of insinuating that of course, this kind of Godless heathen is exactly the sort of nominee you’d expect from a secret Muslim president who can’t produce a birth certificate.

And let’s not leave this subject without noting the revolting racism of the mention of Allah. It wasn’t the possibility of people praying to Buddha that Gingrich and all the others were alarmed by, or Vishnu, or the Shinto God Kami. Only Allah. That millions of decent and patriotic Americans pray to Allah every day doesn’t concern Gingrich and the others in the slightest.

So, this folks, is an authentic right-wing canard. It singles out one religion for scorn over others.  It takes a quote from a situation completely out of context and turns it into something that can only be characterized as a complete, utter lie.  It is now being repeated over and over to ruin someone’s career.  Next time you need a clear example of a nasty right wing meme, well, go bookmark Micheal’s article over on the Guardian and get a startling reminder.

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Just when you think it’s safe to take a look at what’s swimming in the human gene pool, some of the world’s religious prove exactly how little they’ve advanced since the iron age.  You know, those tribes that ask those big questions like:  “Who can we blame next and does that mean we can kill them now?”

Thanks to Joseph Cannon, I know that Swine Flu: God’s Latest Punishment of Idol Worship is a real opinion that exists on a site for Conservative Christians only.  As both an atheist and a liberal, I was told I was not welcome in the  site’s banner, but heck, I had to go there.  There, you can learn such godly lessons as this:

One of God’s favorite conduits for extingushing evil is swine. Surely, we all remember the time that Jesus cast the devils possessing a nudist into a herd of swine which promptly drowned themselves. This time, the swine are staying alive and killing the devils, a/k/a Mexicans, a/k/a Catholics, a/k/a cultists, a/k/a idol-worshippers. Those people have always provoked the Lord with their “veneration” of Mary to the point that she has supplanted Jesus and become the Diana Ross of their religion, with Jesus relegated from THE Supreme to simply a Supreme. The cultists in the country just south claim to see Mary in everything from a stucco wall to an enchilada. They worship mortal “saints” and pray to statues. It was only a matter of time before Jesus became fed up and released the Trinity’s holy wrath on those dog-eaters.

Joe’s finding so many examples of this stuff that just when I think I’ve found the worst example, up pops part two and three.  So, the lovely bit above comes from just a ‘citizen’.  How about this one coming from a government official via BlueLyon?   The article is on Yahoo and is headlined as “Israeli official: Swine flu name offensive”.

JERUSALEM – The outbreak of swine flu should be renamed “Mexican” influenza in deference to Muslim and Jewish sensitivities over pork, said an Israeli health official Monday.

Deputy Health Minister Yakov Litzman said the reference to pigs is offensive to both religions and “we should call this Mexican flu and not swine flu,” he told a news conference at a hospital in central Israel.

So why should all the  Christians and Jews get all the ink or cyberink? This Imam from North Carolina says that The Swine Flu is Allah’s curse upon America. Be sure to check out the about and and the posts to the link.

Anyone with eyes can clearly see that this new disease is a curse from Allah upon America. The Mujahideen and those who support them continue to ask Allah to destroy America. Allah responded. Today, they are being destroyed military, economically, and now they are being destroyed with a new disease that is spreading fast. May Allah protect the Muslims in the West from this disease and may this disease reach all the enemies of Allah so that the American Government can no longer move a finger against the Ummah!

Not to been out done by Israeli officials, MPs in Egypt called for “imediate death for nations’ pigs” .  Inquiring minds want to know if pigs can actually be subjected to fatwa?

I am anxiously awaiting a news release from Pastafarians.  I mean, I’d like to know if  the Flying Spaghetti Monster wants us to switch to strictly beef meatballs before I make dinner tonight.

As Joe points out, there is no real source link to this TPM story:  “Pat Robertson & rest of Christian right wing praying for Swine Flu Armageddon! Could this be their chance to finally be right???” but I just gotta go with my gut on this and say it’s believable.  It’s the end of the world as Pat knows it.    Maybe we should call them the four pigriders of the Apocalypse now.

