The tire pressure warning hasn’t come back, so I’m writing that one off to something they did during service ‘A’. I’ve got almost fourteen grand on the car now and it still drives like a dream come true…so solid and sure. Problem is gas is now at about $3.60 a gallon for premium at the cheap station near me (which is part of a convenience store chain, so they may be writing gas off as a loss leader…something the regular gas stations cannot do. I’m tempted to go to Costco to fill up but the numbers just don’t justify it. I’m using more gas to make the trip then I save in cost. So I might as well fill up locally. But I just can’t pop into it and take a drive just anywhere for the shear pleasure of driving it like I did in the weeks just after I bought it. I have to plan my pleasure drives out now. Oh well…it’s getting to be springtime here in Baltimore now, and there is a lot of yard work to do around the house anyway. But the annual road trip to California is going to be a tad costly this year. I’m really starting to be afraid now, that I’m going to live to see the end of the open road.
DMG now had a successful brand name, but still lacked a characteristic trademark. Then Paul and Adolf Daimler – the company founder’s two sons, and now senior executives at DMG – remembered that their father, who had died in March 1900 shortly before his 66th birthday, had once used a star as a symbol.
Gottlieb Daimler had been technical director of the Deutz gas engine factory from 1872 until 1881. At the beginning of his employment there, he had marked a star above his own house on a picture postcard of Cologne and Deutz, and had written to his wife that this star would one day shine over his own factory to symbolize prosperity.
The DMG board immediately accepted the proposal and in June 1909, both a three-pointed and a four-pointed star were registered as trademarks. Although both designs were legally protected, only the three-pointed star was used. From 1910 onward, a three-dimensional star adorned the radiator at the front of the car.
The three-pointed star was supposed to symbolize Daimler’s ambition of universal motorization – “on land, on water and in the air”…
So now you know where the star came from. And on that note, here’s a little something I found on YouTube for any other Mercedes fanboys out there reading this.
Mercedes Jellinek Whose father named his very famous Daimler made racing car after her, and whose name has been on every car Daimler has made ever since…
Hell is other people, said Sartre. I am not nearly enough misanthrope to agree. I can amuse myself for days at a time working on this and that solitary pastime at home, in my art room, in my office, reading a good book, listening to a favorite piece of music. But not for long. Without companionship I am miserable. Hell is having no one to talk to, no one to walk through life with. But I’ll concede that there are people in this world who embody hell pretty nearly. My maternal grandmother for one.
I’ve always found the concept of Hell…capital ‘H’…disturbing. Not to contemplate the reality of it, because I simply don’t believe in it. It’s disturbing in what it reveals about the human psyche. God didn’t invent Hell. Humans beings did. To put other human beings into. Nothing says more how bottomless the human capacity for evil is, then the idea of Hell.
In case anyone’s interested, the impetus behind my writing my last post, ”Homosexuality Isn’t Stealing or Lying …”‘ is this simple truth: If my gay friends, whom my life experience tells me can no sooner stop being gay than I can stop being straight, have to go to hell after they die, then I’m going with them. Too many gays and lesbians have been too good to me in this life for me to leave them behind in the next. I won’t do it. That’s really all I was saying.
What I am not saying (and certainly haven’t said) is that the Bible is wrong, or should be changed, or that fundamentalist or “conservative” Christians are wrong or should change. I’m not even saying that it’s true that gays and lesbians are born homosexual in the same way I was born straight. Maybe I’m wrong about that. I don’t care. I leave those kinds of questions to the future and those in the present who, unlike me, like to debate. (And you better believe I have no interest in alienating my fundamentalist and “conservative” Christian friends, for whom I have nothing but love and respect. I wish I had blood relatives who’d ever been as good to me as some of my conservative brothers and sisters in Christ have been.)
Again: I’m saying nothing more than this: If any of my dear gay friends get condemned to hell for no other reason than that they’re gay, then I will choose to go to hell with them. I am sure Christ will let me make that choice. I’m not sure of a lot of things, but I’m positive Christ understands sacrificing oneself for the love of others.
This isn’t just posturing, this man really believes in Hell, Capital ‘H’. Tavdy pointed me to this follow-up post over at John Shore’s blog in the comments to This Post. This man is really struggling between his love for his gay friends and what he honestly believes about God and for once I can look at this and believe it’s real and not some sort of empty posturing and that’s entirely because you can see he really does view gay people as human beings and not a bunch of faceless scarecrows with the word SODOMITE pinned on them. I really feel for him.
What decent person could accept entry into paradise, knowing that so many other good-hearted, decent, loving people are going to burn for eternity simply for loving someone of their own sex, and being loved by them? I think part of my own journey away from the faith, never mind what it had to say about my sexual orientation, was realizing that paradise itself would be a kind of Hell so long as I knew there were people burning alive in Hell for all eternity. What kind of person would feel comfortable in paradise knowing that? And for what? For being a Mormon instead of a Presbyterian? For being a Muslim or a Jew? For being an Atheist? For dismissing the story of Noah? For not praying to the Saints? For not going to church every Sunday? For that you burn for all eternity? What kind of person even conceives of such a thing to begin with? God didn’t invent Hell. Human beings did.
As I wrote back to Tavdy, I count my blessings. I could have easily grown up to be a biblical literalist. Considering the household I grew up in I’m still a bit surprised to this day that I didn’t. I could have ended up loathing myself as a gay teenager, drifting in and out of Ex-Gay programs, and generally hating myself and who knows what else. Destroying my mind with drugs and booze. Trying to kill my heart with brief barren assignations in the toilets because that’s where my twisted up conscience kept insisted my sexual desires belonged. Somehow I didn’t. I think I know why. Partly. I fell in love with the stars at an early age and began devouring books on astronomy and from there to nature and science. Ever since my thinking about God and my relationship to my creator has always been grounded in what I saw in nature and my theology such as it is, goes along the lines of "When the bird and the bird book disagree, believe the bird." I never took the bible literally and have always felt free in conscience and spirit to embrace the wisdom I see in it and discard what makes no sense. Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live… Right…whatever…
But I can’t point to any moment in my life where I made a conscious decision to reject the idea that the bible is the Literal word of God. That never happened. All that happened was I had this gut level understanding ever since I can remember walking outside at night and looking up at the stars, that the literal word is up there in the dazzling night sky and there on the ground under my feet and the birds in the trees and the scent of the blossoms and there in the light of the rising sun. So whenever I read the bible I always had this sense that I was reading how people understood God to be, but not necessarily how God was, and whenever I read anything that was ugly or stupid or mean I just reckoned that had nothing do to with God and just glossed over it. God made the bird. Humans write the bird books and humans are not infallible.
