The Bush Administration announced last week that the nation is no longer losing wetlands–as long as you consider golf course water hazards to be wetlands.
Really.
Thursday (March 30), Interior Secretary Gale Norton called a press conference to claim our long nightmare of wetlands loss had finally come to an end due to unprecedented gains since 1997 (click hear to read the report she cites). However, she then admitted much of that gain has been in artificially created ponds, such as golf course water hazards and farm impoundments.
The sporting community–from Ducks Unlimited to the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership–reacted quickly, and not favorably.
I’ll bet not. Next they’ll be saying that global warming is on the decline, because worldwide sales of air conditioners are up.
John at Americablog posted this open letter from gay Democratic party insider Paul Yandura the other day. It pretty much speaks for me too, and I’d intended to blog a little about it…
Dear Friends:
The Republicans have announced that they intend to use gay equality issues as a divisive election year tactic- AGAIN this year. Neither the DNC, nor any of the national committees (DCCC,DSCC), have a strategy to combat this hatred (unless you count avoidance as a strategy).
For many months a number of us have made appeals to Howard Dean and party officials to care about and defend the dignity of gay and lesbian families and friends, in the same way they defend the dignity of other key constituencies.
As the enclosed article shows, the DNC is fighting the vicious attacks being waged upon immigrants by the Republican party. Its the right thing to do and I applaud their action. Why then is it so difficult for them to do the same for us?
Why are gays and lesbians continually left to fight these battles alone? Where are our allies?
All progressives need to be asking how much has the DNC budgeted to counter the anti-gay ballot initiatives in the states. We also all need to know why the DNC and our Democratic leaders continue to allow the Republicans to use our families and friends as pawns to win elections.
We need answers to these questions. Until we get them my advice is don’t give any more money to the Dems.
-Paul
Well, that’s not my advice. My advice is to give to specific democratic candidates who are willing to stand up for justice and equality for gay and lesbian Americans, and To No One Else until they all grow backbones. But then Dean has to go and do something you’d think was worthy only of Petulant George…
Democratic Party Chair Howard Dean on May 2 fired the party’s gay outreach advisor Donald Hitchcock less than a week after Hitchcock’s domestic partner, Paul Yandura, a longtime party activist, accused Dean of failing to take stronger action to defend gays.
Howard Dean sacked the party’s gay outreach advisor just days after his domestic partner publicly criticized the party chair for failing to stand up for gay families.
Dean immediately hired gay former Democratic Party operative Brian Bond to replace Hitchcock, according to DNC spokesperson Karen Finney, who called Bond a "proven leader."
…
"It was not retaliation," Finney said of Hitchcock’s dismissal. "It was decided we needed a change. We decided to hire a proven leader."
Sell it to the White House Press Corps Finney. I’m not a republican. You can’t expect me to believe transparantly obvious bullshit just because the party leadership tells me to believe it.
Hitchcock declined comment Tuesday night except to confirm that Dean informed him May 2 through a surrogate that he had been terminated. He said he was considering consulting an attorney to decide whether to contest the firing.
"This is retaliation, plain and simple," said Yandura. "This shows what they think about domestic partners."
Yandura said Tuesday night that Dean was using Hitchcock as a "scapegoat" for problems of Dean’s own making.
"All I did was ask questions about what the party and Dean are doing about its GLBT constituency, Yandura said. "I have yet to see any answers."
Well, you just got one. And so did the rest of us. Howard Dean just retaliated against a gay man whose spouse spoke out about the party’s cowardly behavior in the face of republican gay bashing. The same Howard Dean who eliminated the GLBT Outreach Desk, telling the Gay community when we started raising a stink that it was all really an effort to improve outreach to all constituencies. The same Howard Dean who enjoyed much gay support for his 2004 presidential run, based on his signing into law Vermont’s Civil Unions. Somehow, when he became chair of the DNC, some of us expected that the party would actually start fighting back against the bigots, instead of picking a lot of pointless fights with gay democrats. But I guess not. Well…we always were the easy targets…
My advice is still, and now more then ever, to give to, and work for, democrats who are willing to stand up for us. But then it seemed, once upon a time, as though Dean was one of those democrats, didn’t it. I can almost envy the republicans. Life must be so much simpler when all you have to think is what the party tells you to think, and all you have to do is what the party tells you to do.
