I’m the last person to complain about being too warm. But this weather is starting to freak me out. I was just outside taking an evening walk. It is somewhat foggy again this evening, and warm enough to walk around with my jacket unzipped. It was colder inside the local supermarket, standing next to the frozen food coolers, then it was outside.
I’ve had the furnace off more then its been on for a couple months now. Mid Atlantic winters aren’t exactly fierce, but this is ridiculous. When I was a kid, there would be permanent, winter long pockets of snow on the ground by now. All the places that didn’t get much sunlight during the day, or spots where it got piled up by the snow plows in parking lots and side streets, would have snow in them by now, and when that snow was finally gone you knew it was getting to be spring again. Yesterday someone told me the cherry trees had started to blossom in spots. Tomorrow I should check to see if my daises are coming up.
Who would have guessed that answering a few census questions could make you a participant in battling the "homosexual agenda"?
Napa resident Marcia Zwick never imagined this when she recently received a large, important-looking envelope in the mail. She works as a legal secretary and is accustomed to handling official documents.
"I’m a reasonably intelligent person," Zwick said. "I couldn’t tell what this really was."
The answer isn’t readily apparent.
"U.S. Taxpayer Census," the envelope says on the outside in big letters. "Do Not Tamper: Reply Within 5 Days."
Inside is an official-looking questionnaire. "This U.S. Taxpayer Census has been specially commissioned to gather public opinion in America’s ‘grassroots’ about the new Social Security Preservation Act (HR 219) now pending in the U.S. Congress," it says.
"This Census is individually registered under your name to represent Napa public opinion in California 01 voting district. So it is critical you return it — even if you are undecided about some answers."
In reality, the "Census" is a mailer from something called the Christian Seniors Association. And of the nine questions it asks, six involve a slanted look at Social Security and three involve donating money to the right-wing organization.
What the mailer doesn’t tell you, though, at least not in so many words, is that any funds contributed to the Christian Seniors Association will in fact go to its parent group, the Traditional Values Coalition.
Cute. This from the man who routinely calls gay people sexual predators and pedophiles. They’re the folks responsible for this bit of fragrant web advertising:
The mailer from the Christian Seniors Association only hints at broader public-policy goals. An accompanying letter explains that the organization was started several years ago as an alternative to the AARP.
…
It’s not until you get to the fine print on the back of the association’s Census form that you learn the organization "is a division of Traditional Values Coalition" and that "all contributions are combined to help pay Traditional Values Coalition expenses."
So this ersatz seniors organization really exists mostly to funnel old people’s money over to TVC. You have to figure that’s because scaring them with the gay bogyman isn’t opening up their checkbooks like it used to. Picture Lou spending money old people gave to him out of their fixed incomes thinking it was going to a campaign for senior’s issues, on his splendid little war on homosexuality instead. I guess screwing old people isn’t ungodly if all you rape them for is their money. You know…that stuff they use to put food in their mouths and a roof over their heads and buy their medicine with. Who the hell made Lou Sheldon a reverend? John Gotti?
If the vehement prejudices toward gay people in some Episcopalian churches here in America seems surprising to the majority of American Episcopalians…there may be a reason for that…
Parishioners say it happens quietly, unobtrusively: As the sick make their way to the altar, some worshipers begin speaking in tongues. Occasionally, one is "arrested in the spirit," falling unconscious into the arms of a fellow congregant.
The special faith-healing services, held one Sunday night a month at The Falls Church in Fairfax, are a rarity in the Episcopal Church. But members of The Falls Church have long felt at odds with fellow Episcopalians, who they believe have been drifting theologically in an ever more liberal direction.
Speaking in tongues…!? I hear you ask. Didn’t know that Episcopalians did that, did you? I sure didn’t. But they do at The Falls Church in Virginia. On the other hand, it’s probably not actually Episcopalians that are doing that…
At least two-thirds of the worshipers are Methodists, Presbyterians or Baptists, and there is no pressure on them to be confirmed as Episcopalians, said the Rev. Rick Wright, associate rector.