Maybe there is a life after death…I have no idea. But the idea of Hell, like the idea of original sin, is cheap and petty and ugly and completely unworthy of that which could create space and time, let alone the birds and the bees out of nothing. Humans have an almost bottomless capacity to hate. If Hell is anything, it is proof of that. But I simply cannot believe that of anything capable of creating a soul. So I don’t believe in hell. I have seen a small portion of the hell humans can make for each other on this good earth however, and that has convinced me that Jesus was absolutely right about this: We have to love one another.
Sometimes a news article just jumps off the screen and laughs in your face. Via Box Turtle Bulletin… If you have any doubts about the depth anti-gay hate in this country, read this:
The General Assembly yesterday approved a resolution calling for expanded opportunities for Kentucky public schoolchildren to learn about the Holocaust and other acts of genocide.
House Joint Resolution 6 is named after the late Ernie Marx of Louisville, a Holocaust survivor who made a life’s mission to spread education about the horrors he witnessed.
It passed the Senate on a voice vote and the House by a vote of 83-12. It now goes to Gov. Steve Beshear.
The resolution would direct the Department of Education to make curriculum materials available for optional use in public schools by March 2009.
The material would be part of the Kentucky Program of Studies, which has state approval but is not required.
The resolution reflects four years of efforts by middle-school students at St. Francis of Assisi School in Louisville, where Fred Whitaker offers instruction on the Holocaust and takes students to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.
He said the pupils began lobbying for legislation that would give students in public schools access to opportunities to study the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews were killed by Nazi Germany and its collaborators.
"These middle school students really knew something we should all know," Whitaker said. "They really knew there was something powerful that (happens) to anyone when they study the Holocaust and genocide."
Not powerful enough for some, apparently…
The Senate deleted a clause in the House version that cited other people the Nazis deemed "undesirable" because of their "race, nationality, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, religion, and political ideology."
Whitaker said he received indications earlier in the session that the reference to sexual orientation was a "red flag" that could have endangered the bill.
Dig it. It took them Four Years, just to get the Kentucky statehouse to agree that school kids should probably learn something about one of the greatest human catastrophes of the twentieth century…Maybe. We’ll suggest they learn about it, but not require it. And then someone spies a clause in the bill suggesting that school kids learn that there were other victims besides Jewish folk, and that would have been fine too except for the homosexuals. You know…these guys…
But the republican majority leader tut, tuts, any suggestion that they wouldn’t have been fine…really…with including the gay victims of the holocaust in their Completely Optional Curriculum…
But Senate Majority Leader Dan Kelly, R-Springfield, said in an interview that was never an issue for Senate leadership.
He said he had no problem with curricula discussing homosexual victims of the Holocaust as long as it’s "age-appropriate."
Whitaker said that, even without the language on other victims of the Nazis, "you can’t study the Holocaust and not also come across pink triangles," the insignia that homosexual prisoners were forced to wear.
You know goddamned well you can. For decades after World War Two nothing, Nothing was ever said about the pink triangles, until gay scholars started digging into it based on rumors and stories they’d heard from survivors. I started learning about the Holocaust in Junior High schools (middle school these days) and it figured in every lesson on that period of time for the rest of my grade school years and Not Once did I ever hear mention of the pink triangles, or how the Nazis had toughened Germany’s seldom enforced anti-gay laws, even before they enacted the brutally antisemitic Nuremberg laws, or how when the death camps were finally liberated, the surviving Jewish prisoners were released, as well as the gypsies, the Slavs, the intellectuals, the opposition party members…hell, even the communist prisoners were let go…but not the pink triangles. They were considered vermin by both the Nazis, and the American liberators.
Yes Mr. Republican Majority Leader Sir, you can goddamned well teach about the holocaust and not once mention the fact that gay men were rounded up by the Nazis too and shoveled into the death camps. That was the status-quo all during both our school years wasn’t it? And you’d like very much to go back to that status quo wouldn’t you? Because you know most of your voter base doesn’t think the Nazis did anything wrong when it came to exterminating homosexuals don’t you? And you know goddamned well you’ll loose votes if you do anything to suggest otherwise don’t you? If you have no problem with curricula discussing homosexual victims of the Holocaust, then why didn’t you have that line put back into the bill?
The Holocaust museum says the Nazis arrested about 100,000 men as homosexuals and that an unknown number died amid brutal conditions.
Marzian said she could accept the Senate changes.
"You have to compromise in legislation," she said.
You did a great job of putting the knife into it Kelly. You had your boys whisper that the bill Whitaker and Marzian worked on four four years was dead unless they deleted the line about gay victims of the Holocaust and they did it and now you can look at the cameras and claim you’re shocked, shocked, that anyone would bother caring about all that. This is why you’re majority leader isn’t it. You could have had it fucking put back in and insisted to your caucus that it stay there and you didn’t, and make no mistake, everybody knows who ripped that little page out of the history books and why.
And one other thing they’ll always know… In 2008, over sixty years after World War Two, Kentucky school children still aren’t routinely taught about the Holocaust, and won’t be because after four years of trying all the Kentucky state house could do was pass a bill that suggests they learn about it. That was about as far as you could go without loosing the bigot vote, wasn’t it Kelly? And now you get to play civilized man for the cameras.
Whitaker said he regretted that Marx, who died last year at age 81, didn’t live to see passage of the bill.
If it’s too much to ask that your schools teach about what happened to six million Jews I suppose it’s way too much to ask that it also mention the unknown thousands of gay victims too. Especially when you and your fellow republicans need to be able to gay bash for votes every few years.
