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Hi, BetterMost friends!
This is my first blog, and I plan to just start at the beginning: posting things I find interesting and hope y’all will reply.
I’ll start out with my first love – dogs, but this will remain a general thread for general feedback, suggestions and posts.
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Cool. ;)
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Congrats on your new blog Friend!! :D :D :D
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Wow, replies already! ;D Thanks.
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Hi Marge (it's Marcia, isn't it?). Congrats on the new blog. Best wishes for success.
Paul
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Congratulations and welcome to Blogland, Marcia! 8) 8) 8)
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Hi Marge, welcome. I recently just got more active, bloggily speaking.
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Hi Marge/cia, I always look forward to your posts and will be reading your blog with interest!
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Hey there, Marcia! Welcome to Our Daily Thoughts! I like the name "Coyote Howls" and I'm looking forward to visiting often.
Lynne
8)
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Welcome to Blogland, Marge! ;D
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Hey there, Marcia! Welcome to Our Daily Thoughts! I like the name "Coyote Howls" and I'm looking forward to visiting often.
Lynne
8)
I like the name "Coyote Howls" too. :) It reminds me of the part in the story about Jack setting off coyote yips with his singing (am I remembering that correctly? Jeez, it's been too long since I've read the story properly all the way through).
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Hi Marge/cia, I always look forward to your posts and will be reading your blog with interest!
Me too.
I like the name Coyote Howls too. Very BBM.
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A plug for the "White Knot" campaign
(http://www.whiteknot.org/) was recently posted on Current Events and was promptly moved to the "Equality Agenda" subforum. Here's more info from the site itself.
"The White Knot is the symbol for marriage equality. Wear it every day to show your support and to create conversation. Use it to tell someone today that equal rights are important to everyone. Share the White Knot and spread the word that all loving couples deserve the same legal rights, benefits, and respect that civil marriage bestows. Visibility is the goal.
"Whether you are gay, straight, or otherwise, please show your support by wearing the Knot and telling people why you are wearing it. Wear your White Knot to work, to school, to your place of worship. Together, we will keep the topic at the top of people's minds and keep the conversation going."
You can send for a White Knot through the website, but they're easy to make:
-- Start with grosgrain (or satin) ribbon available at most fabric and craft stores. Use 5/8" wide ribbon and make 6" strips for large knots or use 3/8" wide ribbon and make 5" strips for medium knots.
-- Cut the ends diagonally or cut triangles in them to help prevent fraying.
-- Tie a knot in the center of the ribbon. Even out the ends as you pull tight.
-- Tie another knot over the first knot and pull the ends of the ribbon to flatten them out. Pin it on vertically and you're good to go.
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Equality Events Calendar (Partial)
This is NOT a comprehensive list -- just what's posted by http://www.whiteknot.org/ :
Mar 4 - Eve of Justice
Throughout California
Check for events in your city on the night before the oral arguments to invalidate Prop 8.
Mar 5 10,000 Person March
San Francisco, CA
Come from around the country to show the CA Supreme Court the true support marriage equality has.
May 3 National Equality Rally
Philadelphia, PA
Join people from across the nation gatheting at Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell—the site where the Gay Pioneers launched our movement with protests each Fourth of July from 1965 to 1969.
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Happy St. Patrick's Day, Marcia!
(http://i327.photobucket.com/albums/k463/dcfmod/4098.gif)
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What a beautiful card! Even has a very appropriate Celtic-type design in the background.
Here's a recently-discovered drawing hinting at St. Patrick's REAL history, disovered by the immortal Gary Larson:
(http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q135/talkstocoyotes/StPatandSnakes.jpg)
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That is funny! I wonder where all them snake were supposed to have gone?
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That is funny! I wonder where all them snake were supposed to have gone?
They came to America and became Republicans. ...
Ba-da-bing!
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They came to America and became Republicans. ...
Ba-da-bing!
Ba-da-boom! ;D
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Not sure about the "best surgical team ever assembled" part, but this is a pretty good analogy. Take a look at the Current Events section of this forum for a microcosm.
Calling Doctor Obama (how America can commit national suicide)
by Frank Schaffer (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/calling-doctor-obama-how_b_179427.html)
You're dying of an aneurysm. Minutes count. One reason that you are in such trouble is that for the last 8 years you have been going to a quack and getting horrible care. Now, at last, you have a great new doctor! But there is something odd going on here: your life is magically linked to everyone you know. You die, and they die too. The stakes couldn't be higher.
Luckily the ballooning blood vessel about to burst in your brain, has shown up on a scan -- just in time. (Your old and lousy doctor didn't believe in scans. He said he "knew Jesus" and that that was good enough.) Your new doctor is a first-class young, black, kind, trustworthy and talented neurosurgeon. He is methodically prepping the operating room to save your life. Things are looking up!
Then you do something strange, strange that is for anyone who wants to survive: you make it impossible for your surgeon to work! Thus you put yourself -- and all those linked to you -- at terminal risk.
While your doctor is quietly and reassuringly telling you what his plan is you yell: "You're going to fail!" "Your plan for saving my life sucks!" "Do it my way, or no way!" "I'm smarter than you!" and even; "I want you to fail so I'll be proved right about what an idiot you are!"
The surgeon has hired the best surgical team ever assembled, but none of them are good enough for you. You insist that he fires them all and finds a team more to your liking, made up of people just like you: loud, ideologically driven, impatient and with the attention span of a flea.
Meanwhile you invite a lot of friends and acquaintances into the OR to make sure that while you're anesthetized (and your doctor is trying to save you) that they will scream abuse throughout the operation and, "keep this guy in line!" as you put it.
And the funny thing is: everyone in the operating room knows that minutes count, and that your condition is terminal. In fact -- like you -- they are accusing your doctor of not working fast enough! They all claim to be your best friends and to have your best interests at heart. What is even stranger is that (as I said) they know that their fate and yours is one and the same: you die, they all go down. But somehow they have the idea that surgery is a form of entertainment. They are so disconnected from reality (and spoiled too) that they think that everyone gets unlimited second chances in this "game," as they think of it.
Two more groups crash the operating room doors. Just as the surgery is beginning a gang of the surgeon's most bitter enemies -- you've inexplicably invited them along too -- and another gang who, in the near past, claimed to be both you and your doctor's friends, burst in.
The surgeon's enemies scream that your doctor has no medical degree, that he's actually trying to kill his patient, that the surgeon is the Antichrist, a socialist, a Muslim, a fraud, a "mere affirmative action hire under-qualified for the job," and that he has only gotten his medical degree for the purpose of destroying good hard working people.
Meanwhile the surgeon's (and your) "friends" are bellowing that they have better ideas, that the surgeon -- who they once said was so smart, kind, cool, collected -- is actually dumb and slow and not producing perfect results in the few moments he's had to work on your case so far, and that his surgical team is incompetent, and that he's performing the "wrong operation."
When the shouted comments of the surgeon's bitter enemies combine with the "helpful" suggestions from his so-called friends the the ensuing chaos fatally derails the surgeon's best laid plans. In fact, the two opposing sides -- the doctor's supposed friends and his bitter enemies -- begin to fight each other across the operating table. The warring camps trample you the patient. Life-support systems rip out and you're dragged off the operating table.
The mob shouts, "Why isn't the operation over yet?" "Why isn't the patient better already?"
Your surgeon answers: "If you stick to it, if you are persistent, then -- then these problems can be dealt with. That whole philosophy of persistence, by the way, is one that I'm going to be emphasizing again and again in the months and years to come, as long as I am in this office. I'm a big believer in persistence."
The mob screams: "What do you mean 'months' or 'years'? We want results now! We want them our way! To hell with 'persistence!' "
You fall to the floor. Your surgeon kneels and tries to perform CPR on you his, now dying, patient. And since your life is mysteriously linked to everyone in the room -- they begin to die too!
Rather than stop and think about how -- by hindering the surgeon -- they are killing you, and thereby killing themselves, your friends redouble their abuse of the doctor...
Later... when this bizarre case is investigated, it's determined that the dead people littering the OR committed collective suicide. "Never before," pronounces the coroner, "have so many people killed themselves through such childish stupidity. They hired the best surgeon anyone has ever been lucky enough to find, and then these people blew their last chance by not giving him time, space and support to do his work. What a bunch of idiots."
One of the more perceptive comments on Mr. Schaeffer's column: "the enablers of the failure are hardly likely to claim ownership for 30 years of bad deregulation or running up the debt from 2 trillion to 10 trillion +. The plutocrats want to return to the trough. If they didn't care about ordinary citizens for 30+ years - why change now?"
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That's a great analogy. Thanks for posting it.
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(http://i249.photobucket.com/albums/gg230/hersheysmileys/icons/Easter.gif)
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U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (a Great American® in Hannityspeak) defends Texas Gov. Rick Perry's comments on Texican secession as defending "the sovereignty of his state."
Click on the image to view the video.
(http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q135/talkstocoyotes/DeLayMatthews.jpg) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glWhVBn21Vw&e)
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Republican Disaster - The (Unspoken) Anatomy of The Meltdown
by Frank Schaeffer
I was a Republican insider. For instance, the late Jack Kemp was a friend who I often advised on "connecting" with the Religious Right, until I left the Republican Party and the evangelical subculture and slammed the door behind me. During my last call with Jack he hung up on me. (I was backing McCain in 2000 and he was for W.) I want you to understand this context of my "insider's" comments here because they are going to strike you as shocking. So please let me recap some personal history.
My parents and I were the guests of the Reagans, Fords and Bush's in the White House and/or in other private meetings. Jack Kemp was so good a friend that he once interrupted a speech at a fund-raising banquet in Washington that I'd walked into late and walked from the podium to the back of the hall shook my hand introduced me to the assembled Republican leaders, then walked back to the podium and continued his speech. He did this because -- in those days -- I was an important link to the (then) powerful evangelical movement.
I was often in Jack's house with Jack and his wife Joanne who, at that time, was conducting a weekly Bible study group with other congressional wives called the "Schaeffer group," based on my father's books. In those days -- the 1970s and early 80s -- as both a staunch Republican and pro-life leader and the son of the famous evangelist, I was right in the middle of the Republican machine.
Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy of doom -- in the 1970s my family was an integral part of bringing the Republican Party under the sway of the emerging Religious Right, particularly because of our support of the antiabortion movement. It was my father who talked Jerry Falwell into "taking a stand" on the "moral issues" of the day, which then morphed into the Moral Majority. Back in the 70s and early 80s Dad and I both appeared on the 700 Club many times, I preached from Jerry Falwell's pulpit and was the keynote speaker at the Religious Broadcasters and Christian Booksellers Association annual events several years running.
There came a day in 1985 (my dad had died in 1984) that I began to take another look at my commitment to the both the far right of Republican Party and the Religious Right. I came to realize that I was in bed with a group of people who were profoundly anti-American. They were professional haters. They wrapped themselves in the flag and "loved America," but it was an America in their imaginations only and cast in their image: white, middle-class, straight, born-again, homophobic and tinged with racism, not to mention misogyny.
The America most Americans lived in; diverse, open, tolerant and multi-ethnic was the America that the right would hardly even acknowledge. They "loved" an America that didn't exist, and hated the real country we live in. (I go into this in detail in two books; Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All -- or Almost All -- of It Back and also in my forthcoming Patience With God: Faith For People Who Don't Like Religion -- Or Atheism where I lay out an alternative to some very bad choices between the extremes.)
So what went wrong with the Republican Party? Believe me, it's all about religion!
Two religions (in the broadest sense of the term) have destroyed the Republican Party: evangelical Christianity and Christian/Jewish Zionism. Evangelical Christianity created the Religious Right which forever linked the Republican Party to the antiabortion, anti-sex education, anti-evolution and anti-gay crusades. And both Christian and Jewish Zionism linked the Republican Party to what became the neoconservative movement with its roots in such publications as Commentary magazine and their shrill Israel-can-do-no-wrong anti-Arab agenda. (I knew the late editor of Commentary Norman Podhoretz quite well, and we met several times to build alliances between evangelicals and the far American Zionist far right. When it came to Arabs, I believe he was a real racist.)
I would not call Zionism per se a religion, but I'm talking about secular goals pursued with religious fervor. I would call Zionism, American-style a politicized version of a religion. I also argue that the neo-con side got traction when religious Jews became Zionists and when religious Christians (evangelicals) hopped aboard to hasten the "Rapture." And I'd like to point out that American Zionists ally themselves with the Israeli hardliners, but that opinion in Israel is much more diverse and often tolerant than that, as is opinion among Jewish Americans, who do not by and large accept the AIPAC point of view uncritically.
The result of the Republican Party being taken over by these religious groups was that we got George W. Bush. His idea of governance was a hands-off, all-government-is-bad-government neglect, combined with an unnecessary war in Iraq inspired by a form of Zionism that sees all Arabs as a threat, Islam as evil, America as an exceptional place duty-bound "by God" to keep the world safe for evangelical Christian "values," on the one hand, and militant Christian and Jewish Zionism on the other. It is a poisonous blend. (It's not just Zionism, or a form of Zionism, that makes Americans hate Arabs. Anti-Arab, anti-Muslim images in America go way back and some right wing evangelicals and Jews merely tap into that racism.)
Evangelical/Christian Zionism has been bad for the State of Israel too. It has helped put that country into a permanent defensive crouch in which there is now perhaps no way out from destruction that comes to all people who see everyone else (from the EU to the UN to the Arabs and Iran) as a threat. The building of the illegal West Bank settlements and turning the Gaza Strip into what amounts to a concentration camp, combined with demographic reality will doom the State of Israel if a two state peace agreement is not reached and reached fast. But Christian Zionists have done all they can to undermine peace in the name of fulfilling "biblical prophecy" as have the far right of the Jewish Zionists, people like my old friend Norman Podhoretz.
With "friends" like the Christian Zionists -- exemplified by the Reverend John Hagee and many others who "support" Israel while eagerly waiting for the "return of Christ" and the destruction of all "unbelieving Jews" -- Israel needs no enemies. Given that the hard-line American Christian Zionists encouraged the Republican Party to become the party of permanent war to keep the State of Israel "safe" they have actually helped set the stage for its destruction. And therefore the Republicans also opened the door to our national economic ruin as well. The two are linked; eternal war and ruin, because our permanent wars (thinly veiled excuses to "keep Israel safe") are never paid for by increased taxes or a draft. (Disclosure: my son served in the Marines and was deployed.)
But attitudes are changing: The results of a new Zogby poll are interesting. They suggest that Obama would have strong support for a US diplomatic effort to forge an Israel-Palestine deal, even if it means tough pressure on Israel. According to the poll, when asked if the United States should "get tough" with Israel in order to back up its call for an end to settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, fully 50 percent of Americans said yes, with just 19 percent saying "do nothing," and 32 percent not sure.
Asked whether the interests of Israel and the US are identical, only 28 percent of Obama voters agreed, while 59 percent disagreed. Among McCain voters, it was the reverse: 78 percent of McCain voters said US and Israel interests were identical (!) and 15 percent said they are not.