Take a Deep Breath, We'll be All Right

I don’t just have a special interest in the next few years in Politics because of my status as a Budding Mystic. I actually happen to have a future to look forward to, dreams to strive for, ect. Let’s just thanks all the Gods I have decided to go into Healthcare for now. It’s a recession proof field, so I’ll be all right, even if my Writing career has to be put on hold for a bit.

No doubt everyone here has heard of the coming Armageddon that is to supposedly befall us in 2012. We’ll get to that in a minute., but admittedly the news over the past few days has been rough. Torture Memos have been released, Iraq doesn’t appear to be doing all that well, Pakistan is trying to contain the Taliban in it’s own borders, the Swine Flu is spreading, Bea Arther has died (cries), ect.

And let’s not not forget the Economy.

Many people will tell you that the world is going to end in 2012 because that is when the Mayan calender ends. But that doesn’t really mean much. The Mayans vanished off the face of the Earth, if I remember correctly (and you will have to forgive me if my memory on this subject doesn’t serve me all that well, as I am too lazy to look it up). The Mayan calender has thirteen cycles, and 2012 is, I believe, the end of the last cycle.

So does that mean the world is going to self destruct? Hardly. You have likely heard of a series called Left Behind, by Jerry B. Jenkins. It is all about the “Rapture” and the “Tribulation” and the “End of the World.” It is possibly one of the silliest series on the planet, because, for one thing, it is based off of the Book of Revelations. Have you read Revelations? I laugh at anyone who claims they can actually interpret that book of the Bible. Left Behind was made into a movie that failed in the box office, but the nonetheless it sparked some of the “End of the World” feelings in the General Populace.

For one thing, I don’t take the book of Revelations seriously. I remember one incident in particular that solidified that feeling. My mom gave me twenty bucks to go to Youth Group with some old family friends when I was sixteen or so, and they were talking about Revelations. I was bored, and I took an interest in the conversation. That was around the time The Da Vinci Code was causing quite a controversy, and I had been reading Elaine Pagels, so I asked the Youth Pastor who wrote the Book of Revelations. This is how our exchange went. (Again, forgive me if some facts are wrong here. It has been at least a year since I last did any heavy lifting on this topic and as I explained, I am too lazy to look it up).

Youth Pastor: Well, all we really know is that it was written by a person named John. Some Biblical Scholars believe it was John the disciple-

Me: So no one actually knows who wrote it? It says here that this John had a dream and this is what the entire book is about. A dream.

Youth Pastor: Yes, well-

Me: And I am pretty sure that the Book of Revelations was written quite some time after Jesus’s death, right? Like…. hundreds of years or something? So how can this book have been written by John the Disciple? That makes no sense. So it must have been some other John. This entire book, the Book of Revelations, is just a dream by a random guy named John!

Youth Pastor:

Me: That’s it, isn’t it?

Youth Pastor: Well, yeah.

Me: Okay, then. I’ve proved my point. Carry on.

I didn’t bother arguing any further because the guy sitting next to me was really hot, and I got distracted. But I’m still not going to forget that conversation because it just made me think more about 2012.

Personally, I don’t think that in 2012, the world as we know it is going to end just because the Mayan Calender will.

A lot of people actually believe that the next few years will be filled with upheaval (Wars, Famine, and Economic Collapse) and the result will be a spiritual awakening, or something of the like, in 2012 that will mark the beginning of a long process that will take us to the Age of Aquarius.

I don’t know, myself. But I know I’m going to try to remain optimistic, no matter what happens. I won’t get upset about what’s in the news. What will happen will happen. As little people, we might not think we have control over much, but… okay, we don’t have control over much.

My point is to have a little Faith. It might seem like things are really terrible sometimes, but you know what they say: “With Darkness comes the Dawn.”