Another thing about the homosexual/Christian “issue” is that it seems to me that we Christians should be clear on the fact that asserting homosexuals should stop acting homosexual necessarily means asserting that they should spend their lives never knowing the loving intimacy with another that straight people enjoy and know to be the best and richest experience in life.
If I were gay, and I lived and behaved in the way most Christians (understandably!) defend as biblical, I would live alone. I wouldn’t wake up every morning next to my wife. I’d never hold hands with my wife. I’d never kiss my wife. I’d never cuddle with my wife. I’d not know the profound pleasure of every day growing older with my wife. Remaining as sinless as possible would, for me, mean never knowing love of the sort that all straight people, Christian or not, understand as pretty much the best thing life has to offer.
Again: I’m not saying that it’s manifestly absurd and even cruel to suggest that everyone within a broad swath of our population spend their lives in emotional and physical isolation. I believe in the tenets of Christianity as ferociously as any Christian in the world. All I’m saying is that, as far as I can tell, we Christians (insofar as we ever speak with one voice) are saying that it is morally incumbent upon homosexuals to spend their lives in emotional and physical isolation. I hear a lot of Christians asserting that gays and lesbians should stop acting like gays and lesbians. But I never hear anyone saying the unavoidable follow-up to that — saying what that really means — which is that gay and lesbian men and women should spend their lives never experiencing what people most commonly mean when they use the word “love.”
This is what I’ve been waiting to see…someone who believes the bible categorically forbids same sex relationships admit what that really means to gay people. Not babble that homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex. Not witlessly deny that there is ever any fulfilling, romantic, body and soul and spirit component to same sex relationships. But honestly and seriously look at what denying intimate romantic love to gay people does to their lives, to their inner lives, to their heart and soul. To our spirit.
Someone who is at least willing to both see human beings when they look at us, and honestly acknowledge the hell we are being put through for the sake of these biblical passages, can be talked with.
Thank you Mr. Shore. I’ve been waiting for literally decades to see a Christian writer make this connection. Usually it’s just quickly glossed over. I think the reason why is pretty obvious.
When my mom passed away a few years ago, I inherited her diaries. We never discussed my sexual orientation…it was a Don’t Ask Don’t Tell household. I was, like her, raised a Baptist, and the time of my coming of age coincided, not coincidentally, with the period of my leaving the faith. What I expected to read in her diaries from that time was grief over my slow but steady walk away from our church. But no. Grief there was, but it was almost exclusively over how the bright and cheerful son she once had turned into a moody, sullen, angry young man. It makes me cry to read those entries.
When you take the possibility of love away from someone…what do they have left? Think about that, the next time you see an angry homosexual.
Bruce: Perfectly said. Just … perfect. And what a touching, heart-wrenching story.
Liberal Christians like Fred Clark have never had any trouble acknowledging the spiritual potential of same sex love. But they’re not generally biblical literalists. Hopefully I’ll see more of this from those in the coming years. The people who don’t care and just don’t want to know have had the stage for far too long.
Despite the fact that I still don’t have my college degree and that I struggled to make ends meet for most of my life working various low paying blue collar jobs, I suspect I could never pass myself off as "a man of the people", were it not for the shot of "Bartender’s Special" a very foxy bartender gave me once at Larry’s Lounge in D.C..
To run for president, you need to drink a lot…
I think it had Southern Comfort in it, which automatically gives me extra bonus populist points. Which is good, because I wouldn’t have touched that glass with a ten foot pool if I hadn’t been completely twitterpated by the guy who handed it to me, and having a drink with a cute guy in a gay bar penalizes me severely on populist points.
I spoke in an undergraduate class today. As a friend of mine has said a few times about her students, pretty soon you’re going to have to explain to them what the Lewinsky scandal was. This isn’t a comment on the quality of the students, just that the degree to which 19 year olds have shared cultural and historic experience with me is shrinking fast. Bush v. Gore happened when they were 11. What’s recent history to me is a vague recollection for them.
I suppose I need to stop comparing Bush and Reagan, let alone Nixon…
Three Cheers For Heterosexuality. Oh Come On Now…Cheer!
Via Pam’s House Blend… Brian Blair is the opponent of Kevin Beckner, the openly gay man running for the Hillsborough County Commission in Florida. The county is holding its Day of Silence in honor of 15-year-old hate crime victim Lawrence King this year, and naturally, as Pam puts it, "…the idea of kids engaging in a silent, passive act against violence, harassment and prejudice during the school day is just too much to bear for these people of apparently weak faith." Here’s what Blair has to say about it:
"I have always believed that all citizens are equal and should be treated accordingly. On the other hand, no group of citizens should be given government sanction and support to promote their social and sexual agenda upon the rest of us and especially, on our children."
"Considering the fact that the same school system does not want to allow just one Minute of Silence in the classroom for God, this is preposterous."
"Can you imagine asking for a ‘Day of Cheer for Heterosexuality?’ If no action is taken to change this policy, then perhaps it is time for another surgical strike from the majority; ‘A Day of Abstention’ from school participation might be considered."
Brian Blair brings a high degree of seriousness to American politics, and Florida politics especially, not simply because he is a defender of heterosexuality against the militant gay agenda, but also because he was once a WWE professional wrestler. Here’s a photo of Mr. Blair (on the left) in his role as part of the WWE "Killer Bees" team…
Can you imagine asking for a ‘Day of Cheer for Heterosexuality?
When you want it the most there’s no easy way out
When you’re ready to go and your heart’s left in doubt
Don’t give up on your faith
Love comes to those who believe it
And that’s the way it is
"In Paraguay we are at T-9 days to national elections. The ruling party has been in power for nearly 61 years (including more than 30 years of dictatorship). Now the state-run ADSL company is hijacking the DNS nationwide of a site that denounces the corruption in the party."
…provoked this comment…
Paraguay is a country ruled by a conservative coalition.
Which only goes to show what my old bolshie Uncle Ivan used to say. "Kid," he’d say, "nobody believes in capitalism. Nobody believes in socialism. It’s socialism for me, and capitalism for you!" Ivan may have been a red, but he was a cynic first and foremost, and that keeps you honest.