Something I hadn’t heard about the recent Bin Laden rant, is that he wants the Danish cartoonists who drew Mohammad extradited…to al Qaeda. For a fair trial of course…
Al Qaeda’s leader focused much of his almost 52-minute message on what he continually referred to as “a Zionist-crusader war on Islam,” which he said was shown most explicitly by the Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed.
Muslims consider it sacrilegious to produce a likeness of Mohammad, and the cartoons sparked violent protests throughout the Muslim world.
He said the cartoon controversy was “too serious for an apology” and was the most serious aspect of the alleged war against Islam.
Now, in a babbling rant that touched on “…what he called the slaughter of Muslims in places such as Palestine, Bosnia, Kashmir and Chechnya”, you’d think he’d rank that slaughter at least a tad higher then twelve cartoons of Mohammed. But…no. In the screaming mental chaos of the religious fanatic, bloodshed isn’t nearly as offensive as defiance.
He called for the extradition of those responsible for drawing and publishing the cartoons to be tried by al Qaeda, just as he said the United States and United Nations had demanded he be turned over after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
“We demand that their governments hand them over to us to be judged by the law of Allah,” he said.
“This request is from the category of treating in kind, and we say to you, if you have not forgotten, let us remind you that when you announced Osama bin Laden was accused of striking at American interests, you issued a [U.N.] Security Council resolution which was passed unanimously declaring the extradition of Osama was mandatory despite no evidence being provided,” bin Laden said.
Al Qaeda has previously claimed responsibility for the 9/11 attacks.
In kind. In kind. He really thinks that drawing cartoons of Mohammed is worse then killing Muslims. Perhaps he’d like a few more then. I’d certainly rather draw cartoons then kill anyone.
Damn…I’m going to be so happy when we finally have a president who wants to go after that bastard.
Homosexuality has been like a ghost, hiding in the shadows of my shame, telling me I can never reach my full potential as a Christian. As strange and contradictory as it may sound, seeing Brokeback Mountain helped me bury that ghost and begin moving forward.
What I saw in Brokeback Mountain tore my heart apart. I cried with Alma when she discovered the truth about Ennis and Jack. I also cried for the countless wives in real life who know that their husbands are leading a secret existence. I cried even harder for the men, more in number than we realize, who are trapped in sexual sin and don’t know how to escape it. And as I wept, I wondered if God could use me to help reach some of them with his grace and delivering power.
No scene touched me more than the one in which Ennis’s daughter pays him a visit after Jack dies, and tells him he needs to buy some furniture to liven up his cold and barren trailer. Ennis responds, "If you ain’t got nothin, you don’t need nothin." I made up my mind then and there that I would not let homosexuality rob me like it had robbed Ennis.
No you drooling moron…homosexuality didn’t rob Ennis, a goddamn tire iron swung by all the force hate could give it robbed him. Twice…
"You won’t catch me again," said Jack. "Listen. I’m thinkin, tell you what, if you and me had a little ranch together, little cow and calf operation, your horses, it’d be some sweet life. Like I said, I’m gettin out a rodeo. I ain’t no broke-dick rider but I don’t got the bucks a ride out this slump I’m in and I don’t got the bones a keep gettin wrecked. I got it figured, got this plan, Ennis, how we can do it, you and me. Lureen’s old man, you bet he’d give me a bunch if I’d get lost. Already more or less said it — "
"Whoa, whoa, whoa. It ain’t goin a be that way. We can’t. I’m stuck with what I got, caught in my own loop. Can’t get out of it. Jack, I don’t want a be like them guys you see around sometimes. And I don’t want a be dead. There was these two old guys ranched together down home, Earl and Rich — Dad would pass a remark when he seen them. They was a joke even though they was pretty tough old birds. I was what, nine years old and they found Earl dead in a irrigation ditch. They’d took a tire iron to him, spurred him up, drug him around by his dick until it pulled off, just bloody pulp. What the tire iron done looked like pieces a burned tomatoes all over him, nose tore down from skiddin on gravel."
"You seen that?"
