Breaking News Events

[Rufusboi]

What part of One in five households with television sets watched President Obama (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/barack_obama/index.html?inline=nyt-per)’s Oval Office address about the gulf oil spill on Tuesday night, according to the Nielsen Company. An average of 24 million households and 32 million people tuned in to the almost 20-minute address, according to Nielsen, which counts only at-home viewing. is an interpretation that doesn't show or prove anything? Please explain your critical thinking process that led you to this conclusion.

1 in 5 is a statistic. It is a number. I believe it is also a number based on a random sample of homes that work with Neilsen to track their viewing. Any multitude of people can then come in and interpret that number to mean something. The two people that you linked to offered their own personal interpretations of that number. I don't consider these two interpretations to be particularly meaningful or correct. THey are just two interpretations of Neilsen data written by two people who work for newspapers. They didn't say anything particularly noteworthy. They just offered their opinion of what they thought the Neilsen numbers meant. So therefore, they did not show or prove anything. They just informed me of what they think the Neilsen data means.

10 different people can look at that 1 in 5 and interpret that number to mean 10 different things. Then all we can do is decide who we think offers the best interpretation. 1 in 5 is meaningless until someone inteprets that data. This is where things get sticky.

Rufus

[dreadgeek]

There can be a problem with Auto-Didactical thinking though....and that is there is no one bit yourself to challenge or critically analyze what it is your learning. ie--Hitler was an Auto-Didact.

If people want to learn they can, the problem is that you also have to be challenged and engaged and to do that is the function of higher education.

Mitmo:

I am not at all saying that auto-didactical thinking is ideal. Not at all. Given my druthers higher education--through the graduate level--would be free to all comers who qualified. NOTHING beats classroom instruction. And absolutely one needs to be challenged and have constant engagement (which is why I miss one of my colleagues, Russell, so much--he is a smart man, and just slightly to the far right end of William F. Buckley. We would have the *best* discussions at work). My parents did us a great service by shredding, night after night, sloppy arguments we brought to the table--particularly as opinionated teenagers. :)

I merely wanted to say that it is an option--if not to be fully educated in a subject, one can get a grounding in it.

Cheers
Aj

[dreadgeek]

Okay, let me clear up a misconception. I am not a teacher. I have thought about taking up 'the family business' but except for two stints, neither longer than a year and a half, have I taught as my job. I teach computer literacy classes--or did before I went back to school--but I'm not an educator. I wrestle with myself whether or not I will ever be an educator. My heart says yes, yes, yes. My very strong desire to eat says 'no, no, no'. Even at the university level (where I would want to teach) it is hard to find jobs with benefits nowadays--that is a powerful inducement *away* from teaching. Teaching in the public schools is pretty right-out for me. In many school districts teaching the subject of evolutionary biology--and I would teach biology if I taught anything in public schools--is just right out. In many more, one has to walk around the word saying everything BUT evolution. That would stay entertaining for me for all of about 10 minutes and then I would say something along the lines of "this is biology class. I wouldn't teach nor would I give serious time to astrology in an astronomy class and I'm not going to give it to creationism in a biology class for the same reasons." My time at that school would, at that point, be measured in days. If it were not for that, I would probably consider teaching at the high school level but there is that.

I hate to say it but I'll be honest, I don't *like* little kids enough to teach anything below high school. I liked my kid. I like my granddaughter (well, two year olds are hard NOT to like if you don't have to live with them all day...:) ). Other people's children? Not so much with the like.

What would I do? Having grown up with a professor of education, pedagogy was just in the air. I would move away from teaching to the test. I believe that if you have *standards* then you can, actually, assess within a reasonable level of approximation what a student knows by asking them to demonstrate that knowledge. For example, I presume that when I write about evolutionary biology I sound like I know what I'm talking about. When I have taught I could tell which students were getting it and which weren't simply by the questions they would ask (whether they spoke them in class, after class or called me over). But in order for something like that to work you have to have the emotional fortitude, as a teacher, to say that certain papers are well written and show knowledge of the subject and that research was clearly done (and documented) and certain papers do not. As long as there is any hint in the academy, at any level, that just turning in a paper--good, bad, incomprehensible--is sufficient for a student to feel good about themselves we'll have no choice BUT to teach to the test.

Don't get me started on educational issues, Rufusboi it is a passion of mine. I saw such a poignant example of the difference between the life of an educated man and the life of an uneducated man and the difference that it made in their children that I consider classrooms truly sacred spaces and teaching a vocation. Education almost but not quite rises to the level of a religion for me.

:)

Cheers
Aj


I agree that we need an educated and informed populace. You get no argument from me here. I will state, as a side note, that the founders envisioned a white male educated populace. So their definition of an educated populace wasn't that everyone needed to be educated, only certain people. It would be interesting to find out the percentage of the population that didn't know certain "givens" or "core knowledge" in 1800 versus today.

The concept of mass literacy is pretty new. I'm thinking late 1800s in Europe but it could have come about earlier in the US.

That brings me back to your next statement, and again, this is where we disagree. You think "many" (maybe this is where I got the "most" idea I had in my head) do not want to be either educated or informed. This is where we part ways. Maybe I am naive, maybe you are cynical. But I don't think "many" prefer being uneducated or uninformed. I think many are trying everyday to fix that in whatever way they can. Can I prove this? No. I can point to college enrollment stats, book purchasing stats, library card stats just as you can point to the same stats to make your argument.

The two links Msdemeanor provided were basically two opinions/intepretations of Neilson rating data. For me they showed and proved nothing. Just two writers giving me their interpretation of Neilsen data.

The stats you find tell you that people are wallowing in their ignorance and like it down there. The stats tell me that our education system is failing all of us. And cultivating cirtical thinking would put a pretty quick stop to the influence of "emotionally satisfying jingoism."

I don't know whether you teach in a public school, a private school, High school, or college (you mentioned business school) but as an educator, what are you going to do? How do we fix this lack of basic knowledge? And as an educator, why do you think people are ignorant and uninformed? To me, it goes a lot deeper than people just prefer being ignorant and uniformed.

Rufus

[Soon]

U.S. Supreme Court bolsters gun rights

Second Amendment applies to individuals, not just 18th-century militias, justices rule by 5-4 margin (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/us-supreme-court-bolsters-gun-rights/article1622154/)


Paul Koring
Washington — Globe and Mail Update
Published on Monday, Jun. 28, 2010 9:13PM EDT
Last updated on Monday, Jun. 28, 2010 9:27PM EDT

As with free speech, Americans have a fundamental right to own guns, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday, answering a centuries-old debate and threatening laws and regulations enacted by states and cities that outlaw handgun ownership or impose tight controls on assault weapons.

Concluding that citizens can own firearms for self-defence, Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, reasoned that the framers of the Constitution regarded “the right to keep and bear arms among those fundamental rights necessary to our system of ordered liberty.”

The landmark 5-4 ruling in the long and bitter battle over the meaning of the Second Amendment makes clear that individual citizens – not just 18th-century militias – have a Constitutional right to bear arms. It amounts to a major, albeit narrow, victory for gun-rights advocates, who have long argued that outlawing guns keeps them from law-abiding citizens while allowing armed criminals to run amok.

Wayne Lapierre, executive vice-president of the National Rifle Association, one of the most powerful lobby groups in the United States, called the decision “a great moment in American history,” but warned that the ruling will prove worthless unless it is enforced.

“I'm a practical guy. I don't want to win on philosophy and lose on freedom,” he said. “What good is a right without the gun?” he added, calling for the courts to roll back laws that make gun ownership difficult. “Here's a piece of paper – protect yourself. That's no right at all.”

Gun-control advocates warned the ruling will result in more bloodshed.

“People will die because of this decision,” said Kristen Rand of the Violence Policy Center. “It is a victory only for the gun lobby and America's fading firearms industry.”

Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, the largest anti-firearms lobby in the United States, said the decision still allows for reasonable limits on gun ownership.

“The Second Amendment individual right to possess guns in the home for self-defence does not prevent our elected representatives from enacting common-sense gun laws to protect our communities from gun violence,” he said in a statement.

The “gun lobby argument that its ‘any gun, for anybody, anywhere’ agenda is protected by the Constitution” was rejected by the Supreme Court, Mr. Helmke added.

The ruling sparked an immediate debate over its practical consequences. A host of challenges to local and state laws are expected. But whether gun-control laws can be redrafted to avoid infringing on what the court has ruled is an individual right may take years to become clear.

The ruling means “the Second Amendment joins other provisions of the Bill of Rights that are routinely enforced against both federal and state infringements,” Glenn Harlan Reynolds, the Beauchamp Brogan distinguished professor of law at the University of Tennessee, wrote in an online discussion at a New York Times blog of contributing experts.

“It may wind up being protected fairly well – as, say, First Amendment speech rights generally are – or poorly, as Fourth Amendment rights against search and seizure often are, but it is now a full-fledged part of the Bill of Rights, not a neglected stepchild.”

Five of the court’s nine judges wrote opinions in the case. Perhaps second only to abortion, gun control and the right to bear arms remains the most divisive and hotly contested issue in the United States.

More than 60,000 people are shot annually in the United States, many of them family members shot accidentally or in domestic disputes in households with legally owned and licensed firearms. But thousands of others are shot in violent and drug-ridden urban slums, often with illegal guns.

The court did not rule on the constitutionality of Chicago’s handgun ban – one of the nation’s toughest. Instead the decision sent the Chicago ban back to the lower courts to decide whether it conforms with the ruling.

“The reasons that motivated the framers to protect the ability of militiamen to keep muskets available for military use when our nation was in its infancy .... have only a limited bearing on the question that confronts the homeowner in a crime-infested metropolis today,” wrote one of the four dissenting judges, Justice John Paul Stevens, in his last opinion. He retired Monday.

The Supreme Court ruling was made on a challenge to a Chicago law that severely limits handgun ownership. Despite “doomsday proclamations, [the court’s decision] does not imperil every law regulating firearms,” Judge Alito wrote, adding that many jurisdictions already have reasonable laws keeping guns out of the hands of convicted criminals and the mentally ill and banning them from places such as schools and civic buildings.

For centuries, the meaning of the Constitution’s oddly worded Second Amendment has been hotly debated as to the intent of the framers. “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

Proponents of gun control contend it was intended to allow for militias comprised of a largely rural citizenry of farmers to keep weapons. The Supreme Court upheld the opposing view – that the Second Amendment means that every citizen has the right to own firearms.

Judge Alito, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas comprised the majority.

Judge Stephens and Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor were opposed.

[Delish]

http://www.9wsyr.com/news/local/story/Police-arrest-man-suspected-of-throwing-dog-from/KGTEwCqckUGcHrJjJPGy4g.cspx

[Gemme]

http://www.9wsyr.com/news/local/story/Police-arrest-man-suspected-of-throwing-dog-from/KGTEwCqckUGcHrJjJPGy4g.cspx

Oh, the poor baby! Someone needs to throw that guy out of a window. Okay, no, that's not nice, but still.... *shakes head*

[Kätzchen]

>>> Tens of thousands take to the streets in Athens, Greece <<<

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,5740483,00.html?maca=en-newsletter_en_Newsline-2356-txt-nl


"Violent clashes have broken out between demonstrators and police on the streets of the Greek capital, Athens, as some 10,000 people took to streets to protest the government’s austerity measures intended to address Greece’s debt crisis."

[Greyson]

http://www.9wsyr.com/news/local/story/Police-arrest-man-suspected-of-throwing-dog-from/KGTEwCqckUGcHrJjJPGy4g.cspx


Interesting. An innocent living thing, the dog was used to incite fear, the illusion of control over the dog's guardian, owner? I feel horrible about what happened to this dog but I also think we as a community should consciously take note of this act of violence against a woman. All of this madness is grounded in Domestic Violence. Somewhere along the way, our society has given a tacit nod in acceptance of this sort of behavior.

[Greyson]

I suspected it would only be a matter of moments before someone on this judicial panel would somehow imply that Kagan's judicial philosophy was tarnished by her mentee/mentor relationship with Thurgood Marshall. So many inuendos, code words, so little time. Paleezee.
______________________________________________


June 29, 2010


STATEMENT FROM NAACP LDF ON
SENATE ATTACKS ON THURGOOD MARSHALL


(Washington, DC) - During the Senate confirmation hearings of Elena Kagan to be Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, several Senators have disparaged Justice Thurgood Marshall, his judicial philosophy, and his connection to Elena Kagan, who once clerked for Justice Marshall. In response to these attacks, NAACP LDF Director-Counsel John Payton issues the following statement:

"Thurgood Marshall changed our country dramatically for the better. Astonishingly, Elena Kagan is being attacked by certain members of the Senate Judiciary Committee because she says her mentor was Thurgood Marshall. She could not have had a better mentor.

Here is what is undisputed: In the middle decades of the twentieth century, Thurgood Marshall was a leader of those forces whose faith in the Constitution and the American Dream dismantled the perverse empire of Jim Crow - with its separate and unequal schools and colleges, its rigidly segregated neighborhoods, and its profoundly unequal opportunity in every sector of American life. As the founder of LDF, Thurgood Marshall helped America understand what democracy really means; and he continued to expound that exalted vision as a Justice of the Supreme Court.

It is a disservice to the Senate and to the nation to have some, for the sake of hollow posturing, distort Thurgood Marshall's beliefs and his extraordinary contribution to our understanding of justice and equality. Simply put, Thurgood Marshall helped make our union more perfect, and that legacy illuminates the highest possibilities for all Americans yesterday, today and tomorrow."

[Toughy]

I expected they would go after Justice Marshall......so no big surprise to me. Those old white guys are racist to their core and only like black folks like what's his name....crap I really can't remember his name....google is my friend..........Justice Thomas who has the brains of a tadpole and has never asked one question in his time on the Court.

The only activist Judges they like are the right wing ultra-conservative ones........4 of the 5 most conservative Justices ever are sitting on the Supreme Court right now.

[AtLast]

I expected they would go after Justice Marshall......so no big surprise to me. Those old white guys are racist to their core and only like black folks like what's his name....crap I really can't remember his name....google is my friend..........Justice Thomas who has the brains of a tadpole and has never asked one question in his time on the Court.

The only activist Judges they like are the right wing ultra-conservative ones........4 of the 5 most conservative Justices ever are sitting on the Supreme Court right now.

Yes, to be expected. And I am now thinking that after Kagan is in, Bader Ginsburg will soon retire, or pass away. There is hope! Although, Obama will again go for the middle.