Shadows always pass, but then the Sun comes out. Sometimes, for things to drastically change (and don’t you agree that things need to drastically change?) we have to endure pain and sadness. It’s like making mistakes. You can’t regret them TOO much, or else you’ll never learn from them!

Well, anyway, I just needed to share that with someone.

It all just reminds me of my favorite Scene from Lord of the Rings. This one here:

Oh, and this is Bullet Witch, my favorite “End of the World” Video Game, because Alicia saves the world and blows up demons and such, all in High Heels:

“End of the World” Open Thread!

Recently, The New York Times and the Telegraph uk have published articles about five religious leaders who are advising President Barack Obama. Supposedly Obama has sought these five men’s counsel (yes, they are all men natch) because he has been without a church and pastor of his own since he threw his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright under the bus on April 28, 2008 and subsequently on June 1, 2008 resigned from Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, presumably in return for the unearned Michigan delegates he was handed by the DNC on May 31 at the infamous meeting of the Rules and Bylaws Committee in Washington, DC.

The five men who have been chosen to attend to the President’s spiritual needs are “overwhelmingly opposed to abortion,” according to the Telegraph; and all except Otis Moss, Jr. are opposed to equal rights for homosexuals. Here is a little information about each of Obama’s “prayer circle”:

Otis Moss, Jr.

As a young preacher in his native Georgia, Moss helped lead sit-ins at segregated lunch counters and fought for voting rights for blacks. He went to jail several times for participating in sit-ins and marches.

He marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, Ala., and Washington, and urged Jesse Jackson to run for president in 1983. Moss was co-chair of the National African American Religious Committee of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign…

According to the conservative Weekly Standard, Moss is close to Jeremiah Wright.

Otis Moss Jr. and Wright shared a mentor in Samuel DeWitt Proctor, who helped give rise to black liberation theology. In fact, it was the radical Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference that sponsored Wright’s now-infamous National Press Club appearance in late April 2008–which led to Obama’s break with Trinity and Wright. Less noted was the fact that the symposium’s guest preacher that day was Reverend Otis Moss Jr. Moss has publicly defended Wright and compared his preaching to that of Amos, Micah, Malachi, and John the Baptist.

Moss’s closeness to Wright is expressed most clearly in the 40-minute tribute sermon he preached from Trinity’s pulpit on the occasion of Wright’s 36th anniversary at the church in February 2008. Of Wright, Reverend Moss said: “All of us who know him and love him have been blessed by his genius, his creativity, his scholarship, his discipleship, his sensitivity as an artist, his boldness as a prophet, and, I agree, his rhythmic poetry.” This homage came long after Wright’s hit parade of sound-bites: “God Damn America”  . . .”America’s chickens are coming home to roost” .  .  . “Bill did us like he did Monica Lewinsky.” Poetry indeed.

Based on his relationship with Wright and his son’s position at TUCC, I assume he is an advocate of Black Liberation Theology. His appointment to the White House council and his relationships with Wright and TUCC certainly bring into question Obama’s claims to have cut his ties with his former pastor and church.

T.D. Jakes

Bishop T.D. Jakes is the “CEO” of “The Potter’s House,” a church in Dallas, TX. According to the NYT story linked above,

Bishop Jakes said he sought out Mr. Obama in Chicago because of their common interest in Kenya and because he was impressed with the speech Mr. Obama delivered at the Democratic National Convention in 2004.

Bishop Jakes is himself a nationally known preaching powerhouse who fills sports stadiums and draws 30,000 worshipers to his church in Dallas, the Potter’s House. He also produces movies, writes books and runs antipoverty programs in Dallas and Kenya, where Mr. Obama has ties through his Kenyan father.

The Telegraph story, also linked previously, reports that

The most controversial figure the president has been telephoning is Bishop T. D. Jakes… [who] refers to homosexuality as “brokenness” and recently claimed that he wouldn’t hire a sexually active gay person.