So what did the Republicans become? They are the party of unnecessary wars both actual and cultural and the party of the rich -- those who never serve in the military, just put up flags to "support the troops." The actual war in Iraq was (as everyone knew with a wink and a nod, but few dared say) really about our commitment to Christian and Jewish Zionism as it was "understood" by the born-again fool Bush. The culture war is also an unnecessary and unmitigated war that pitted the "real America" (in other words white mostly uneducated, lower-middle-class evangelical/Catholic working Americans) against everyone else.
If you're not a gay-hating, "pro-life," born-again evangelical and/or an ardent Israel-can-do-no-wrong-all-Arabs-are-evil-Jesus-is-coming-back-soon evangelical on the one hand or a neoconservative I-never-met-a-war-I-didn't-like "intellectual" on the other hand, these days you're probably not a Republican. Throw in a college degree or the habit of getting information from any source other than right wing blogs, radio "personalities" like Rush Limbaugh or "authors" like Ann Coulter and you won't be voting Republican again in this lifetime.
What's caused the Republican Party's real meltdown? It's that it has ceased to exist as a political party and is instead a dwindling weirdly eclectic collection of uneducated rubes led by a few fearful angry far right thinkers who talk in media sound bites geared to the types of people who watch Fox News. Jack Kemp was not part of this horrible little "party." He was a smart compassionate man. There used to be more Republicans like Kemp. Today the Republican core constituency is the national village idiot.
With the election of President Obama America has turned the page on the village idiots. We now have a president who is a religious believer himself, who supports Israel (as I do, by the way), but who well understands -- and articulates beautifully as he just did at Notre Dame talking about abortion -- the fact that authentic faith should be a unifying force instead of a divisive one. That's bad news for religious nuts, be they Christians or Jews. That's good news for America and the world, and maybe for our overstretched military too.
The choice for America has always been between inclusive pluralism and exclusion. The kind of religion and Evangelical/Zionist/neoconservative cabal used to take over the interests of the Republican Party is just too small for this big diverse, tolerant and open country of ours. So the Republicans have a choice: become an American political party again serving American interests or continue to serve the narrowly defined religious interests of two angry and fearful Jewish/Evangelical minorities who are themselves bastardized offshoots of their Christian and Jewish traditions.
Frank Schaeffer is a writer. He is author of Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back and also author of the forthcoming Patience With God: Faith For People Who Don't Like Religion (Or Atheism).
at the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/republican-disaster----th_b_205388.html
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U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (a Great American® in Hannityspeak) defends Texas Gov. Rick Perry's comments on Texican secession as defending "the sovereignty of his state."
Click on the image to view the video.
(http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q135/talkstocoyotes/DeLayMatthews.jpg) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glWhVBn21Vw&e)
Please..... Delay was run out of office and Washington.
::)
An embarrassment in Texas politics.
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Texas politics is capable of embarrassment? Well, slap my ass and call me Fanny!
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Republican Disaster - The (Unspoken) Anatomy of The Meltdown
by Frank Schaeffer
Wow. Thanks for that, Marcia.
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You're welcome!
I clearly remember Francis Schaeffer. He was the religious version of the shallow mega-celebrity.
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Quote from Marge_Innavera
They "loved" an America that didn't exist, and hated the real country we live in.
An accurate quote, but I wouldn't put it in past tense. It should read, "They "love" an America that never existed, and hate the real country we live in".
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Quote from Marge_Innavera
An accurate quote, but I wouldn't put it in past tense. It should read, "They "love" an America that never existed, and hate the real country we live in".
Except possibly on Leave it to Beaver, The Donna Read Show, and Father Knows Best. ;)
(Ladies, don't forget to put your pearls on before you put the roast in the oven. ...) ;)
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(http://www.mediabistro.com/unbeige/original/50shousewife.jpg)
Marcia, thanks for that article. Very interesting read!
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(http://www.mediabistro.com/unbeige/original/50shousewife.jpg)
Shame on her! She's not wearing her pearls! :o
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Believe it or not, when I was a kid there was a lady across the street from us who dressed a lot like that. I was buddies with her daughter, who was my age, so I saw a lot of her and she was nice enough, not at all June Cleaverish but my mom thought it was weird. She liked to dress up when she went out someplace but she'd be doing her housework in shorts and sleeveless blouse and here comes our neighbor out to her mailbox with dress, pumps, the whole bit.
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(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_NYa0sKHEHcc/SYg17ESQlaI/AAAAAAAAIVs/Jh3sAIT8lMM/s400/01356~I-m-Happy-Posters.jpg)
:laugh:
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Believe it or not, when I was a kid there was a lady across the street from us who dressed a lot like that. I was buddies with her daughter, who was my age, so I saw a lot of her and she was nice enough, not at all June Cleaverish but my mom thought it was weird. She liked to dress up when she went out someplace but she'd be doing her housework in shorts and sleeveless blouse and here comes our neighbor out to her mailbox with dress, pumps, the whole bit.
I feel sorry for someone who has to go through life feeling uncomfortable. Back in my working days, I didn't wear dress, pumps and pearls, but even what I did wear felt constricting enough that as soon as I got home the first thing I did was change clothes.
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Believe it or not, when I was a kid there was a lady across the street from us who dressed a lot like that. I was buddies with her daughter, who was my age, so I saw a lot of her and she was nice enough, not at all June Cleaverish but my mom thought it was weird. She liked to dress up when she went out someplace but she'd be doing her housework in shorts and sleeveless blouse and here comes our neighbor out to her mailbox with dress, pumps, the whole bit.
I used to think some of this may have been generational. I remember when I was a small boy noticing that one of the biggest differences between my mother and my grandmother was that my mother always wore slacks and a blouse to do her housework, and Grandma always wore a skirt and blouse--no pumps or pearls, though! "Grandma" in this case was my dad's mother, but it comes to me now that my other grandmother--Mother's mother--always wore some sort of housedress.
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My mom never wears dresses/skirts, always pants.
It stems back from a time when she tried out to be a cheerleader, and her mother told her that her legs were too fat to be a cheerleader.
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My mom never wears dresses/skirts, always pants.
It stems back from a time when she tried out to be a cheerleader, and her mother told her that her legs were too fat to be a cheerleader.
Seriously? Ouch. :-\
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I've often wished that little girls clothes sold today (other than the Sluttina Look) were the norm when I was a kid. My mom was just in love with those fluffy organdy dresses and maybe my skin was just sensitive to them, but they were like torture devices. They had a texture like sandpaper and didn't 'breathe' at all -- and this was south Florida, a subtropical climate. I remember literally running to my room when we got back from church or any sort of dress-up occasion and changing. To this day I still do it, and I feel blessed to be in a workplace where jeans or slacks and tee shirts are the standard work outfit.
But that lady doing dishes is interesting -- sort of like a cross between Heidi and Bess Myerson. (http://bettermost.net/forum/Smileys/cowboy/grin.gif)
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(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_NYa0sKHEHcc/SYg17ESQlaI/AAAAAAAAIVs/Jh3sAIT8lMM/s400/01356~I-m-Happy-Posters.jpg)
Oddly enough, a new study indicates that women actually WERE happier back then!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/opinion/26douthat.html?sq=douthat&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=print
(http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/opinion/26douthat.html?sq=douthat&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=print)
The New York Times
May 26, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Liberated and Unhappy
By ROSS DOUTHAT
American women are wealthier, healthier and better educated than they were 30 years ago. They’re more likely to work outside the home, and more likely to earn salaries comparable to men’s when they do. They can leave abusive marriages and sue sexist employers. They enjoy unprecedented control over their own fertility. On some fronts — graduation rates, life expectancy and even job security — men look increasingly like the second sex.
But all the achievements of the feminist era may have delivered women to greater unhappiness. In the 1960s, when Betty Friedan diagnosed her fellow wives and daughters as the victims of “the problem with no name,” American women reported themselves happier, on average, than did men. Today, that gender gap has reversed. Male happiness has inched up, and female happiness has dropped. In postfeminist America, men are happier than women.
This is “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness,” the subject of a provocative paper from the economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers. The paper is fascinating not only because of what it shows, but because the authors deliberately avoid floating an easy explanation for their data.
The decline of the two-parent family, for instance, is almost certainly depressing life satisfaction for the women stuck raising kids alone. But this can’t be the only explanation, since the trend toward greater female discontent cuts across lines of class and race. A working-class Hispanic woman is far more likely to be a single mother than her white and wealthy counterpart, yet the male-female happiness gap holds in East Hampton and East L.A. alike.
Again, maybe the happiness numbers are being tipped downward by a mounting female workload — the famous “second shift,” in which women continue to do the lion’s share of household chores even as they’re handed more and more workplace responsibility. It’s certainly possible — but as Wolfers and Stevenson point out, recent surveys actually show similar workload patterns for men and women over all.
Or perhaps the problem is political — maybe women prefer egalitarian, low-risk societies, and the cowboy capitalism of the Reagan era had an anxiety-inducing effect on the American female. But even in the warm, nurturing, egalitarian European Union, female happiness has fallen relative to men’s across the last three decades.
All this ambiguity lends itself to broad-brush readings. A strict feminist and a stringent gender-role traditionalist alike will probably find vindication of their premises between the lines of Wolfers and Stevenson’s careful prose. The feminist will see evidence of a revolution interrupted, in which rising expectations are bumping against glass ceilings, breeding entirely justified resentments. The traditionalist will see evidence of a revolution gone awry, in which women have been pressured into lifestyles that run counter to their biological imperatives, and men have been liberated to embrace a piggish irresponsibility.
There’s evidence to fit each of these narratives. But there’s also room for both.
Feminists and traditionalists should be able to agree, for instance, that the structures of American society don’t make enough allowances for the particular challenges of motherhood. We can squabble forever about the choices that mothers ought to make, but the difficult work-parenthood juggle is here to stay. (Just ask Sarah and Todd Palin.) And there are all kinds of ways — from a more family-friendly tax code to a more accommodating educational system — that public policy can make that juggle easier. Conservatives and liberals won’t agree on the means, but they ought to agree on the end: a nation where it’s easier to balance work and child-rearing, however you think that balance should be struck.
They should also be able to agree that the steady advance of single motherhood threatens the interests and happiness of women. Here the public-policy options are limited; some kind of social stigma is a necessity. But a new-model stigma shouldn’t (and couldn’t) look like the old sexism. There’s no necessary reason why feminists and cultural conservatives can’t join forces — in the same way that they made common cause during the pornography wars of the 1980s — behind a social revolution that ostracizes serial baby-daddies and trophy-wife collectors as thoroughly as the “fallen women” of a more patriarchal age.
No reason, of course, save the fact that contemporary America doesn’t seem willing to accept sexual stigma, period. We simply don’t have the stomach for permanently ostracizing the sexually irresponsible — be they a pregnant starlet, a thrice-divorced tycoon, or even a prostitute-hiring politician.
In this sense, ours is a kinder, gentler, more forgiving country than it was 40 years ago. But for half the public, it’s an unhappier country as well.
Here's the abstract of an article by the authors of the study:
http://www.nber.org/papers/w14969 (http://www.nber.org/papers/w14969)
Betsey Stevenson, Justin Wolfers
NBER Working Paper No. 14969
Issued in May 2009
NBER Program(s): EFG LE LS PE
---- Abstract -----
By many objective measures the lives of women in the United States have improved over the past 35 years, yet we show that measures of subjective well-being indicate that women's happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to men. The paradox of women's declining relative well-being is found across various datasets, measures of subjective well-being, and is pervasive across demographic groups and industrialized countries. Relative declines in female happiness have eroded a gender gap in happiness in which women in the 1970s typically reported higher subjective well-being than did men. These declines have continued and a new gender gap is emerging -- one with higher subjective well-being for men.
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Bess Myerson. (http://bettermost.net/forum/Smileys/cowboy/grin.gif)
There's a name from the past! ;D
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The Party Of Eternal War Unites Against Obama (and America)
by Frank Schaeffer
It strikes me that President Obama's speech, delivered at Cairo University ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/04/obama-cairo-speech-video_n_211210.html )
provides a watershed divide. I'd like to point out that the reactions of right-wing, self-proclaimed "patriotic Americans" to Obama are almost word-for-word the same as the reactions from leading clerics of Iran. And the anti-Obama reaction of the more right-wing Zionist Israeli settlers and their Christian Zionist American supporters is just about word-for-word the same as the reaction of the leaders of Hamas.
Disclosure: I was a lifelong well-connected Republican who enthusiastically worked for Obama's election after I got sick of the right wing negativity that I helped create through my former leadership role in the religious right. (A process of change I explain in my memoir Crazy For God ( http://www.amazon.com/Crazy-God-Helped-Religious-Almost/dp/0786718919 ).
According to AP here are some reactions that make my point. According to a joint statement by eight Damascus, Syria-based radical Palestinian factions, including Hamas; "Obama's speech is an attempt to mislead people and create more illusions to improve America's aggressive image in the Arab and Islamic world."
"[Obama's] vision is so out of touch with reality" says Aliza Herbst, a spokeswoman for Yesha, the West Bank settlers' council.
According to the Daily News Bin Laden said in an audio clip (broadcast on Al Jazeera) "Obama and his administration have planted new seeds to increase hatred for and revenge against America. So, let the American people prepare to continue reaping what the chiefs of the White House sow during the coming years and decades."
During President Obama's trip overseas in April, Fox News took Obama's remarks out of context to support the claim that he was on an "apology tour." Fox News made same smear of Obama's current trip. And in an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh repeated his desire for President Obama to fail. Limbaugh claimed that Obama was doing such a good job of destroying the country that: "If al-Qaeda wants to demolish the America we know and love, they better hurry, because Obama is beating them to it."
Listen to Fox News and change a few words and you're listening to the official anti-American and anti-Obama reaction from the most extreme Islamic leaders and other anti-Americans worldwide. Rush Limbaugh and bin Laden have the same take on our President and the same desire to destroy him.
What we see happening is the realignment of the world, and not just in United States. Simply put the world is now divided into two camps: The Party Of Eternal War and those who genuinely long for peace. Members of The Party Of Eternal War would rather lose the peace, the future and the earth but be proved "right." (Note: as the father of a Marine who was deployed to our current wars I feel these issues deeply and personally!)
Members of The Party Of Eternal War, whether they're called evangelical pro-life Christians, Muslims, secularists or Jews seem to recoil from people ready to lay aside differences and vitriolic rhetoric and try to meet others on some sort of common ground. They hate the idea common ground because their identity is bound up in feeling uncommonly morally superior.
The more militant of the Israeli settlers, the Iranian mullahs, Islamic terrorists, right-wing evangelical Republicans, Fox News commentators, gay bashing "Christians" and of course toxic individuals like Rush Limbaugh and former Vice President Dick Cheney are now part of The Party Of Eternal War.
The Party Of Eternal War is co-joined in strange ways in a campaign of ideas waged for the defeat and/or failure of President Obama and we hope-filled Americans that voted for him. The odd bedfellows in The Party Of Eternal War are joined at the hip by fear and lies and well-honed (and sometimes even beloved and proudly displayed) ignorance.
This is not a question of right versus left or Republican versus Democrat. This is a question of The Party Of Eternal War clinging to the vested interests of conflict. Individuals ranging from bin Laden to Rush Limbaugh, from Sean Hanity to the mote extreme of the Jewish Settlers and the leaders of Hamas and all the rest of this hate-filled, hate-driven angry mob are bent on taking the rest of us with them into an abyss.