"Dad made sure I seen it. Took me to see it…"
Annie Proulx, "Brokeback Mountain"
That’s what robbed Ennis. That’s what stole from him his capacity to love and accept love from another man. Nearly every review of the film I’ve seen has commented on how perfectly the actor who played him, Heath Ledger, captured the sense of a man completely uncomfortable inside his own skin, so completely inhibited he can barely talk. Shame. Guilt. Self loathing. It’s not enough for the hatemongers to make other people hate us. We have to hate ourselves too. We have to hate ourselves even more then they hate us. Because only by hating ourselves that much, will we keep punishing ourselves for simply existing, for just being alive and walking this good earth along with them and breathing their air, when they’re not able to punish us for it with their own two hands. And those of us who never fell into or who manage to escape that bottomless pit of shame and self loathing, still have to deal with the hate and all the myriad ways, large and small, that it cheats us out of one of this life’s most perfect joys.
That’s what robbed Ennis. And it robs all of us. Some of us more then others…horribly more. I’ve never hated myself and never tried to obliterate myself in reckless squalor, or an all controlling self-annihilating religious cult. I’ve never lost a lover to the tire iron. I’ve never been forced against my will into ex-gay therapy. But I can count in months the time in my life I’ve had someone to love, and that’s partly because I’ve fallen in love so many times with other guys, who could not love and desire whole heartedly, because they were so ashamed to love and desire at all.
Hate, and the tire iron. One way or another it robs us all. It robbed me…and it robbed you too. Mr. Belkofer.
That far-right Catholic web site that theocrat Richard Neuhaus leaned on for his claim that 50 or 60 percent of children raised by male homosexuals turn out to be homosexual or bisexual, and suffer many times the norm in incidence of child sexual abuse, has taken its own a peek at Michael Calace’s "Rape Of The Soul. Unaccountably, they seem somewhat appalled…
"The Rape of the Soul" is a fear-mongering, small-minded, and pathetically smutty polemic about art and the Roman Catholic Church. Presented as a documentary by filmmaker and self-described devout Catholic Michael A. Calace, the film seeks to discredit "predatory artists" from da Vinci and Botticelli to anonymous designers of contemporary greeting cards.
Ooooh. Self described devout Catholic is it? But look on the bright side. He doesn’t described himself as a recovering Catholic. Or an Ex-Catholic.
Kinda gets your goat when people read all kinds of filth into even the simplest expressions of beauty and joy in your world, let alone satanic influences, does it? Kinda pisses you off when people ascribe sinister motives to even the smallest commonplaces of your everyday life does it? "Predatory artists", did they say? Why…how unfair…how terribly, terribly unfair it must seem. But what Calace does he does out of love for the church…not hate. I’m sure many who are Catholic may view exposing the disordered subliminal sex messages and satanism in everything from Catholic art to Catholic children’s song books as a personal attack but it is not…any more then saying cancer or a closer parallel perhaps, alcoholism is a disorder.
Or…not. After Andrew Sullivan posted about the gutter Neuhaus gets his facts on homosexuality from, the gutter replied that Paul Cameron is being smeared by the "gay lobby", Neuhaus only said it was a claim, Cameron isn’t his only source, and in any case homosexuals just don’t want to address the fact that they are "psychologically malformed". But it would "keep trying to find ways to say so in as charitable manner as possible." Or at any rate, as charitable a manner as possible while spitting in people’s faces and simultaneously twisting a knife in their heart. And you best believe charity like that doesn’t come along every day.
Now if I were to call homosexual pedophilia an affective disorder and an activist from NAMBLA (North American Man-Boy Love Association) accused me of bigotry most people would see that this was clearly an attempt to change the subject from a discussion of the issue at hand. However, in part, because the MSM has conditioned us to think of SSA as an alternative life style it is not so clear that the same logical fallacy is at play in discussing the “gay” issue.
Charity starts with the standard issue comparison of homosexuals to pedophiles. "SSA" in case you’re wondering, is Same Sex Attraction, "MSM" is Main Stream Media, and "gay" is always in quotes because it’s always better to invent acronyms that dehumanize people, then allow them to speak for themselves. Charity. I wonder if Calace invented any good acronyms for all the penises and satanism he found in Catholic art? And in children’s song books no less…
Now if I were to call homosexual pedophilia an affective disorder and an activist from NAMBLA (North American Man-Boy Love Association) accused me of bigotry most people would see that this was clearly an attempt to change the subject from a discussion of the issue at hand. However, in part, because the MSM has conditioned us to think of Catholicism as an alternative life style it is not so clear that the same logical fallacy is at play in discussing the “left-footers” issue.
Yeah…something like that. With lots of references to how they put pictures of cocks into school children’s books. And remember, it’s a devout Catholic saying so.