Argh... Justice Thomas is an idiot as well as a sexual predator. So many other African Americans would have been better, even if ultra-conservative. mental giant, he is not.

Of course Kagan and the DADT history has been at the GOP epicenter of questioning. I liked that she just said she still stood firmly with her decision on that.... period.

Someone please help me not try to reach in the TV and grab Sessions by the neck....

[Andrew, Jr.]

Should retirement age be raised and benefits cut for the wealthy? A question being asked on CNN today.

[Corkey]

Should retirement age be raised and benefits cut for the wealthy? A question being asked on CNN today.


The question was raised by Boenner (sp) a Republican asshat who wants to keep his money, benefits, and deny others theirs.

[Andrew, Jr.]

Thanks Corkey. I couldn't quite get it out. I can't find my Actos and my sugar is outta wack. It wasn't CNN but HLN. They are asking the public to call in, or email them with their opinions.

[Toughy]

What Boner (fake spray tan man) said was that he thought the retirement age should be raised to 70 because we live longer now......

seriously that is what he said......

I want corporate welfare to end. I want folks who are millionaires and billionaires paying 35% in income tax with NO deductions period. I pay more in taxes than the richest 5 men in this country.....most of them end up not paying ANY...ZERO.....taxes.

[dreadgeek]

The question was raised by Boenner (sp) a Republican asshat who wants to keep his money, benefits, and deny others theirs.

You know, here's the thing. I wouldn't mind being asked to work until 70 or 75 (which I plan on doing anyway) to buy the Baby Boom generation some time with Social Security and Medicare I would be happy to do so. I'm 43, it is not unreasonable for me to expect to be capable of working into my seventies. In fact, my 'third act' career plan--for which I am getting my degree(s) now--actually is predicated on me having another 20 to 25 years of work *after* I get out of school in 2014 or 2015.

In fact, I wish that the President would ask that of my generation because that would buy Social Security and Medicare the time they need to recover from the big hit the preceding generation is going to give it. But NOT for the war. Also, I think that this should only apply to people born AFTER 1965. If you are within 15 years of retirement, it would be inhumane to ask that of you but for those of us who have two decades before retirement now, what is another decade?

Cheers
Aj

[Corkey]

You know, here's the thing. I wouldn't mind being asked to work until 70 or 75 (which I plan on doing anyway) to buy the Baby Boom generation some time with Social Security and Medicare I would be happy to do so. I'm 43, it is not unreasonable for me to expect to be capable of working into my seventies. In fact, my 'third act' career plan--for which I am getting my degree(s) now--actually is predicated on me having another 20 to 25 years of work *after* I get out of school in 2014 or 2015.

In fact, I wish that the President would ask that of my generation because that would buy Social Security and Medicare the time they need to recover from the big hit the preceding generation is going to give it. But NOT for the war. Also, I think that this should only apply to people born AFTER 1965. If you are within 15 years of retirement, it would be inhumane to ask that of you but for those of us who have two decades before retirement now, what is another decade?

Cheers
Aj

I can agree to a point with this AJ, but I also was promised 65 was the year I could retire. Now that I'm disabled it isn't an issue, but when one works all their adult life, with the agreement that in their senior years they can retire and enjoy what is left, then a senator who has absolutely no idea what it is to work long hard hours as in construction, or as a shrimper and other jobs that traditionally don't have any benefits attached to them in pensions, asks hard working folks to go another 5 years, it irks me to no end. I can't see asking these folks to work till they are 70. If one is able, and doesn't have a job that can potentially cripple them just in doing the job then I can see it. But to require it of all, um no. I do think it should be voluntary, with no penalty if one has to retire sooner due to their health.

[Delish]

http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2010/06/30/Castro_Shooting_Suspect_Cleared/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AdvocatecomDailyNews+%28Advoc ate.com+Daily+News%29&utm_content=FaceBook

[Delish]

http://extratv.warnerbros.com/2010/06/larry_king_i_want_ryan_seacrest_to_replace_me.php? adid=063010_newsletter_rightnow_larry_king_i_want_ ryan_seacrest_to_replace_me

[Greyson]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100701/ap_on_re_eu/eu_nordics_gay_leader/print


Icelandic leader in milestone gay marriage

Louise Nordstrom, Associated Press Writer


STOCKHOLM – Iceland's prime minister made history last week when she wed her girlfriend, becoming the world's first head of government to enter a gay marriage.

But fellow Nordic nations hardly noticed when 67-year-old Johanna Sigurdardottir tied the knot with her longtime partner — a milestone that would still, despite advances in gay rights, be all but inconceivable elsewhere.

Scandinavia has had a long tradition of tolerance — and cross-dressing lawmakers and gay bishops have become part of the landscape.

"There is some kind of passion for social justice here," respected cross-dressing Swedish lawmaker Fredrick Federley said. "That everybody should be treated the same."

Gay rights activists said Europe in general has a better record on accepting gays at the highest levels of government than the United States.

"In the current climate of U.S. public opinion it is impossible to imagine a U.S. president who is openly gay and who marries their longtime partner," said Peter Tatchell, spokesman for the London-based gay human rights group Outrage.

"In Europe the reaction is completely different — people just don't care."

Although no openly gay American has made a potentially winning run for president, gay men and lesbians have made significant advances in recent years in winning other elected offices in the United States, often while being open about their same-sex partners.

In Europe, the situation varies.

Several top-level politicians are openly gay, including Sweden's Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren and Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe, considered a possible contender for the 2012 presidential elections.

But a gay head of government would be impossible in strong Catholic nations.

"We will never see a gay prime minister in Italy. The power of the Catholic Church is too strong," said Giuseppina Massallo, 60, from Sicily who lives in Rome. "We have institutions that make us believe that ... being homosexual is simply not the right thing to do."

The 32-year-old Federley occasionally swaps his parliamentary suit and tie for heavy makeup and revealing dresses as drag queen Ursula. Federley has been openly gay for nine years and his sexual identity has never been an issue in politics.

His cross-dressing only hit the headlines when critics in February questioned which Federley accepted an alleged media junket to the Canary Islands: Fredrik the lawmaker or Ursula the drag queen?

Gays in politics would be inconceivable in Africa, where 37 countries have anti-gay laws and where Zimbabwe's leader Robert Mugabe has described same-sex partners as "lower than dogs and pigs."

Ugandans were shocked to hear of Sigurdardottir's marriage to her partner with whom she had been in a registered relationship since 2002. The partnership was converted into a marriage on Sunday, when a new law legalizing same-sex marriage went into force. The Icelandic leader has two adult children from a previous marriage.

"Their society is finished, they have no morals," said Uganda's ruling-party spokeswoman, Mary Karooro Okurutu, described the marriage as "disgusting."

The East African nation frowns on homosexuality and is considering proposed legislation that would impose the death penalty for some gays. The bill has sparked protests in London, New York and Washington.

The Nordic countries have been at the forefront of gay freedoms.

In 1989, Denmark became the first country in the world to allow registered gay partnerships and Sweden's Lutheran church last year ordained its first openly gay bishop.

All five Nordic nations reached top-ten rankings in a 2010 study of the legal situation for lesbian, gay and bisexual people in Europe.

Even Finland, the remotest country in the region, which has been slower than its neighbors in adapting to Scandinavian lifestyle trends scored six out of 10 points.

Russia and Ukraine both received bottom-rankings in the 2010 Rainbow Europe index by ILGA-Europe, a non-governmental umbrella organization representing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender groups.

Even in the neighboring Baltic countries that have a long history of dealings with the Nordics, gay tolerance is generally low.

Same-sex marriages are not legal and are generally frowned upon in Estonia, Latvia and particularly in predominantly Catholic Lithuania.

Gay pride marches in Latvia and Lithuania typically attract crowds of angry counter-demonstrators far larger than the marches themselves.

Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip concedes he is "somewhat conservative" on the question of gay marriages.

"I consider marriage a holy matrimony between a man and a woman," Ansip said Wednesday. "But I do fully accept that same-sex partners possess the same kind of legal guarantees as registered marriages currently do."

[AtLast]

You know, here's the thing. I wouldn't mind being asked to work until 70 or 75 (which I plan on doing anyway) to buy the Baby Boom generation some time with Social Security and Medicare I would be happy to do so. I'm 43, it is not unreasonable for me to expect to be capable of working into my seventies. In fact, my 'third act' career plan--for which I am getting my degree(s) now--actually is predicated on me having another 20 to 25 years of work *after* I get out of school in 2014 or 2015.

In fact, I wish that the President would ask that of my generation because that would buy Social Security and Medicare the time they need to recover from the big hit the preceding generation is going to give it. But NOT for the war. Also, I think that this should only apply to people born AFTER 1965. If you are within 15 years of retirement, it would be inhumane to ask that of you but for those of us who have two decades before retirement now, what is another decade?

Cheers
Aj

I certainly wish you those years of employment. However, not everyone can do this as disabled people, etc. We live longer and in most cases, much stronger and healthier, but not everyone. Things happen to people, we never really know what is around a corner.

I'm in this generation and paid my dues along the way so that generations ahead of me had a solvent SS system (although, one needs other retirement planning as well). Glad to do so. I am not just a little tired of hearing about how younger generations should not be saddled with this. Then, again, I view this system in a more global manner in terms of a society taking responsibility for it's elders during modern times. The US is youth oriented and does not hold elders in esteem in general. But, that is for another thread.

I continue to pay property taxes and other taxes that support education and other services needed by people younger than myself. Glad to do this, too. It isn't like one hits retirement and is not taxed in ways that support younger people. Frankly, I would like to see my tax dollars be going for the things that really do help younger generations build a future, such as education.

I guess I also feel that retirement ought to be an individual choice with preparation.

Now, I am about 3 years from actually being able to draw my SS (at 62), then Medi-Care at 65 (and will continue to pay for supplemental health insurance). I am not just a little pissed with people wanting to mess with what I worked for. Yes, I have other forms of income, but many do not and no matter how healthy one is, age does bring on health issues and expenses.

[Nat]

Doctor Treating Pregnant Women With Experimental Drug To Prevent Lesbianism

Two weeks ago, Time magazine reported on our ongoing efforts to protect the rights of pregnant women offered dexamethasone, a risky Class C steroid aimed at female fetuses that may have a form of congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH). It appears many women and children exposed to dexamethasone through this off-label use are not being enrolled in controlled clinical trials with IRB oversight, in spite of a persistent consensus among experts that this is the only way this treatment should be happening.

We have learned that, this August, the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism will publish an expert consensus again stating this use of prenatal dexamethasone should only happen via IRB-approved clinical trials through research centers large enough to obtain meaningful data. An announcement of the consensus came at the Endocrine Society’s meeting in San Diego last week (and an earlier version is available here).

This consensus has been endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Lawson Wilkins Pediatric Endocrine Society, the European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology, the European Society of Endocrinology, the Society of Pediatric Urology, the Androgen Excess and PCOS Society, and the CARES Foundation. It was reached after review of the existing literature and consultation with researchers indicated significant cause for concern, including the fact that most of the children treated prenatally have been absent from follow-up studies.

The majority of researchers and clinicians interested in the use of prenatal “dex” focus on preventing development of ambiguous genitalia in girls with CAH. CAH results in an excess of androgens prenatally, and this can lead to a “masculinizing” of a female fetus’s genitals. One group of researchers, however, seems to be suggesting that prenatal dex also might prevent affected girls from turning out to be homosexual or bisexual.

Pediatric endocrinologist Maria New, of Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Florida International University, and her long-time collaborator, psychologist Heino F. L. Meyer-Bahlburg, of Columbia University, have been tracing evidence for the influence of prenatal androgens in sexual orientation. In a paper entitled “Sexual Orientation in Women with Classical or Non-Classical Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia as a Function of Degree of Prenatal Androgen Excess” published in 2008 in Archives of Sexual Behavior, Meyer-Bahlburg and New (with two others) gather evidence of “a dose-response relationship of androgens with sexual orientation” through a study of women with various forms of CAH.

They specifically point to reasons to believe that it is prenatal androgens that have an impact on the development of sexual orientation. The authors write, "Most women were heterosexual, but the rates of bisexual and homosexual orientation were increased above controls . . . and correlated with the degree of prenatal androgenization.”

They go on to suggest that the work might offer some insight into the influence of prenatal hormones on the development of sexual orientation in general. “That this may apply also to sexual orientation in at least a subgroup of women is suggested by the fact that earlier research has repeatedly shown that about one-third of homosexual women have (modestly) increased levels of androgens.” They “conclude that the findings support a sexual-differentiation perspective involving prenatal androgens on the development of sexual orientation.”

And it isn’t just that many women with CAH have a lower interest, compared to other women, in having sex with men. In another paper entitled “What Causes Low Rates of Child-Bearing in Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia?” Meyer-Bahlburg writes that “CAH women as a group have a lower interest than controls in getting married and performing the traditional child-care/housewife role. As children, they show an unusually low interest in engaging in maternal play with baby dolls, and their interest in caring for infants, the frequency of daydreams or fantasies of pregnancy and motherhood, or the expressed wish of experiencing pregnancy and having children of their own appear to be relatively low in all age groups.”

In the same article, Meyer-Bahlburg suggests that treatments with prenatal dexamethasone might cause these girls’ behavior to be closer to the expectation of heterosexual norms: “Long term follow-up studies of the behavioral outcome will show whether dexamethasone treatment also prevents the effects of prenatal androgens on brain and behavior.”

In a paper published just this year in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, New and her colleague, pediatric endocrinologist Saroj Nimkarn of Weill Cornell Medical College, go further, constructing low interest in babies and men – and even interest in what they consider to be men’s occupations and games – as “abnormal,” and potentially preventable with prenatal dex:

“Gender-related behaviors, namely childhood play, peer association, career and leisure time preferences in adolescence and adulthood, maternalism, aggression, and sexual orientation become masculinized in 46,XX girls and women with 21OHD deficiency [CAH]. These abnormalities have been attributed to the effects of excessive prenatal androgen levels on the sexual differentiation of the brain and later on behavior.” Nimkarn and New continue: “We anticipate that prenatal dexamethasone therapy will reduce the well-documented behavioral masculinization . . .”