Now that’s really interesting. Go read the article. The schisming churches in Virginia have all the sense and sensibilities of your typical southern charismatic megachurch. So much so that they’ve lost many of their Episcopalians to other area churches. Now two-thirds of the people in that sanctuary don’t even bother calling themselves Episcopalians. And yet they’ve decided to take that Episcopalian church out of the American Episcopalian community, in favor of the church of a man who thinks gays should be arrested simply for sitting down together for lunch in public. Why is that not surprising? Ask the faithful at Six Flags Over Jesus and you’ll probably hear the same sentiment. But they’re in their own church, not living like digger wasps inside someone else’s.
So I guess while its technically true that the Episcopalians in northern Virginia are schisming, the reality seems to be that it’s really just the usual suspects. Ah, well…how else could a bunch of Baptists stage a schism, unless they did it in someone else’s church…
When I discuss the Left’s embrace of New Anger with people across the political spectrum, two not very satisfactory explanations keep coming up. One is that the party that is out of power has more to gripe about. Yes, but that doesn’t explain why the Left gravitated to a form of anger that exacerbated its unpopularity. Nor, why the Right, in similar circumstances kept its New Anger aficionados on the margins.
The New Anger. The left gravitiates to it. Even though it makes them unpopular. The right would never do such things…
Fortunately for liberals, the Iraqis executed Saddam Hussein the exact same week that former President Ford died, so it didn’t seem strange that Nancy Pelosi’s flag was at half-staff.
Civility. Why are you liberals so angry? Why can’t you be more civil?
President Bush has quietly claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans’ mail without a judge’s warrant, the Daily News has learned.
The President asserted his new authority when he signed a postal reform bill into law on Dec. 20. Bush then issued a "signing statement" that declared his right to open people’s mail under emergency conditions.
That claim is contrary to existing law and contradicted the bill he had just signed, say experts who have reviewed it.
Bush’s move came during the winter congressional recess and a year after his secret domestic electronic eavesdropping program was first revealed. It caught Capitol Hill by surprise.
"Despite the President’s statement that he may be able to circumvent a basic privacy protection, the new postal law continues to prohibit the government from snooping into people’s mail without a warrant," said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the incoming House Government Reform Committee chairman, who co-sponsored the bill.
Experts said the new powers could be easily abused and used to vacuum up large amounts of mail.
"The [Bush] signing statement claims authority to open domestic mail without a warrant, and that would be new and quite alarming," said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington.
"The danger is they’re reading Americans’ mail," she said.
"You have to be concerned," agreed a career senior U.S. official who reviewed the legal underpinnings of Bush’s claim. "It takes Executive Branch authority beyond anything we’ve ever known."
A top Senate Intelligence Committee aide promised, "It’s something we’re going to look into."
Well, so what? You can’t impeach him unless the republicans go along with it and swear to God if Bush was caught with a pistol in his hands robbing a bank, they’d tell you that the president has the right to rob banks in the name of national security because 9-11 changed everything.
Good thing it’s not a democrat doing this or the news media would be having kittens right now.
I doubt that even Barack Obama can save us from our anger now. That’s because the anger that lately pervades our politics is more than just an after effect of six years of Democratic setbacks (although the strikingly angry Democratic response to their six bad years does call for an explanation).
An explaination…did you say? Well…how about this one…
You should go read the rest of Digby’s post. Digby says of the Kurtz review that, "It’s fascinating because it once again illustrates the degree to which conservatives have absolutely no self-awareness", but I don’t think it’s a lack of self awareness so much as a lack of conscience. When they kick people in the teeth, conservatives don’t see that as anything less then their god given right as superior beings. The role of all the rest of us lesser beings is to just stand there and passively take it because…well…they have a god given right to dish it out to us and if we object, we’re the ones being mean. To them. And of course, if we decide to dish it right back then we are being positively uncivil.