When Rev Jakes’ son Jermaine was arrested last month for soliciting gay sex in a Dallas park after exposing himself to two undercover male vice squad detectives, the bishop said he revealed he had issued “correction” to his son.

Bishop Jakes has also been criticised for his advocacy of “prosperity theology”, which teaches that God rewards the faithful with material gifts. In one sermon, “Provision for the Vision,” he bragged about his own stable of luxury cars.

Kirbyjohn Caldwell

Kirbyjohn Caldwell, according to the Telegraph story,

runs the world’s largest United Methodist congregation at Windsor Village Church in Houston, who has been criticised for going “too far in linking spiritual wholeness to financial wholeness”.

His church prohibits ordination for practicing homosexuals, same-sex unions and a woman on staff at Rev Caldwell’s church runs a group called Metanoia, a gay conversion programme which claims to use Christian teaching to “cure” those “seeking freedom from homosexuality, lesbianism, prostitution, sex addiction and other habitual sins”.

Caldwell was also a spiritual advisor to George W. Bush, and he presided over Jenna Bush’s wedding. During the primaries, Caldwell’s relationship to Obama because known because of the controversy over self-proclaimed “ex-gay” gospel singer Donnie McClurkin, who represented Obama at a rally in South Carolina. It soon became known on the liberal blogs that Caldwell ran a gay conversion “ministry” out of his church, and that he was a contributor to and involved in Obama’s presidential campaign. Shortly after all this became public the Metanoia gay conversion program was scrubbed from Caldwell’s website (full story at Lavendar Liberal).

Jim Wallis

Jim Wallis, according to the Telegraph,

is president and chief executive of Sojourners, a liberal evangelical magazine based in Washington has made friendly overtures to gay Christians but he is a vocal opponent of abortion and gay marriage.

The NYT says of Wallis:

Mr. Wallis has recently joined conservatives in pressing the president’s office of faith-based initiatives to continue to allow government financing for religious social service groups that hire only employees of their own faith.

Mr. Wallis said he got to know Mr. Obama in the late 1990s when they participated in a traveling seminar that took bus trips to community programs across the country. Mr. Wallis said they “hit it off” because they were both Christians serious about their faith, fathers of young children the same age and believers in “transcending left and right” to find solutions to social problems.

“He and I were what we called back then ‘progressive Christians,’ as opposed to the dominant religious-right era we were in then,” Mr. Wallis said. “We didn’t think Jesus’ top priorities would be capital gains tax cuts and supporting the next war.”

Joel C. Hunter

Joel C. Hunter is pastor of Northland Church , a conservative megachurch in Longwood, Florida. He was elected head of The Christian Coalition, but stepped down because the organization refused to expand its agenda from just opposing abortion and gay rights to fighting poverty and global warming.

Apparently, the President gets advice from these five men and talks to them on the phone when he is in need of spiritual guidance or wants someone to pray with. The Telegraph reports that

Mr Obama prayed with Otis Moss and Joel Hunter on the eve of his election and would have added Revs Jakes and Caldwell to the conference call if they had been available.

The NYT says that:

Bishop Jakes said he had been tapped for several prayer phone calls — the most recent being when Mr. Obama’s grandmother died in November, two days before the election. “You take turns praying,” said Bishop Jakes, who like the other ministers did not want to divulge details of the calls. “It’s really more about contacting God than each other.”

Mr. Hunter said of the phone calls: “The times I have prayed with him, he’s always initiated it.”

The Obama administration has reached out to hundreds of religious leaders across the country to mobilize support and to seek advice on policy. These five pastors, however, have been brought into a more intimate inner circle. Their names were gleaned from interviews with people who know the president and religious leaders who work in Washington. Their role could change if Mr. Obama joins a church in Washington, but that could take some time because of the logistical challenges in finding a church that can accommodate the kind of crowd the Obamas would attract.