It seems more than a little ironic to have New, one of the first women pediatric endocrinologists and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, constructing women who go into “men’s” fields as “abnormal.” And yet it appears that New is suggesting that the “prevention” of “behavioral masculinization” is a benefit of treatment to parents with whom she speaks about prenatal dex. In a 2001 presentation to the CARES Foundation (a videotape of which we have), New seemed to suggest to parents that one of the goals of treatment of girls with CAH is to turn them into wives and mothers. Showing a slide of the ambiguous genitals of a girl with CAH, New told the assembled parents:

“The challenge here is . . . to see what could be done to restore this baby to the normal female appearance which would be compatible with her parents presenting her as a girl, with her eventually becoming somebody’s wife, and having normal sexual development, and becoming a mother. And she has all the machinery for motherhood, and therefore nothing should stop that, if we can repair her surgically and help her psychologically to continue to grow and develop as a girl.”

In the Q&A period, during a discussion of prenatal dex treatments, an audience member asked New, “Isn’t there a benefit to the female babies in terms of reducing the androgen effects on the brain?” New answered, “You know, when the babies who have been treated with dex prenatally get to an age in which they are sexually active, I’ll be able to answer that question.” At that point, she’ll know if they are interested in taking men and making babies.

In a previous Bioethics Forum post, Alice Dreger noted an instance of a prospective father using knowledge of the fraternal birth order effect to try to avoid having a gay son by a surrogate pregnancy. There may be other individualized instances of parents trying to ensure heterosexual children before birth. But the use of prenatal dexamethasone treatments for CAH represents, to our knowledge, the first systematic medical effort attached to a “paradigm” of attempting in utero to reduce rates of homosexuality, bisexuality, and “low maternal interest.”

Researchers working on an interesting project tend to suggest how their work could have broader implications. This is no exception: the 2008 paper by Meyer-Bahlburg et al hints that variation in sexual orientation beyond the population of girls with CAH might also be partly explainable through prenatal androgen exposure. Such reasoning could lead to the pursuit of other “screening” and “treatment” methods for manipulating intrauterine environments.

While everyone has been busy watching geneticists at the frontier of the brave new world, none of us seem to have noticed what some pediatricians are up to. Perhaps it is because so many people are fascinated by the idea of a “gay gene” that prenatal “lesbian hormones” have slipped past public scrutiny. In any case, we think Nimkarn and New’s “paradigm for prenatal diagnosis and treatment” suggests a reason why activists for gay and lesbian rights should be wary of believing that claims for the innateness of homosexuality will lead to liberation. Evidence that homosexual orientation is inborn could, instead, very well lead to new means of pathologization and prevention, as it seems to be in the case we’ve been tracking.

Needless to say, we do not think it reasonable or just to use medicine to try to prevent homosexual and bisexual orientations. Nor do we think it reasonable to use medicine to prevent uppity women, like the sort who might raise just these kinds of alarms. Consider that our declaration of our conflict of interest.

Alice Dreger is a professor of clinical medical humanities and bioethics at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. Ellen K. Feder is an associate professor and acting chair of American University’s Department of Philosophy and Religion. Anne Tamar-Mattis, an attorney, is the executive director of Advocates for Informed Choice, which employs legal advocacy to support the rights of children with intersex conditions or disorders of sex development.



Read more: http://www.thehastingscenter.org/Bioethicsforum/Post.aspx?id=4754&blogid=140#ixzz0sU0BA0dy

[Blaze]

Reflecting off of Nat posting, this was on our news tonight also. Things that make you go hmmmm.

Can homosexuality be prevented in the womb?

Updated at 04:38 PM today
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HOUSTON (KTRK) -- Can homosexuality be prevented in the womb? The first known experiment to do just that is underway and it's stirring controversy.

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A group of New York clinicians is gearing this prenatal treatment toward girls and women with a condition called congenital adrenal hyperplasia. CAH is a serious hormonal disruption that sometimes results in ambiguous genitalia.
Previous research has shown that females born with CAH have increased rates of tomboyism and lesbianism. A steroid called dexamethasone, or DEX, has shown some success in preventing this. It's why researchers in this study believe it has promise in preventing girls from turning out to be homosexual or bisexual.
(Copyright ©2010 KTRK-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.)

[Softhearted]

source: http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2008/05/28/how-do-american-journalists-cover-medicine-not-well/

"How Do American Journalists Cover Medicine? Not Very Well

By Scott Hensley
Journalist, heal thyself.

When it comes to covering the medical news of the day, journalists could do a much better job.

An independent analysis of 500 stories about medical topics by major consumer print and broadcast outlets in the U.S. found “journalists usually fail to discuss costs, the quality of the evidence, the existence of alternative options, and the absolute magnitude of potential benefits and harms.”

The findings from 22 months of media scrutiny appear in the current issue of PLoS Medicine. The work was done by HealthNewsReview.org, which started looking over our shoulder in April 2006.

Here’s a table from the PLoS paper that catalogs our shortcomings:

(sorry, the image did not want to download... argh!!!)

As self-respecting journalists, we asked who’s behind this schoolmarmish outfit and how do they do what they do? The reviewers are a bunch of doctors and public health types, and their painstaking process for deciding how vigorously to wag fingers at us is described here.

A reformed journalist named Gary Schwitzer, author of the PLoS paper, serves as the third reviewer of each piece. He’s also publisher of the reviews, a professor of journalism at the University of Minnesota, and, gasp, a blogger. Maybe that makes him a peer reviewer?

What about funding, you ask? Any hidden agenda? A-ha! All this journalistic second-guessing can be laid at that feet of that dastardly quality guru Jack Wennberg from Dartmouth. The financial support for the graders comes from the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making, founded in 1989 by Wennberg and colleagues.

Bonus Prescription: What can be done? A PLoS editorial that accompanies Schwitzer’s paper calls the findings “a wake-up call for all of us involved in disseminating health research—researchers, academic institutions, journal editors, reporters, and media organizations—to work collaboratively to improve the standards of health reporting.”


Another article:
source: http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2009/05/04/academic-medical-centers-often-guilty-of-research-hype/

"Academic Medical Centers Often Guilty of Research Hype

By Sarah Rubenstein
The media may be guilty of exaggerating the results of medical studies, but academic medical centers that hype the results aren’t blameless themselves.

A piece out in the Annals of Internal Medicine takes a look at press releases that academic medical centers sent out about their research, examining such details as whether they gave information on the studies’ size, hard results numbers and cautions about how solid the results are and what they mean. The conclusion: The press releases “often promote research that has uncertain relevance to human health and do not provide key facts or acknowledge important limitations.”

The authors, led by Steven Woloshin and Lisa Schwartz of Dartmouth, looked at releases from EurekAlert issued by 20 academic medical centers and their affiliates in 2005. (EurekAlert compiles many press releases and sends them to journalists.) The researchers found that 58 out of 200 releases, or 29%, exaggerated the findings’ importance.

Exaggeration was more common in releases about animal studies than human studies. Out of the 200 releases, 195 included quotes from the scientific investigators: 26% of them were “judged to overstate research importance,” the authors write.

One example they cite: A release from the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah that had to do with a study of mice with skin cancer and was titled, “Scientists inhibit cancer gene.” It quotes the lead investigator, Matthew Topham, saying that the “implication is that a drug therapy could be developed to reduce tumors caused by Ras without significant side effects.” This was an exaggeration, the Dartmouth folks write, because “neither treatment efficacy nor tolerability in humans was assessed.”

We put in a call to Topham, who told us he thought the critique itself was an exaggeration. Though he acknowledged the release could have explicitly said the results wouldn’t necessarily be the same in humans, “we were very careful to say we had done this in mice.” The word “implication” used in the press release “suggests that we have not done anything in humans,” he says, adding he assumed it was common knowledge that animal results don’t always translate into human results.

The authors of the Annals piece didn’t look at how often exaggerated press releases actually resulted in exaggerated news reports. However, they wrote, “We believe that academic centers contribute to poor media coverage and are forgoing an opportunity to help journalists do better.”

Woloshin and Schwartz have written before about medical research and the media, including another piece about flawed press releases from medical journals and one about news reports that “often omit basic study facts and cautions” about research presentations at scientific meetings. They’re not the only ones who make a case that journalists don’t cover medicine very well."

Even if these articles date a few years back, I doubt that the situation has changed much.

[Toughy]

Doctor Treating Pregnant Women With Experimental Drug To Prevent Lesbianism

<big ole snip>

Read more: http://www.thehastingscenter.org/Bioethicsforum/Post.aspx?id=4754&blogid=140#ixzz0sU0BA0dy

Here is a thread about this:
http://www.butchfemmeplanet.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1682

[AtLast]

This is just plain scary!!! Think about the folks that would want to do this!

What is fascinating on the other side of the coin is that this could actually be data supporting homosexuality as being determined biologically- something many (as in qeer hating wing-nuts) do not want to believe.

Doctor Treating Pregnant Women With Experimental Drug To Prevent Lesbianism

Two weeks ago, Time magazine reported on our ongoing efforts to protect the rights of pregnant women offered dexamethasone, a risky Class C steroid aimed at female fetuses that may have a form of congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH). It appears many women and children exposed to dexamethasone through this off-label use are not being enrolled in controlled clinical trials with IRB oversight, in spite of a persistent consensus among experts that this is the only way this treatment should be happening.

We have learned that, this August, the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism will publish an expert consensus again stating this use of prenatal dexamethasone should only happen via IRB-approved clinical trials through research centers large enough to obtain meaningful data. An announcement of the consensus came at the Endocrine Society’s meeting in San Diego last week (and an earlier version is available here).

This consensus has been endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Lawson Wilkins Pediatric Endocrine Society, the European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology, the European Society of Endocrinology, the Society of Pediatric Urology, the Androgen Excess and PCOS Society, and the CARES Foundation. It was reached after review of the existing literature and consultation with researchers indicated significant cause for concern, including the fact that most of the children treated prenatally have been absent from follow-up studies.

The majority of researchers and clinicians interested in the use of prenatal “dex” focus on preventing development of ambiguous genitalia in girls with CAH. CAH results in an excess of androgens prenatally, and this can lead to a “masculinizing” of a female fetus’s genitals. One group of researchers, however, seems to be suggesting that prenatal dex also might prevent affected girls from turning out to be homosexual or bisexual. Pediatric endocrinologist Maria New, of Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Florida International University, and her long-time collaborator, psychologist Heino F. L. Meyer-Bahlburg, of Columbia University, have been tracing evidence for the influence of prenatal androgens in sexual orientation. In a paper entitled “Sexual Orientation in Women with Classical or Non-Classical Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia as a Function of Degree of Prenatal Androgen Excess” published in 2008 in Archives of Sexual Behavior, Meyer-Bahlburg and New (with two others) gather evidence of “a dose-response relationship of androgens with sexual orientation” through a study of women with various forms of CAH.

They specifically point to reasons to believe that it is prenatal androgens that have an impact on the development of sexual orientation. The authors write, "Most women were heterosexual, but the rates of bisexual and homosexual orientation were increased above controls . . . and correlated with the degree of prenatal androgenization.”

They go on to suggest that the work might offer some insight into the influence of prenatal hormones on the development of sexual orientation in general. “That this may apply also to sexual orientation in at least a subgroup of women is suggested by the fact that earlier research has repeatedly shown that about one-third of homosexual women have (modestly) increased levels of androgens.” They “conclude that the findings support a sexual-differentiation perspective involving prenatal androgens on the development of sexual orientation.”

And it isn’t just that many women with CAH have a lower interest, compared to other women, in having sex with men. In another paper entitled “What Causes Low Rates of Child-Bearing in Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia?” Meyer-Bahlburg writes that “CAH women as a group have a lower interest than controls in getting married and performing the traditional child-care/housewife role. As children, they show an unusually low interest in engaging in maternal play with baby dolls, and their interest in caring for infants, the frequency of daydreams or fantasies of pregnancy and motherhood, or the expressed wish of experiencing pregnancy and having children of their own appear to be relatively low in all age groups.”

In the same article, Meyer-Bahlburg suggests that treatments with prenatal dexamethasone might cause these girls’ behavior to be closer to the expectation of heterosexual norms: “Long term follow-up studies of the behavioral outcome will show whether dexamethasone treatment also prevents the effects of prenatal androgens on brain and behavior.”

In a paper published just this year in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, New and her colleague, pediatric endocrinologist Saroj Nimkarn of Weill Cornell Medical College, go further, constructing low interest in babies and men – and even interest in what they consider to be men’s occupations and games – as “abnormal,” and potentially preventable with prenatal dex:

“Gender-related behaviors, namely childhood play, peer association, career and leisure time preferences in adolescence and adulthood, maternalism, aggression, and sexual orientation become masculinized in 46,XX girls and women with 21OHD deficiency [CAH]. These abnormalities have been attributed to the effects of excessive prenatal androgen levels on the sexual differentiation of the brain and later on behavior.” Nimkarn and New continue: “We anticipate that prenatal dexamethasone therapy will reduce the well-documented behavioral masculinization . . .”

It seems more than a little ironic to have New, one of the first women pediatric endocrinologists and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, constructing women who go into “men’s” fields as “abnormal.” And yet it appears that New is suggesting that the “prevention” of “behavioral masculinization” is a benefit of treatment to parents with whom she speaks about prenatal dex. In a 2001 presentation to the CARES Foundation (a videotape of which we have), New seemed to suggest to parents that one of the goals of treatment of girls with CAH is to turn them into wives and mothers. Showing a slide of the ambiguous genitals of a girl with CAH, New told the assembled parents:

“The challenge here is . . . to see what could be done to restore this baby to the normal female appearance which would be compatible with her parents presenting her as a girl, with her eventually becoming somebody’s wife, and having normal sexual development, and becoming a mother. And she has all the machinery for motherhood, and therefore nothing should stop that, if we can repair her surgically and help her psychologically to continue to grow and develop as a girl.”

In the Q&A period, during a discussion of prenatal dex treatments, an audience member asked New, “Isn’t there a benefit to the female babies in terms of reducing the androgen effects on the brain?” New answered, “You know, when the babies who have been treated with dex prenatally get to an age in which they are sexually active, I’ll be able to answer that question.” At that point, she’ll know if they are interested in taking men and making babies.

In a previous Bioethics Forum post, Alice Dreger noted an instance of a prospective father using knowledge of the fraternal birth order effect to try to avoid having a gay son by a surrogate pregnancy. There may be other individualized instances of parents trying to ensure heterosexual children before birth. But the use of prenatal dexamethasone treatments for CAH represents, to our knowledge, the first systematic medical effort attached to a “paradigm” of attempting in utero to reduce rates of homosexuality, bisexuality, and “low maternal interest.”