Speaking of which…have you noticed how the word, "civility" has become some kind of watchword recently? Civility. Civility. The news media has suddenly discovered that it is important for us to be civil. Now that the democrats are back in power. Goodness knows it wasn’t important when people like the lady in the photo above were in power. Goodness knows it wasn’t important back when Rush Limbaugh was playing "It’s Raining Men" right after news broke that a New York Times reporter had committed suicide by jumping out an office window. Goodness knows it wasn’t important when Ann Coulter said the only problem she has with Timothy McVeigh is that he didn’t go to the New York Times building. Now that democrats are back in power, the news media that treated Limbaugh and Coulter like elder statesmen have suddenly discovered that incivility is a bad thing. Gosh.
Digby reminds us about the little list of words the father of the new incivility, Newt Gingrich made for republicans to use every time they talked about democrats…
He became famous (with some help from his cohorts) for being a manipulative, vicious asshole and the lesson was well learned. He went on to create a lexicon of derision, used by Republicans everywhere, to describe Democrats and liberals. He called these words "contrast":
Often we search hard for words to define our opponents. Sometimes we are hesitant to use contrast. Remember that creating a difference helps you. These are powerful words that can create a clear and easily understood contrast. Apply these to the opponent, their record, proposals and their party.
I realize it is churlish of us liberals to attempt to defend ourselves from this kind of bad faith and even worse for us to lose our Gary Cooper cool. But, you know, when you push people far enough and hard enough they start to fight for their survival. The level of vitriol and hate emanating from the right — and encouraged by Republicans leaders of all stripes — has been overwhelming. These past twelve years alone have been characterized by smears, toxic rhetoric, impeachments, abuse of power, stolen elections, power mad governance, corruption and ineptitude. So yes, we’re angry — but more importantly, we are fearful for our country.
Until Republicans admit what they have wrought and recognize that their trash talking and boot-to-the-throat mode of fetid politics are responsible for our state today, then for the good of the country, I hope the left remains angry and battles them back with everything they’ve got.
This is ugly, I admit. But the country just can’t take another couple of decades of Republican politics and Republican rule. We have to stop it — and it won’t be stopped if Democrats play nice.
No. It won’t. I say this over and over again but it’s true: we’re in a knife fight with these people. You either fight back to win, or you just stand there and let them laugh in your face and kick your balls, because that’s just what they’ll do, and keep doing, even after you’ve curled up in the fetal position. They don’t care. They hate you. They hate you with a passion that your gay and lesbian neighbors have seen first hand for decades now. Digby’s right. Until the republicans are held accountable for the past couple decades of vitriol and hate they’ve been spewing into the political well all that this newly discovered concern about the level of incivility amounts to, is just another way of keeping us passive while they get to keep kicking everyone they despise in the face. It won’t stop until they’re held accountable.
Rep.-elect Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, found himself under attack last month when he announced he’d take his oath of office on the Koran — especially from Virginia Rep. Virgil Goode, who called it a threat to American values.
Yet the holy book at tomorrow’s ceremony has an unassailably all-American provenance. We’ve learned that the new congressman — in a savvy bit of political symbolism — will hold the personal copy once owned by Thomas Jefferson.
"He wanted to use a Koran that was special," said Mark Dimunation, chief of the rare book and special collections division at the Library of Congress, who was contacted by the Minnesota Dem early in December. Dimunation, who grew up in Ellison’s 5th District, was happy to help.
Jefferson’s copy is an English translation by George Sale published in the 1750s; it survived the 1851 fire that destroyed most of Jefferson’s collection and has his customary initialing on the pages. This isn’t the first historic book used for swearing-in ceremonies — the Library has allowed VIPs to use rare Bibles for inaugurations and other special occasions.
Goode represents Jefferson’s birthplace, Albemarle County Virginia. Though I’m sure they’d lend him one, you have to suppose a Jefferson Bible wouldn’t be good enough for Goode to put his hand on while taking an oath. Or…maybe I have that backwards…
Thomas Jefferson believed that the ethical system of Jesus was the finest the world has ever seen. In compiling what has come to be called "The Jefferson Bible," he sought to separate those ethical teachings from the religious dogma and other supernatural elements that are intermixed in the account provided by the four Gospels. He presented these teachings, along with the essential events of the life of Jesus, in one continuous narrative.