On some days members of the The Party Of Eternal War gun down Dr. Tiller in a church in Kansas. On other days they mock President Obama's best efforts to reclaim the reputation of America from cretins and torturers. They dismiss all our hopes as "mere words." On yet other days they drive planes into buildings or call a Supreme Court nominee a "racist," since they can't come up with any other arguments against Obama's brilliant and experienced pick.
In spirit these are all the same people. Members of The Party Of Eternal War may hate each other (and most of them have never met) but they unite in their hatred of our President and we the majority of ordinary live-and-let-live Americans who love him.
We owe ourselves, our children and our magnificent president a redoubled effort to provide a bulwark against the insanity offered us by The Party Of Eternal War and the professional haters both here and abroad. Our future literally depends on President Obama succeeding. We will never see his like again in our lifetimes. His vision, international stature, decency, calmness and intellectual ability is our last and best chance.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/the-party-of-eternal-war_b_211463.html
(italics in original; bolding added by poster)
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Another clear-eyed perspective from Leonard Pitts. Posted in the Huffington Post, at http://www.contracostatimes.com/opinion/ci_12610311?nclick_check=1
Holocaust museum stark reminder of where racial hatred leads
"Them Jews aren't going to let President Obama talk to me." — the Rev. Jeremiah Wright
"I hate gay people ..." — Tim Hardaway, former NBA star
"A Third World country." — Tom Tancredo, former Colorado representative, speaking of Miami
"She's frightening. And she's racist." — Dennis Baxley, former executive director, Christian Coalition of Florida, speaking of Judge Sonia Sotomayor
"Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies." — Glenn Beck, talk show host, to Rep. Keith Ellison, a Muslim
"Fifty years ago they'd have you hanging upside down with a (expletive) fork up your (expletive)." — Michael Richards, comedian, to an African-American in his audience
———
"Enjoy" is not a word one uses in connection with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, but I've always found a visit here conducive to contemplation and reflection. So it is even on a fog-shrouded morning when you can't get in, when yellow tape rings off the entrance, police vehicles sit with lights flashing and armed security stands watch.
Last week, a man with a rifle walked in and opened fire, fatally wounding security guard Stephen Johns. Other guards shot the intruder.
Authorities say the shooter, James von Brunn, was an avowed racist and anti-Semite well known to the pustular netherworld of white supremacy and to those who monitor it.
He believed the Holocaust a hoax and America to be a "Third-World racial garbage dump." He believed this, even at 88 years of age. "It's time to kill all the Jews," he wrote in one e-mail.
Can you imagine what might have happened had he managed to shoot his way past the guards?
It is jolting to recall that I once thought we were living in the last days of creatures such as this. My only excuse: it was the 1970s and I was young, raised on civil rights marches and Norman Lear comedies. Kids like me felt, with the offhand smugness of youth, that we were harbingers of a new world too enlightened to ever again hate people because of what they were. We were past all that.
Or so we thought. Because what a shock it is to wake up 40 years later in a world where the intercultural dialogue we thought we'd mastered has become a shrill circus overrun by haters and opportunists.
It's a world where on any given day one might be assaulted by the casual anti-Semitism and homophobia that afflict so much of the African-American community, or the racist patter of a washed-up TV star who has mistaken freedom of speech for freedom from thought, or the gassy posturing of political and media figures who happily, disingenuously trivialize the rawest wounds of the American experience for ratings and political position.
We act as if it were all a game, as if it means nothing when people of position and visibility spew garbage, validating and galvanizing the unhinged and the disaffected who need little encouragement to believe all their problems are caused by Them.
We act as if we do not toy with fire when people of authority claim white Christians are a victimized minority or Hispanics a threatening and faceless Other. We act as if we were not heirs and witnesses to a blood-soaked history that tells us exactly where this hate some of us so fecklessly stoke will logically, inevitably lead.
Hate groups standing now at record numbers. One dead. Ten dead. Six million dead.
I've always liked the Holocaust museum because it is a stark reminder in an era where too many are in a hurry to forget.
So it is even today, even quiet and locked up tight. Behind yellow tape it sits, scene of a hate crime authored by an old man who thought he was great because his skin was pale. An American flag droops limply at half staff as if tired of waiting, waiting for the last days of creatures such as this.
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That's a very good article. Thank you!
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Marge - just seeing this thread now!
Will come and visit now I know its here!
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Marge - just seeing this thread now!
Will come and visit now I know its here!
Thanks for visiting, and I hope to see you here again! This is a very casual blog, so feel free to post a topic in the "Hi, y'all" thread -- that's the all-purpose one. :)
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Thanks for visiting, and I hope to see you here again! This is a very casual blog, so feel free to post a topic in the "Hi, y'all" thread -- that's the all-purpose one. :)
Well, you know I check in every day. You always have the most interesting things to add!
As the saying goes, Marge, "If you didn't exist, we would have to invent you!" ;D
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Great article, Marge. Thanks for posting it!
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(http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g116/CellarDweller115/pfireworks.gif)(http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g116/CellarDweller115/pfireworks.gif)(http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g116/CellarDweller115/pfireworks.gif)(http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g116/CellarDweller115/pfireworks.gif)(http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g116/CellarDweller115/pfireworks.gif)(http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g116/CellarDweller115/pfireworks.gif)(http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g116/CellarDweller115/pfireworks.gif)
Happy
4th
Of
July
Marcia!
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Thanks, Chuck! I always enjoy your holiday posts.
Both The Husband and I had to work yesterday and I work a graveyard shift so these are about the only fireworks I've seen. Didn't even get to hear "1812" played. ;)
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(http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q135/talkstocoyotes/Dumbcake.jpg)
Evidently the person who ordered this asked for the inscription: "best wishes, Suzanne, and underneath that. . . . "
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:laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
Reminds me of the kids' book, Amelia Bedelia, about a maid who takes everything literally.
(When she's told to "draw the drapes," she gets a paper and pencil and draws a picture of the curtains. ...)
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Heya Marge. :)
I'm curious ... I don't 'get' your flag. Care to explain it (or show me where you did)?
Thanks.
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Heya Marge. :)
I'm curious ... I don't 'get' your flag. Care to explain it (or show me where you did)?
Thanks.
Sorry to be so late in replying -- somehow, I missed the last few posts on this thread.
The flag is the "States of Equality" flag, with stars representing states where same-sex marriage is legal. I believe I first saw it on the Joe.My.God blog.
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The anti-gay organization MissionAmerica issued a 'condemnation' of the shootings in Tel Aviv that was apparently written by someone with attention-span issues. The official condemnation of the shootings went on for two short paragraphs before the piece meandered into a screed about the wonderfulness of the anti-gay movement, with a little "what were they doing there anyway?" thrown in.
Mission America Condemns Shootings at Israeli 'Gay' Youth Center
Mission America denounces the murder of two teenagers and the wounding of many others who were visiting a “gay” youth center in Tel Aviv, Israel. President Linda Harvey said this:
“We are deeply saddened by this violent act and the deaths of these young people, and pray for the perpetrator to be found and brought to justice.
“At the same time, it is deplorable this incident is already being used by the homosexual community to blame this act on those holding a traditional moral viewpoint. Israelis, just as anyone else on earth, should still have the right to oppose homosexuality for religious or other reasons without being called accessories to murder. The motive is still unknown; why engage in slanderous speculation?
“Are those who bravely stand up against the deviance of homosexuality—which violates the dignity and worth of those involved -- responsible for all crime against those drawn to the lifestyle? This kind of bigotry has no place in a civilized society and is wildly irresponsible, unjust and inaccurate.”
Mission America (www.missionamerica.com ) is a Christian organization that has worked for over a decade to expose the harmful “gay” agenda directed at youth, and maintains that homosexuality is not an inborn condition. Such claims are without scientific merit . Those who have same sex attractions should see them as a sinful disorder, yet one that can be overcome. Thousands of admitted ex-homosexuals show the ever-present hope for change.
“It’s tragic that any teens go to these centers, and we remain unequivocally opposed to their purpose, which is to legitimize this behavior and draw young people into claiming a homosexual identity, often without parental involvement or knowledge. ” Harvey said. “Yet the reason we have for our opposition, is because of the harm homosexuality will do in these precious lives. I don’t know any pro-family conservatives who would wish more harm to come into these young lives. We are in the business of trying to help them avoid the risks simply by proclaiming there’s a better way.”
She added, ”No one needs to be involved in homosexuality, but unfortunately, these two young people can no longer hear that message.
“Our greatest hope for all youth is that they live long and healthy lives. These kids’ chance to do that has been stolen from them. Our prayers are with their families in this time of loss.”
Contact: Mission America, 614-442-7998
[email protected]
http://www.missionamerica.com/agenda.php?articlenum=95
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Oh geez. The obtuseness of those people never fails to amaze me.
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No kidding! The second to last paragraph comes rather close to saying 'we're so sorry these people were shot before we got a chance to tell them how sinful and defective they are.'
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No kidding! The second to last paragraph comes rather close to saying 'we're so sorry these people were shot before we got a chance to tell them how sinful and defective they are.'
Makes one wonder who the 'defective' ones really are.
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Oh geez. The obtuseness of those people never fails to amaze me.
You can say that twice and mean it.
And Marcia, thanks for the explanation on the flag, very cool idea.
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Doonesbury's take, anyway.....
(http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q135/talkstocoyotes/birtherwhackos1.gif)
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(http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q135/talkstocoyotes/Dumbcake.jpg)
Evidently the person who ordered this asked for the inscription: "best wishes, Suzanne, and underneath that. . . . "
:laugh: :laugh:
That flag is really interesting - I hadnt known the reasons for it.
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I've had a surprising number of people ask about the flag, and I wish I knew who thought it up. Jimmy over at DC is planning to look into it for a Daily Sheet story.
Isn't that cake a hoot! I don't know what the person who'd ordered it did, but I'd have taken it to the office party to give everybody a good laugh.
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Isn't that cake a hoot! I don't know what the person who'd ordered it did, but I'd have taken it to the office party to give everybody a good laugh.
I would've busted out laughing if I was handed a cake like that.
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Actually, I did get a cake somewhat like that when I was in college. My birthday always fell at the end of Fall quarter, when we were having exams and when I was a freshman my parents sent me a birthday cake to cheer me up. All my neighbors in the dormitory were assembled in my room, I opened the box and here was a cake saying "Happy Birthday Harold." We had a good laugh and ate it anyway. The next day I called the bakery, and the manager informed me that "Harold thought your cake was delicious." :laugh:
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I opened the box and here was a cake saying "Happy Birthday Harold." We had a good laugh and ate it anyway. The next day I called the bakery, and the manager informed me that "Harold thought your cake was delicious." :laugh:
:laugh:
Oh, that's classic!
The funniest thing I've ever seen on a cake was done at someone's 50th birthday party. The person throwing the party got a pack of figures called "Horrified B-Movie Victims". :laugh: They look like the crowds of people running from monsters or aliens from a bad sci-fi movie.
Well, when the cake came out, it had a big "50" on it, and the host placed the horrified figures around the 50. It was priceless.
Here's a pic I found of the figures. It should give you an idea of what the cake looked like.
(http://www.goreydetails.net/images/items/jpeg1196922722.jpg)
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Those are so cool, Chuck, that I immediately looked them up. Get this -- I got as far as "horrified b" and google automatically filled in the rest. Apparently they're a popular search term.
I also liked the "angry mob play set" and the "glow in the dark flesh-eating zombies play set."
Christmas stockings are taken care of for this year!
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I have to check out the "angry mob" set, but I did see the "flesh eating zombie" set.
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Those are so cool, Chuck, that I immediately looked them up. Get this -- I got as far as "horrified b" and google automatically filled in the rest. Apparently they're a popular search term.
I also liked the "angry mob play set" and the "glow in the dark flesh-eating zombies play set."
Christmas stockings are taken care of for this year!
What a great site! I've bookmarked it for future use. 8) 8) 8)
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I also liked the "angry mob play set" and the "glow in the dark flesh-eating zombies play set."
found the "angry mob" play set.
(http://steynian.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/angry-mob-play-set.jpg)
maybe we can rename them? How about "town hall meeting disrupters"? :laugh:
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maybe we can rename them? How about "town hall meeting disrupters"? :laugh:
:laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
Or would those be the flesh-eating zombies?
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found the "angry mob" play set.
(http://steynian.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/angry-mob-play-set.jpg)
maybe we can rename them? How about "town hall meeting disrupters"? :laugh:
Let's go for simple and elegant and call them the GOP.....
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This article reminded me of something my late Religious Science minister (who was gay) said years ago about emotional boundaries set for men and women. Women, he said, are encouraged to be emotionally expressive to a fault -- with the one significant exception of expressing anger; it's no coincidence that women are often pressured to keep a smile on their face at all times. Men, on the other hand, are denied strong expression of any emotions except -- which they're encouraged to express to a fault, especially when it's paired with aggression.
IMO, it takes a rather reductionist approach, but does raise some interesting issues.
The coming masculinity
by Brendan Tapley
Late last year, a different "surge" emerged in the headlines. The FBI released its statistics for hate crimes in a good news-bad news report. Good news: overall, hate crimes declined from the previous year; bad news: there was a 6 percent surge in incidents against homosexuals – the only category that increased – the majority of which targeted gay men (59.2 percent versus 12.6 percent for gay women). What was unclear was the reason; the FBI was quick to say its report did not assign causes for fluctuations. But with the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act currently experiencing its best chances for congressional passage in a dozen years, it seems worth proposing one.
Most men will admit that publicly demonstrating affection toward another man – even platonic affection – can incite from fellow men "the look." Often enough, that look precedes threats or much worse, as in the cases of Jose Sucuzhanay (murdered for walking arm-in-arm with his biological brother), Lawrence King (shot in the head for giving an eighth-grade classmate a Valentine card), or any of last year's 1,460 hate crime victims.
So far, I've been fortunate not to confront anything "statistical," but the looks and slurs that I've received make me a guy who alternates between showing affection for my male friends and someone who worries about the implications. Whenever I've experienced this disapproval I've resented those who generate it, which is why it was interesting when I became the "looker."
I was walking in Rome when for the third time that day I noticed two men acting affectionately toward one another. I only realized my eyes had narrowed because, when I passed the third pair, arm-in-arm, they returned my gaze with irritation. Taken aback by the expression I'd made and the one it elicited, I became more astonished by the cause I knew I could assign to it. My problem wasn't prejudice. It was envy.
From an early age, men in this country are trained to go without love or loving gestures from fellow men. When that principle of manhood becomes clear, our longing for such love does a paradoxical thing: it both intensifies and goes underground. Men cannot help but feel an increased desire to fill this void; at the same time, we rarely act on it because, by seeming gay, such a desire still contradicts our modern definition of masculinity.
Enter the "danger" of gay men. These men pursue and act on male intimacy as though it should be a given, even a right. Should a man find himself in the presence of loving gestures from or between such men, he is likely to feel, as I did, a psychic split: regarding such overtures as tempting and incriminating. This internal clash between a man's long-held desire and his self-denial can turn a passing disapproval into problematic envy and that envy into resentment, even rage.