In the end, there is only one thing that really matters in any system: transparency. At least if the system is supposed to be run for the benefit of the people who live under it. You can be all for the proletariat, or all for the free market, but if you’re pulling the wool of the peoples’ eyes, you aren’t any different from anybody else running a con behind high sounding priciples.
Well I believe in a free market because I don’t think that human beings can plan an economy any better then we can plan the weather. But a free market needs a rule of law and a means of preventing the power of money from subverting that rule of law, or that free market won’t remain free for very long, it’ll degenerate into oligarchy.
But that’s the republican ideal, isn’t it? For decades now anyone with half a brain could see that republicans favored oligarchy over all other forms of government. They claim to believe in both free markets and the rule of law and I think seven years plus of George Bush has pretty well decisively proved otherwise. Nothing disturbs the status-quo more then free market capitalism, when it isn’t turning it upside down. Nothing. And nothing locks the human potential in chains and thereby preserves the status-quo better then crony capitalism, which is to say, republican party economics.
The state religion of Oligarchy is God Loves The Rich. Its economic theory is To The Victors Belong The Spoils. Its theory of government is Might Makes Right. Vis:
On Thursday in the National Press Club in Washington, a crowd gathered to witness the presentation of the Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling to Lieutenant Commander Matthew Diaz. The story of Matthew Diaz was chronicled in this space repeatedly (also here and here). It is a story of courage, fortitude, conviction and suffering. Joe Margulies introduced the honoree with clarity:
no one can think it is fun when you sit in a courtroom as an accused, and a United States prosecutor points an accusatory finger at your chest and calls you a criminal and tells you that you have betrayed your oath and you have betrayed your country, and you have endangered the safety of the men and women that you swore to share your burdens with. And no one can think it is fun when you have to sit with your heart pounding in your chest as the jury files back into the room with a piece of paper folded in its hands, and that piece of paper holds your fate. And no one can think it is fun when that jury, your peers, pronounces you guilty. And no one can think it is fun when you have to face that same jury that will sentence you for what may be many years; many years that you will be away from your family, your life in tatters, your career ruined.
Matthew Diaz served his country as a staff judge advocate at Guantánamo. He watched a shameless assault on America’s Constitution and commitment to the rule of law carried out by the Bush Administration. He watched the introduction of a system of cruel torture and abuse. He watched the shaming of the nation’s uniformed services, with their proud traditions that formed the very basis of the standards of humanitarian law, now torn asunder through the lawless acts of the Executive. Matthew Diaz found himself in a precarious position—as a uniformed officer, he was bound to follow his command. As a licensed and qualified attorney, he was bound to uphold the law. And these things were indubitably at odds.
Diaz resolved to do something about it. He knew the Supreme Court twice ruled the Guantánamo regime, which he was under orders to uphold, was unlawful. In the Hamdan decision, the Court went a step further. In powerful and extraordinary words, Justice Kennedy reminded the Administration that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions was binding upon them, and that a violation could constitute a criminal act. One senior member of the Bush legal team, informed of the decision over lunch, was reported to have turned “white as a sheet” and to have immediately excused himself. For the following months, Bush Administration lawyers entered into a frenzied discussion of how to protect themselves from criminal prosecution.
One of the crimes the Administration committed was withholding from the Red Cross a list of the detainees at Guantánamo, effectively making them into secret detainees. Before the arrival of the Bush Administration, the United States had taken the axiomatic position that holding persons in secret detention for prolonged periods outside the rule of law (a practice known as “disappearing”) was not merely unlawful, but in fact a rarified “crime against humanity.” Now the United States was engaged in the active practice of this crime.
The decision to withhold the information had been taken, in defiance of law, by senior political figures in the Bush Administration. Diaz was aware of it, and he knew it was unlawful. He printed out a copy of the names and sent them to a civil rights lawyer who had requested them in federal court proceedings.
Diaz was aware when he did this that he was violating regulations and that he could and would, if caught, be subjected to severe sanction. What he did was a violation of law, even as it was an effort to cure a more severe act of lawlessness by the Government. Diaz violated the law in precisely the same sense as Martin Luther King reminds us, in the Letter from Birmingham Jail, that his arrest was based on a violation of law. That everything the Nazis did in Germany was lawful. And that every act of the Hungarian freedom fighters was a crime. In terms of the moral law, however, Diaz was on the side of right, and the Bush Administration and the Pentagon had, by engaging in the conduct that the Supreme Court condemned, placed themselves on the side of lawlessness, corruption and dishonor.
Diaz was charged, tried and convicted for disclosing “secrets.” For the Bush Administration, any information which would be politically embarrassing or harmful to it is routinely classified “secret.” In this fashion the Administration believes it can use criminal sanctions against those who disclose information it believes will be politically damaging. The list of detainees at Guantánamo, which by law was required to be disclosed, was classified as “secret.”
Diaz spent six months in prison and left it bankrupt and without a job. In addition to his sentence, the Pentagon is working aggressively to have Diaz stripped of his law license so he will not be able to practice his profession. The Bush Administration has sought to criminalize, humiliate and destroy Diaz. Its motivation could not be clearer: Diaz struck a blow for the rule of law. And nothing could be more threatening to the Bush Administration than this.
When republicans tell you that they love free markets and hate big government, look around:
Dean Baker has a nice rant about the disappearance of reliance on "market forces" now that the Princes of Wall Street are staring disaster in the face without government help:
What Happened to "Free-Market" Conservatives (or Neo-liberals)?: With the housing bubble in full meltdown, our political leaders are busily ignoring all the things they have said about the market over the last quarter century and looking to throw all the money that they can find to sustain the bubble. This would be comical, if it weren’t so painful.
Remember all the steel workers and autoworkers who lost their jobs due to trade agreements that were supposed to advance economic efficiency over the last quarter century? How about the workers in the airline, trucking, and telecommunications industry who lost jobs due to deregulation, which was also supposed to increase economic efficiency?
Well, it’s a new day. Nothing these people (or their economists) said matters anymore. It housing bubble support time!