Researchers working on an interesting project tend to suggest how their work could have broader implications. This is no exception: the 2008 paper by Meyer-Bahlburg et al hints that variation in sexual orientation beyond the population of girls with CAH might also be partly explainable through prenatal androgen exposure. Such reasoning could lead to the pursuit of other “screening” and “treatment” methods for manipulating intrauterine environments.

While everyone has been busy watching geneticists at the frontier of the brave new world, none of us seem to have noticed what some pediatricians are up to. Perhaps it is because so many people are fascinated by the idea of a “gay gene” that prenatal “lesbian hormones” have slipped past public scrutiny. In any case, we think Nimkarn and New’s “paradigm for prenatal diagnosis and treatment” suggests a reason why activists for gay and lesbian rights should be wary of believing that claims for the innateness of homosexuality will lead to liberation. Evidence that homosexual orientation is inborn could, instead, very well lead to new means of pathologization and prevention, as it seems to be in the case we’ve been tracking.

Needless to say, we do not think it reasonable or just to use medicine to try to prevent homosexual and bisexual orientations. Nor do we think it reasonable to use medicine to prevent uppity women, like the sort who might raise just these kinds of alarms. Consider that our declaration of our conflict of interest.

Alice Dreger is a professor of clinical medical humanities and bioethics at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. Ellen K. Feder is an associate professor and acting chair of American University’s Department of Philosophy and Religion. Anne Tamar-Mattis, an attorney, is the executive director of Advocates for Informed Choice, which employs legal advocacy to support the rights of children with intersex conditions or disorders of sex development.



Read more: http://www.thehastingscenter.org/Bioethicsforum/Post.aspx?id=4754&blogid=140#ixzz0sU0BA0dy

[Nat]

This is just plain scary!!! Think about the folks that would want to do this!

What is fascinating on the other side of the coin is that this could actually be data supporting homosexuality as being determined biologically- something many (as in qeer hating wing-nuts) do not want to believe.

If the way we are different is a choice, we are immoral sinners going straight to hell. If the way we are different is biological, we can be eradicated through science.

[AtLast]

If the way we are different is a choice, we are immoral sinners going straight to hell. If the way we are different is biological, we can be eradicated through science.

Guess they have it covered.... ARGH!

[MsDemeanor]

If the way we are different is biological, we can be eradicated through science.
You glass half empty people *shaking head*. If it is biological, science can make MORE of us!!!!

[MsDemeanor]

Oregon gets it - at least the Democrats do. The usual suspects - those pro-business anti-people Republicans - voted against the bill.
New (Oregon) law prohibits credit history checks by most employers


linkyloo (http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2010/06/new_law_prohibits_credit_check.html)

[dreadgeek]

I wasn't sure whether or not to put this in the news thread or the political mythbusting thread but since no one here has (yet) said that the Afghanistan war is one that Obama chose, it'll go here.

See below:

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele expressed an unusual interpretation of the relationship between Barack Obama and the war in Afghanistan at a Connecticut fundraiser Thursday.

"This was a war of Obama's choosing," Michael Steele said at the event. "This is not something the United States has actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in."

Steele also accused Obama of "demonizing Iraq while saying the battle really should be in Afghanistan."

"Well, if he's such a student of history, has he not understood that, you know, that's the one thing you don't do is engage in a land war in Afghanistan, alright, because everyone who's tried over a thousand years of history has failed," Steele continued.


Yes, that's right Barack Obama (or as I like to refer to him as Darth Obama) started the Afghanistan war.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/02/michael-steele-says-afgha_n_633730.html

The thing is, I expect that within a week this meme will catch hold in conservative circles.

Cheers
Aj

[Bob]

"Well, if he's such a student of history, has he not understood that, you know, that's the one thing you don't do is engage in a land war in Afghanistan, alright, because everyone who's tried over a thousand years of history has failed," Steele continued.


"You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders - the most famous of which is "never get involved in a land war in Asia!"

-Vizzini
The Princess Bride

[dreadgeek]

"You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders - the most famous of which is "never get involved in a land war in Asia!"

-Vizzini
The Princess Bride

"...only slightly less well known is this, never go in against a Sicilian when DEATH is on the line!" HAHAHAHAHA! (collapse)

Cheers
Aj

[AtLast]

Oregon gets it - at least the Democrats do. The usual suspects - those pro-business anti-people Republicans - voted against the bill.
New (Oregon) law prohibits credit history checks by most employers


linkyloo (http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2010/06/new_law_prohibits_credit_check.html)

Its about freakin' time! The whole credit bureau thing makes me crazy with employers being able to use it in hiring practices. People have difficult financial times and gee, ya' think securing a job might help that? Plus the damn credit bureaus are only interested in keeping negative info up to date, not removing negative reports as they are to do within certain time frames. This is such an attack on working class people and a whole new type of oppression.

Thanks for this link!

[MsDemeanor]

Fifty bucks says that by the time the 2012 election gets close, 9/11 will have happened on Obama's watch...

In other news, Chicago sends a big fat fuck you to the activist Roberts Court with swift new handgun legislation. All those gun nuts and keep and bear all their arms, but they can't buy them in the city, and they can't walk out their door with one.

Key provisions include:
*Applicants would need a Chicago firearm permit, costing $100 every three years, as well as an Illinois firearm owner's ID card. They would be required to register all their guns with the city, at a cost of $15 per gun every three years.
*Firearm sales would be banned in the city.
*Chicago residents could register no more than one handgun per month for each qualifying adult in a home.
*People who now own firearms illegally would get a 90-day grace period after the new law takes effect to register the guns without penalty.
*Gun training totaling four hours in a classroom and an hour on a firing range is required before getting a permit. But firing ranges are banned, so training would need to be completed outside Chicago.
*To transport a gun, it would have to be "broken down," not immediately accessible, unloaded and in a firearm case.
* Firearms could be possessed only inside the dwelling. It would be illegal to have a gun in the garage, on the front porch or in the yard. Guns also would not be allowed in hotels, dorms and group living facilities.
*Only one firearm per permit holder can be kept in ready-to-fire condition. Other guns must be taken apart or have trigger locks in place. In homes with minors, all guns must be secured when they are not in the possession of the owner.
*Permit applicants must be at least 21 years old, unless a parent signs for someone 18 or older.
*Assault weapons are banned, as are sawed-off shotguns and "unsafe" handguns, as defined by the Chicago Police Department, which will maintain an online list of prohibited guns.

linkyloo (http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/clout_st/2010/07/city-council-passes-daley-gun-restrictions-450.html)

[AtLast]

Fifty bucks says that by the time the 2012 election gets close, 9/11 will have happened on Obama's watch...

In other news, Chicago sends a big fat fuck you to the activist Roberts Court with swift new handgun legislation. All those gun nuts and keep and bear all their arms, but they can't buy them in the city, and they can't walk out their door with one.

Key provisions include:
*Applicants would need a Chicago firearm permit, costing $100 every three years, as well as an Illinois firearm owner's ID card. They would be required to register all their guns with the city, at a cost of $15 per gun every three years.
*Firearm sales would be banned in the city.
*Chicago residents could register no more than one handgun per month for each qualifying adult in a home.
*People who now own firearms illegally would get a 90-day grace period after the new law takes effect to register the guns without penalty.
*Gun training totaling four hours in a classroom and an hour on a firing range is required before getting a permit. But firing ranges are banned, so training would need to be completed outside Chicago.
*To transport a gun, it would have to be "broken down," not immediately accessible, unloaded and in a firearm case.
* Firearms could be possessed only inside the dwelling. It would be illegal to have a gun in the garage, on the front porch or in the yard. Guns also would not be allowed in hotels, dorms and group living facilities.
*Only one firearm per permit holder can be kept in ready-to-fire condition. Other guns must be taken apart or have trigger locks in place. In homes with minors, all guns must be secured when they are not in the possession of the owner.
*Permit applicants must be at least 21 years old, unless a parent signs for someone 18 or older.
*Assault weapons are banned, as are sawed-off shotguns and "unsafe" handguns, as defined by the Chicago Police Department, which will maintain an online list of prohibited guns.

linkyloo (http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/clout_st/2010/07/city-council-passes-daley-gun-restrictions-450.html)

WOOT!!! Sanity can happen!

I bet you are right about 2012 and Obama... the GOP has an amazing capacity to re-write history. For awhile, I felt both major parties had little in the way of differences... NO MORE!


Another tid-bit via the Boner-

GOP Leader Boehner Floor Speech Opposing Democrats' Trillion-Dollar Spending Bill

YouTube- GOP Leader Boehner Floor Speech Opposing Democrats' Trillion-Dollar Spending Bill

[Toughy]

I can listen to the rapture lady longer than I can listen to Boner.........I only last about 10-20 secs with Boner..........

[Andrew, Jr.]

All I can say is that our country needs help like yesterday. When are the politicians going to wake up? Why are we helping everyone else but ourselves? :vigil:

[AtLast]

Barney Frank And Ron Paul Join Hands To Call For Military Budget Cuts


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/barney-frank-and-ron-paul-join-hands-to-call-for-military-budget-cuts-2010-7#ixzz0t3DIdjO8



In a piece at the Huffington Post, Barney Frank and Ron Paul jointly call for spending cuts to reduce the deficit.

While they may not see eye to eye on much ideologically (although Frank has a libertarian streak that he's not often given credit for), there is one area where they'd both like to see cuts: the military.

It's here that Frank's liberalism, and Ron Paul's non-interventionism align. And beyond that, the military eats up A LOT of our budget, so if you're looking for a juicy place to cut, this is it.

Here's the nut of it:

In order to create a systematic approach to reducing military spending, we have convened a Sustainable Defense Task Force consisting of experts on military expenditures that span the ideological spectrum. The task force has produced a detailed report with specific recommendations for cutting Pentagon spending by approximately $1 trillion over a ten year period. It calls for eliminating certain Cold War weapons and scaling back our commitments overseas. Even with these changes, the United States would still be immeasurably stronger than any nation with which we might be engaged, and the plan will in fact enhance our security rather than diminish it.

To keen observers of the political winds, this is not all that surprising.

The cover story of the latest American Conservative magazine asks whether the Tea Party, and its odd assortment of anti-taxers and Ron Paul-niks are about to turn anti-war. Whereas in the past, it'd be hard to convince rock-ribbed Republicans to push for lower spending, a strong budgetary angle, combined with the core conservative belief that more government intervention in anything usually produces worse results could make for a perfect storm.

Whereas most pundits look to entitlement spending for budget-cutting opportunities, this is something you should pay attention to, especially if a fierce anti-spending crowd wins in November, and if America's disgust with our foreign wars continues to escalate.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/barney-frank-and-ron-paul-join-hands-to-call-for-military-budget-cuts-2010-7#ixzz0t3DiW4dS

OK, my take on this is that it will be used in Nov. as Demos not supporting the troops- even with Paul as a co-sponsor. Also, I do want to know what others think about this- is it really what this says it is?

[MsDemeanor]

I saw a piece on their joint efforts yesterday. Interesting co-conspirators! The military budget in this country is waaayyyy out of line; I'm glad to see folks making this proposal.

[Mrs. Strutt]

From act.credonation.com:

Discovery Channel is giving a nature show to Sarah Palin, and paying her more than $1 million per episode. And if you visit Disneyland or buy a Mickey Mouse watch, you may be paying for it, unless you take action now.

Disney is a long-time advertiser on The Learning Channel, and unless the company specifically demands that its ads not be shown during this Palin show, that ad revenue may be funding this monstrosity.

We can stop this. Disney is very sensitive to customer feedback, and has done the right thing in the past when challenged. Write Disney today, and demand it not support this show.

Sign the petition at:

http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/disney_discovery/?rc=palin_Dis_FBetal

A separate petition for Discovery Channel itself can be found at:

http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/palin_discovery2/?rc=palin__hl_palin1

[SuperFemme]

I can listen to the rapture lady longer than I can listen to Boner.........I only last about 10-20 secs with Boner..........

i knew you loved my rapture lady.

bwahahahaha.

[AtLast]

I saw a piece on their joint efforts yesterday. Interesting co-conspirators! The military budget in this country is waaayyyy out of line; I'm glad to see folks making this proposal.

Oh, I agree with you there. I wonder about the actual funds that do go to the troops, however. But, as I read this, that is not what they are going after. Hummmm............ but I think the GOP will make it sound that way, even with Paul on it. Also, it is interesting to me that they are kicking this out there before the mid-term elections. Any thoughts, there?

[Zimmeh]

This is something that caught my attention this morning...It made me sick to my stomach and I hope the police catch this monster...

http://www.wesh.com/news/24178196/detail.html

Zimmy

[Zimmeh]

I signed this petition..Another reason why I dislike the Mouse..

From act.credonation.com:

Discovery Channel is giving a nature show to Sarah Palin, and paying her more than $1 million per episode. And if you visit Disneyland or buy a Mickey Mouse watch, you may be paying for it, unless you take action now.

Disney is a long-time advertiser on The Learning Channel, and unless the company specifically demands that its ads not be shown during this Palin show, that ad revenue may be funding this monstrosity.

We can stop this. Disney is very sensitive to customer feedback, and has done the right thing in the past when challenged. Write Disney today, and demand it not support this show.

Sign the petition at:

http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/disney_discovery/?rc=palin_Dis_FBetal

A separate petition for Discovery Channel itself can be found at:

http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/palin_discovery2/?rc=palin__hl_palin1

[AtLast]

This is something that caught my attention this morning...It made me sick to my stomach and I hope the police catch this monster...

http://www.wesh.com/news/24178196/detail.html

Zimmy

UGH.. this is very disturbing.

[rockybcn]

Texas GOP Official Platform Calls for Imprisonment of Homosexuals and Supportive Heterosexuals.

http://jaysays.com/2010/06/texas-gop-official-platform-calls-for-imprisonment-of-homosexuals-and-supportive-heterosexuals/

[MsDemeanor]

If anyone uses this thread to post anything related to King Jame's announcement tonight, I will throw a fit, a major fit.

Y'all have been warned.

And the Texas GOP can go fuck themselves. Ignorant bunch of hating assholes.

[AtLast]

Johannes Mehserle was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the Oscar Grant killing today.

Watching some news on this right now. Of course the risk of racial rioting in Oakland, CA are being thrown all over. This is a very emotionally charged case for Oakland residents, especially African American youth. But, I think this presumptive thinking is racist. Am I wrong to think this? It just feels to me that this is always the stereotypic reflex- all the black people are going to riot because the verdict is less than many of them may feel is due.

It is a tragic case all around.

[nowandthen]

"Injustice Anywhere is a threat to Justice Everywhere!" ~MLK~
Sad for his family, justice was not served.