I didn't want to hurt the Italians; on the contrary, they had what I wanted: an open fraternity that was so unassailably appropriate its expression was blase. But no sooner had I felt that longing than it mutated into an instinctive hostility. However absurd this reaction was, I also saw its logic.
As is often true of men, anger conceals our real feelings; in this case, my sorrow. The scorn I'd felt for the Italians allowed me to ignore the ways I daily surrendered to the masculine tragedy of forgoing true male connection. Such a judgment also excused me from being a braver man who would fight against this fate by risking my own gestures. Indeed, the knee-jerk allegiance I had to what a "real man" was prevented me from actually being one, clarifying for me the real root of homophobia.
The aversion to male love – whether it remains internal or becomes criminal – is not about prejudice. Prejudice is a "palatable" alibi that denies a darker truth. Homophobia is a common reaction to love between men because admitting such love is possible forces men to reevaluate the male "contract." And that presents men with their own good news-bad news situation.
Witnessing real male connection – becoming aware of our longing for it – threatens masculinity, not just because it brings up in men our uneasiness in feeling gay, but more because it exposes masculinity for the raw deal it is: an existential cheat that has defrauded men of a full 50 percent of human connection. Unlike women, who create rich ties within the sisterhood, this forfeiture has lodged an unspoken complaint within our psyches, a primal disenfranchisement that prevents our wholeness. But while an unapologetic conviction by men that male love is part of masculinity would free us from an inherent and stunting bondage (good), it would also sacrifice male privilege (bad).
For instance, would demanding love from our fathers be worthwhile if it meant our accountability as fathers became more rigorous? If love between men was more common than exceptional, would we have to meet a standard of brotherhood that exceeded the frat house and was honored beyond the battlefield? If this subconscious grievance in maleness disappeared, would we have to get on with the business of being fully present, intimate, and responsible to the women in our midst? If male love were no longer taboo, would we have no one to oppress to feel better about ourselves?
Indeed the reinvention of masculinity ends with what some might see as a Pyrrhic victory – the extinction of masculinity's excuses, its low expectations. Because renegotiating the male contract will strip from us the straitjacket whose limitations we men may uncomfortably but willingly wear.
This is the real reason men fight demonstrations of male love. Or in the case of gay hate crimes, why we increasingly attack the messengers of what is a new and coming masculinity. Those who get out of masculinity's raw deal by no longer accepting privation is what enrages those who abide by it still. Our closeted envy of gay men, rather than letting it transform us or masculinity's rules, instead makes pariahs out of the pioneers. We turn their example into a grave offense for the worst reason: to preserve a self-destructive privilege.
Is it any coincidence that in the bluest states in America – where homosexuality is presumably more explicit – the FBI counted most of the hate crimes? Massachusetts (80) and California (263) versus Alabama (1) and Louisiana (2). In the case of hate crimes against gays, perhaps it is not a matter of irrational hate at all, but of rational love that men just don't want in evidence. Because even more explosive than a man confronting a perception of homosexuality and exercising his prejudice is the man who admits his crimes have always been against himself, and he has become his own jailor.
Brendan Tapley is currently writing a memoir on masculinity. His work has appeared in the New York Times and Chicago Tribune, among others. He lives in New Hampshire.
http://ebar.com/openforum/opforum.php?sec=guest_op&id=224
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Damn. What a brilliant article! :o
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Wowee. What an article!
There could, of course, be other reasons for those low numbers for Alabama and Louisiana, including a refusal of those who do the reporting to call a hate crime a hate crime. :-\
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I posted the reply I wrote to this article at In the Community of Men: http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,18011.msg536199.html#msg536199
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Wowee. What an article!
There could, of course, be other reasons for those low numbers for Alabama and Louisiana, including a refusal of those who do the reporting to call a hate crime a hate crime. :-\
the reporting of hate crimes has been, up until the Matthew Shepard amendment was passed only a few weeks ago, entirely the purview of local, county and state law enforcement. That has now changed. Federal resources are now available to assist - and where necessary - compel the investigation of those crimes which are suspected to fall under the Act, as well as a widening of the characterizing of crimes against persons of minority status, color, religion, or sex. We may see a very different picture once the Feds get involved in reporting, accountability, and prosecutions, particularly in rural, deep-red states which have discriminatory laws against sexual minorities.
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An interesting historic note is that affection between men was common back when it was believed that all men were sexually attracted to the opposite sex. Men would confess to loving other men and bed sharing (including hugging and "snuggling") was common. It wasn't until people started to realize that there were men (and women) that preferred the affection and sexual favors of members of their own sex that laws started to be passed and this emotional distance between men developed.
This seemed to happen more in the U.S. than Europe, perhaps because of Puritanical background of our country.
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It wasn't until people started to realize that there were men (and women) that preferred the affection and sexual favors of members of their own sex that laws started to be passed and this emotional distance between men developed.
I thought sodomy laws have been around since the colonial days.
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I thought sodomy laws have been around since the colonial days.
They didn't start actively pursuing sodomy as a crime until the late 1800's. After Walt Whitman and others started being more open about homosexuality, and "the love that dare not speak it's name" started to be less quiet.
You might want to check this out, it's a fascinating book.
http://www.amazon.com/Love-Stories-between-before-Homosexuality/dp/0226426165/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251061747&sr=8-1 (http://www.amazon.com/Love-Stories-between-before-Homosexuality/dp/0226426165/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251061747&sr=8-1)
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from the Huffington Post: (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-ostroy/republicans-scream-emstay_b_277224.html)
Republicans Scream: "Stay Away From Our Kids, Obama! If Anyone's Gonna Fill Their Heads With Deceptive Partisan Crap It's Gonne Be Us!"
The latest controversy that has Republicans' panties in a collective snit is President Barack Obama's plan to address the nation's school children Tuesday in a speech designed to motivate, challenge and inspire excellence through education. Sounds like a no-brainer, right? Well, not if you're a closed-minded conservative who views Obama's address as a form of "indoctrination."
A parent interviewed on Fox News Thursday morning said she's so angry that she's keeping her children home rather than subject them to Obama's speech: "This is government of the people...it's not about us having to do for government but what the government should be doing for us."
So much for the selfless principle behind President John F. Kennedy's stirring, patriotic plea to the American people during his 1960 inauguration address: "Ask not what your country can do you for, ask what you can do for your country." This woman couldn't have presented the typical Republican 'I-don't-give-a-shit-about-anyone-but-me' philosophy any clearer.
And right-wing media pundits have piled on. In her column Thursday, Michelle Malkin incredulously warns that Obama's campaign calls for kids to "Create posters of their goals." She raises this flag as if there's something wrong with challenging our children to aspire. To have goals. Am I missing something? Just what is Malkin and her Republican brethren so afraid of, anyway? That kids will think Obama's a cool guy who makes a lot of sense? How about giving them some credit for being able to make their own determinations and draw their own conclusions?
Not likely. These Obama-hating conservatives and their dumbed-down, myopic philosophies appeal to the lowest common-denominator of their party, which is why it got trounced in the last election. There used to be a time when a presidential address to children would've meant something. When it wouldn't have been turned into some cheapened partisan charade played by self-serving political operatives trying to shape the next election. Or by ignorant, fearful voters who've been brainwashed into thinking that Obama is the devil-incarnate out to poison their children's minds.
'Indoctrination?' Really? Does anyone really think Obama is going to very publicly abuse his power by making some sort of blatant amoral partisan appeal to our children while the whole world, including his rabid critics, watches? Do you think he thinks he'd get away with something that obvious? Jeez, people, I know the president's behavior seems odd given that in eight years George W. Bush couldn't string together two sentences without mangling the English language, and that he had the intellectual curiosity of a slug, but how about we just take Obama's intentions at face value? That he's a president who cares about children, what they think, and who wants to engage them in the national discourse.
What a terrible concept: a U.S. president talking with school kids about the importance of education, of expanding their intellectual horizons, of setting goals, and of getting involved in civics. Wow. Truly despicable lessons to impart on children, huh? Why expose our kids to such irresponsible 'indoctrination' when we can just keep 'em home that day and fill their heads with the really objective stuff like abortion is murder; gays are evil; guns are good; Obama and Democrats are destroying life as we know it; and that God is a Republican.
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I. Hate. The. Republican. Party. >:(
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You know, I don't even get angry anymore when I see the kind of shit the conservatives will dish out.
I just laugh, because it is so incredibly apparent that the parents are pushing "their" agenda.
What do they think is going to happen? After the speech, cards will be handed out asking students
to join the Democratic party?
He is our President.
I seem to remember conservatives getting their panties in a wad when Bush was criticized for his invasion
of Iraq. Everyone said.... He's our president, you should support him.
::)
All this hoopla over a speech to students, which is apparently about how education is essential, and
encouraging students to work hard for their education.
All I can do is just shake my head and wonder how this country can spend time on something like
this when we have growing unemployment and an economy that is in the shitter.
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You know, I don't even get angry anymore when I see the kind of shit the conservatives will dish out.
I just laugh, because it is so incredibly apparent that the parents are pushing "their" agenda.
What do they think is going to happen? After the speech, cards will be handed out asking students
to join the Democratic party?
He is our President.
I seem to remember conservatives getting their panties in a wad when Bush was criticized for his invasion
of Iraq. Everyone said.... He's our president, you should support him.
::)
All this hoopla over a speech to students, which is apparently about how education is essential, and
encouraging students to work hard for their education.
All I can do is just shake my head and wonder how this country can spend time on something like
this when we have growing unemployment and an economy that is in the shitter.
I find it somewhat frightening because these people are not conservative at all. They'll swallow whatever ridiculous propaganda they are fed, and hold any view or belief they are told they should have by their Mullahs. These are the people who would give up their freedoms just to take ours away if they where told to do so by the "right" people. We saw that with Bush and Cheney's near destruction of the Constitution. Habeus Corpus was canceled, (I'm not sure it's been restored yet) something that only happens in dictatorships, but these same people were cheering that. Well they were told they should, so they did.
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I. Hate. The. Republican. Party. >:(
So do I. Have since 1980.
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I find it somewhat frightening because these people are not conservative at all. They'll swallow whatever ridiculous propaganda they are fed, and hold any view or belief they are told they should have by their Mullahs. These are the people who would give up their freedoms just to take ours away if they where told to do so by the "right" people. We saw that with Bush and Cheney's near destruction of the Constitution. Habeus Corpus was canceled, (I'm not sure it's been restored yet) something that only happens in dictatorships, but these same people were cheering that. Well they were told they should, so they did.
Of course, Lincoln did that during the Civil War, but, then again, Lincoln was a Republican. ...
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Of course, Lincoln did that during the Civil War, but, then again, Lincoln was a Republican. ...
The difference was that in Lincoln's case, this was during a declared war between two nation-states and lasted until the war officially ended. Today, we have the threat of terrorism conveniently defined as the "war on terror" -- in which there will be no official end. Any and all objections to crushing of civil liberties then met with "well, we're at war", with no end to said war in sight.
Of course, you are hearing this from one of those subhuman childless forum members..... :P
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When our war on terror is officially over, who attends the peace conference and signs the treaties as our opponent?
If this can't be done, if nobody officially surrenders, then how do we know the war on terror is over?
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When our war on terror is officially over, who attends the peace conference and signs the treaties as our opponent?
If this can't be done, if nobody officially surrenders, then how do we know the war on terror is over?
Exactly. That's why this "war on terror" schtick is such a con.
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The difference was that in Lincoln's case, this was during a declared war between two nation-states and lasted until the war officially ended.
Actually it was done during a crisis caused by a treasonous rebellion, but let be, let be. ...
;D ;)
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When our war on terror is officially over, who attends the peace conference and signs the treaties as our opponent?
If this can't be done, if nobody officially surrenders, then how do we know the war on terror is over?
I guess it's a little like the "War on Cancer." Remember that? It never ends. ... :(
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Exactly. That's why this "war on terror" schtick is such a con.
Sure enough. And I was just thinking the other day, I guess we didn't learn anything from when the Russians got bogged down in Afghanistan, did we?
Not that I'm ag'in crushing the Taliban, because I'm all in favor of that, but I'm just starting to think we're not going to wind up any better off in Afghanistan than the Russians did. :(
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I guess it's a little like the "War on Cancer." Remember that? It never ends. ... :(
The pattern seems to be that when something not involving an official declaration of war between nation-states starts getting called a "war", look out.
And follow the money -- there are quite a few people with a financial interest in not seeing the "war on cancer" won. Similarly, the "war on tobacco", the "war on drugs"......
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The pattern seems to be that when something not involving an official declaration of war between nation-states starts getting called a "war", look out.
And follow the money -- there are quite a few people with a financial interest in not seeing the "war on cancer" won. Similarly, the "war on tobacco", the "war on drugs"......
I guess the "War on Terror" fits that pattern, doesn't it? :-\
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The term "war" is a strategically chosen verbal ploy.
It serves as a rallying cry to young men to enlist, because we have chosen to use troops instead of diplomacy.
And it gives the action the sound of public legitimacy, whether war is actually declared or not.
Clinton was able to end the terrorist action in Ireland by creating a situation where the two parties are so economically entwined that a hostile action on either side hurts both of them economically. Whether that would work here or not, I don't know.
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Clinton was able to end the terrorist action in Ireland by creating a situation where the two parties are so economically entwined that a hostile action on either side hurts both of them economically. Whether that would work here or not, I don't know.
I doubt it. And I believe there really is no negotiating with the Taliban. The Taliban have no incentive to reach a negotiated settlement, because that would require them to give up something.
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I doubt it. And I believe there really is no negotiating with the Taliban. The Taliban have no incentive to reach a negotiated settlement, because that would require them to give up something.
It may be unlikely, but they say everybody wants something, and it's no secret that politics in the middle east is notoriously corrupt. I wouldn't be surprised if the politics of the religious fanatics in the middle east are as corrupt as they are here.
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It may be unlikely, but they say everybody wants something, and it's no secret that politics in the middle east is notoriously corrupt. I wouldn't be surprised if the politics of the religious fanatics in the middle east are as corrupt as they are here.
Funny that I should actually wish that to be true, but somehow I just can't imagine the Taliban being "bought off." :-\
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Funny that I should actually wish that to be true, but somehow I just can't imagine the Taliban being "bought off." :-\
Well, maybe I'm mistaken, but the louder the "Bible" (or Qur'an or Torah or whatever) is thumped, the less I believe the purity and sincerity of the thumper.
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Well, maybe I'm mistaken, but the louder the "Bible" (or Qur'an or Torah or whatever) is thumped, the less I believe the purity and sincerity of the thumper.
I don't disagree with you about the Bible- or Qur'an-thumping, but look at the way the Taliban were running things when they had control of Afghanistan. I look back to that, and then I can't imagine them being bought off. I believe what they want is to have again the power that they once had to run Afghanistan according to their own medieval notions.
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... keep in mind that it might be open season on you, and little to nothing will be done about it. Straight supporters might take that into consideration as well.
British Consul Killed In Jamaica In Anti-Gay Attack
Jim Burroway
September 11th, 2009
Violence against gays in Jamaica is continuing unabated. Honorary British Consul in Jamaica John Terry was found dead at his home in Montego Bay. Police say he died of asphyxiation after being repeatedly beaten, possibly with a lamp. Police say neighbors found his naked body laying in the yard with a cloth and cord tied around his neck. A trail of blood was found throughout the property.