I really don’t know what to think about all this. When I think of the President of the U.S. asking for advice from Kirbyjohn Caldwell or T.D. Jakes, it gives me the creeps. I can’t believe all they are doing is praying together. These men are all wealthy and powerful; anti-gay and anti-abortion. Two of them believe that wealth is a sign of godliness. They have to be discussing politics and fund-raising. Besides, the NYT says Obama consults them about policy. I’m sorry, but couldn’t Barack Obama find any preachers to talk policy and religion with who are not homophobes and opposed to women being able to control their own bodies? And are these really the kinds of people the President feels comfortable discussing policy with? Why the heck do need a White House Council on faith anyway, and do the members get paid? What is the difference between Barack Obama and George W. Bush again?

The Economist endorsed Obama for POTUS in last year’s presidential campaign.  I’m going to say that up front because  reading my print edition (slightly soggy from today’s rain) would have lead me to another conclusion. Each article in this week’s (March 14, 2009)  United States section took a jab at something POTUS either said or did.  Either the Brits are really mad at the Gordan snub last month, the koolaid has worn off overseas, or they’ve finally seen into the empty suit.  All I can say is here are the links, read for yourself.

Article one was  “Pursued by Obamabears“.  This was an analysis  subtitled “Investors fret that Obama’s crisis  response is not up to task.”  It also had this nifty graphic.  You can read the entire thing and we’ve discussed the bear market that just recently experienced a brief relief rally.  This point was the money maker for me.

Whatever the cause, the strain on the Treasury is encouraging the view that Mr Obama’s agenda is being driven by political advisers and Congressmen, both more attuned to voters’ rage than to market confidence. Chris Dodd, who faces a battle to retain his Connecticut Senate seat in 2010, inserted tough new restrictions on bankers’ pay into the fiscal stimulus package despite the administration’s objections. Since then, a series of mostly small banks have said they will return bail-out money, frustrating the plan to increase the banking system’s capital and lending capacity.

There was also an interesting quote from a former aide to Bill Clinton who was quoted as having ‘two equally depressing” hypotheses on why team Obama appears to be not ready for prime time.  I also liked it.  The comparisons to Carter have started already.

“Either they do not know what to do, or they do not believe they can muster the political support to do what they know needs to be done.” He advised Mr Obama to focus his attention on the crisis, or risk the loss of confidence Jimmy Carter suffered three decades ago. That would bring Obamabears out in droves.

So, that article was not all that unexpected.  Every one has been talking about the fact we don’t have a clear plan for changes in banking regulations or rules, that the market keeps voting no confidence to every announcement, summit, and congressional hearing, and every economist keeps adjusting their forecast down.  But then, I moved to the science  article, the education article, and the Africa policy article.   Ummmmm, it gets worse.  Science first.

This one is entitled “A new era of integrity, sort of” with the subtitle “A science friendly president overstates his case”.   We all know that teleprompter rhetoric is the sole talent of POTUS so even the subtitle didn’t throw me.  However, some of the content made the headline seem understated.  Have a look.

Politics and science will still clash, however. Reasonable people disagree about what kind of research is moral. Mr Obama, for example, thinks that the use of cloning for human reproduction is “profoundly wrong”. Plenty of libertarians disagree. Many of Mr Obama’s supporters believe that experiments on animals are immoral. Resolving such disputes is a job for elected politicians, informed by science but not dictated to by scientists

Mr Obama likes to duck the thorniest disputes, for example by leaving it to the National Institutes of Health to decide what kind of embryos can be used in federally-funded experiments. Should researchers use only embryos left over at fertility clinics, which would otherwise be discarded? Or may they create embryos specifically to experiment on? Mr Obama did not say.