Or perhaps my own charity is a tad lacking. But I tried…I swear I tried…and it’s just too goddamn hard to extend the benefit of good faith to the braying jackass who wrote this, right before he compared gay people to child molesters:
The response to the statements that ’same sex attraction is a disorder’ is never an argument for why it is clearly a part of human nature (I suppose because there is none). Rather, the responses include the accusations of bigotry, “homophobia” (I’ve never figured this out, is that the fear of sameness or the fear of human beings???)…
Get me started… You know David, you’re right. You’re Absolutely Right. The word "phobia" means "an intense, abnormal, or illogical fear of a specified thing". It doesn’t mean "hate". It doesn’t mean "avoidance". It doesn’t mean "prejudiced". You’re Absolutely Right David. The word "phobia" does not have that meaning. But The Suffix Can!Look Up The Motherfucking Suffix!
Tell your chemistry teacher that the word "hydrophobe" is something you can’t figure out (Is that fearful water? How can water be afraid?). Then tell your biology teacher that "photosynthesis" is something you can’t figure out, because plants don’t synthesize light, they synthesize sugars. It’ll be fun.
Many who are personally affected by SSA might see this as a personal attack. It is not. In fact, the very reason for this series is to show why calling SSA a disorder cannot be viewed as a personal attack any more than is saying cancer, or a closer parallel perhaps, alcoholism is a disorder. Let me know what you think…
What I think: Jack Chick is worse then you deserve. "Rape of the Soul" on the other hand, is about right. Charity.
All books can be indecent books
Though recent books are bolder,
For filth (I’m glad to say) is in
the mind of the beholder.
When correctly viewed,
Everything is lewd.
(I could tell you things about Peter Pan,
And the Wizard of Oz, there’s a dirty old man!)
-Tom Lehrer, "Smut"
Okay…these people are nuts. All this time I thought they were just a bunch of uptight prudes who think people shouldn’t actually enjoy sex because people shouldn’t actually enjoy anything. But…no. (Warning…link goes to WorldNetDaily) They really are crazy…
‘Satanic’ art in Catholic Church exposed
Documentary links clergy sex abuse with occult imagery
Could the Roman Catholic Church’s sex abuse crisis be tied to embedded Satanic and occultic imagery in its artwork – some of it hundreds of years old?
That is the seemingly incredible thesis of a new documentary, "Rape of the Soul," made not by anti-Catholic bigots, but by devout followers of the Church.
According to Dr Judith Reisman, pornography affects the physical structure of your brain turning you into a porno-zombie. Porn, she says, is an "erototoxin ", producing an addictive "drug cocktail " of testosterone, oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin with a measurable organic effect on the brain.
Erototoxins. Erototoxins. Well…somebody’s got brain damage that’s for sure…
The film, which is being released by Silver Sword International, contends a major cause of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church could be due to prolonged exposure to sexual and satanic images being incorporated into the religious art.
EEEK!
Experts are featured in the film to offer detailed accounts of the subconscious programming effects of the sex and occult images on the human brain and how it promotes sex, Satanism and the occult. Religious education materials, songbooks, children’s story books, devotionals and the Sunday Missals all have been found to contain embedded imagery.
EEEK!
"These images, unrecognized by the untrained eye, can be a ticking time-bomb to an individual who is unaware of their presence, especially someone who is already predisposed to deviant sexual behavior," said Reisman.
EEEK! EEEK!!
"Artists from DaVinci to Botticelli have embedded subliminal images into their art for centuries," said Calace. "In this case we found penises on crucifixes, anarchy symbols, swastikas, demonic faces and in modern works even the word ‘sex’ encrypted into the images. The works in question include modern artists’ work currently on the covers of missalettes and hymnals that at this very moment sit in the pews of churches throughout the U.S. and on children’s religious teaching aids."
EEEK! EEEK!! EEEK!!!
Calace said, "’Rape of the Soul’ was created to heal the many that have suffered from these uninvited violations."
Therapy for victims of art museums, and grocery store fruit and vegitable counters will be forthcoming in a later program.
Sex addiction. Man…that’s some powerful stuff isn’t it? Penises on crucifixes. Demonic faces. Anarchy symbols! Ms. Reisman and Mr. Calace should get help. How addicted to sex do you have to be to look at a crucifix and see a dick?
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