Police are investigating the possibility that the attack might have been an anti-gay attack, citing a handwritten note on Terry’s body describing him as a “batty man”, a pejorative term for a gay man. The note warned, “This is what will happen to ALL gays.” It was signed, “Gay-Man.”
While London newspapers are reporting the gay angle — even the conservative Times of London mentioned the note as an indication of the murderer’s motive — but the Jamaican news media has been silent on the issue. The Gleaner’s report on the murder completely ignored (http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20090911/news/news7.html) the evidence of an anti-gay bashing.
Jamaica has become notorious for its ongoing anti-gay violence. The U.S. State Department singled out Jamaica for “human rights abuses, including arbitrary detention, mob attacks, stabbings, harassment of homosexual patients by hospital and prison staff, and targeted shootings of homosexuals. Police often did not investigate such incidents.”
Terry, 65, had lived in Jamaica since 1967 where he represented the British High Commission for the popular resort area of Montego Bay.
http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2009/09/11/14596
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Jamaica has become notorious for its ongoing anti-gay violence. The U.S. State Department singled out Jamaica for “human rights abuses, including arbitrary detention, mob attacks, stabbings, harassment of homosexual patients by hospital and prison staff, and targeted shootings of homosexuals. Police often did not investigate such incidents.”
Indeed, there have been plenty of stories in the gay press about anti-gay violence in Jamaica. When I recently learned that a couple I know actually vacationed there, the first thought that went through my head was, "Jesus H.! What the hell were they thinking?!?!"
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Horrible. Horrible. Not that my decision means much, since I wasn't planning on going to Jamaica anyway, but this cinches it.
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This was on the front pages of a few newspapers in the UK yesterday. Not nice. I'm guessing he recently came out. He divorced his wife (of I believe 20 years plus) 3 years ago.
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Horrible. Horrible. Not that my decision means much, since I wasn't planning on going to Jamaica anyway, but this cinches it.
I'd heard a lot of stories of this kind about Jamaica, but felt that this one was notable because the victim was involved with the consulate of another country. If someone like that isn't safe from homophobic thugs in Jamaica, what gay person is?
I did go to Jamaica on a special vacation way back in the early 1970s when I was just out of college, but that kind of thing wasn't even on the public's radar back then. I assume it was just as bad if not worse. No way would I go there today: I'd feel like a collaborator.
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Rather than appeasing the whacko Right, which obviously hasn't worked very well, Obama should be distracting them with shiny trinkets!
The Monkey, The Organ Grinder & the Swift Boating of Van Jones
by John Wellington Ennis
Van Jones has made an abrupt and indignant departure over an empty outrage, letting Obama sacrifice talent and control of the debate in one reflex. While Jones may well prove more effective on the outside of the tepid D.C. mechanisms, that his departure was prompted by Glenn Beck hysterics sends the misleading message that Glenn Beck actually matters. Regrettably, resignation signifies an acknowledgment of impropriety. The right wing parrots refer to it as a scandal, but nothing has actually happened.
This manufactured Van Jones controversy was alternately marketed as "What is this Czar title, anyway, and why is a Russian king ruling our government? That's Communist!" Lost on the clap-traps might be that the title of czar dates back to Nixon and was popularized by Reagan. These are the embittered and disaffected looking to argue over anything, constructing justification for their displaced anger, as opposed to looking for truth.
The other non-troversy came in a speech where Jones referred to Republicans as "assholes" in the way they successfully managed to pass legislation. He also suggested he could be an asshole, i.e., effective. Though this was meant as the same observational truth as in "the assholes always get the girls," it was seized upon like red meat by jackals. No matter if the Vice President can tell a Senator to go fuck himself on the floor of the Senate without rebuke, or the fact that overreacting and feigning outrage to try to get a guy fired really is kind of an asshole thing to do. Jones has so far failed at living up to this, and makes a lousy asshole, and will probably not be scoring with the cheerleaders, some of which he certainly could have used for the past month.
The other tacked-on outrage was that Van Jones had signed a petition supporting further investigation of 9/11. A petition demanding truth about 9/11 is hardly a controversy, and it shouldn't be. As The Dude (Jeff Bridges) yells at Walter (John Goodman) in The Big Lebowski: "What does anything have to do with Vietnam?" The same could be said today about 9/11, to Truthers, to Freepers, to Rudy Giuliani. This point is not even debated, it's like Van Jones knows the profile of harassment. If it's not this, it will be something else. Is your vehicle registered? Are these headlights up to code? Is that brake light dimmer than the other one?
Of course, there is more to this abrupt umbrage about Van Jones than some petition or profanity. As Adele M. Stan details at AlterNet, Van Jones is a threat because of the entrenched industrial opposition against green jobs. Noticeably, this attack on Jones has been unrelated to Van Jones actual performance, obscuring that Jones was at the White House to create millions of jobs in the midst of recession.
Predictably, the right wing chatterbox has crowed over Van Jones's departure, as surprised as anyone that their complaining has actually resulted in anything. This is a Pyrrhic victory, delighting trolls who get to write "HA!" and "I'm driving my low MPG truck to show Van Jones." This Administration -- at least the few progressives within it not driven to placate business interests -- is trying to offer health care and environmental conservation not just for all Americans today, but for generations of Americans to come. This costly din and derision of partisan patricide is far more destructive than foreign enemies.
There is another irony lost on the harpies so quick to clamor for accountability for things real or imagined, from the past, present, or future. The very point of public office is that the public can demand accountability. Government officials are ultimately responsible to the public.
On the other hand, private companies can do whatever they want, as long as their shareholders are happy. And they can lie. They can say their product does not kill people when they know it does. And they can keep that vital information confidential under trade secret protections, endangering the public. And individual executives are almost universally unaccountable in corporate crime. Vioxx. Monsanto. Enron. Goldman Sachs. Philip Morris. Etc.
Despite considerably more attention and infamy, does Erik Prince step down from Blackwater (Xe), particularly now that he has been implicated in the murder of potential whistle-blowers? Erik Prince would tell you to go his idea of a Christian Medieval hell, he owns all of Blackwater, he inherited his millions to go play war games, and no one can figure out what court in the world to even try his crimes in. Till then, he will keep getting new contracts with the U.S. State Department.
Corporations only answer to government when government demands it. Unfortunately, the demanding is usually done by politicians who have to run for re-election and could always use some more contributors. In light of the Supreme Court mulling over corporate monies into our elections, I believe we are approaching a new debate on campaign reform that will expose more people to how beholden our elected officials are.
Thus, this is another circumstance where the ranting righties who have crusaded against any government role in anything presume that same transparency and entitlement that they would be denying themselves in every other role of society, and doing it self-righteously. That you even have a right to call for his resignation proves the main advantage to administration by elected officials.
These are the same people who get inflamed that the President of our country would offer a broadcast message to welcome students back to school. Fears were repeated and escalated that Obama would indoctrinate all children into socialism if they were exposed to even minutes of hearing him speak, like he isn't on TV every day already. Something that could be motivating to children who do not subscribe to a two party mindset was politicized to preposterous ends by people desperate for credibility while devoid of ideas.
If you are afraid that your child will abandon all that you hold sacred after a couple minutes of a grown up explaining something about government on a TV, then you have no freaking control over your kid anyway, and probably never will.
Personally, if this is a public education that I am paying for with my tax dollars, I for one would like a celebrity cameo from the government to show some effort, a little pizazz, like a fancy in-flight video.
These people are scaring their kids with made up ideas of Obama, and they don't know what he would say because they never even listen to him. They don't have to listen to anything, they know they don't trust him, because they have heard so much about what a socialist he is, and even though they don't know what that means, it must be bad, because the white people on FOX keep yelling and crying about it. And the kids grow up thinking the same thing without questioning, and the disconnect proliferates.
It's kind of like the organ grinder and the monkey. The guy with the music box gets the monkey to dance and act out for the people. And when huge corporations, media interests, and high-priced consultants unleash desperate distortions on public policy, they get a robust jig and a squeal from right wing reactionaries, hot heads, bigots, and people who don't know enough to know they don't know enough.
This cuts to the heart of the problems we face in instituting such basic government services as health care and sustainable development. When there is so much disinformation -- literally, one of the biggest industries in America is mass-producing mistruths and distortions, and it is owned by Rupert Murdoch -- there will thrive a chronic disconnect in society.
Where the Obama team was the Marketer of the Year in 2008, this year they have less marketing muscle than the crude new Melrose Place. Obama mistakenly believed that upon entering the White House, people would listen to him just because he was president, or something. No matter how well Jackie Robinson played, he had to face the cruelest critics the most often. Obama is still the subject of prejudiced suspicion, both racial and cultural, but amplified to near mythic proportions of being a Marxist dictator, without having done anything (almost literally) at all.
The Big Tent is a fallacy, and there will never be any participation from a dedicated segment of society that is committed to vitriol and tearing down that tent at all costs.
This deference to disapproval, acquiescence to any angry and aimless mob, it is far more respect and legitimacy than they would return in kind at the sign of offense. These are people who for the most part hide behind screen names while demanding to personally inspect the long form documentation of our President's birth, so that they can find other reasons to complain either way.
This is the base that Van Jones is worried about distracting from health care reform? We need to draw their fire. Van should blare the new Jay-Z on the Front Lawn of the White House while planting acorns to freak out the Ditto heads while the grown ups meet inside and stop posturing over talking points, like their lowest denominator is watching. The rabble-rousers will rabble on, regardless.
To that end, perhaps what is needed is to offer fodder to inflate the self-preoccupation of that right-wing shark-osphere.
Where the signs typically say, "Do Not Toss Items to the Monkey," this is where to start. Feed the monkey peanuts, cotton candy, popcorn to gobble down. Throw it gossip, confusing riddles, internal strife, distraction. Give them more chew toys to tire themselves out with. Wave shiny things in front of their wide, eager eyes. Delude them with relevancy and mock them as the alienated, small-minded, insecure, intolerant sociopaths that they are. We need rope, lots of it, to let them hang themselves in their xenophobic obsessions.
Because what won't deter them is shame. There is no shame to these hacks like Glenn Beck, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, John Boehner, Tom DeLay, and their cadre. Beyond cultural bias, this is an automatic opposition to anything that could be successful. Seeking to earn the approval or inclusion of this deluded minority is ruinous. It offers easy exploitation from predatory industries that have long proven their disregard for American citizens in the interest of profits.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-wellington-ennis/the-monkey-the-organ-grin_b_281181.html
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In an emailed "Washington Update", the Family Research Council is outraged at an openly gay Obama Administration official who has been caught red-handed using profanity in reference to Republicans!
The website they refer to was established shortly after Jennings was appointed, as the centerpiece of an effort to get him fired. Apparently, they're less that overjoyed over his still being there.
The Washington Times this week ran a headline, "Looking for the next Van Jones." But FRC already identified him in June-radical homosexual activist Kevin Jennings, appointed by Education Secretary Arne Duncan to head the Officer of Safe and Drug-Free Schools. Jones, President Obama's "green jobs" czar, was caught using profanity in reference to Republicans; Jennings has directed his profanity at God Himself! Jones merely signed his name to a conspiracy myth about the September 11 attacks; but Jennings has spent decades actively and successfully promoting myths about homosexuality to schoolchildren as founder of the radical Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GSLEN). Van Jones was done in by two key charges and one taped quote; FRC documented at least seven outrageous facts about Jennings and five inflammatory quotes in documents we released in June (see www.stopjennings.org).
Unfortunately, Jennings has now taken his office at the Education Department-where he will be charged with implementing laws like the "Safe Schools Improvement Act," introduced as H.R. 2262. This bill to combat "bullying" and "harassment" is like a "hate crimes" law for schools-but without being limited to actual violence. Cutting down on bullying and harassment of anyone is a worthy goal, but naming "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" as protected categories makes this bill more about advancing the homosexual agenda than keeping schools safe.
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Might you be the "Unknown Liberal"?
Adopt A Liberal
A Liberty Counsel PRAYER-IN-ACTION Program
"Helping Restore Poor Leaders to Right Thinking"
Liberty Counsel is proud to introduce -- and invite you to participate in -- a vital new prayer program solidly built upon St. Paul's admonition to pray for our national leaders:
Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior.
-- 1 Timothy 2:1-3
Since the landmark 2008 general election, there can be no doubt that a very large percentage of our Nation's leaders have a liberal mindset. The undeniable fact is that the 111th Pelosi-Reid Congress and the Obama Administration demonstrate a far left political philosophy. And since the President nominates federal judges and Justices of the United States Supreme Court, the judicial branch of government could take on a decidedly more liberal bent as the Obama Administration wears on.
Liberty Counsel has therefore named this special new prayer-in-action program Adopt a Liberal. And that's exactly what we invite you to do -- adopt a liberal who is in authority for regular, intense prayer in accord with St. Paul's admonition to his disciple, Timothy. In fact, we expect that many of our friends and supporters will choose to adopt many liberals as subjects of regular prayer!
Here's How it Works...
Pick one or more of the liberals from the list we have posted online at www.LC.org, or choose your own liberal(s) to adopt. If you are led to choose one or more of the liberals we have selected for consideration, please read their brief biographical statement, including the reasons they stand in need of prayer.
Pray earnestly and intensely for them! Pray that the Lord would move upon them and cause them to be the kind of leaders who will encourage others to lead "a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence." We encourage you to seek the Lord's guidance on how to pray for your liberal(s), always allowing Him to temper your prayer with His love and mercy.
Join Us as We Pray for God's Powerful Intervention in Many Liberals' Lives
Please pray daily for the liberal(s) of your choice, so each can become a good influence on our Nation's culture. Prayer is powerful! It allows God to change the minds of those for whom we are praying. In fact, we fully expect that many of our adoptees will "graduate" from this prayer program with vivid testimonies of God having changed their lives and worldviews!
We will continue to add new subjects to our Adopt a Liberal program. Please feel free to nominate one or more liberals for prayer by emailing us at [email protected], giving us the reasons you feel they qualify for the program.
Here are just a few representative liberals to further illustrate how the Adopt a Liberal program works...
Choose a Liberal from the Following List
We will be adding a number of new subjects to our Adopt a Liberal program each week. Please feel free to nominate one of more Liberals for prayer by emailing us at [email protected]. Although there is certainly a certain amount of tongue-and-cheek humor associated with this program, we desire that Liberty Counsel's Adopt a Liberal program will conform to 1 Timothy 2:1-4.
Adopt a liberal from the list below, or select the "unknown liberal." Click on a name for more information about these misguided leaders.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
Congressman Barney Frank
Director John Holdren
Mr. Barry Lynn
Secretary Janet Napolitano
President Barack Obama
Senator Harry Reid
Speaker Nancy Pelosi
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
Senator Olympia Snowe
The "Unknown Liberal"
http://lc.org/media/9980/adopt_a_liberal.htm
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God as a conservative?
If there is a God, isn't He the one who invented change?
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I guess not everyone believes that -- otherwise the buzz-phrase "the same yesterday, today and forever" wouldn't be so popular. ;)
Personally, I find the idea of the Being who created the universe being stuck, like a fly in amber, in the culture and view of the universe that was prevalent 6,000 years ago in the Middle East (not to mention just on this one planet) more than a little depressing. This is, arguably, a God who has more than a little in common with Larry The Cable Guy.
