Today is the day for the big protest rally in Austin against the follies of the board of education. Meet at the Texas Education Agency, 1701 Congress Ave., at 1pm. They’re also asking that you register your attendance, although I’m sure no one will be turned away if they don’t.
A Republican congressman from Indiana, Mark Souder, is resigning. He’s one of those conservative, abstinence-only sorts of politicians who uses family, family, family to flog his politics for him, so it’s no surprise that the reason he’s quitting is that he got caught with his pants down in an affair.
But sit down, here’s the part you will not believe: it was a heterosexual fling! Maybe he should get a medal from his party for confounding expectations.
It’s not all good news: Jonathan Katz may have lost a position, but someone who had much more power to do good keeps his. Our Minnesota governor, Tim Pawlenty, is also a homophobic jerk—he just vetoed a bill that promoted some common decency, giving gay partners a few end-of-life rights and responsibilities, so gay people could make decisions about disposition of the body at the death of a partner, for instance. It was a bill that did not go so far as to legalize gay marriage, but simply acknowledged that grieving gay people ought not to be barred from making decisions about the people they love.
And Governor Pawlenty shot down basic human decency, making noises about defining marriage as “between a man and a woman” and how he opposes efforts to “treat domestic relationships as the equivalent of traditional marriage”. He’s a rotten excuse for a human being.
But then, he is a Republican.
The pandering slimeball is angling for a presidential nomination in the next election, and he knows the only way the Republicans will pay attention to him is if he plays up more bigotry and hatred. He’s going to be sidling farther and farther rightward in the next few years, and it’s not going to be good for Minnesota.
I remember Joycelyn Elders. The woman was appointed to the position of surgeon general, and when asked about masturbation at a conference on AIDS, she replied, “I think that it is part of human sexuality, and perhaps it should be taught.” It was a perfectly ordinary comment about something nearly everyone does or has done, and she got fired for it, by Bill Clinton. It was part of my disillusionment and disappointment with the Democrats.
Now look who Obama has appointed to a team to assist with the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico: Jonathan I. Katz. He’s not quite a climate change denialist, but the next best thing: he agrees that the climate is warming, that it’s anthropogenic, but tells us that it’s good for us, and we ought to stop research on it. At the same time, he’s doing research on geoengineering to counteract global warming. I’m confused. I think he’s confused.
But here’s what made me think of Joycelyn Elders. Katz is a self-admitted, flaming homophobe, and he’s proud of it. Literally. He comes right out and says it while blaming gays for killing innocent people (the deaths of gays, of course, were there own damn fault).
Unfortunately, the victims are not only those whose reckless behavior brought death on themselves. There are many completely innocent victims, too: hemophiliacs (a substantial fraction died as a result of contaminated clotting factor), recipients of contaminated transfusions, and their spouses and children, for AIDS can be transmitted heterosexually (in America, only infrequently) and congenitally. The icy road was lined with unsuspecting innocents, who never chose to ride a motorcycle. Guilt for their deaths is on the hands of the homosexuals and intravenous drug abusers who poisoned the blood supply. These people died so the sodomites could feel good about themselves.
What of those cursed with unnatural sexual desires? Must they forever suppress these desires? Yes, but this is hardly a unique fate. Almost everyone has desires which must be suppressed. Most men and women think adulterous thoughts fairly often, and find themselves attracted to members of the opposite sex to whom they are not married. Morality requires them to suppress these desires, and most do not commit adultery, though they feel lust in their hearts. Almost everyone, at one time or another, covets another’s property. They do not steal. Many people feel great anger or intense hatred at some time in their lives. They do not kill.
I am a homophobe, and proud.
This is what I don’t get. Joycelyn Elders could make an accurate, honest, and relevant comment about the fact that masturbation is a part of human sexuality, and that if we’re concerned about sexually transmitted diseases, it is a reasonable alternative outlet for sexual urges…and she got fired for it.
Jonathan Katz writes stupid and wrong comments about how gay people are killers, and says that they should completely suppress their sexual urges…and he gets a distinguished appointment from the Obama administration.
However, there is some good news here. People complained, and the administration listened: Katz has been dismissed from the position. Maybe there is some hope after all.
Now we just get to sit back and wait for the wingnuts to start complaining about the exclusion of bigotry.
Have you heard about the Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention and Prosecution Act?
Meanwhile, the bill recently introduced by Joe Lieberman and John McCain — the so-called “Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention and Prosecution Act” — now has 9 co-sponsors, including the newly elected Scott Brown. It’s probably the single most extremist, tyrannical and dangerous bill introduced in the Senate in the last several decades, far beyond the horrific, habeas-abolishing Military Commissions Act. It literally empowers the President to imprison anyone he wants in his sole discretion by simply decreeing them a Terrorist suspect — including American citizens arrested on U.S. soil. The bill requires that all such individuals be placed in military custody, and explicitly says that they “may be detained without criminal charges and without trial for the duration of hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners,” which everyone expects to last decades, at least. It’s basically a bill designed to formally authorize what the Bush administration did to American citizen Jose Padilla — arrest him on U.S. soil and imprison him for years in military custody with no charges.
If this bill passes, may I suggest that, since it does undermine the rule of law and does great damage to the republic, that the first persons charged under its provisions be the despicable McCain and Lieberman? Won’t they be surprised!
Of course, since we do respect the rule of law, I suggest that everyone write to their congresspeople and tell them that you oppose this bill. Save McCain and Lieberman from the fate of Danton and Robespierre!
Once upon a time, there was a bill moving through congress that was a good bill. It increased funding for research, and for science and math education. It had bipartisan support and was sailing through.
There is a villain to this story, though. Some congresscreatures — Republicans, led by a fool from Texas — didn’t like the good little bill. It’s not clear why. Maybe because it was going to cost some money. Maybe just because they don’t like that science and education stuff.