Oscar Grant was Murdered, plain and simple and the value of his life is measured by a system if injustice.
I am disheartened :-(
:praying:

[MsDemeanor]

Watching some news on this right now. Of course the risk of racial rioting in Oakland, CA are being thrown all over. This is a very emotionally charged case for Oakland residents, especially African American youth. But, I think this presumptive thinking is racist. Am I wrong to think this? It just feels to me that this is always the stereotypic reflex- all the black people are going to riot because the verdict is less than many of them may feel is due.

Just out of curiosity, were you watching the local Faux Newz station (KTVU 2)? I expect talk of protests, and given what happened before, of riots; San Francisco has a heavy population of professional protesters, and they all probably jumped on BART to head to Oakland the second they heard a verdict was being delivered. The presumption that it's going to be African Americans sounds likethe racist spin that I would expect from KTVU.

My resident criminal defense attorney can't understand why the involuntary option was even given to the jury. This is akin to an acquittal.

[Toughy]

I just got back from downtown Oakland. I have been involved in hundreds of protests and I have a good sense of how they go and of crowd energy. I know what the professional anarchist violence prone asshats look like.

Oscar Grant's grandfather spoke at the rally. He called for peace. This was a long planned rally to occur the day of the verdict. Oakland pastors and priests and community leaders have been holding candle light vigils and calls for peace since the trial started and it's stepped up since the jury went into deliberations on Friday. There are lots of families with children down there, Christian groups, Unitarians. The crowd is mostly black and brown, but plenty of white folk. I missed the little incident with the AC transit bus, but that was settled peacefully and the OPD backed off. They do have the entire area surrounded with police in riot gear, long batons, some with tear gas rifles.....I must have seen about 500 cops in the downtown area.........with hundreds more staged down towards Jack London Square (the cops are from oakland pd, state patrol, sheriffs dept, and surrounding communities). Some of those cops looked a little tense, but most looked and felt ok.

I left because it's getting dark and the number of anarchists (mostly young white men) with faces covered by bandannas and black men with faces covered started increasing. The feel of the crowd was starting to change and the families were starting to leave. Yes it's gonna get ugly down there tonight........probably really ugly because there are some rightfully very angry folks who are going to get violent and will be spurred towards it by the anarchists. I've seen plenty of peaceful demonstrations and civil disobedience actions turn to shit in a hurry once the anarchists start with their crap.

AtLast............you know.........what you said about 'racial rioting'........well that's just flat out racist. You might want to think about why you put the word 'racial' in that sentence.

I have no earthly idea how involuntary manslaughter could possibly be the verdict when the white cop shot and killed an unarmed black kid, in the back, while the kid was face down on the ground. This country just will not convict a cop of murder esp a white cop killing a black kid.

[AtLast]

Just out of curiosity, were you watching the local Faux Newz station (KTVU 2)? I expect talk of protests, and given what happened before, of riots; San Francisco has a heavy population of professional protesters, and they all probably jumped on BART to head to Oakland the second they heard a verdict was being delivered. The presumption that it's going to be African Americans sounds likethe racist spin that I would expect from KTVU.

My resident criminal defense attorney can't understand why the involuntary option was even given to the jury. This is akin to an acquittal.

SHIT! I had heard the verdict was going to be announced at 4 pm on my way home on the radio, so turned on TV when I got home. I just flipped to a station that was covering the verdict-it was Ch 2!!

It was just the regular news at that point (with the Breaking News cut in). I went back out again until now and haven't watched anything else yet and didn't listen to the radio in the car.

I was struck by the insinuations being just thrown out. But, I don't usually watch 2. Now I get it!

The involuntary man option did seem off. But, I really can't speak to how these things are put forth in a trial. My guess is that many people will take this as an acquittal. I am stunned with the verdict.

[Toughy]

I'm watching Channel 2 news right now......

Of the film they have shown of the 'riot' (which was apparently, the looting of a Foot Locker, a bunch knocked over newpaper racks and papers all over the streets and a whole bunch of folks playing 'catch me if you can' with police) all of the folks shown arrested with the exception of one black man, are white anarchists, probably from SF and Berkeley.

The thing that truly pisses me off about all the media is the inability to see where the violence that happens in organized peaceful civil disobediance/demonstrations/rallies comes from. It is always started by anarchists in my experience and the overwhelming majority of them are white.

It's 10:30 and for right now it's over.....they are re-opening some streets downtown.............however there are still a bunch of folks still on the street. And I am off to bed.


Oh yeah............the jury had no black folk on it, but was majority white, with asian and latino folk filling it out.

[MsDemeanor]

AtLast............you know.........what you said about 'racial rioting'........well that's just flat out racist. You might want to think about why you put the word 'racial' in that sentence.

I think you misread the post. AtLast didn't 'put' that word in the sentence...she was commenting on what the TV news story had focused on and questioning why Faux Newz emphasized 'racial' rioting....

[AtLast]

I'm watching Channel 2 news right now......

Of the film they have shown of the 'riot' (which was apparently, the looting of a Foot Locker, a bunch knocked over newpaper racks and papers all over the streets and a whole bunch of folks playing 'catch me if you can' with police) all of the folks shown arrested with the exception of one black man, are white anarchists, probably from SF and Berkeley.

The thing that truly pisses me off about all the media is the inability to see where the violence that happens in organized peaceful civil disobediance/demonstrations/rallies comes from. It is always started by anarchists in my experience and the overwhelming majority of them are white.

It's 10:30 and for right now it's over.....they are re-opening some streets downtown.............however there are still a bunch of folks still on the street. And I am off to bed.


Oh yeah............the jury had no black folk on it, but was majority white, with asian and latino folk filling it out.

Not one black on the jury!!!?? WTF!

[AtLast]

I think you misread the post. AtLast didn't 'put' that word in the sentence...she was commenting on what the TV news story had focused on and questioning why Faux Newz emphasized 'racial' rioting....


Yes, T, you did misread my post. I most certainly was talking about the news story and Ch 2/Faux news doing this.

Geeesssuuussss.......!!! Now I will probably get I'm a racist reps!! This isn't funny after the last couple of days with thread situations. Yes, I am upset by this, seriously. Look at some of the stuff that gets started on here due to misreading of posts and flat-out inaccuracy!!

[AtLast]

I just got back from downtown Oakland. I have been involved in hundreds of protests and I have a good sense of how they go and of crowd energy. I know what the professional anarchist violence prone asshats look like.

Oscar Grant's grandfather spoke at the rally. He called for peace. This was a long planned rally to occur the day of the verdict. Oakland pastors and priests and community leaders have been holding candle light vigils and calls for peace since the trial started and it's stepped up since the jury went into deliberations on Friday. There are lots of families with children down there, Christian groups, Unitarians. The crowd is mostly black and brown, but plenty of white folk. I missed the little incident with the AC transit bus, but that was settled peacefully and the OPD backed off. They do have the entire area surrounded with police in riot gear, long batons, some with tear gas rifles.....I must have seen about 500 cops in the downtown area.........with hundreds more staged down towards Jack London Square (the cops are from oakland pd, state patrol, sheriffs dept, and surrounding communities). Some of those cops looked a little tense, but most looked and felt ok.

I left because it's getting dark and the number of anarchists (mostly young white men) with faces covered by bandannas and black men with faces covered started increasing. The feel of the crowd was starting to change and the families were starting to leave. Yes it's gonna get ugly down there tonight........probably really ugly because there are some rightfully very angry folks who are going to get violent and will be spurred towards it by the anarchists. I've seen plenty of peaceful demonstrations and civil disobedience actions turn to shit in a hurry once the anarchists start with their crap.

AtLast............you know.........what you said about 'racial rioting'........well that's just flat out racist. You might want to think about why you put the word 'racial' in that sentence.
I have no earthly idea how involuntary manslaughter could possibly be the verdict when the white cop shot and killed an unarmed black kid, in the back, while the kid was face down on the ground. This country just will not convict a cop of murder esp a white cop killing a black kid.



Re-read my my post Toughy- you are mistaken and misread it. IT WAS THE NEWS STATION THAT USED THIS TACTIC AND TERM- NOT ME! In fact, my post was exactly about what you are talking about- how the media was stereotyping African Americans by throwing out riot lines. READ THE DAMN POST!

[Toughy]

My apologies to you AtLast....I did misread your post.

The local stations this morning have all have clearly said the police understand the violence was a result of 'outside agitators'. Channel 2 seems to gloss that little fact over. They keep saying 'protestors turned violent'. OPD says about 80% of the arrests were of folks from out of town.

I must say I am impressed (for the first time) with the new OPD Police Chief and Mayor Dellums. The citizens of Oakland got to have their say in a peaceful way.........the police did not interfere in that at all. They had a good plan of action and carried it out.

[AtLast]

Thank you, T!

Usually, a misread would not bother me so much, but, lately, things have been rough.

Yes, Msdemeanor asked me what channel I flipped to- it was Ch. 2 (a Faux News affiliate). I was just searching for the verdict reading at the time. This morning, from other TV and radio reports, I am hearing that the violence was from outside agitators. Good that other media sources are getting this out! Oakland does not need more grief with this.

Yes, it looks like the OPD handled this well, thankfully.





My apologies to you AtLast....I did misread your post.

The local stations this morning have all have clearly said the police understand the violence was a result of 'outside agitators'. Channel 2 seems to gloss that little fact over. They keep saying 'protestors turned violent'. OPD says about 80% of the arrests were of folks from out of town.

I must say I am impressed (for the first time) with the new OPD Police Chief and Mayor Dellums. The citizens of Oakland got to have their say in a peaceful way.........the police did not interfere in that at all. They had a good plan of action and carried it out.

[Isadora]

What makes me sad it that the mainstream media chose to show the rioting not the many many many locals who went to their churches or to peaceful gatherings in protest.

When the media portrays nothing but violence, the media breeds destruction and deeper violent action.

[MsDemeanor]

My neighbors include two brothers that are both Oakland PD. I had a chat today with the younger one's girlfriend. She said that, out of 78 arrests, 19 were from Oakland, 28 or so from CA, and the rest from out of state.

[SuperFemme]

In all the L.A. Times pictures they show POC looting stores and in supposed conflict with police. It is more than ridiculous the way it is being portrayed.

[Toughy]

Kind of reminds you of Katrina when all the black folks were looting and the white folk were just trying to get supplies. Yep there were some black folk looting the Foot Locker......however it was brief and they didn't clean out the store...and that footage gets played over and over......

My question for Foot Locker is why in the hell didn't you board up your windows......everyone knew there was going to be broken windows and most of the stores downtown were boarded up. All the stores around the Fruitvale BART station were boarded up and closed by 3:00pm. That's the BART station where Oscar was killed. Nothing at all happened there.

My little sister called me this morning to check and see if I was OK...........she and her husband are in northwestern Oregon dredging and panning gold. The news she saw was all about riots and nothing about the 2000 or so folks who peacefully took over a small part of downtown Oakland.

At my work we have several firefighters and cops and county sheriffs who bring their precious dogs for daycare/boarding..........I got the same info from them MsDemeanor reported

---------
Susan.........I really am sorry I misread your post......it was entirely my fault.

[AtLast]

Kind of reminds you of Katrina when all the black folks were looting and the white folk were just trying to get supplies. Yep there were some black folk looting the Foot Locker......however it was brief and they didn't clean out the store...and that footage gets played over and over......

My question for Foot Locker is why in the hell didn't you board up your windows......everyone knew there was going to be broken windows and most of the stores downtown were boarded up. All the stores around the Fruitvale BART station were boarded up and closed by 3:00pm. That's the BART station where Oscar was killed. Nothing at all happened there.

My little sister called me this morning to check and see if I was OK...........she and her husband are in northwestern Oregon dredging and panning gold. The news she saw was all about riots and nothing about the 2000 or so folks who peacefully took over a small part of downtown Oakland.

At my work we have several firefighters and cops and county sheriffs who bring their precious dogs for daycare/boarding..........I got the same info from them MsDemeanor reported

---------
Susan.........I really am sorry I misread your post......it was entirely my fault.

We are cool.

UGH.. there is a lot of footage/talk of this incident and not much about the real heart of people demonstrating in a peaceful manner and what they were trying to get across.

I have heard some reports that are not even using the word riot, mostly demonstration- that is good (one was CNN). And reporting about the fact that so many of those causing problems were not even from Oakland.

But, yes.... there has been an awful lot of press focused on this instead of all of the issues this case represents. There is a conversation to have that never seems to get addressed.

[Zimmeh]

CNN just reported that Yankee's Owner, George Steinbrenner has passed away. The sports world lost a baseball icon.

My condolences to his family and all Yankee fans.

[Greyson]

CNN just reported that Yankee's Owner, George Steinbrenner has passed away. The sports world lost a baseball icon.

My condolences to his family and all Yankee fans.


I am not a die hard Yankee fan. I remember the 1977 World Series between the NY Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers. What a series! My team lost but I remember both George Steinbrenner and Billy Martin. Those two men and their charisma opened up some of the magic of baseball to this L.A. hometown kid. Thanks for the memories.

My condolances.

[The_Lady_Snow]

(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/waymon-hudson/disturbing-new-report-for_b_645977.html#)

http://s.huffpost.com/images/blank.gif






Disturbing New Report forAnti-LGBT Violence in 2009 (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/waymon-hudson/disturbing-new-report-for_b_645977.html)




http://www.huffingtonpost.com/waymon-hudson/disturbing-new-report-for_b_645977.html

[The_Lady_Snow]

Argentina Senate to Vote on Gay Marriage




http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/14/world/americas/14argentina.html?_r=1

[Pretty Woman]

http://www.pamshouseblend.com/diary/16695/pentagon-mulling-segregation-as-an-option-based-on-dadt-survey-results

[UofMfan]

Argentina Gay Marriage Law: First Country In Latin America To Approve Same Sex Marriage

MICHAEL WARREN | 07/15/10 07:51 AM | AP

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Argentina legalized same-sex marriage Thursday, becoming the first country in Latin America to grant gays and lesbians all the legal rights, responsibilities and protections that marriage brings to heterosexual couples.

After a marathon debate, 33 lawmakers voted in favor, 27 were against it and 3 abstained in Argentina's Senate in a vote that ended after 4 a.m. Since the lower house already approved it, and President Cristina Fernandez is a strong supporter, it now becomes law as soon as it is published in the official bulletin.

The law is sure to bring a wave of marriages by gays and lesbians who have increasingly found Buenos Aires to be more accepting than many other places in the region.