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Join Us as We Pray for God's Powerful Intervention in Many Liberals' Lives
Please pray daily for the liberal(s) of your choice, so each can become a good influence on our Nation's culture. Prayer is powerful! It allows God to change the minds of those for whom we are praying. In fact, we fully expect that many of our adoptees will "graduate" from this prayer program with vivid testimonies of God having changed their lives and worldviews!
But what if God chooses to make the adoptee even more liberal? Didn't they think of that, I wonder? ???
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I guess not everyone believes that -- otherwise the buzz-phrase "the same yesterday, today and forever" wouldn't be so popular. ;)
Personally, I find the idea of the Being who created the universe being stuck, like a fly in amber, in the culture and view of the universe that was prevalent 6,000 years ago in the Middle East (not to mention just on this one planet) more than a little depressing. This is, arguably, a God who has more than a little in common with Larry The Cable Guy.
"As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen."
Except for global warming. ... ;D
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So, being a liberal, am I going to hell if I don't change?
;D
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.... to buy those cookies!
(http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q135/talkstocoyotes/GirlScoutfire.jpg)
Of course, not all of us need threats, or even encouragement..... ;)
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OMG !
I swear, I almost run away when I see them selling cookies !
I know it's a good cause and all, but dang, I always get suckered in to buying
more boxes then I need.
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(http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g116/CellarDweller115/smilies%20for%20forum/poop.gif)
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Are those rabbit Girl Scout cookies? :laugh:
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Are those rabbit Girl Scout cookies? :laugh:
Easter is way too far away for them to be jelly beans. ... ;D
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But what if God chooses to make the adoptee even more liberal? Didn't they think of that, I wonder? ???
UPDATE:
(http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q135/talkstocoyotes/AdoptaLiberallogo.jpg)
OneNewsNow displays the "Adopt a Liberal" logo and brings us up to date on this fun project:
"[Liberty Counsel president Mat] Staver says his group is also producing a deck of cards similar to baseball trading cards. "On the one side [of each card] will be a picture of a liberal, and on the other side some of the liberal positions or policies that negatively impact life, liberty, and family," he says. "In this way people can pray for a specific person, then trade cards with their friends."
"Staver points that that particular deck of cards will have 51 cards -- 'which is one card short of a full deck,' he adds.
"Liberty Counsel is also producing bumper stickers that ask the question: 'Have you prayed for a liberal today?' "
OneNutNow has also added "Barry Lynn (Americans United for Separation of Church and State), talk-show host Alan Colmes, and lesbian radio and TV personality Rachel Maddow" to the list of lucky liberal luminaries.
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OneNutNow has also added "Barry Lynn (Americans United for Separation of Church and State), talk-show host Alan Colmes, and lesbian radio and TV personality Rachel Maddow" to the list of lucky liberal luminaries.
Ah yes, bring back the Inquisition, that would certainly be a benefit to society.
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It's not exactly that. The Liberty Counsel has started an "Adopt A Liberal" campaign. It's first posted on this thread, at http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,32230.msg541359.html#msg541359
Basically, people are being encouraged to 'adopt' and pray for "the liberal(s) of your choice, so each can become a good influence on our Nation's culture. Prayer is powerful! It allows God to change the minds of those for whom we are praying. In fact, we fully expect that many of our adoptees will 'graduate' from this prayer program with vivid testimonies of God having changed their lives and worldviews!" There's a list of names that includes "The Unknown Liberal".
That logo is interesting: the bisected circle that's blue on the left (ah!) and red on the right, with the hand of a benighted liberal reaching up from the murky blue depths and being grasped by a hand extending from a red-white-blue striped sleeve on the red side. Subtlty isn't the strong suit there. ;)
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It's not exactly that. The Liberty Counsel has started an "Adopt A Liberal" campaign. It's first posted on this thread, at http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,32230.msg541359.html#msg541359
Basically, people are being encouraged to 'adopt' and pray for "the liberal(s) of your choice, so each can become a good influence on our Nation's culture. Prayer is powerful! It allows God to change the minds of those for whom we are praying. In fact, we fully expect that many of our adoptees will 'graduate' from this prayer program with vivid testimonies of God having changed their lives and worldviews!" There's a list of names that includes "The Unknown Liberal".
That logo is interesting: the bisected circle that's blue on the left (ah!) and red on the right, with the hand of a benighted liberal reaching up from the murky blue depths and being grasped by a hand extending from a red-white-blue striped sleeve on the red side. Subtlty isn't the strong suit there. ;)
Notice the complacent assumption that God is on their side. ::)
I have news for them. God is a Liberal. That's why He sent His Son to save sinners, not the righteous. A Conservative God would have let sinners go to hell in their own good time and saved only the righteous.
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A Conservative God would have let sinners go to hell in their own good time and saved only the righteous.
Or maybe "let the market decide". ;)
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It's not exactly that. The Liberty Counsel has started an "Adopt A Liberal" campaign. It's first posted on this thread, at http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,32230.msg541359.html#msg541359
Basically, people are being encouraged to 'adopt' and pray for "the liberal(s) of your choice, so each can become a good influence on our Nation's culture. Prayer is powerful! It allows God to change the minds of those for whom we are praying. In fact, we fully expect that many of our adoptees will 'graduate' from this prayer program with vivid testimonies of God having changed their lives and worldviews!" There's a list of names that includes "The Unknown Liberal".
That logo is interesting: the bisected circle that's blue on the left (ah!) and red on the right, with the hand of a benighted liberal reaching up from the murky blue depths and being grasped by a hand extending from a red-white-blue striped sleeve on the red side. Subtlty isn't the strong suit there. ;)
And the poor liberal's hand is being grabbed at the wrist, fingers outstretched as though he were in pain. No hint of clasped hands that would give the impression of agreement and equality. Guess subservience is the best offer liberals can expect.
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"[Liberty Counsel president Mat] Staver says his group is also producing a deck of cards similar to baseball trading cards. "On the one side [of each card] will be a picture of a liberal, and on the other side some of the liberal positions or policies that negatively impact life, liberty, and family," he says. "In this way people can pray for a specific person, then trade cards with their friends."
Some people have waaay too much time on their hands. ::)
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(http://i675.photobucket.com/albums/vv112/HoloRetro/oosterheem/happy-halloween.gif)
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Someone at the Democratic Underground came up with an alternative solution to a recent kerfuffle on an airline:
(http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q135/talkstocoyotes/screamingbrat.jpg)
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(http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q135/talkstocoyotes/Heresthedeal.jpg)
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(http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q135/talkstocoyotes/Heresthedeal.jpg)
:laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
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Until the traditional churches clean up their act about equality -- and the more "liberal" ones break their deafening silence -- this is pretty much my response to anyone who tries to interest me in their religion.
Be that a personal savior from a psychotic god, a personal prophet who supports treating women like cattle, or L. Ron Hubbard. ;)
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by David Neiwert.
This is one of the items on my (December) birthday-present list. It'll be a present to myself if I don't get it.
Publisher's Weekly's review, as quoted on Amazon.com:
Rarely has a book been released at a time when it's been more relevant than David Neiwert's The Eliminationists. Neiwert, an award-winning journalist and blogger at Orcinus and of late, at Crooks and Liars, has focused for years on that fine, scary line where heated rhetoric gives way to pure hate speech, and where fantasies of inflicting violence morph into the real thing. With the killing of three Pittsburgh police officers by a white-supremacist radical, an understanding of the right-wing extremists now deeply embedded in the modern conservative movement is more important than ever.
And lucky we are to have such a guide as Neiwert, who over the years has become the absolute master of the study of hate speech, authoritarianism and violence. His new book is the culmination of decades of watching the far right, listening to talk radio, tracking militias and extremists, and cataloging incidents inspired by false facts and the stoking of paranoia. Heck, for the naming of the phenomenon alone, he should be thanked: Eliminationism: a politics and a culture that shuns dialogue and the democratic exchange of ideas in favor of the pursuit of outright elimination of the opposing side, either through suppression, exile, and ejection, or extermination.
Admit it: We all knew there was a better word we were waiting for. Finally, it has arrived. While we're at it, let's have him define an overused (but strangely enough, underdefined) term for us at the outset: Fascism is passionate nationalism, allied to a conspiratorial dualism and a crude Social Darwinism, voiced with resentment toward the forces, or conditions, that restrain "the chosen people."
Sound vaguely familiar? It should. As Neiwert shows, this country since the 1990s has been undergoing what he terms para-fascist tendencies going mainstream as those once on the fringes have begun infecting one of the two major political parties and co-opting conservatism, making of it the paranoiac, reactionary--and, most frighteningly--increasingly violent crew we now hear regularly on Fox News and on talk radio.
The first portion of The Eliminationists lays out in careful detail the evidence, in cite after cite, of ... a particular trend that has manifested itself with increasing intensity in the past decade: the positing of elimination as the solution to political disagreement. Rather than engaging in a dialogue over political and cultural issues, one side simply dehumanizes its opponents and suggests, and at times demands, their excision. This tendency is almost singularly peculiar to the American Right and manifests itself in many venues: on radio talk shows and in political speeches, in bestselling books and babbling blogs. Most of all, we can feel it on the ground: in our everyday lives, in our encounters, big and small, with each other.
His insistence on the right-wing nature of modern eliminationism holds up, despite cries from the conservatives that "liberals do it too." Neiwert acknowledges that leftists have been known--less frequently--to toss around talk of assassination or insurrection but, he points out, they tend to focus on threatening talk toward an individual (think Cheney or Bush), not an entire category of human beings. The far right, on the other hand...
In contrast, right-wing rhetoric has been explicitly eliminationist, calling for the infliction of harm on whole blocs of American citizens: liberals, gays and lesbians, Latinos, blacks, Jews, feminists, or whatever target group is the victim du jour of right-wing ire.
This distinction is crucial, and Neiwert makes an alarming case for the fact that the rhetoric that leads up to violent crimes against whole classes of individuals is a necessary ingredient to the carrying out of the penultimate acts, that without the vicious cheerleading, many of the acts would not be carried out because, he says, "such rhetoric has played a critical role in giving permission for it to proceed, by creating the cultural and psychological conditions that enable the subsequent violence." At the bottom of such rhetoric is a savagely anti-democratic, American-hating ethos too, despite the flag-cocooning in which the shouters participate.
Indeed, one of the more disturbing elements in what we are currently witnessing on the right is the 'mainstreaming' and normalizing of extremist talk through 'patriotic' transmitters. Neiwert explains: " 'Transmitters' of fringe ideas into the mainstream have two audiences. The first (and by far the largest) is made up of the many millions of ordinary mainstream conservatives who tune in and log on to the Right's army of media talking heads and movement leaders. The second includes their xenophobic counterparts on the far Right, where the memes come from in the first place. For the latter, these transmissions signal that their formerly unacceptable beliefs are gaining acceptance; they hear these transmissions as an invitation for them to move into the mainstream without having to change their views. The former hears them as an invitation to think more like the latter without shame."
The result of all this perversion of nationalism and so-called patriotism is not just sprees of deadly shootings such as we saw in Pittsburgh. "This kind of rhetoric is, in effect," Neiwert writes, "the death of discourse itself. Instead of offering an opposing idea, it simply shuts down intellectual exchange and replaces it with the brute intention to silence and eliminate." And at the heart of democracy lies the belief that no matter our differences, we are committed to communication. When silence falls, democracy loses, and the author here maintains that when hate rhetoric is employed, at its base it really is a hatred of America itself--with its stated ideals of pluralism--that is the unacknowledged target.
"Eliminationism--including the rhetoric that precedes it and fuels it--expresses a kind of self-hatred," Neiwert claims. "In an American culture that advertises itself as predicated on inclusiveness, eliminationism runs precisely counter to those ideals. Eliminationists, at heart, hate the very idea of America."
The sub-textual paradox that the second half of the book balances against such anti-American ideation is ... that such tendencies have been part of America from the start. This latter portion of the book is at times nearly too much to bear as the history of white European domination and eradication of Native Americans is detailed, as well as the lynchings of African Americans, the backlash against Chinese immigrants and the round-up of Japanese Americans for internment bears witness. Indeed, as Neiwert points out, nearly identical language is unleashed today against Latino immigrants as there have been against different waves of "others" in our collectively shameful past; even such modern "heroes" as the Minutemen can trace their lineage back to the lynching mobs and vigilantism of the early 20th century.
Tendencies toward fascism, both in our historical past and in our current political climate, can be triggered by what the author calls "the mobilizing passions." As a checklist, it's probably one of the most useful I've run across:
1. A sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions.
2. The primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, both universal and personal, and the subordination of the individual to it.
3. The belief that the group one belongs to is victimized, which justifies any action without legal or moral limits against the group's enemies, both internal and external.
4. Dread of the group's decline under the corrosive effect of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences.
5. The need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary.
6. The need for authority by natural leaders (always male), culminating in a national chief who alone is capable of incarnating the group's destiny.
7. The superiority of the leader's instincts over abstract and universal reason.
8. The beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group's success.
9. The right of the "chosen people" to dominate others without restraint from any human or divine law, "right" being decided solely by the group's prowess in a Darwinian struggle.
While most of these sound at least vaguely familiar, Neiwert goes out of his way, repeatedly, to point out that America is in no way in the throes of true fascism. Even some of the above criteria, he claims, remain clearly unmet. But that "permission" factor, the precursor that hate language brings, is most certainly present.
What, then, is the way out (or back)? How do we, both as individuals and as a country, begin to put the brakes on such eliminationist language? Well, Neiwert has some tough words for liberals, who are, in his estimation, making a bad situation worse:
For all its logic and love of science, a consistent flaw weighs down modern liberalism: an overweening belief in its own moral superiority. (Not, of course, that conservatives are any better in this regard; factoring in the religious Right and the "moral values" vote, they are objectively worse.) This tendency becomes especially noticeable in urban liberal societies, which for all their enlightenment and love of tolerance are maddeningly and disturbingly intolerant of the "ignorance" of their rural counterparts....
If we want to look at all those red counties and come to terms with the reasons the people there think and vote the way they do, it's important to come to terms with our own prejudices, our own willingness to treat our fellow Americans--the ones who are not like us--with contempt and disrespect.... In the end, we cannot prevent fascism from happening here by pretending it is something it is not; it must be confronted directly and straightforwardly, or it will not be confronted at all. Yet, at the same time, those who are the targets of its eliminationist bile must resist the temptation to wield this recognition like a cudgel. We cannot dehumanize and demonize those who have fallen under its sway. And we cannot stop the forces of hate by indulging it ourselves.
Ultimately, Neiwert argues, both sides--liberal and conservative--need to surrender the unhelpful idea that they are the "heroes" of the American story. For in order for there to be a hero, he explains, we need a demonized other from which to "rescue" the nation. True heroism in a democracy is not killing "bad guys" or rounding up scary people or shouting fellow citizens into silence, effectively forcing them to eliminate their voices and themselves from the democratic scene. Rather, it is recognizing the human in the other, the messy nuance of competing interests and sub-cultures, honoring the ability to disagree (strongly) without wishing death or silence on one another. True heroism can look, from the outside, kind of drab and lacking in drama.