Other controversies loom. Many scientists doubt that “clean coal” technology is a practical way of tackling climate change. But there are coal mines in swing states, so Mr Obama loudly supports it. Drug firms say Mr Obama’s efforts to squeeze drug prices will deter innovation. A recent Supreme Court ruling could do the same: it allowed a patient to claim damages from a drug firm when, despite six warnings not to inject an anti-nausea drug into an artery, a doctor’s assistant did just that.

Meanwhile, Mr Obama’s vow never to fiddle data rings a little hollow. Last week, for example, he declared that “[t]he crushing cost of health care causes a bankruptcy in America every 30 seconds.” The Economist credulously repeated this claim. But it is false. The study on which it is based found that number of bankruptcies in 2001 from all medical-related causes, not just the cost of health care. That includes people who could not work because they were sick. In politics, all too often, eloquence trumps accuracy.

Well, there we go again.  With POTUS, it’s always in the fine print, isn’t it?  Announce the grandstand but back it up with nuanced action that undermine the rhetoric.  So, let’s go on to education.  Certainly, this has to be more upbeat.

This article was called “The Teacher In Chief Speaks” with the subtitle “Will the States Listen?”  Surely, we have more than rhetoric on education.  After all, the President has experience as a Lecturer at a university so he must have some idea of how to work out issues there.

For those who listened carefully, that was the underlying theme of Barack Obama’s big schools speech on March 10th. He promised that “America’s entire education system [will] once more be the envy of the world.” But the plans he laid out for achieving this goal consisted largely of pleading with states and school districts—which actually run the show—to do a better job.

Hmmm.   Lets see.  He called for longer school hours and merit pay for teachers.  That sounds oddly Republican.  He urged states to stop restrictions for numbers of charter schools.  Yup, Dubya liked that too. Wait, wait here’s one that sounds remotely democratic.  Let me quote on that one.

Meanwhile, Democrats in Congress quietly voted to kill a voucher programme that allows around 1,700 students, mostly black, poor or both, to escape Washington, DC’s, awful public schools and attend private ones. Mr Obama supports killing the programme, but his flacks say he wants the students currently enrolled in it, who include two at his daughters’ excellent private school, to be allowed to complete their studies. How kind.

Oh, dear.  Certainly Potus will fare better on African Policy.  The article here is entitled:  “Don’t expect a revolution” and its subheading is “Barrack Obama may differ little from George Bush in his approach to Africa.”  Wait!?!  Is this “Change we can believe in”?   Let’s see. Certainly he’d be interested in getting right on top of things by say, appointing some one to look into genocide and problems in the area. Right?

Mr Obama has yet to name his assistant secretary of state—the top appointment—for Africa; other assistant secretaries, for apparently higher-priority regions, have already been tipped.

Okay, well, he’s been busy with the economy.  (Let’s just overlook all those empty desks at Treasury also.)  So let’s see, there must be some consistency in some of his other appointments.

Mr Obama brings with him some big figures with strong opinions on one of Africa’s bloodiest conflicts, in the Sudanese region of Darfur. Joe Biden, his vice-president, has called in the past for a threat of military action against the Sudanese government to stop the killings there. Mr Obama’s ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, has backed the threat of force too. Samantha Power, who has joined Mr Obama’s National Security Council, is a historian of genocide who, though she believes in toughening sanctions and divestment from Sudan, opposes military intervention. If the conflict worsens, Mr Obama could face difficult choices.

I’m just waiting for the G-20.  I’m thinking we’re going to see some interesting things.  Economist columnist Lexington in “Le vieux canard” has this to say about our POTUS and his exposure to Europe and Europeans.

For all Europe’s Obamamania Mr Obama is, in fact, one of the least European-minded of American presidents. JFK studied at the London School of Economics with Harold Laski, a leading British socialist. Bill Clinton went to Oxford University and surrounded himself with Rhodes scholars who liked to discuss the German educational model. John Kerry was famously not just French-speaking but also “French-looking”.