The approval came despite a concerted campaign by the Roman Catholic Church and evangelical groups, which drew 60,000 people to march on Congress and urged parents in churches and schools to work against passage.

Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio said "everyone loses" with gay marriage, and "children need to have the right to be raised and educated by a father and a mother."

Nine gay couples had already married in Argentina after persuading judges that the constitutional mandate of equality supports their marriage rights, but some of these marriages were later declared invalid.

As the debate stretched on for nearly 16 hours, supporters and opponents of held rival vigils through the frigid night outside the Congress building in Buenos Aires.

"Marriage between a man and a woman has existed for centuries, and is essential for the perpetuation of the species," insisted Sen. Juan Perez Alsina, who is usually a loyal supporter of the president but gave a passionate speech against gay marriage.

But Sen. Norma Morandini, another member of the president's party, compared the discrimination closeted gays face to the oppression imposed by Argentina's dictators decades ago.

"What defines us is our humanity, and what runs against humanity is intolerance," she said.

Same-sex civil unions have been legalized in Uruguay, Buenos Aires and some states in Mexico and Brazil. Mexico City has legalized gay marriage. Colombia's Constitutional Court granted same-sex couples inheritance rights and allowed them to add their partners to health insurance plans.

But Argentina now becomes the first country in Latin America to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide, granting gays and lesbians all the same rights and responsibilities that heterosexuals have. These include many more rights than civil unions, including adopting children and inheriting wealth.

Gay rights advocates said Argentina's historic step adds momentum to similar efforts around the world.

"Today's historic vote shows how far Catholic Argentina has come, from dictatorship to true democratic values, and how far the freedom to marry movement has come, as twelve countries on four continents now embrace marriage equality," said Evan Wolfson, who runs the U.S. Freedom to Marry lobby.

He urged U.S. lawmakers to stand up "for the Constitution and all families here in the United States. America should lead, not lag, when it comes to treating everyone equally under the law."

Among the opponents were teacher Eduardo Morales, who said he believes the legislation was concocted by Buenos Aires residents who are out step with the views of the country.

"They want to convert this city into the gay capital of the world," said Morales of San Luis province.

Ines Franck, director of the group Familias Argentinas, said the legislation cuts against centuries of tradition.

Opposing the measure "is not discrimination, because the essence of a family is between two people of opposite sexes," he said. "Any variation goes against the law, and against nature."

The president, currently on a state visit to China, spoke out from there against the Argentine Catholic Church's campaign and the tone she said some religious groups have taken.

"It's very worrisome to hear words like 'God's war' or 'the devil's project,' things that recall the times of the Inquisition," she said.

Some opposition leaders have accused her of promoting the initiative to gain votes in next year's presidential elections, when Fernandez's husband, former President Nestor Kirchner, is expected to run again.

The vote came after Sen. Daniel Filmus urged fellow lawmakers to show the world how much Argentina has matured.

"Society has grown up. We aren't the same as we were before," he said.

___

Associated Press Staff Writers Almudena Calatrava, Debora Rey and Bridget Huber contributed to this report.

[The_Lady_Snow]

Brief for 9 states backs Arizona immigration law



http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100715/ap_on_re_us/us_immigration_states

[The_Lady_Snow]

No matter how tough or cool you or I think we are, we will never ... and I mean NEVER be "get shot in the jaw and spit the bullet out" cool


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1294268/Hero-British-soldier-shot-face-Taliban-SPITS-bullet.html

[The_Lady_Snow]

Voters Say To Hell With Deficit Reduction, Help The Unemployed (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/14/unemployment-deficit-polls-voters_n_646600.html)



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/14/unemployment-deficit-polls-voters_n_646600.html

[AtLast]

Voters Say To Hell With Deficit Reduction, Help The Unemployed (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/14/unemployment-deficit-polls-voters_n_646600.html)



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/14/unemployment-deficit-polls-voters_n_646600.html



I am disgusted with GOP congressional assbites saying people will not look for work if unemployment insurance is not extended!! Saying they are lazy and extending unemployment benefits will only result in people refusing work?

Some of this is based upon how some people are not taking jobs far from where they live. OK, many people have child care needs (especially in summer months). Child care is expensive and when you add on more hours due to commuting, it gets even more expensive. Plus, travel is not cheap! and wear and tear on cars, etc. So, if one takes a job further away and it is also one that pays less than their prior employment, they have child care and commuting expenses on top of that, they are lazy for not taking that job? Some folks also take care of ill parents and need day care for them, as well. Hell, they could have kids in school and aging, sick parents!! There are a lot of people these days with these kinds of obligations.

Also, do the unemployment/looking for work stats take into account people that have decided to re-train for another kind of work? Many are doing this that have lost jobs in industries that may not come back. Seems like a smart thing to do to me. They are opening up more doors for employment during a very tough time.

This kind of thinking makes me nuts! Congressional members are so out of touch with what the average people are going through!! This, when lack of regulation as well as pure greed (via the top level of people with mega incomes!!) put the economy where it is!!!

Then there is the fact that the US worker supplies the funds within the unemployment insurance system overall!

The deficit is far too high, however, if people don’t have work, it will actually get higher in the long run.

[UofMfan]

RNC failed to report over $7 million in debt.


http://thinkprogress.org/2010/07/21/rnc-report-debt/

Republican_Chairman_C_Star_s640x490Earlier this month, reports leaked suggesting the Republican National Committee had failed to report “hundreds of thousands of dollars” of debt to the FEC. It now appears that the level of debt is much greater than originally estimated and may have been hidden by committee leadership. The Washington Times reports:

In a memo to RNC budget committee members, RNC Treasurer Randy Pullen on Tuesday accused Chairman Michael S. Steele and his chief of staff, Michael Leavitt, of trying to conceal the information from him by ordering staff not to communicate with the treasurer – a charge RNC officials deny.

Mr. Pullen told the members that he had discovered $3.3 million in debt from April and $3.8 million from May, which he said had led him to file erroneous reports with the FEC. He amended the FEC filings Tuesday.

Campaign-finance analysts said that simply misreporting fundraising numbers to the FEC can lead to millions of dollars in fines and that criminal charges can be levied if the actions are suspected to be intentional.

Though RNC aides and officials are strongly denying any wrongdoing or misreporting, the organization has brought on “former [FEC] Chairman Michael E. Toner” as outside counsel, an “unusual and significant move,” according to Heritage Foundation legal pundit Hans A. von Spakovsky. He noted, “The RNC normally uses its own inside counsel to deal with the FEC, but if I had a really serious problem with the FEC, Michael Toner is one of the first guys I would turn to help me out.” It also looks like another serious problem for Steele, who just got done weathering numerous calls for his resignation after suggesting that the U.S. should not be involved in Afghanistan.

–Charlie Eisenhood

[AtLast]

http://www.pamshouseblend.com/diary/16695/pentagon-mulling-segregation-as-an-option-based-on-dadt-survey-results

WTF?? Feed into myths and stereotypes? There have been queers in the military forever! So, they don't have to hide their orientation ny longer aand that will mean they will flirt with straight people?

Seems to me that the problem is with the homophobes believing they are so desirable and having to respect other people's sexuality!!

[Zimmeh]

This caught my attention this morning while I was watching the local news. I have an iPhone and I honestly would never do this. The apps that you download, may have a virus and cause the phone to crash, like a computer.

I am not sure how everyone feels about this, but I am not willing to damage my phone to get an app that I cannot get from iTunes.

http://www.wesh.com/technology/24394450/detail.html

Zimmy

[Jess]

This caught my attention this morning while I was watching the local news. I have an iPhone and I honestly would never do this. The apps that you download, may have a virus and cause the phone to crash, like a computer.

I am not sure how everyone feels about this, but I am not willing to damage my phone to get an app that I cannot get from iTunes.

http://www.wesh.com/technology/24394450/detail.html

Zimmy

To my understanding, once you have "jailbreaked" your iphone they will no longer honor the warranty either.

[AtLast]

Illegal Immigrant List Making the Rounds in Utah

A list containing the names of 1,300 suspected illegal immigrants has been distributed to politicians and state officials in Utah, unnerving some in the Hispanic community and sparking an investigation to determine where the dossier came from.

Investigators sifted through records at several agencies Wednesday, trying to determine if someone tapped into a database to get the sensitive information appearing on the list, the Associated Press said. Sent by an anonymous group to state officials, politicians and reporters, it includes names, Social Security numbers, workplaces, addresses and phone numbers, along with demands for the deportation of illegals. Even the names of children show up, as well as due dates for pregnant women.

The Utah list surfaced as Arizona prepared to implement later this month a controversial state law authorizing police to check for immigration status after they stop a suspect for any other violation.

In Salt Lake City, a spokeswoman for Gov. Gary Herbert said it would take several days to find the source of the information leak.

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/07/15/illegal-immigrant-list-making-the-rounds-in-utah/

[Zimmeh]

Good Morning Atlast,

I am going back to college at the end of August and I am going to be a registered nurse. Here in Florida, most companies will not touch me since I have a Bachelor's Degree and 16 years of experience to back this degree. It is frustrating to hear what these ppl who make more money a year than most of their constituents. To me, let them try and live on $960 a month. Hell, why don't they cut their own salaries and save us taxpayers money? If I decide to purchase private health insurance, and pay all of my bills, I will have $190 to live on for the month.

Thank you for your post,

Zimmy

I am disgusted with GOP congressional assbites saying people will not look for work if unemployment insurance is not extended!! Saying they are lazy and extending unemployment benefits will only result in people refusing work?

Some of this is based upon how some people are not taking jobs far from where they live. OK, many people have child care needs (especially in summer months). Child care is expensive and when you add on more hours due to commuting, it gets even more expensive. Plus, travel is not cheap! and wear and tear on cars, etc. So, if one takes a job further away and it is also one that pays less than their prior employment, they have child care and commuting expenses on top of that, they are lazy for not taking that job? Some folks also take care of ill parents and need day care for them, as well. Hell, they could have kids in school and aging, sick parents!! There are a lot of people these days with these kinds of obligations.

Also, do the unemployment/looking for work stats take into account people that have decided to re-train for another kind of work? Many are doing this that have lost jobs in industries that may not come back. Seems like a smart thing to do to me. They are opening up more doors for employment during a very tough time.

This kind of thinking makes me nuts! Congressional members are so out of touch with what the average people are going through!! This, when lack of regulation as well as pure greed (via the top level of people with mega incomes!!) put the economy where it is!!!

Then there is the fact that the US worker supplies the funds within the unemployment insurance system overall!

The deficit is far too high, however, if people don’t have work, it will actually get higher in the long run.

[Zimmeh]

Yep and I am not willing to lose a phone that is going to cost me $400 to replace.

Thanks Jess!

Zimmy

To my understanding, once you have "jailbreaked" your iphone they will no longer honor the warranty either.

[dark_crystal]

http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/WikiLeaks-Organization-Sparks-Controversy-99311219.html

endangering lives or useful whistleblowing?

What do we think?

[UofMfan]

Target Homophobia? CEO Gregg Steinhafel Defends $150K Donation To Anti-Gay Politician, LGBT Community Angered

HuffPo

A campaign contribution to a well-known anti-gay politician in Minnesota has become a rather large public relations nightmare for Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel--and the store now faces boycotts and backlash from the gay community.

Target's Chief Executive Steinhafel said gay employees have been concerned about the money helping state Rep. Tom Emmer, who opposes gay marriage. Target gave $150,000 to MN Forward, a group staffed by former insiders from outgoing Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty's administration. MN Forward is running TV ads supporting Emmer.

The Associated Press reports that Emmer is a fiery conservative who lauds Arizona's strict approach to illegal immigration, once advocated chemical castration for sex offenders and wants to lower taxes. His profile contrasts with Target's moderate image in Minnesota, where the company is known for donating to public school programs, food pantries and the annual Twin Cities Gay Pride Festival.

Following the money trail, the Minnesota Independent has also linked Emmer to a Minnesota Christian "punk-rock ministry" that supports the killing of gays and lesbians.

Learning that Target would lend financial support to someone like Emmer angered many LGBT shoppers and gay rights supporters. The Human Rights Campaign, which previously gave Target a 100 percent approval rating for their treatment of LGBT employees, issued this statement Monday:

"Target has worked hard to create a fair and equitable workplace for its LGBT employees, and should be proud of its leadership in this area. It is for this reason that HRC is very disappointed in Target's significant monetary contribution to Minnesota Forward, a group supporting the most clearly anti-LGBT candidate for Governor in Minnesota. We have reached out to Target to express our concern over this contribution. While political contributions to support candidates are not a factor in HRC Foundation's Corporate Equality Index, HRC finds it puzzling that Target would take great steps to support LGBT inclusiveness while simultaneously helping a candidate who shamelessly rejects equality for LGBT Minnesotans."

In an email to Target staff, Steinhafel responded to the criticism.

"We rarely endorse all advocated positions of the organizations or candidates we support, and we do not have a political or social agenda," Steinhafel wrote. "As you know, Target has a history of supporting organizations and candidates, on both sides of the aisle, who seek to advance policies aligned with our business objectives, such as job creation and economic growth...Let me be very clear, Target's support of the GLBT community is unwavering, and inclusiveness remains a core value of our company." (Read Steinhafel's full response here.)

Meanwhile, some gay rights advocates are considering a boycott of Target over the ordeal. In Chicago, openly-gay state Rep. Greg Harris, who celebrated a Target opening in his district last week, told ChicagoPride.com he hopes Target will rethink their support of Emmer.

"Companies like Target need to understand that they can't have it both ways when it comes to issues of our basic rights, and that the facts will eventually come out. I hope that they will rethink this contribution and find a way to make it right," Harris said.

A Facebook group dedicated to boycotting Target has also gained momentum.

Money from Target's top executives has gone mainly to Republicans. Former Chief Executive Officer Robert Ulrich, who retired last year, gave $617,000 during his time as Target's leader, most of it to the state GOP. Current Chief Executive Gregg Steinhafel has donated about $25,000, almost exclusively to Republican candidates and causes, including at least $1,000 to Michele Bachmann's "Victory Committee."

[Corkey]

I don't like Target, their stuff is cheap, their prices are too high, and now they support hate. Knew there was a reason I didn't like them.