This chilling indictment of modern conservatism concludes that the traditional Republican Party (the author was raised in a Republican blue collar home in Idaho) has been infiltrated by a far-right movement that views liberals, gays, and minorities as un-American elements deserving to be eliminated. Neiwert, a journalist who won a National Press Club Award in 2000 for his reporting on domestic terrorism for MSNBC.com, indicts such conservative icons as Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, Lou Dobbs, and Glenn Beck for inciting the lunatic fringe to remove all undesirables, much as Nazi Germany did to the Jews and Gypsies.
The cheerleaders, or "transmitters" as Neiwert calls them, of eliminationism are not limited to talk radio hosts but also include prominent politicians like onetime Senate majority leader Trent Lott and 2008 Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Palin was "the most significant transmitter in recent years," according to the author. This account of far-right power in America concludes that domestic terrorism might increase like it did during the Clinton years now that America has its first African American president and that a fascist state is a real threat. Readers will decide for themselves just how far to the right the Republican Party has been pushed and how widespread the fanatical far right is. This provocative narrative will stir interest in public libraries.
http://www.amazon.com/Eliminationists-Hate-Radicalized-American-Right/dp/0981576982/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257452986&sr=8-1
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by David Neiwert.
This is one of the items on my (December) birthday-present list. It'll be a present to myself if I don't get it.
Publisher's Weekly's review, as quoted on Amazon.com:
Rarely has a book been released at a time when it's been more relevant than David Neiwert's The Eliminationists. Neiwert, an award-winning journalist and blogger at Orcinus and of late, at Crooks and Liars, has focused for years on that fine, scary line where heated rhetoric gives way to pure hate speech, and where fantasies of inflicting violence morph into the real thing. With the killing of three Pittsburgh police officers by a white-supremacist radical, an understanding of the right-wing extremists now deeply embedded in the modern conservative movement is more important than ever.
And lucky we are to have such a guide as Neiwert, who over the years has become the absolute master of the study of hate speech, authoritarianism and violence. His new book is the culmination of decades of watching the far right, listening to talk radio, tracking militias and extremists, and cataloging incidents inspired by false facts and the stoking of paranoia. Heck, for the naming of the phenomenon alone, he should be thanked: Eliminationism: a politics and a culture that shuns dialogue and the democratic exchange of ideas in favor of the pursuit of outright elimination of the opposing side, either through suppression, exile, and ejection, or extermination.
Admit it: We all knew there was a better word we were waiting for. Finally, it has arrived. While we're at it, let's have him define an overused (but strangely enough, underdefined) term for us at the outset: Fascism is passionate nationalism, allied to a conspiratorial dualism and a crude Social Darwinism, voiced with resentment toward the forces, or conditions, that restrain "the chosen people."
Sound vaguely familiar? It should. As Neiwert shows, this country since the 1990s has been undergoing what he terms para-fascist tendencies going mainstream as those once on the fringes have begun infecting one of the two major political parties and co-opting conservatism, making of it the paranoiac, reactionary--and, most frighteningly--increasingly violent crew we now hear regularly on Fox News and on talk radio.
The first portion of The Eliminationists lays out in careful detail the evidence, in cite after cite, of ... a particular trend that has manifested itself with increasing intensity in the past decade: the positing of elimination as the solution to political disagreement. Rather than engaging in a dialogue over political and cultural issues, one side simply dehumanizes its opponents and suggests, and at times demands, their excision. This tendency is almost singularly peculiar to the American Right and manifests itself in many venues: on radio talk shows and in political speeches, in bestselling books and babbling blogs. Most of all, we can feel it on the ground: in our everyday lives, in our encounters, big and small, with each other.
His insistence on the right-wing nature of modern eliminationism holds up, despite cries from the conservatives that "liberals do it too." Neiwert acknowledges that leftists have been known--less frequently--to toss around talk of assassination or insurrection but, he points out, they tend to focus on threatening talk toward an individual (think Cheney or Bush), not an entire category of human beings. The far right, on the other hand...
In contrast, right-wing rhetoric has been explicitly eliminationist, calling for the infliction of harm on whole blocs of American citizens: liberals, gays and lesbians, Latinos, blacks, Jews, feminists, or whatever target group is the victim du jour of right-wing ire.
This distinction is crucial, and Neiwert makes an alarming case for the fact that the rhetoric that leads up to violent crimes against whole classes of individuals is a necessary ingredient to the carrying out of the penultimate acts, that without the vicious cheerleading, many of the acts would not be carried out because, he says, "such rhetoric has played a critical role in giving permission for it to proceed, by creating the cultural and psychological conditions that enable the subsequent violence." At the bottom of such rhetoric is a savagely anti-democratic, American-hating ethos too, despite the flag-cocooning in which the shouters participate.
Indeed, one of the more disturbing elements in what we are currently witnessing on the right is the 'mainstreaming' and normalizing of extremist talk through 'patriotic' transmitters. Neiwert explains: " 'Transmitters' of fringe ideas into the mainstream have two audiences. The first (and by far the largest) is made up of the many millions of ordinary mainstream conservatives who tune in and log on to the Right's army of media talking heads and movement leaders. The second includes their xenophobic counterparts on the far Right, where the memes come from in the first place. For the latter, these transmissions signal that their formerly unacceptable beliefs are gaining acceptance; they hear these transmissions as an invitation for them to move into the mainstream without having to change their views. The former hears them as an invitation to think more like the latter without shame."
The result of all this perversion of nationalism and so-called patriotism is not just sprees of deadly shootings such as we saw in Pittsburgh. "This kind of rhetoric is, in effect," Neiwert writes, "the death of discourse itself. Instead of offering an opposing idea, it simply shuts down intellectual exchange and replaces it with the brute intention to silence and eliminate." And at the heart of democracy lies the belief that no matter our differences, we are committed to communication. When silence falls, democracy loses, and the author here maintains that when hate rhetoric is employed, at its base it really is a hatred of America itself--with its stated ideals of pluralism--that is the unacknowledged target.
"Eliminationism--including the rhetoric that precedes it and fuels it--expresses a kind of self-hatred," Neiwert claims. "In an American culture that advertises itself as predicated on inclusiveness, eliminationism runs precisely counter to those ideals. Eliminationists, at heart, hate the very idea of America."
The sub-textual paradox that the second half of the book balances against such anti-American ideation is ... that such tendencies have been part of America from the start. This latter portion of the book is at times nearly too much to bear as the history of white European domination and eradication of Native Americans is detailed, as well as the lynchings of African Americans, the backlash against Chinese immigrants and the round-up of Japanese Americans for internment bears witness. Indeed, as Neiwert points out, nearly identical language is unleashed today against Latino immigrants as there have been against different waves of "others" in our collectively shameful past; even such modern "heroes" as the Minutemen can trace their lineage back to the lynching mobs and vigilantism of the early 20th century.
Tendencies toward fascism, both in our historical past and in our current political climate, can be triggered by what the author calls "the mobilizing passions." As a checklist, it's probably one of the most useful I've run across:
1. A sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions.
2. The primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, both universal and personal, and the subordination of the individual to it.
3. The belief that the group one belongs to is victimized, which justifies any action without legal or moral limits against the group's enemies, both internal and external.
4. Dread of the group's decline under the corrosive effect of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences.
5. The need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary.
6. The need for authority by natural leaders (always male), culminating in a national chief who alone is capable of incarnating the group's destiny.
7. The superiority of the leader's instincts over abstract and universal reason.
8. The beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group's success.
9. The right of the "chosen people" to dominate others without restraint from any human or divine law, "right" being decided solely by the group's prowess in a Darwinian struggle.
While most of these sound at least vaguely familiar, Neiwert goes out of his way, repeatedly, to point out that America is in no way in the throes of true fascism. Even some of the above criteria, he claims, remain clearly unmet. But that "permission" factor, the precursor that hate language brings, is most certainly present.
What, then, is the way out (or back)? How do we, both as individuals and as a country, begin to put the brakes on such eliminationist language? Well, Neiwert has some tough words for liberals, who are, in his estimation, making a bad situation worse:
For all its logic and love of science, a consistent flaw weighs down modern liberalism: an overweening belief in its own moral superiority. (Not, of course, that conservatives are any better in this regard; factoring in the religious Right and the "moral values" vote, they are objectively worse.) This tendency becomes especially noticeable in urban liberal societies, which for all their enlightenment and love of tolerance are maddeningly and disturbingly intolerant of the "ignorance" of their rural counterparts....
If we want to look at all those red counties and come to terms with the reasons the people there think and vote the way they do, it's important to come to terms with our own prejudices, our own willingness to treat our fellow Americans--the ones who are not like us--with contempt and disrespect.... In the end, we cannot prevent fascism from happening here by pretending it is something it is not; it must be confronted directly and straightforwardly, or it will not be confronted at all. Yet, at the same time, those who are the targets of its eliminationist bile must resist the temptation to wield this recognition like a cudgel. We cannot dehumanize and demonize those who have fallen under its sway. And we cannot stop the forces of hate by indulging it ourselves.
Ultimately, Neiwert argues, both sides--liberal and conservative--need to surrender the unhelpful idea that they are the "heroes" of the American story. For in order for there to be a hero, he explains, we need a demonized other from which to "rescue" the nation. True heroism in a democracy is not killing "bad guys" or rounding up scary people or shouting fellow citizens into silence, effectively forcing them to eliminate their voices and themselves from the democratic scene. Rather, it is recognizing the human in the other, the messy nuance of competing interests and sub-cultures, honoring the ability to disagree (strongly) without wishing death or silence on one another. True heroism can look, from the outside, kind of drab and lacking in drama.
This chilling indictment of modern conservatism concludes that the traditional Republican Party (the author was raised in a Republican blue collar home in Idaho) has been infiltrated by a far-right movement that views liberals, gays, and minorities as un-American elements deserving to be eliminated. Neiwert, a journalist who won a National Press Club Award in 2000 for his reporting on domestic terrorism for MSNBC.com, indicts such conservative icons as Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, Lou Dobbs, and Glenn Beck for inciting the lunatic fringe to remove all undesirables, much as Nazi Germany did to the Jews and Gypsies.
The cheerleaders, or "transmitters" as Neiwert calls them, of eliminationism are not limited to talk radio hosts but also include prominent politicians like onetime Senate majority leader Trent Lott and 2008 Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Palin was "the most significant transmitter in recent years," according to the author. This account of far-right power in America concludes that domestic terrorism might increase like it did during the Clinton years now that America has its first African American president and that a fascist state is a real threat. Readers will decide for themselves just how far to the right the Republican Party has been pushed and how widespread the fanatical far right is. This provocative narrative will stir interest in public libraries.
http://www.amazon.com/Eliminationists-Hate-Radicalized-American-Right/dp/0981576982/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257452986&sr=8-1
Looks interesting. Eliminationism is an interesting term but I think that as a rose by any other name smells just as sweet, fascism by any other name stinks just as bad. Inventing euphemisms for fascism only obfuscates the problem, lets call it what it is; fascism is fascism not eliminationism. Torture is torture not "enhanced interrogation" (a nazi term btw).
Modern History Sourcebook:
Benito Mussolini:
What is Fascism, 1932
Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) over the course of his lifetime went from Socialism - he was editor of Avanti, a socialist newspaper - to the leadership of a new political movement called "fascism" [after "fasces", the symbol of bound sticks used a totem of power in ancient Rome].
Mussolini came to power after the "March on Rome" in 1922, and was appointed Prime Minister by King Victor Emmanuel.
In 1932 Mussolini wrote (with the help of Giovanni Gentile) and entry for the Italian Encyclopedia on the definition of fascism.
Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. It thus repudiates the doctrine of Pacifism -- born of a renunciation of the struggle and an act of cowardice in the face of sacrifice. War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have courage to meet it. All other trials are substitutes, which never really put men into the position where they have to make the great decision -- the alternative of life or death....
...The Fascist accepts life and loves it, knowing nothing of and despising suicide: he rather conceives of life as duty and struggle and conquest, but above all for others -- those who are at hand and those who are far distant, contemporaries, and those who will come after...
...Fascism [is] the complete opposite of…Marxian Socialism, the materialist conception of history of human civilization can be explained simply through the conflict of interests among the various social groups and by the change and development in the means and instruments of production.... Fascism, now and always, believes in holiness and in heroism; that is to say, in actions influenced by no economic motive, direct or indirect. And if the economic conception of history be denied, according to which theory men are no more than puppets, carried to and fro by the waves of chance, while the real directing forces are quite out of their control, it follows that the existence of an unchangeable and unchanging class-war is also denied - the natural progeny of the economic conception of history. And above all Fascism denies that class-war can be the preponderant force in the transformation of society....
After Socialism, Fascism combats the whole complex system of democratic ideology, and repudiates it, whether in its theoretical premises or in its practical application. Fascism denies that the majority, by the simple fact that it is a majority, can direct human society; it denies that numbers alone can govern by means of a periodical consultation, and it affirms the immutable, beneficial, and fruitful inequality of mankind, which can never be permanently leveled through the mere operation of a mechanical process such as universal suffrage....
...Fascism denies, in democracy, the absur[d] conventional untruth of political equality dressed out in the garb of collective irresponsibility, and the myth of "happiness" and indefinite progress....
...iven that the nineteenth century was the century of Socialism, of Liberalism, and of Democracy, it does not necessarily follow that the twentieth century must also be a century of Socialism, Liberalism and Democracy: political doctrines pass, but humanity remains, and it may rather be expected that this will be a century of authority...a century of Fascism. For if the nineteenth century was a century of individualism it may be expected that this will be the century of collectivism and hence the century of the State....
The foundation of Fascism is the conception of the State, its character, its duty, and its aim. Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived of in their relation to the State. The conception of the Liberal State is not that of a directing force, guiding the play and development, both material and spiritual, of a collective body, but merely a force limited to the function of recording results: on the other hand, the Fascist State is itself conscious and has itself a will and a personality -- thus it may be called the "ethic" State....
...The Fascist State organizes the nation, but leaves a sufficient margin of liberty to the individual; the latter is deprived of all useless and possibly harmful freedom, but retains what is essential; the deciding power in this question cannot be the individual, but the State alone....
...For Fascism, the growth of empire, that is to say the expansion of the nation, is an essential manifestation of vitality, and its opposite a sign of decadence. Peoples which are rising, or rising again after a period of decadence, are always imperialist; and renunciation is a sign of decay and of death. Fascism is the doctrine best adapted to represent the tendencies and the aspirations of a people, like the people of Italy, who are rising again after many centuries of abasement and foreign servitude. But empire demands discipline, the coordination of all forces and a deeply felt sense of duty and sacrifice: this fact explains many aspects of the practical working of the regime, the character of many forces in the State, and the necessarily severe measures which must be taken against those who would oppose this spontaneous and inevitable movement of Italy in the twentieth century, and would oppose it by recalling the outworn ideology of the nineteenth century - repudiated wheresoever there has been the courage to undertake great experiments of social and political transformation; for never before has the nation stood more in need of authority, of direction and order. If every age has its own characteristic doctrine, there are a thousand signs which point to Fascism as the characteristic doctrine of our time. For if a doctrine must be a living thing, this is proved by the fact that Fascism has created a living faith; and that this faith is very powerful in the minds of men is demonstrated by those who have suffered and died for it.