So they hatched a plan, taking advantage of a little rule. They made a motion to recommit, stopping the bill in its tracks by adding a new addition that would require the whole thing to go back to committee. Congress could vote to kill the addition, which would let the bill proceed, or they could vote to for the recommit, throwing the good little bill back.
Now here’s the cunning part: the addition was a completely irrelevant demand, a new requirement that federal employees caught watching porn would not get paid. Congress could vote for better science and education funding and allow porn watching, or they could vote against science and education and against porn. Sneaky. Devious. Evil. Jebus, but I’ve come to despise Republicans.
So what happened? 121 Democrats promptly abandoned the bill and voted against it. Because they’re cowards without a single bone of principle in their flabby, craven bodies. They didn’t want to be seen voting for porn, so they let the Rethuglican ringmaster crack his whip and herd them right where he wanted them to go.
I think I despise them all.
That insane tea-baggin’ Maine GOP convention did something else of interest. Some of the Republican caucuses were held in a local school, including the 8th grade classroom of teacher Paul Clifford. He returned to the classroom after the weekend to discover that the Republicans had indulged themselves in remodeling the classroom.
For seven years, Clifford has had “a collage-type poster depicting the history of the U.S. labor movement” on his classroom door. He uses it “to teach his students how to incorporate collages into their annual project on Norman Rockwell’s historic ‘Four Freedoms’ illustrations.” When Clifford returned to his classroom on Monday, after the GOP caucuses, the poster was gone; in its place was a sticker reading, “Working People Vote Republican.”
Republicans opened a “closed cardboard box they found near Clifford’s desk” and later objected to the fact that it contained copies of the U.S. Constitution donated to the school by the American Civil Liberties Union.
After the caucuses, “rank-and-file Republicans who were upset by what they said they had seen in Clifford’s classroom” began calling the school, objecting to student art they had seen and a sticker on a filing cabinet reading “People for the American Way — Fight the Right.”
Labor is so un-American, Norman Rockwell was an America-hating commie pinko, and kids shouldn’t be exposed to the Constitution, especially if the ACLU likes it.
It’s getting so you can’t tell the patriots from the vandals. And Republicans are clearly the party against intellectualism, education, and diversity.
The other day, I posted about the smear campaign in Alabama against Bradley Byrne, which tried to impugn the man by saying, “Byrne supported teaching evolution…said the Bible was only partially true”. Byrne won a speck of sympathy from me, despite the fact that he’s a Republican, for at least standing up for the evidence.
That sympathy is gone now. Byrne has come back with a rebuttal.
• I believe the Bible is the Word of God and that every single word of it is true. From the earliest parts of this campaign, a paraphrased and incomplete parsing of my words have been knowingly used to insinuate that I believe something different than that. My faith is at the center of my life and my belief in Jesus Christ as my personal savior and Lord guides my every action.
• As a Christian and as a public servant, I have never wavered in my belief that this world and everything in it is a masterpiece created by the hands of God. As a member of the Alabama Board of Education, the record clearly shows that I fought to ensure the teaching of creationism in our school text books. Those who attack me have distorted, twisted and misrepresented my comments and are spewing utter lies to the people of this state.
Well, screw you, too, you rednecked ignorant yokel. It’s a real shame that the people of Alabama are being served by fools and pandering morons. Now the Alabamans know who to vote against, I just hope there’s somebody sensible left in the field to vote for.
The wingnuts had a party in DC! It was called May Day: A Cry to God for a Nation in Distress, and consisted of a small mob of prayerful crazies listening to people at the microphone beg God to force Hollywood to make more movies like Gibson’s Passion, and by the way, make sure that hussy Dakota Fanning isn’t in them. It’s an odd way to help a nation in distress, by asking for more torture porn.
Alas, a Minnesotan was also there, and she embarrassed us with this little speech:
And father, we repent that we have not used godly wisdom when we have elected officials into elected positions in our state and nation, father, and that it has opened the door, that Minnesota holds the responsibility for placing the first Muslim in Congress, and Father, for that we repent.
It’s true. Not only did Minnesota elect Michele Bachmann, but we also elected Keith Ellison. Unlike Bachmann, though, Ellison seems to be more interested in getting his secular job done in Washington, and doesn’t wave his religion like a bloody flag.
Maybe Crazy Minnesota Lady should have asked forgiveness for electing an incompetent right wing loon to office, instead.
We shouldn’t pick on the South all the time, so here is a tale out of the eminently Yankee state of Maine. The Maine Republican party recently met to establis their official platform, and ended up getting hijacked by the tea-baggers. Their new platform contains all kinds of nutty demands.
The document calls for the elimination of the Department of Education and the Federal Reserve, demands an investigation of “collusion between government and industry in the global warming myth,” suggests the adoption of “Austrian Economics,” declares that “‘Freedom of Religion’ does not mean ‘freedom from religion'” (which I guess makes atheism illegal), insists that “healthcare is not a right,” calls for the abrogation of the “UN Treaty on Rights of the Child” and the “Law Of The Sea Treaty” and declares that we must resist “efforts to create a one world government.”
It also contains favorable mentions of both the Tea Party and Ron Paul. You can read the whole thing here.
There are other jewels in there. Marriage is between one man and one woman; all illegal aliens must be immediately arrested, detained, and deported without any possibility of amnesty; the border must be sealed; drill, baby, drill; US out of the UN!; and yes, it really does want to abolish the state board of education and put all schools under entirely local control.
The wingnuts have taken over.
Although…if you’ve ever read the Texas Republican Party platform an any time in the last 20 years, you might also realize that the Maine platform is on the mild side of Republican lunacy.