This presentation of The Jefferson Bible offers the text as selected and arranged by Jefferson in two separate editions: one edition uses a revised King James Version of the biblical texts, corrected in accordance with the findings of modern scholarship; the second edition uses the original unrevised KJV. The actual verses of the Bible used for both editions are those chosen by Jefferson. Visitors should find the revised KJV text much easier to read and understand. Those seeking the precise English version Mr. Jefferson used when making his compilation can click on "Unrevised KJV text."
He may be on the conservative movement’s shit list these days, but Andrew Sullivan is still its useful idiot…
I doubt whether Massachusetts will forgo the honor of being the first state to grant gay couples legal equality with their straight peers. But there’s one way to find out. Let’s debate and campaign. The national gay groups, whose record on marriage has been spotty at best, need to make this the first priority of the national movement. Winning a democratic vote on marriage is a huge opportunity – and well within our grasp. We have the arguments. We have the evidence. Now let’s have the vote.
We have the arguments do we? Well…one argument we won’t have I guess is that no civilized nation puts the human rights of minorities up for popular vote. Can someone tell me when reason ever made a dent in the mindset of bigots? It wasn’t the voters who swept away the segregation laws in America, it was the hated Warren Court.
The Conservative Soul is it? Well of course. Conservatives never were very big on the concept of liberty and justice for all were they…
I walked home this evening, still in the heat of anger after what Massachusetts did to its gay and lesbian citizens yesterday. I haven’t been this angry in a long time. Not since the Burger supreme court upheld the sodomy laws. Not since Anita Bryant convinced 4 out of 5 Dade County Floridians to repeal a law that gave their gay neighbors the simple right to hold down a job without fear of being fired, simply because they are gay. I walked home, strode past fellow pedestrians, crossed streets of traffic, angry, solitary. You know, you can actually taste anger. I hate being like this. You can almost feel the anger burning you up inside, burning the minutes off of your life, like ash off the end of a cigarette.
I got home, walked past my neglected bird feeders, opened the door and picked the mail off the floor where it ends up after the postman pushes it through the slot. I saw some bills, some credit card ads, and…a postcard. It was from you.
I don’t know if you even bother reading this blog or not…but, thanks. Much thanks. I’d just about forgotten in the past couple days that there is more to life then the things that make me angry. Time isn’t the only true luxury in life. Sometimes it feels like ease and peace of mind are luxuries too. I wish I had said more to you back when we both had the luxury of time. But I am grateful now for a card. For a moment, life was good again.
Somebody finally sits up and takes notice! Wonderful! Over at Eschaton, echidne says that it is an odd juxtaposition that our new congress may well repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, at the same time Massachusetts takes the right to marry away from its gay and lesbian citizens. "Equal for war but not for love?" She asks. Good question.
In fact, it is precisely to prevent people from asking that question, that we are not allowed to serve. Did you think that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was really about military readiness? Have some second thoughts please. It is because the sight of openly gay people fighting for, and dying for their country, would cause people to raise those kinds of questions that the bigots have been fighting so bitterly to prevent us from serving.
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell has nothing to do with national security. It has nothing to do with close quarters contact on the battlefield and all the other shibboleths the religious right keeps raising. It has exactly zero to do with troop moral. It is about preventing gay equality. It has always been about preventing gay equality. Nothing else.
Charles Andersen was my friend
His clothes in our closet
Still smell like him
All these years we kept
Two bedrooms
The one we dusted
And the one we used
Guess we did that, for all of you
-Mark Weigle, All That Matters
Well the outrage among the progressive blogs at the Massachusetts statehouse capitulation to bigotry has just been overwhelming hasn’t it? Or I suppose it would have been, if they hadn’t all been so busy being outraged about the stuff that really matters. Good thing I have some links here to a few gay blogs or I might think no one on earth really gives a good goddamn about what happens to gay people in this country…
Despite the high court’s ruling that all citizens, regardless of race, are guaranteed equal protection under the law, the legislature voted today to place a constitutional amendment on the ballot that would permit white voters to deny certain rights to the black citizens of the state of…
Um, wait. What I meant to say was, the high court of the state of Massachusetts declared that every citizen, regardless of sexual orientation, has the right to marry. And now the Massachusetts legislature has taken the first step to place a constitutional amendment banning any new gay marriages on the 2008 ballot. Because, after all, it’s really important to let the majority rule on the rights of minorities.