[Soon]

Target Homophobia? CEO Gregg Steinhafel Defends $150K Donation To Anti-Gay Politician, LGBT Community Angered



Money from Target's top executives has gone mainly to Republicans. Former Chief Executive Officer Robert Ulrich, who retired last year, gave $617,000 during his time as Target's leader, most of it to the state GOP. Current Chief Executive Gregg Steinhafel has donated about $25,000, almost exclusively to Republican candidates and causes, including at least $1,000 to Michele Bachmann's "Victory Committee."

That's all I need to know.

Thanks U!

[Nat]

Link to Target's corporate feedback (http://www.target.com/gp/help/display-contact-us-form.html?displayLink=tci)

[AtLast]

An accident in the Gulf has resulted in a new oil spill. Anyone have any more details? This is a short blurb I found... one point is that the well head was not lit as required. Hummmm... got new regulatory oversight? Please, please make this be a very small spill that can be stopped immediately.....

Barge Hits Well Near Gulf, Sends Oil, Gas Spewing
Barge hits La. well; oil and gas spew near bay already coping with Gulf spill


The Associated Press
By KEVIN McGILL Associated Press Writer

A barge slammed into an abandoned well in a coastal inlet early Tuesday, sending a shower of water, natural gas and oil spewing about 100 feet into the air.

Oil spews from a wellhead in Barataria Bay on the coast of Louisiana after it was struck by a tugboat, Tuesday, July 27, 2010. A crew capable of capping the well is expected onsite later this afternoon. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
(AP)Emergency officials said about 6,000 feet of containment boom was in place around the site in a lake just north of Barataria Bay, which has already been fouled by oil from the massive BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

While there was no estimate of how much oil was spewing Tuesday, officials said the mile-long slick it created was small compared with the Gulf spill.

The Coast Guard said the towboat Pere Ana C was pushing the barge on Mud Lake when it hit the wellhead about 1 a.m. No one was hurt.

The towboat captain told investigators the well was not lit as required, Coast Guard Capt. John Arenstam said.

The Coast Guard hired Wild Well Control Inc. to begin attempts to cap the well later Tuesday. Another contractor is handling cleanup.

[MsDemeanor]

That's all I need to know.

Thanks U!
I didn't even need to know that much. They had me at "Michele Bachmann" :devil:

[Soon]

Target Homophobia? CEO Gregg Steinhafel Defends $150K Donation To Anti-Gay Politician, LGBT Community Angered

HuffPo

A campaign contribution to a well-known anti-gay politician in Minnesota has become a rather large public relations nightmare for Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel--and the store now faces boycotts and backlash from the gay community.

Target's Chief Executive Steinhafel said gay employees have been concerned about the money helping state Rep. Tom Emmer, who opposes gay marriage. Target gave $150,000 to MN Forward, a group staffed by former insiders from outgoing Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty's administration. MN Forward is running TV ads supporting Emmer.


2SipXbgyi68&feature=player_embedded

[Nat]

Tom Emmer also supports Arizona's immigration stance.

[Cyclopea]

http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/WikiLeaks-Organization-Sparks-Controversy-99311219.html

endangering lives or useful whistleblowing?

What do we think?

Both.
Some interesting coverage of the Afghan files at Der Speigel and The Guardian. The NYTimes, not so much. Disappointing but perhaps not surprising.

[Nat]

Indigenous tribes occupy dam in Brazil, demand reparations (http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0727-hance_occupation_dam.html)

An indigenous group in Brazil has taken over a hydroelectric dam, which they state has polluted vital fishing grounds and destroyed sacred burial ground. They are demanding reparations for the damage done and that no more dams are built in the region without their prior consent.

The occupation of the dam began on Sunday when approximately 300 Indians from eleven different tribes took over the Dardanelos Dam in the Brazilian state of Matto Grosso. Despite wearing war paint and bows and arrows, the occupation was said to be non-violent and no injuries have been reported.

Initially the indigenous protesters held some 150 workers at the dam, but have since released the employees. The tribes are currently holding talks with government officials and representatives from the dam in hopes to come to an agreement to end the standoff.

A spokesperson with the Enawene Nawe tribe, one of the tribes represented in the action, told indigenous rights organization Survival International that "[they] joined the protest to raise awareness about the damage the dams cause, about the recognition of our land and the dangers of future projects like this".

After two years with poor fish catches, the government was forced to bring in farmed fish for the tribes.

"They don't want money in their hands. What they want is a sustainable program in the area that will recover the loss they have suffered in this archaeological site," explained Antonio Carlos Ferreira Aquino from the National Foundation for Indigenous Affairs in an interview with CNN.

Brazil has become increasingly dependent on hydroelectric power to boost energy production, however dams in Brazil have been implicated in flooding pristine rainforest, disrupting natural river ecosystems, hurting already marginalized indigenous people, and releasing vast amounts of the potent greenhouse gas methane arguably equal to carbon emissions released by fossil fuel powered plants.

[Rook]

Ellen set to Leave American Idol after 1 Season
Reason ? "didnt feel like the right fit"
Really? hmm

[Nat]

Pentagon Report Places Blame for Military Suicides (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/30/us/30suicide.html?partner=rss&emc=rss)

The report, released Thursday at the Pentagon, found that it was not only the stress of repeated deployments over nearly a decade in Iraq and Afghanistan that has driven the Army suicide rate above the civilian rate for the first time since the Vietnam War. Significantly, the report said that 79 percent of the soldiers who committed suicide had had only one deployment, or had not deployed at all.

“For us to blame this thing just on the war would be wrong,” Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the vice chief of staff of the Army, said at a news conference about the report. “That’s not what we’re trying to do here.”

Nonetheless, General Chiarelli said that he believed — but could not prove statistically — that the overall Army suicide rate had been driven up by the 21 percent of suicides committed by soldiers with multiple deployments. “That has just always been my concern, that they may be it, that may be the reason,” he said. “But I don’t have any data that I can tie that to.”

There were a record 160 active-duty Army suicides in the year from Oct. 1, 2008, to Sept. 30, 2009.

The report said that if the Army added in accidental deaths, which it said are often the result of high-risk behavior involving drinking and drugs, “less young men and women die in combat than die by their own actions.” It concluded: “We are often more dangerous to ourselves than the enemy.”

[Nat]

WASHINGTON, July 27 (UPI) -- An Iranian national who has lived in the United States since he was a child has asked for political asylum because he is gay.

Mohammad Abdollahi, 24, says his personal safety would be jeopardized if he is deported to his native Iran after living in the United States for some 20 years.

"It's not something I can imagine," Abdollahi told ABC News. "It would be a very scary thing because I haven't hidden my sexuality in talking with friends or the media."

Abdollahi came to the United States as a boy with his parents, who were students at the University of Michigan. He was tagged for deportation after a protest in May.

Abdollahi told ABC he became aware of his sexual orientation as a teenager, about the same time he found out about his illegal immigration status.

Although Abdollahi was a minor when he came to the United States and would face a dubious future in Iran, ABC said Tuesday he faces long odds in winning asylum. "He's looking at having to prove greater than 50 percent chance of persecution, a clear probability of persecution," said immigration attorney Kimberley Schaefer.


Abdollahi's letter to President Obama:

Dear Mr. President,

My name is Mohammad Abdollahi and I am an undocumented immigrant. Two months ago I made history.

On May 17, according to the New York Times, I become one of the first undocumented students, along with two others, to “have directly risked deportation in an effort to prompt Congress to take up [the DREAM Act].” Risking deportation was no small act for me. Not only did I risk being forcibly removed from United States, the only country I know as my home, to Iran, where I don’t know the culture or the language. I also happen to be gay. In Iran, people like me are tortured and executed. I am still at risk of deportation and execution, right now, and I will continue to be at risk until the DREAM Act is passed.

I took this risk because I had no choice. For all of my life, my future has been held hostage by politicians, both Democrat and Republican, who have used me as a political football. My family immigrated to the United States from Iran when I was just three years old. Undocumented immigrants are often told, “get in line!” without knowing that many of us were at one point in this infamous line. My family was “in line” until an immigration attorney miscalculated the processing fee for an H1-B visa by $20 dollars and our application was rejected. The second attorney my family hired to fix the application spent his time bickering with the old attorney instead of informing my parents that they only had 60 days to appeal our rejected application. The deadline came and went and we became undocumented.

I’ve known I was undocumented for a long time, but I still graduated from high school. While working to pay out-of-state tuition, I was able to earn my Associate’s degreein Health and Human Services from Washtenaw College. When I had enough credits, I applied to Eastern Michigan University. I handed a counselor there my transcript and he said, “Mohammad, you are the kind of student we want at this university.” He then handed me an acceptance letter. I was in.

I looked at this letter and thought of my mother. With this piece of paper, I could go to my mother and tell her that she didn’t have to stay up late crying anymore. She didn’t have to blame herself anymore. She hadn’t done her children wrong by bringing them to this country. I could tell her it was all worth it. Then, the counselor brought back his supervisor, who told me that they could not accept me because I “needed to be in a line to get in”. The counselor then reached over his desk and took my acceptance letter from me.

I left. My future was being held hostage. A short time later, the DREAM Act came up for a vote in the Senate, and 44 other people decided that they too were going to hold my future hostage. Three years later, my future and the futures of over 2 million others are still being held hostage. Two months ago, I risked my life because once again the window to my future is closing. I am in limbo. I cannot contribute to the only country I know as my home. I also cannot return to Iran, where the penalty for homosexuality is capital punishment.

My only hope is for the DREAM Act to pass, but time is running out in this Congress. The DREAM Act has more support in the Senate than any other piece of immigration legislation, but it is being held hostage by Democrats who do not want to vote on it separately from comprehensive immigration reform, and by Republicans who refuse to publicly support legislation they have supported before.
I made history two months ago, and today, along with hundreds of other undocumented youth from across the nation, I will make history again. Hundreds of us are descending on Washington D.C. to ask Congress to stop holding our lives hostage and to pass the DREAM Act now. Please stand with us and ask Congress to pass the DREAM Act, now.

Sincerely,
Mohammad Abdollahi


He is interviewed in the last few minutes of this video:

rAymhyQxu4k

[Nat]

link from change.org (http://www.change.org/petitions/view/tell_campbells_soup_to_condemn_anti-gay_activities_of_its_partner_company_request_food s?js_fb)

Campbell's Soup has a 10-year contract with a food business in Holland, Michigan known as Request Foods, which helps package and distribute prepared food items. But Request Foods also works hard to keep civil rights away from gays and lesbians in their community.

Request Foods has taken out a full page advertisement in their hometown of Holland, Michigan, to try and defeat a local law that would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the town's nondiscrimination policy. In their ad, they accuse gay people of being psychologically disordered, suggest that people can spontaneously change their sexual orientation, and argue that gays and lesbians don't deserve civil rights because homosexuality is destructive to society.

here's the ad:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_NUZ_fM-TQKQ/TFF0PYTpHpI/AAAAAAAARpQ/GJvsTzPzeng/s1600/Picture+1.png

[AtLast]

WASHINGTON, July 27 (UPI) -- An Iranian national who has lived in the United States since he was a child has asked for political asylum because he is gay.

Mohammad Abdollahi, 24, says his personal safety would be jeopardized if he is deported to his native Iran after living in the United States for some 20 years.

"It's not something I can imagine," Abdollahi told ABC News. "It would be a very scary thing because I haven't hidden my sexuality in talking with friends or the media."

Abdollahi came to the United States as a boy with his parents, who were students at the University of Michigan. He was tagged for deportation after a protest in May.

Abdollahi told ABC he became aware of his sexual orientation as a teenager, about the same time he found out about his illegal immigration status.

Although Abdollahi was a minor when he came to the United States and would face a dubious future in Iran, ABC said Tuesday he faces long odds in winning asylum. "He's looking at having to prove greater than 50 percent chance of persecution, a clear probability of persecution," said immigration attorney Kimberley Schaefer.


Abdollahi's letter to President Obama:



He is interviewed in the last few minutes of this video:

rAymhyQxu4k

Thank you for posting this. I am getting letters out to show support for this guy.

It would do us all a lot of good to understand how homosexuality in many, many countries is a crime to be punished by death via a government. Yes, in the US, we have homophobes galore and civil rights are still being sought (and there are the hate crimes), but, taking in government/state sponsored dealth penalities for one's sexuality is a whole other story!!

[MsDemeanor]

Request Foods has a Contact Us link on their web site. Bless their homophobic little hearts, they don't even require that you fill in your name or contact information. You can just just select Other for Nature of your interest and enter comments.

linkyloo (http://www.requestfoods.com/contactus.html)

[Liam]

Supreme Court revises Miranda...

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SUPREME_COURT_MIRANDA?SITE=MALOW&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

[Corkey]

https://ecf.cand.uscourts.gov/cand/09cv2292/

[Gayla]

I don't think this counts as breaking news but I couldn't find any other thread to post it in.

Confessions of a Tea Party Casualty (http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/08/bob-inglis-tea-party-casualty)

[Nat]

I don't think this counts as breaking news but I couldn't find any other thread to post it in.

Confessions of a Tea Party Casualty (http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/08/bob-inglis-tea-party-casualty)

"They were upset with me," Inglis recalls. "They are all Glenn Beck watchers." About 90 minutes into the meeting, as he remembers it, "They say, 'Bob, what don't you get? Barack Obama is a socialist, communist Marxist who wants to destroy the American economy so he can take over as dictator. Health care is part of that. And he wants to open up the Mexican border and turn [the US] into a Muslim nation.'" Inglis didn't know how to respond.

[Nat]

http://m.guardian.co.uk/?id=102202&story=http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/aug/04/us-billionaires-half-fortune-gates

[Softhearted]

"WASHINGTON, July 27 (UPI) -- An Iranian national who has lived in the United States since he was a child has asked for political asylum because he is gay. Mohammad Abdollahi, 24, says his personal safety would be jeopardized if he is deported to his native Iran after living in the United States for some 20 years. "It's not something I can imagine," Abdollahi told ABC News. "It would be a very scary thing because I haven't hidden my sexuality in talking with friends or the media." Abdollahi came to the United States as a boy with his parents, who were students at the University of Michigan. He was tagged for deportation after a protest in May. Abdollahi told ABC he became aware of his sexual orientation as a teenager, about the same time he found out about his illegal immigration status. Although Abdollahi was a minor when he came to the United States and would face a dubious future in Iran, ABC said Tuesday he faces long odds in winning asylum. "He's looking at having to prove greater than 50 percent chance of persecution, a clear probability of persecution," said immigration attorney Kimberley Schaefer."