For years, economic policy was supposed to be guided by market principles. If our autoworkers couldn’t compete with their counterparts in Mexico or China, who got paid $1 an hour, then it would be inefficient to have trade protection that would keep them employed here. The same applied to regulations that might keep high paying jobs in key sectors of the economy. Educated people all knew that interfering with the market was harmful to the economy, and if we ever forgot this basic truth, the Washington Post regularly ran sanctimonious editorials to remind us.
Well, it’s a new day. The housing bubble is melting down and Congress and the Fed are throwing money everywhere. After all, this isn’t about auto workers and truckers, it’s about Wall Street banks, and the politicians are pulling out all the stops to come to the rescue. In addition to the money that the Fed is throwing at the banks through subsidized loans at its discount window, it is also granting free insurance to the investment banks — a gift that is potentially worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
Now Congress is jumping into the act. Remember way back in the fall when they couldn’t find $7 billion to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program? Well, now Congress can finds hundreds of billions of dollars to support a housing bubble. It’s a worthy goal. After all, the Wall Street crew might lose their shirts if the housing bubble continues to meltdown.
Congress will not be able to support the housing bubble indefinitely, but they might be able to do it long enough to allow the big boys to cash out and pass more of their bad loans onto the taxpayers and other suckers.
The political support for this bailout package may make it unstoppable, but if it does go through, we should be clear that there are new rules. In the post bailout world, anyone who makes claims about forcing workers or the poor to take pay cuts or do without benefits in the name of economic efficiency is simply a fool or liar.
Anyone who cared about economic efficiency would be yelling at the top of their lungs against this bailout. Anyone who can throw untold hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars at the rich to save their hides, has no concerns about economic efficiency, they just want to help the rich. In such a world, the rest of us have the right to demand the same sort of handouts from the government. And those who stand in the way are simply lackeys of the rich and powerful, who pretend to care about principles of economics.
Traditional Values = Forced Abortions And Prostitution
Bob Schaffer, Republican senate candidate for Colorado, is having his little vacation jaunts with convicted briber Jack Abramoff exposed on the pages of the Denver Post today. It’s smarmy for more reasons then the photos of him and his wife enjoying the lap of luxury on the dime of a group of Mariana Island sweat shop owners…
That’s Schaffer and his wife doing a little parasailing. Supposedly they’re investigating the conditions in the island sweat shops pending legislation to bring them under tighter U.S. regulation. The Mariana Island sweat shop owners were Abramoff’s biggest contributors. They’re about as sorded a bunch of republican bankrollers as you’re likely to find. As Joshua Marshall writes over at Talking Points Memo…
The Marianas program is notorious around the world for forced abortion, slavery, child prostitution, beatings and having the overwhelmingly female foreign workers houses in shacks with no plumbing surrounded by barbed wire.
And here’s Schaffer on his whirlwind tour of the sweatshops…
Schaffer later reported that the workers there all seemed happy. How…unsurprising. The Denver Post reports…
At the time, those alleged abuses and a push by the Clinton administration led to a flurry of congressional action. Several bills passed the Senate that would have brought the islands’ factories under stricter American laws, but the legislation failed in the House.
Hired by factory owners and the government of the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands, Abramoff and his firm were paid more than $11 million over nine years to fend off those efforts, according to reports.
In a 2001 memo to the Marianas governor meant to justify millions in fees, Abramoff singles out the relationships built with members of the House Resources Committee, which has jurisdiction over U.S. protectorates. He points to the lavish trips for dozens of lawmakers and family members to build goodwill. And he says his connections ultimately scuttled dangerous legislation like the bill proposed by then-Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, which would have toughened the islands’ labor and immigration laws.
"We then stopped it cold in the House," the memo boasts.
"In the end, this all-out public relations and lobbying blitz brought the (Mariana Islands) back from the brink of legislative disaster," the lobbyist wrote.
Never mind for a moment, that these congressional representatives of The Party Of Moral Values had to know where the money was coming from. Never mind that they cheerfully turned a blind eye to forced abortions and prostitution in exchange for a good time on the dime of highly successful businessmen whose business model only happened to include forcing their employees to have abortions and go into prostitution. They’re congressmen after all. And…republicans. Is there a lower form of life then that? Actually…yes there is. Does the human gutter go any deeper? Actually, yes it does. And does it wear it’s righteousness on its sleeve? Tsk, tsk…Need you ask… Why…of course!
Abramoff for obvious reasons, had to conceal his payoffs to Schaffer. It would never do to have it look like the very sweatshops he was investigating paid for his trip…and parasailing lessons. So a third party payment was arranged. Guess who served as Abramoff’s willing frontmen?
Yes…those morally righteous bible believing god fearing Jesus loving save marriage from the homosexuals folks over at the Traditional Values Coalition…
In some cases, Abramoff — who is now in prison for fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials, none of it related to the Mariana Islands — took efforts to obscure the scope of that effort and his firm’s involvement.
Values Coalition paid for trip
Schaffer’s $13,000 trip was paid for by the Orange County, Calif.-based Traditional Values Coalition, which Schaffer described as a religious group "concerned with human rights."
"Whatever involvement (Abramoff) had with Traditional Values Coalition wasn’t known at the time," Wadhams said.
Later investigations have shown that in many instances, TVC — which claims to represent 43,000 churches — acted virtually as a political arm of Abramoff’s lobbying operation.
In one 2000 case investigated by The Washington Post, TVC lobbied heavily against a bill restricting online gambling that would have hurt one of Abramoff’s clients, eLottery Inc. In return, the report said, TVC received a check from the client for $25,000. Abramoff and TVC head Louis Sheldon had cooperated successfully so often that the now-jailed lobbyist began referring to him as "Lucky Louie," the newspaper reported. A TVC official didn’t return a phone call requesting comment.
What Are Traditional Values? While other pro-family groups may have their own specific definitions of what "traditional values" means, here’s what we consider to be traditional values:
A moral code and behavior based upon the Old and New Testaments. We believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that the Lord has given us a rule book to live by: The Bible. We are committed to living, as far as it is possible, by the moral precepts taught by Jesus Christ and by the whole counsel of God as revealed in the Bible.
Moral precepts…did you say…? Oh…lookie here…
Right To Life: We believe that every human deserves the right to life—from conception to death—and that we do not have the right to kill unborn children nor to murder the elderly through active euthanasia.