If we’d only done that back before the civil rights movement, the citizens of Alabama would certainly have granted Rosa Parks a seat at the front of the bus without all those messy protests. And "separate but equal" schools? Why, they would have been voted down by an overwhelming majority in every state. There was no need for those activists judges to rule in Brown v. Board of Education.
In Massachusetts a minority of homophobic bigots in the statehouse, and the cowards who at the last minute decided to look the other way, will now allow a simple majority of the voters who bother to vote the right to determine what basic human rights minorities in their state can or cannot have. But never mind. American progressives clearly have much more important things to worry about. Hey…how about that Bush op-ed in the Wall Street Journal…
Platt, who has also written nine books for computer professionals, has a message for software developers: "Your. User. Is. Not. You."
People who write software programs value control. The user, on the other hand, just wants something that’s easy to operate.
To illustrate his point, he notes that computer programmers tend to prefer manual transmissions. But not even 15 percent of the cars sold in the United States last year had that feature.
I bought the Honda Accord over the Toyota Camry because Honda would sell me a nicely dressed up Accord with a stick, while Toyota would only sell me the economy version with a stick.
So they’re going to allow a vote on the anti-gay marriage amendment in Massachusetts. I was worrying about this when I saw all the Boston newspapers start bloviating about how the legislature had a "responsibility" to let the vote happen, after the state supreme court ruled they couldn’t force the vote, and that they had a "duty" and so on.
Does anymore seriously believe that our enemies, if the positions had been reversed, wouldn’t have used precisely the same tactics to prevent a vote, if doing it would take away our right to marry? Would they have fucking cared what the newspapers said? We are in a knife fight with these people, and you win a knife fight by fighting to win, not by playing by a set of rules designed specifically to allow the enemy to keep taking swings at you while you just stand there with your hands behind your back. You go into a fight with these people to win by any means necessary, or don’t bother fighting them because they’ll laugh in your face and kick your balls. They’re dancing in Massachusetts now, because they can figure now that in a couple years they’ll be able to cut the ring fingers off the gays in their state. And if you thought the religious right was triumphalist before, just wait until they can crow that they turned back sodomite marriage in Massachusetts.
To the cowards who previously voted to adjourn rather then vote, and then switched sides yesterday, all I have to say to you is I hope your own marriages suffer the same fate as ours. About half of heterosexual marriages fail anyway don’t they? Piss on your hopes, your dreams, and every moment of awestruck joy you ever felt as a couple.
"[W]e are leaving ourselves vulnerable to infiltration by those who want to mold the United States into the image of their religion, rather than working within the Judeo-Christian principles that have made us a beacon for freedom-loving persons around the world."
— Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA), in an op-ed published in today’s USA Today, explaining why he believes the United States should refuse immigrants from the Middle East.
You may recall, this is the wanker who pitched a fit when congressman elect Keith Ellison announced he would take the oath of office in a ceremony using the Koran, instead of the Bible, and then went on to pitch a fit about Muslim immigrants pouring into the United States, and then went on to avow that he would never take the oath on the "Kor-Ran" (I watched him on a newscast…that’s how he keeps pronouncing it) and that he only wanted to "…draw attention to the need to acknowledge the Bible as the basis of America’s moral values. Judeo-Christian values are the greatest single protection against another Holocaust".
Well Virgil…it’s really swell that you’re so busy defending American from people who want to mold it into the image of their religion. Now…how about you go find yourself a mirror and tell it to the gutter crawling jackass you see in there. Kor-Ran. Kor-Ran. Kor-Ran.
A bill, of course, they wouldn’t even consider when they were in the majority.
There is something profoundly sickening about watching the party that made race baiting and fag bashing into political art forms bellyaching about minority rights.
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