Mr Obama’s roots lie in Kenya, Indonesia and Kansas—any continent but Europe. His two books hardly mention Europe at all. “The Audacity of Hope” includes a disparaging reference to the idea that America should “round up the United Kingdom and Togo” as supporters—and then do as it pleases. The only European country that gets a mention in the index under “Foreign policy, US” is Ukraine—and that nation gets less space than Indonesia.

I’d say POTUS is heading for a much tougher audience than the ones he faced in Europe last summer.  After all, I doubt Europe’s top bands will be playing before the G20 summit meetings, there will be no teleprompters during meetings and no one else will use them during press conferences, and well, let’s face it the Brits are not known for their cuisine so who even cares if it’s free?    This is just one of these things I’m so looking forward to.

Note: I have been away from The Confluence for a while now, mainly due to personal and health reasons. I feel compelled to return to provide a voice from the gay PUMA community–those few of us that resisted the kool aid, that is. Well, that, and the fact that I missed all of you guys TERRIBLY.

I don’t have much to add to this post from queerty, but it is worth spreading around just to show how ridiculous hate groups like the Family Research Council have become in their unending battle to eradicate homosexuality from our country.

As you all know from our secret meetings where we plan out our world domination, the gays are responsible for all the world’s ills– or at least that’s what Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council believes. Our latest victory, according to the virulently homophobic jerk is to force America’s women to turn out litters of children. Nadya Suleman’s eight children are not the result of a sloppy fertility treatment, but rather, the result of procreating lesbians. You’re going to want to read this one.

Says Perkins:

“Last week, taxpayers learned that they would be partially liable for the family’s care through hundreds of dollars in food stamps and disability payments. The news fueled even more conviction that the fertility doctor should have refused the procedure. But is he really to blame–or are our courts? In California, the state Supreme Court made it virtually impossible for a physician to exercise his own judgment after two lesbians sued in 2001 for the right to be artificially inseminated over the doctors’ personal or social objections.”

I especially like the part about the taxpayers having to pay for her irresponsibly bringing so many babies into the world. Does Perkins think she should have aborted some of them? I guess as long as it is nice white christian women having “litters” of children its ok.

Now that the McCaughey septuplets are out of imminent danger, it’s possible to raise some impolite questions.

First off, what’s God got to do with it? Everyone from the parents to the doctors keeps talking about this being God’s will, as if the Almighty compelled Bobbi McCaughey to become a guinea pig for modern science…

…what about the responsibility of the McCaugheys’ wanting eight children with their family’s limited income and two bedroom home? If Mrs. McCaughey had done this serially, she would have been roundly condemned by a society that now, as a matter of federal law pushed through by “pro-family” conservatives, punishes poor women for having children they can’t afford. Predictably, a spokesperson for the conservative Family Research Council hailed McCaughey’s decision to disregard medical advice and not abort any fetuses as “a wonderful example for this country,” adding that it proves “the community can come together and provide for the need of those who are faced with a crisis pregnancy and are having difficulty thinking about how they’re going to provide for their new child.” (emphasis mine)

But Suleman, with her rather middle eastern sounding name (and lack of male authority figure in her life), isn’t the first non-white person to be maligned or ignored for their procreation habits…

Indeed, the sextuplets naturally conceived and born to a black couple in Washington D.C. six months earlier received no support. They lived in a crowded apartment off the meager earnings from the father’s two jobs.

So here’s what we’ve got. A Christian hate group scapegoating lesbians to justify their racist, hypocritical stance when it comes to fertility and women’s control over their bodies. Nice.

And in case you were wondering, this is the kind of right wing freak show that will continue to fight against equality for women and gays on Obama’s “Faith Based Initiative”.  One of the members of that council, former Southern Baptist Convention president Frank Page, believes that gays can be cured and that women should submit to the authority of their husbands…

…and if there is anyone here from NC, please see my post here about the Diocese of Raleigh’s attempts to meddle in our state’s constitution. We need any help we can get to put a stop to it. Thanks.

Crossposted at Electric Blues