You don’t say…
Homosexuality, Bi-Sexuality, Transgenderism, And Other Deviant Sexual Behaviors: The Bible clearly condemns all sexual behaviors outside of marriage between one man and one woman. Homosexual behavior is explicitly condemned in both the Old and New Testaments as an abomination and a violation of God’s standards for sexuality. We oppose the normalization of sodomy as well as cross-dressing and other deviant sexual behaviors in our culture.
You don’t say…
A U.S. Interior Department investigation found that pregnant workers were forced to get illegal abortions or lose their jobs. Some were recruited for factories but forced into the sex trade instead.
And you helped a bunch of Marianas sweat shop owners to pay off enough U.S. congressmen that their sweat shops could escape being regulated and thereby keep operating business as usual, which meant forcing their workers to get abortions and become prostitutes, and god knows what else. My, my…what traditional values you have there…
The Homosexual Movement And Pedophilia
The homosexual activist movement and organized pedophiles
are linked together by a common goal: To gain access to children for seduction into homosexuality.
How many of the women you’ve helped sweatshop owners force into prostitution were underage I wonder?
Cumberland County Commissioner Bruce Barclay resigned this afternoon, hours after it became public that he is the focus of a state police investigation of an allegation of rape
County President Judge Edgar Bayley said he received the resignation of Barclay, 48, a Monroe Twp. Republican, around 3 p.m. The county’s five judges will choose a replacement, who must be a Republican, Bayley said
Well of course he Must Be A Republican. You wouldn’t want one of those godless secular hedonistic democrats in government would you???
No charges have been filed against Barclay. His attorney, Matthew Gover, called the rape allegation "ludicrous."
Ludicrous did you say? Well…yes…it’s not rape if the other person involved is an adult who consented to the act…er…for a fee…
Former commissioner’s attorney: Footage shows rape charge unfounded
State police say former Cumberland County commissioner Bruce Barclay videotaped hundreds of sexual encounters — many with male escorts — using cameras hidden throughout his Monroe Township home.
Police say the sexual encounters were videotaped without the knowledge of the participants, according to an affidavit of probable cause filed Tuesday with Magisterial District Judge Susan Day. Court documents say cameras were installed in January of 2007.
Investigators are searching items seized from Barclay’s residence a second time in relation to a rape investigation.
Reading a prepared statement, Barclay’s attorney, Matthew Gover, said although he and Barclay do not agree with everything in the affidavit, “It is clear in my client’s private life he has made an error of judgment. What is striking is this very same lack of judgment exonerates him from a rape allegation that wasn’t going anywhere.”
…
According to court documents, Trooper Bryan R. Henneman said he “received information prior to the search warrant that Barclay had been involved in the hiring of prostitutes.”
During a subsequent interview, Henneman said Barclay admitted to hiring prostitutes on a weekly basis at his residence in Monroe Twp.”
The affidavit describes several such encounters with an Internet escort service known as “harrisburgfratboys.com.” Court documents indicate Barclay twice flew a 19-year-old man referred to as “W.M.” to his West Palm Beach home. During a trip last month, “W.M” told investigators that Barclay flew a male prostitute from Binghamton, N.Y., and paid that man $1,500.
Wow. This is the second one and half grand escort I’ve read about in the past few weeks. And you thought the price of gasoline was skyrocketing…
Hidden camera network
The affidavit describes a hidden camera network that included cameras hidden in a bathroom, bedrooms and “indoor recreational areas.” Cameras were hidden inside AM/FM radios, motion detectors and intercom speaker systems, court documents say.
During an interview with Barclay, Henneman said he “admitted to using the cameras to record sexual encounters.” Police say Barclay saved between 100 and 500 encounters on his computer system.
According to court documents “Barclay stated that no one else was aware of the hidden cameras and also that no one else was aware that the sexual encounters were videotaped or gave him permission to videotape the encounters.”
Business camera
Henneman said Barclay also admitted to having a camera installed at his business along the 500 block of North York Street in Mechanicsburg. According to court documents, Barclay told Henneman that one sexual encounter was filmed on that camera, which also fed into his home computer network.
Barclay told Henneman that “at least” five additional males were filmed having sex “who were unaware that they were being filmed.”
How much you want to bet this jackass is completely onboard with the drive to write an anti-same sex marriage amendment into the Pennsylvania constitution? Gotta defend those family values…
And in other news…
News 8 has obtained the complete search warrant request and affidavit of probable cause. You can read it in its entirety here, however, please note that some of it is graphic.
The Travelodge hotel chain have conducted a survey of 2,248 Brits to find out what helps them go to sleep.
According to Reuters Coldplay topped the list of music that acts as the perfect sleeping pill replacement. James Blunt, Snow Patrol, Take That and Norah Jones were also high on the list.
Sleep inducing music wasn’t the only topic polled. Reuters reports, "But those who prefer to be tucked in with a book at night judged celebrity autobiographies as the most effective sleep aid, with the life stories of glamour model Jordan, soccer star David Beckham and Sharon Osbourne ranking at the top."
White noise generally puts me to sleep. No, that’s not the name of an Easy Listening orchestra. At least I don’t think so.
This in my email box, from the Southern Poverty Law Center…
Last week, we asked you to take a stand against the growing number of white supremacist, neo-Nazi, anti-immigrant, anti-gay and other hate groups in our country — a staggering 48% increase since 2000.
Funny how that worked out, isn’t it? The Bush republicans take over the Federal Government, and a majority of the statehouses, and what do you know…hate groups just start springing up everywhere…
Here’s the rest of the email… Figured I’d pass it along in case any of you reading this wanted to join in…
Thousands of people of goodwill — just like you — responded by adding themselves to our map as a voice for tolerance.
It’s not too late for you to join all those who are standing strong against hate.
You’ve shown your commitment to ending injustice and racism. Now, I’m asking you to show your concern about this alarming increase in hate groups by taking a stand against hate.
We need people in every city, county and state to stand up and be counted and show that we are a nation that will not accept the hate, racism and intolerance infecting our communities, schools and political debate.
Please add yourself to our interactive map as a voice for tolerance — and find out which hate groups are active in your area.