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Looks interesting. Eliminationism is an interesting term but I think that as a rose by any other name smells just as sweet, fascism by any other name stinks just as bad. Inventing euphemisms for fascism only obfuscates the problem, lets call it what it is; fascism is fascism not eliminationism.
Sounds to me like he's defining it as a kind of hybrid of fascist and anarchist mentalities. But I'd have to read the book to comment on that any further.
Torture is torture not "enhanced interrogation" (a nazi term btw).
They were masters of euphemisms, that's for sure -- e.g., "resettlement" or "special handling."
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New York Times - http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/opinion/08rich.html?em
The Night They Drove the Tea Partiers Down
For all cable news’s efforts to inflate Election 2009 into a cliffhanger as riveting as Balloon Boy, ratings at MSNBC and CNN were flat Tuesday night. But not at Fox News, where the audience nearly doubled its usual prime-time average. That’s what happens when you have a thrilling story to tell, and what could be more thrilling than a revolution playing out in real time?
As Fox kept insisting, all eyes were glued on Doug Hoffman, the insurgent tea party candidate in New York’s 23rd Congressional District. A “tidal wave” was on its way, said Sean Hannity, and the right would soon “take back the Republican Party.” The race was not “even close,” Bill O’Reilly suggested to the pollster Scott Rasmussen, who didn’t disagree. When returns showed Hoffman trailing, the network’s resident genius, Karl Rove, knowingly reassured viewers that victory was in the bag, even if we’d have to stay up all night waiting for some slacker towns to tally their votes.
Alas, the Dewey-beats-Truman reveries died shortly after midnight, when even Fox had to concede that the Democrat, Bill Owens, had triumphed in what had been Republican country since before Edison introduced the light bulb. For the far right, the thriller in Watertown was over except for the ludicrous morning-after spin that Hoffman’s loss was really a victory. For the Democrats, the excitement was just beginning. New York’s 23rd could be celebrated as a rare bright spot on a night when the party’s gubernatorial candidates lost in Virginia and New Jersey.
The Democrats’ celebration was also premature: Hoffman’s defeat is potentially more harmful to them than to the Republicans. Tuesday’s results may be useless as a predictor of 2010, but they are not without value as cautionary tales. And the most worrisome for Democrats were not in Virginia and New Jersey, but, paradoxically, in the New York contests where they performed relatively well. That includes the idiosyncratic New York City mayor’s race that few viewed as a bellwether of anything. It should be the most troubling of them all for President Obama’s cohort — even though neither Obama nor the national political parties were significant players in it.
But first let’s make a farewell accounting of the farce upstate. The reason why the Democratic victory in New York’s 23rd is a mixed blessing is simple: it increases the odds that the Republicans will not do Democrats the great favor of committing suicide between now and the next Election Day.
This race was a damaging setback for the hard right. Hoffman had the energetic support of Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Fox as well as big bucks from their political auxiliaries. Furthermore, Hoffman was running not only in a district that Rove himself described as “very Republican” but one that fits the demographics of the incredibly shrinking G.O.P. The 23rd is far whiter than America as a whole — 93 percent versus 74 — with tiny sprinklings of blacks, Hispanics and Asians. It has few immigrants. It’s rural. Its income and education levels are below the norm. Only if the district were situated in Dixie — or Utah — could it be a more perfect fit for the narrow American demographic where the McCain-Palin ticket had its sole romps last year.
If the tea party right can’t win there, imagine how it might fare in the nation where most Americans live. Some G.O.P. leaders have started to notice. Mitt Romney didn’t endorse Hoffman despite right-wing badgering to do so. On Wednesday, Michael Steele dismissed the right’s mantra that somehow Hoffman’s loss could be called a victory and instead talked up the newly elected Republican governors who won by appealing to independents and moderates. Chris Christie and Bob McDonnell are plenty conservative, but both had rejected Palin’s offers to campaign for them. They also avoided the tea party zanies, the fear-mongering National Organization for Marriage and the anti-abortion-rights zealots Hoffman embraced. They positioned themselves as respectful Obama critics, not haters likening him to Hitler.
In the aftermath of this clear-cut demonstration of how Republicans can win, the revolutionaries are still pledging to purge the party’s moderates by rallying behind more Hoffmans in G.O.P. primaries from Florida to California. And they may get some scalps. But Tuesday’s loss revealed that they’re better at luring freak-show gawkers into Fox’s tent than voters into the G.O.P.’s. As if to prove the point, protesters hoisted a sign likening health care reform to Dachau at the raucous tea party rally convened by Michele Bachmann on Capitol Hill on Thursday.
Should the G.O.P. avoid self-destruction by containing this fringe, then the president and his party will have to confront their real problem: their identification with the titans who greased the skids for the economic meltdown from which Wall Street has recovered and the country has not. If there’s one general lesson to be gleaned from Christie’s victory over Jon Corzine in New Jersey, it’s surely that in today’s zeitgeist it’s less of a stigma to be fat than a former Goldman Sachs fat cat, even in a blue state.
Michael Bloomberg’s shocking underperformance in New York was an even more dramatic illustration of this animus. Tuesday’s exit polls found that he had a whopping 70 percent approval rating, as befits a mayor who, whatever his quirks and missteps, is widely regarded as a highly competent, nonideological executive who has run the city well. Yet only 72 percent of those who gave him a thumb’s up voted for him. Though the mayor wildly outspent and out-campaigned his bland opponent, Bill Thompson, he received only 50.6 percent of the vote.
This shortfall has been correctly attributed to Bloomberg’s self-serving, highhanded undoing of the term limits law he had once endorsed. The ferocity of the public reaction to this power grab surprised him, pollsters and the press alike. That it became a bigger deal than anyone anticipated — arguably bigger than it merited — is an indicator of how much antipathy there is toward the masters of the universe in the financial capital. Americans don’t hate rich people, but they do despise those who behave as if the rules don’t apply to them. “Michael Bloomberg is About to Buy Himself a Third Term” was the cover line on New York magazine in October. However unfairly, some voters conflated his air of entitlement with the swaggering Wall Street C.E.O.’s who cashed out before the crash and stuck the rest of us with the bill.
The Obama administration does not seem to understand that this rage, left unaddressed, could consume it. It has pushed aside the entreaties of many — including Paul Volcker, the chairman of the White House’s own Economic Recovery Advisory Board — to break up too-big-to-fail banks. Those behemoths, cushioned by the government’s bailouts, low-interest loans and guarantees, are back making bets that put the entire system at risk. Yet last Sunday, we once again heard the Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, on “Meet the Press” dodging questions about the banks in general and Goldman in particular with unpersuasive bromides. “We’re not going to let the system go back to the way it was,” he said.
Surely he jests. On Monday morning, a business-savvy Democratic senator, Maria Cantwell of Washington, publicly questioned Geithner’s fitness for his job, given his support of loopholes in proposed regulations of the derivatives that enabled last year’s collapse. On Tuesday, Congressional Democrats, with the White House’s consent, voted to gut the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the post Enron-WorldCom law passed in 2002 to prevent corporate accounting tricks and fraud. Arthur Levitt, the former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman, told me on Friday it was “surreal” that Democrats were now achieving the long-held Republican goal of smashing “the golden chalice” of reform. If investors cannot have transparency, Levitt said, “the whole system is worthless.”
The system is going back to the way it was with a vengeance, against a backdrop of despair. As the unemployment rate crossed the 10 percent threshold at week’s end, we learned that bankers were helping themselves not just to bonuses as large as those at the bubble’s peak but to early allotments of H1N1 vaccine. No wonder 62 percent of those polled by Hart Associates in late September felt that “large banks” had been helped “a lot” or “a fair amount” by “government economic policies,” but only 13 percent felt the “average working person” had been. Unemployment ranked ahead of the deficit and health care as the No. 1 pocketbook issue in the survey, with 81 percent saying the Obama administration must take more action.
The tea party Republicans vanquished on Tuesday have no jobs plan. They just want to eliminate all Washington spending — a prescription that didn’t go down too well in New York’s 23rd, where the federal government has the largest payroll. The G.O.P. establishment’s one-size-fits-all panacea is tax cuts — thin gruel for those with little or no taxable income. The administration’s answer is the stimulus, whose iffy results so far, it argues, can’t be judged this early on.
Fair enough. But a year from now the public will register its verdict in any event. Meanwhile, both parties have their own delusions, not the least of which is the Republicans’ conviction that Tuesday was a referendum on what Obama has done so far. If anything, it was a judgment on just how much he has not.
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This recipe is also posted in the Holiday thread -- the color makes it a good choice for Christmas and Valentine's Day both. It has a reputation as a Southern recipe but it actually originated in New York.
Red Velvet Cake
| (http://davecullen.com/brokeback/daily/format/placeholder.gif) | (http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q135/talkstocoyotes/redvelvetcake.jpg)
| (http://davecullen.com/brokeback/daily/format/placeholder.gif) | Most recipes for Red Velvet cake are similar. Of course, there's always a cut-to-the-chase option in the form of the Duncan Hines mix. And a Google search of recipes turned up vegan and gluten-free alternatives.
2 ½ cups plain flour
1 ½ cups sugar
2 tablespoons. cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup buttermilk
1 ½ cup vegetable oil
1 tsp white vinegar
1 tsp vanilla flavoring
1 tsp almond flavoring
2 eggs (medium or large)
1 ½ bottles red food coloring (2 ounce size) | (http://davecullen.com/brokeback/daily/format/placeholder.gif) |
Sift the flour, sugar, baking soda and cocoa powder into a big bowl that you’ll use to mix the cake.
Using a hand or table mixer, put in the milk. Mix. Add oil and mix.
Add vinegar, vanilla and almond flavoring. Mix. Lightly beat the eggs in a small bowl. Add and mix. Add the food coloring. Mix until the batter is even in color.
Pour the batter into three 8-inch or two 9-inch cake pans; bake at 350 degrees F for 30 minutes or until the center tests done with a toothpick.
Let the cake cool and then frost with Cream Cheese Frosting:
Cream Cheese Frosting
½ cup margarine (softened)
8 oz. cream cheese
½ tsp vanilla flavoring
1 box of confectioners sugar (1 pound)
1-1/2 cup chopped pecans
Beat the margarine and cream cheese in a medium mixing bowl until light and creamy. Add vanilla and confectioners sugar and beat well. Hand stir in pecans, saving about a half cup for garnish.
Spread cream cheese icing between layers of the Red Velvet cake, up the sides and on top. Sprinkle with the rest of the pecans.
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I love red velvet cake.
I'm going to have to try this recipe.
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This is a slightly adapted version of a recipe that originally appeared in The Joy of Cooking. When I worked for a Living History museum, I used it often in demonstrations of mid-19th century cooking. The substitution of honey for part of the molasses in a traditional recipe makes this version a little more consistent with 21st century tastes.
Missouri Town Gingerbread
1/2 cup (1 stick or 4 ounces) butter or margarine
1 beaten egg
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup molasses
1 cup hot water
2 - 1/2 cups flour
1 - 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon ginger
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1/2 teaspoon salt
Melt butter or margarine; mix in sugar and egg. In one bowl mix all dry ingredients; in another, mix molasses, honey and water. Add this mixture and the flour mixture alternately to the butter-egg-sugar mixture, beating well after each addition.
Bake in a greased square cake pan at 350 degrees, about one hour.
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This is a slightly adapted version of a recipe that originally appeared in The Joy of Cooking. When I worked for a Living History museum, I used it often in demonstrations of mid-19th century cooking. The substitution of honey for part of the molasses in a traditional recipe makes this version a little more consistent with 21st century tastes.
So the original recipe would call for a whole cup of molasses and no honey?
Either way sounds yummy to me! I love gingerbread! ;D
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So the original recipe would call for a whole cup of molasses and no honey?
Either way sounds yummy to me! I love gingerbread! ;D
Me too!
The recipes vary like with anything else but yes, there's a lot more molasses in traditional recipes. Gingerbread used to be eaten often at breakfast (still can be!)
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Me too!
The recipes vary like with anything else but yes, there's a lot more molasses in traditional recipes. Gingerbread used to be eaten often at breakfast (still can be!).
Now, there's a thought! ;D
I like molasses, too. My lifetime favorite cookies are my mother's molasses cookies. And growing up, Mother never gave me peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (to this day I've never had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich). No, I grew up with peanut butter and molasses on bread. ;D
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Happy Thanksgiving Marcia!
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Howlin' out a Happy Birthday to you, Marcia!!
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Thank you! ;D
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HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARCIA!
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(http://i327.photobucket.com/albums/k463/dcfmod/Christmas%20Cards/western-christmas-tapestry-throw-at.jpg) (http://i327.photobucket.com/albums/k463/dcfmod/Christmas%20Cards/Hat20and20Holly20-jpg.jpg)
Merry Christmas Marcia!!!!
Hope you have had a happy holiday season,
and that the past year has been a great on for you!
May 2010 bring you more great things!
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Hello Marcia.
It's time to say "good-bye"
to 2009, and I hope it
was a good year for you.
I hope that 2010 brings you
good health
good fortune
happiness
and all that you can wish for.
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Ever heard the cliche that we're all related? That isn't just a facile "we are the world" sentiment -- we are all related, and more closely than you might think. The numbers suggest that less than 1,000 years ago, everyone on the planet at the time is theoretically among your ancestors.
The chart below, and in the next three posts, shows the approximate number of ancestors of a baby born in the year 2000 CE. The number doubles each generation (2 biological parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents, etc.), with the chart using four generations per century, a fairly conservative figure. Not scientific, but somewhat thought-provoking.
(numbers calculated on Excel -- the lazy person's friend!)
(http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q135/talkstocoyotes/ancestorschart1.jpg)
By doubling the number of direct ancestors for each generation, you hit the half-million point around the year 1525.
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(http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q135/talkstocoyotes/ancestorschart2.jpg)
It only takes until 1250 CE to get into the billions.
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(http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q135/talkstocoyotes/ancestorschart3.jpg)
By the year 1000 CE we have a 13-digit number. . . .
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(http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q135/talkstocoyotes/ancestorschart4.jpg)
And a 25-digit number by the first century CE! Obviously, the theoretical number of ancestors exceeded the total population of the planet several centuries back, and at that point, if you could trace your ancestors back that far, the same people would start appearing more than once.
This is easy to see with animal pedigrees, since 1) if the animal has a pedigree, the reproduction was carefully controlled and recorded and 2) most domestic animals have a shorter life span than human beings; you can have 2 to 5 dog generations in just one decade.
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That was interesting, Marcia! :D
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(http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g116/CellarDweller115/smilies%20for%20forum/2676.gif)(http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g116/CellarDweller115/smilies%20for%20forum/Val_mini4.gif)(http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g116/CellarDweller115/smilies%20for%20forum/valentine2.gif)
Happy Valentine's Day, Marcia!
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Happy St. Patrick's Day, Marcia!
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I think this will be my official "good-bye" post for the blogs when I leave for a trip.
:laugh:
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(http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q135/talkstocoyotes/coyoteface.jpg)
Visit my new blog, Talking With Coyotes, (http://talkingwithcoyotes.blogspot.com/) at Blogspot.
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