I’m also asking that you send your friends this link and ask them to take a stand against hate.
And if they’re fortunate enough to be in an area with few hate groups, then tell them it’s important to take a stand now, before the seeds of hate take root in their communities.
Together we can make a difference.
Thank you for your commitment to ending injustice and racism.
When I was 16 I had a dark secret. Something that embarrassed me deeply. Something I knew I could never tell my friends about. No…not my sexual orientation, although this secret of mine really should have spelled it out for me in neon lights. But I was young, and naive, and full of all the myths, lies and superstitions about homosexuality that the adults in my life had fed me, so I was sure I wasn’t one. I didn’t swish…I didn’t lisp…I enjoyed most of the typical boyhood pastimes and had little to no use for girl things. Well…except one. My private stash of Tiger Beat and 16 Magazines. That was my embarrassing secret.
Every month when the new issues would come out, I would sweat blood walking to a drugstore miles away from the nearest ones to my apartment, to get my fix where hopefully none of my school mates would recognize me. Once there I would load up on several other magazines and stuff the ones I really wanted in the middle of the stack and hope the checkout clerk wouldn’t notice too much that a teenage boy was buying teenage girl magazines. Occasionally an eyebrow would arch in my direction, and I would lamely say I was buying them for a non-existent sister. More often then not, the statement was greeted with smirking disbelief. Checkout clerks probably know more about human nature then priests do.
I would take my swag home and immediately open the teen mags and go right to the pages with photos of my favorites on them…my teenage heart-throbs if I had enough courage back then to acknowledge it. But I didn’t. I’d been told all my life that homosexuals were dangerous psychopaths who killed and mutilated strangers while having horrible, perverse sex. And I, being a bit of a late bloomer actually, was still too young to have all that much interest in sex. But I knew I liked looking at beautiful guys. I knew that something about them made my heart sigh. I would lay awake some nights imagining how it would be to be their best friend.
Looking back on all of it, in a different world I could have had my own sweet little teenybopper adolescence. It would have been nice to be able to grow up like most other kids without fear or shame of my own sexuality, and just grow into it naturally. I picture myself sometimes at that age, sitting at my desk, pen or brush in hand, working on a cartoon for the school newspaper, or alternatively soldering iron in hand, circuit boards and a tray of components in front of me, working on a new Heathkit stereo, photos of my favorite funny cars on the wall in front of me, side by side with those of my current male teen heartthrob, the radio next to me playing bubblegum pop. But for a change it’s something that isn’t afraid to speak to the gay teens in the audience too…
This morning, I woke up with this feeling
I didn’t know how to deal with
And so I just decided to myself
I’d hide it to myself
And never talk about it
And did not go and shout it
When you walked into the room …..
"I think I love you!" "I think I love you!"
David Cassidy…man oh man…what a bitchin’ Fox!!!
I picture myself being open and cheerful about my developing romantic interests in guys. At home and at school, among my friends, among my family. Bruce is growing up…and, oh look, he’s discovered…boys. Well, well… His friendships always were a bit intense… So different I would have been from the shy, quiet boy who kept himself slightly apart from the others, because he didn’t understand himself, and was so afraid how people would react to him if he let his guard down. I would probably have been just another bubbly adolescent…a bit artistic, a bit of a techno geek, typically boyish but with a positively girlish streak in him whenever it came to boys I found too cute for words.
But I wasn’t allowed that adolescence. Instead I hid my teen magazines under the bed, and listened to my bubblegum pop alone, never really realizing that I was on the threshold of one of this life’s most wonderful moments…the time we discover what love is all about. I could have walked into it happily…joyfully even. Instead I struggled, stumbled, and hid my heart fearfully. My mom would remark with great sadness in her diaries (which I inherited after her death) how I had changed from a cheerful young boy into one of sullen moods, and a sudden angry temper. It makes me cry to read those entries.
I look at my record collection from back then…mostly the 45rpm singles I bought in my middle teen years because back then I wouldn’t spend the price of a whole album unless it was a band I really liked a lot, and I see almost nothing but love songs among them. Granted, that’s mostly what rock has always been. But there was a lot of it back then about life and politics, the war and the struggles our generation was going through. Songs I loved like For What It’s Worth, and Incense and Peppermint…and interestingly enough in retrospect, Hold Your Head Up.
And if it’s bad
Don’t let it get you down, you can take it
And if it hurts
Don’t let them see you cry, you can take it
Hold your head up, hold your head up
Hold your head up, hold your head high
And if they stare
Just let them burn their eyes on you moving
And if they shout
Don’t let them change a thing what you’re doing
Hold your head up, hold your head up
Hold your head up, hold your head high
I don’t think I need to analyze very much why I liked that one. But the songs I turned to again and again alone in my bedroom were the love songs, and what is amazing to me about that in retrospect is that at that age I really didn’t care much for all that gushy love stuff. I was going through my stacks of 45 rpms the other day and it just floored me how much of it was surgery sweet love songs. As I remember that part of my life, I didn’t have much interest in all that love stuff. But then, nobody told me I could fall in love with a guy either.
I wasn’t paying much attention to the lyrics in those songs, but something in the music itself spoke to me, in a way that the lyrics, speaking only to the straight boys in the audience, never could. I would connect with it instantly when I heard it on the radio, and like a flash I was down to the record store to by the single. It would be years before I would find myself listening to the lyrics. I had to grow into myself as a gay man first, and then learn the trick a lot of gay guys have to learn in this world, of mentally changing a pronoun as I listen…
You know that it would be untrue
You know that I would be a liar
If I was to say to you
[Girl], we couldn’t get much higher
Come on baby, light my fire
Come on baby, light my fire
Try to set the night on fire
I never really paid much attention to those lyrics at first. Just the music, and the sultry sound of Morrison’s voice.
You are all the [woman] I need, and baby you know it,
You can make this beggar a king, a clown or a poet.
I’ll give you all that I own.
You got me standing in line
Out in the cold,
pay me some mind.
Bend me, shape me
Anyway you want me,
Long as you love me, it’s all right
Bend me, shape me
Anyway you wnat me,
You got the power to turn on the light.
Something in the music spoke to me, in a way the lyrics just didn’t. My record collection is full of these kinds of songs. Bubblegum pop mostly, as they called it back then. In another world, there would have been some that spoke directly to gay guys, or at least was gender neutral enough that I could have taken the lyrics to heart as much as I did the music. But even back then, well before I came out to myself as a gay man, I had a soul for sweet love songs. Perhaps…a tad too sweet.
Which brings me to the one other thing that embarrassed me slightly back in those days, but not so much that I felt I had to go to great lengths to hide it from my friends. That was my taste in music. On the one hand, it was The Doors, and Airplane, and Led Zeppelin. On the other, it was The Monkees, Buddha Records, and Crimson and Clover. In retrospect I’m surprised more of my classmates hadn’t figured me out long before I’d figured out myself. But as it turns out, even were I straight I’d have had to hide most of my record collection from my friends. In another world, I would have been allowed to enjoy that music. In this one only teenage girls are allowed to like those kinds of songs. Because…well…they’re girls.
In most respects I was your usual adolescent male. But there was this definite girlish streak in me that would just pop out at various times. And well before I came understand myself as a gay man, I knew better then to let people see it. I kept it to myself alone in my bedroom. That knowledge had been driven into me in the usual way it is with boys like the one I was, on the school yards and in the hallways, and around corners where no one could see, I would get beaten…badly sometimes…by other boys who thought it was so much fund to beat the crap of out kids like me. But let’s face it, they’d been given permission to by the adults in their lives, and by the culture they lived in.
Girly boy. Consider that phrase for a moment. The knuckle dragging morons who throw it around can be driven by homophobia at times…maybe even most times…but not always. Even among gay males, you see the occasional contempt for those among us who are not 200 percent masculine. There is more misogyny in that phrase, then homophobia. I wouldn’t call myself effeminate. I don’t think any of my friends would either. A bit nerdish, yeah. A bit wonkish. I am no John Wayne by any means, but no Liberace either. But there is this definite girlish streak in me and I have struggled for most of my life now to let it just be itself because I repressed it so deeply when I was a teenager, and then again as a young adult male. Never mind being gay. Gay or straight, guys are not supposed to be sweethearts.
Which brings me to a post a read just yesterday over at Pam’s House Blend…
The writer gives an interesting history of Rickrolling, and then this rather poignant little personal story…
I was introducted to Rickrolling by my teenage nephew about a year or so ago. My nephew told me that he and his friends amuse themselves by sending music and video clips of Rick Astley via e-mail, and cellphone.
When my nephew showed me the video of Rick Astley singing Never gonna Give You Up on YouTube, he laughed out loud uncontrolably. Then, I asked him, "Why do you think this is so funny?"
Silence.
Uh, oh. I’d seen that silent response before. My nephew suddenly remembered that his favorite uncle is gay. He was at a loss for words as to how to explain why he finds Rick Astley to be funny.
I had to press him for the truth, "Is it because he looks gay?"
"Uh, it isn’t that he looks so gay, Uncle Fritz. It is because, uh, his voice doesn’t fit the way he looks."
"Gay?"
Silence.
Of course, ‘gay’ has been turned into an all-around put-down in schools these days…sort of like the way ‘Jewish’ used to be used as a synonym for someone who was cheap or stingy or selfish. I was Rickrolled a few days ago…by a gay friend no less…and I picked up on what was going on immediately. It’s not homophobia specifically. The joke isn’t that Astley or his music is gay in the sense of…well…homosexual. It’s gay in the general put-down sense. It’s gay as in lame. It’s gay as in wimpy. It’s gay as in weak. More to the point, it’s gay as in Sissy.
Now people have been putting down each other’s music since humans were making tunes with drums and sticks, so I don’t think it’s all about gender bullying. Music just reaches in to a place deep inside of us, past our logical rational parts, and strums our feelings directly. Music that rubs our emotions the wrong way can be really, really annoying and it’s no more a rational distaste then seeing someone you find unattractive naked is. I’m sure Never Going To Give You Up gets on a lot of people’s nerves. But enough people liked it that it became an international hit. How many songs do that? Why the disrespect? Simple:
Here’s the thing I want you to notice: it wasn’t Eltonrolling. Say what you want about Elton John, but that he’s a large presence in the pop music world is undeniable. He’s made millions, and that gives him a measure of power and respect. Rick Astley is the too cute for his own good boy-next-door who likes to bring his girl flowers and write her pretty songs and gets the crap beaten out of him by the other kids on a regular basis. That’s why it’s Rickrolling and not Eltonrolling. It isn’t about gay. It’s about wuss.
Sissy is in fact, a put-down applied to gay people out of contempt. The stereotype is that we’re all limp-wristed, swishing lisping effeminates. And yes, you meet some pretty girlish gay guys. But then you also meet some pretty girlish straight ones too. Sometimes those are called Effete Intellectuals. Sometimes they are Bleeding-heart Liberals. This chest thumping de-masculinization of the hated other is about as primitive as it gets, which is why you see a lot of it in school yards and hallways. But more then that, it is a deeply perverse attack not just on the humanity of the target, but on humanity itself. Cold hearted brutality does not build civilizations, it only and gleefully destroys them. It is our ability to love and trust one another, cooperate and protect one another, that keeps the jungle from our streets. The deeper, more ancient animal parts of us may be our bedrock, but it is our capacity to love and cherish that takes us out of the ancient wilderness and into civilization.
But that’s a world the gutter cannot cope with. A world where the smaller gentler boys aren’t afraid, are happy and carefree, is a world where the survival skills of thugs don’t get them anywhere, and that’s a world they will not endure the sight of.
It was more then a cheerful adolescence that was taken from me. It was a part of me that I lost in those years. So different I would have been from the shy, quiet boy who kept himself slightly apart from the others, because he didn’t understand himself, and was so afraid how people would react to him if he let his guard down. Instead I struggled, stumbled, and hid my heart fearfully, and changed from a cheerful young boy into one of sullen moods, and a sudden angry temper. This is how the gutter wins. I’ve been trying to reclaim this part of myself ever since. Maybe some day the human race will stop allowing its children to be abused.
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