FFS!!! HELLO??? Talking about a country where homosexuality is considered a crime punishable by death!!! Does he really need to prove it????

links: http://www.cbc.ca/arts/film/story/2008/08/26/f-homosexuality-iran-sex-change.html

http://www.globalgayz.com/country/Iran/view/IRN/gay-iran

http://www.voyage.gc.ca/countries_pays/report_rapport-eng.asp?id=132000

[T D]

"WASHINGTON, July 27 (UPI) -- An Iranian national who has lived in the United States since he was a child has asked for political asylum because he is gay. Mohammad Abdollahi, 24, says his personal safety would be jeopardized if he is deported to his native Iran after living in the United States for some 20 years. "It's not something I can imagine," Abdollahi told ABC News. "It would be a very scary thing because I haven't hidden my sexuality in talking with friends or the media." Abdollahi came to the United States as a boy with his parents, who were students at the University of Michigan. He was tagged for deportation after a protest in May. Abdollahi told ABC he became aware of his sexual orientation as a teenager, about the same time he found out about his illegal immigration status. Although Abdollahi was a minor when he came to the United States and would face a dubious future in Iran, ABC said Tuesday he faces long odds in winning asylum. "He's looking at having to prove greater than 50 percent chance of persecution, a clear probability of persecution," said immigration attorney Kimberley Schaefer."


FFS!!! HELLO??? Talking about a country where homosexuality is considered a crime punishable by death!!! Does he really need to prove it????

links: http://www.cbc.ca/arts/film/story/2008/08/26/f-homosexuality-iran-sex-change.html

http://www.globalgayz.com/country/Iran/view/IRN/gay-iran

http://www.voyage.gc.ca/countries_pays/report_rapport-eng.asp?id=132000

This kind of thing sooooooo pisses me off!!!!

[AtLast]

Indiana Hospital Says No Transgender Patients Allowed

http://gayrights.change.org/blog/view/indiana_hospital_says_no_transgender_patients_allo wed

[MsDemeanor]

That doctor and that hospital both have lovely lawsuits in their future. With any luck, the doctor will have his license reviewed (revoked would be nice) and the hospital will be investigated and it's credentials scrutinized. What they did is a violation of medical ethics codes and federal law.

[AtLast]

That doctor and that hospital both have lovely lawsuits in their future. With any luck, the doctor will have his license reviewed (revoked would be nice) and the hospital will be investigated and it's credentials scrutinized. What they did is a violation of medical ethics codes and federal law.

I would think so! ER treatment cannot be refused, period!

[Laerkin]

Prop 8 Ruled Unconstitutional:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/04/proposition-8-overturned_n_670739.html

[AtLast]

Prop 8 Ruled Unconstitutional:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/04/proposition-8-overturned_n_670739.html

WOOT! More to come, but this is very good news!

[Greyson]

Yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Leigh]

Good for California overturning Prop 8 ~ thats fanastic :D

[MsMerrick]

Equality actually being held to mean.. Oh yeah..Equal ! What a concept :)
Thank you Founding Peeps, and all those that created our Constitution :)

[AtLast]

Equality actually being held to mean.. Oh yeah..Equal ! What a concept :)
Thank you Founding Peeps, and all those that created our Constitution :)


Been thinking about that perhaps the fact that one of the lawyers arguing the case is a conservative (the Bush rep for Bush v. Gore) might be advantageous when this gets to the federal SC. He ought to know how to frame things in ways that all the conservative justices can understand.. actually hear. So, even Alieto and Scalia might be able to make the jump to what the framers did mean! And those that wrote the Bill of Rights! A little legal strategy to consider. Would love to hear from any lawyers here that have something to say about this.

Hummm.... this probably won't reach the SC for a couple of years (and all the appeals will happen in the interim)... My guess is that another SC nomination will come up within this time frame. OK, so, it is extremely important that Obama is a two-term president! Not that his appointments have been far left or progressive thus far, but, I really would not want a Republican making the appointment if another vacancy arises prior to the end of Obama's current term! Especially since that next vacancy may very well be Ruth Bader-Ginsberg.

Just thinking’…. projecting and being hopeful!

I am bummed with the stay imposed, however. It would have been better for more couples to just be able to marry now, perhaps adding to the 18000 folks in CA that were able to retain legal marriages after the … Hummm… second appellate decision post Prop 8 passage. I just feel that the more same-sex marriages recognized as legal goes to the equality position more deeply in terms of the 14th Amendment that this decision will rise or fall on. But, I may be totally wrong in this thinking.

[Zimmeh]

Now if Florida could get their happy butts in gear and pass a same-sex marriage law here...

Have a good night,

Zimmy


Been thinking about that perhaps the fact that one of the lawyers arguing the case is a conservative (the Bush rep for Bush v. Gore) might be advantageous when this gets to the federal SC. He ought to know how to frame things in ways that all the conservative justices can understand.. actually hear. So, even Alieto and Scalia might be able to make the jump to what the framers did mean! And those that wrote the Bill of Rights! A little legal strategy to consider. Would love to hear from any lawyers here that have something to say about this.

Hummm.... this probably won't reach the SC for a couple of years (and all the appeals will happen in the interim)... My guess is that another SC nomination will come up within this time frame. OK, so, it is extremely important that Obama is a two-term president! Not that his appointments have been far left or progressive thus far, but, I really would not want a Republican making the appointment if another vacancy arises prior to the end of Obama's current term! Especially since that next vacancy may very well be Ruth Bader-Ginsberg.

Just thinking’…. projecting and being hopeful!

I am bummed with the stay imposed, however. It would have been better for more couples to just be able to marry now, perhaps adding to the 18000 folks in CA that were able to retain legal marriages after the … Hummm… second appellate decision post Prop 8 passage. I just feel that the more same-sex marriages recognized as legal goes to the equality position more deeply in terms of the 14th Amendment that this decision will rise or fall on. But, I may be totally wrong in this thinking.

[atomiczombie]

This ain't over yet, but I give a big thumbs up to the Judge who handed down this decision today.

[Nat]

"A state’s interest in an enactment must of course be
secular in nature. The state does not have an interest in
enforcing private moral or religious beliefs without an
accompanying secular purpose."

Amen

"At oral argument on proponents’ motion for summary
judgment, the court posed to proponents’ counsel the assumption
that “the state’s interest in marriage is procreative” and inquired
how permitting same-sex marriage impairs or adversely affects that
interest. Doc #228 at 21. Counsel replied that the inquiry was
“not the legally relevant question,” id, but when pressed for an
answer, counsel replied: “Your honor, my answer is: I don’t know.
I don’t know.”"

heee

Proponents’ procreation argument, distilled to its
essence, is as follows: the state has an interest in encouraging
sexual activity between people of the opposite sex to occur in
stable marriages because such sexual activity may lead to pregnancy
and children, and the state has an interest in encouraging parents
to raise children in stable households. Tr 3050:17-3051:10. The
state therefore, the argument goes, has an interest in encouraging
all opposite-sex sexual activity, whether responsible or
irresponsible, procreative or otherwise, to occur within a stable
marriage, as this encourages the development of a social norm that
opposite-sex sexual activity should occur within marriage. Tr
3053:10-24. Entrenchment of this norm increases the probability
that procreation will occur within a marital union. Because samesex
couples’ sexual activity does not lead to procreation,
according to proponents the state has no interest in encouraging
their sexual activity to occur within a stable marriage. Thus,
according to proponents, the state’s only interest is in oppositesex
sexual activity.

Katami and Stier testified about the effect Proposition 8
campaign advertisements had on their well-being. Katami explained
that he was angry and upset at the idea that children needed to be
protected from him. After watching a Proposition 8 campaign
message, PX0401 (Video, Tony Perkins, Miles McPherson, and Ron
Prentice Asking for Support of Proposition 8), Katami stated that
“it just demeans you. It just makes you feel like people are
putting efforts into discriminating against you.” Tr 108:14-16.
Stier, as the mother of four children, was especially disturbed at
the message that Proposition 8 had something to do with protecting
children. She felt the campaign messages were “used to sort of try
to educate people or convince people that there was a great evil to
be feared and that evil must be stopped and that evil is us, I
guess. * * * And the very notion that I could be part of what
others need to protect their children from was just —— it was more
than upsetting. It was sickening, truly. I felt sickened by that
campaign.”

[Stearns]

Why wasn't the trial allowed to be televised? I've forgotten, so somebody please refresh my memory.

[Manul]

Why wasn't the trial allowed to be televised? I've forgotten, so somebody please refresh my memory.

Public Broadcast of the Trial in This Case Would Violate Petitioners’ Due
Process Right to a Fair Trial.

http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Stay-TV-on-Prop-8-trial-1-9-10.pdf

[Stearns]

Public Broadcast of the Trial in This Case Would Violate Petitioners’ Due
Process Right to a Fair Trial.

http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Stay-TV-on-Prop-8-trial-1-9-10.pdf

Thanks, Manul!

[Manul]

Thanks, Manul!

De nada. In other words, they didn't want their faces to be seen.

[Stearns]

De nada. In other words, they didn't want their faces to be seen.

I call 'smokescreen' regarding the fear of retaliation bit. I think they didn't want the compelling arguments posed by Olson-Boies to win over any potential sympathizers and to hide their own shoddy, baseless defense.

[Manul]

I call 'smokescreen' regarding the fear of retaliation bit. I think they didn't want the compelling arguments posed by Olson-Boies to win over any potential sympathizers and to hide their own shoddy, baseless defense.

Olson-Boies won over the one that matters. :D

[AtLast]

This ain't over yet, but I give a big thumbs up to the Judge who handed down this decision today.

Yep! And his opinion is quite compelling in terms of an appeal.

Now that I have been able to hear part of the decision, it is quite amazing that this judge (H.W. Bush appointee) had such clarity in the fact that our rights are not up for voting, they simply are. And his bringing to light that marriage has never been based upon a couple's ability or intention to pro-create.

Much more in the opinion about gender TODAY, not yesterday! All 3 of the key arguments presented are quite clearly determined by the opinion. A big one was that same-sex marriage does not in any fashion cause harm to heterosexual marriage.

138 page opinion..... but, oh, I want to read every word!

[AtLast]

Full text of decision link: http://metroweekly.com/poliglot/2010/08/04/Perry%20Trial%20Decision.pdf
--------------------

Article about opinion- from HOME / jurisprudence : The law, lawyers, and the court.

A Brilliant RulingJudge Walker's decision to overturn Prop 8 is factual, well-reasoned, and powerful.
By Dahlia Lithwick
Posted Wednesday, Aug. 4, 2010, at 9:27 PM ET

Judge Walker ruled Prop 8 unconstitutionalJudge Vaughn R. Walker is not Anthony Kennedy. But when the chips are down, he certainly knows how to write like him. I count—in his opinion today—seven citations to Justice Kennedy's 1996 opinion in Romer v. Evans (striking down an anti-gay Colorado ballot initiative) and eight citations to his 2003 decision in Lawrence v. Texas (striking down Texas' gay-sodomy law). In a stunning decision this afternoon, finding California's Proposition 8 ballot initiative banning gay marriage unconstitutional, Walker trod heavily on the path Kennedy has blazed on gay rights: "[I]t would demean a married couple were it to be said marriage is simply about the right to have sexual intercourse," quotes Walker. "'[M]oral disapproval, without any other asserted state interest,' has never been a rational basis for legislation," cites Walker. "Animus towards gays and lesbians or simply a belief that a relationship between a man and a woman is inherently better than a relationship between two men or two women, this belief is not a proper basis on which to legislate," Walker notes, with a jerk of the thumb at Kennedy.

Kennedy? Hot sauce to go with those words?

But for all the lofty language about freedom and morality, nobody can fairly accuse Judge Walker of putting together an insubstantial or unsubstantiated opinion today. Indeed, the whole point of this legal exercise—the lengthy trial, the spectacularly detailed finding of facts (80 of them! with subheadings!)—was to pit expert against expert, science against science, and fact against prejudice.

It's hard to read Judge Walker's opinion without sensing that what really won out today was science, methodology, and hard work. Had the proponents of Prop 8 made even a minimal effort to put on a case, to track down real experts, to do more than try to assert their way to legal victory, this would have been a closer case. But faced with one team that mounted a serious effort and another team that did little more than fire up their big, gay boogeyman screensaver for two straight weeks, it wasn't much of a fight. Judge Walker scolds them at the outset for promising in their trial brief to prove that same-sex marriage would "effect some twenty-three harmful consequences" and then putting on almost no case.

Walker notes that the plaintiffs presented eight lay witnesses and nine expert witnesses, including historians, economists, psychologists, and a political scientist. Walker lays out their testimony in detail. Then he turns to the proponents' tactical decision to withdraw several of their witnesses, claiming "extreme concern about their personal safety" and unwillingness to testify if there were to be "recording of any sort." Even when it was determined that there would be no recording, counsel declined to call them. They were left with two trial witnesses, one of whom, David Blankenhorn, founder and president of the Institute for American Values, the judge found "lacks the qualifications to offer opinion testimony and, in any event, failed to provide cogent testimony in support of proponent's factual assertions." Blankenhorn's credentials, methodology, lack of peer-reviewed studies, and general shiftiness on cross examination didn't impress Walker. And once he was done with Blankenhorn, he turned to the only other witness—Kenneth P. Miller—who testified only to the limited question of the plaintiffs' political power. Walker wasn't much more impressed by Miller, giving his opinions "little weight."

Then come the elaborate "findings of fact"—and recall that appellate courts must defer far more to a judge's findings of fact than conclusions of law. Here is where Judge Walker knits together the trial evidence, to the data, to the nerves at the very base of Justice Kennedy's brain. Among his most notable determinations of fact, Walker finds: states have long discriminated in matters of who can marry; marital status affects immigration, citizenship, tax policy, property and inheritance rules, and benefits programs; that individuals do not choose their own sexual orientation; California law encourages gay couples to become parents; domestic partnership is a second-class legal status; permitting same-sex couples to marry does not affect the number of opposite-sex couples who marry, divorce, cohabit, or otherwise screw around. He found that it benefits the children of gay parents to have them be married and that the gender of a child's parent is not a factor in a child's adjustment. He found that Prop 8 puts the force of law behind a social stigma and that the entirety of the Prop 8 campaign relied on instilling fears that children exposed to the concept of same-sex marriage may become gay. (Brand-new data show that the needle only really moved in favor of the Prop 8 camp when parents of young children came out in force against gay marriage in the 11th hour of the campaign.) He found that stereotypes targeting gays and lesbians have resulted in terrible disadvantages for them and that the Prop 8 campaign traded on those stereotypes.

And then Walker turned to his conclusions of law, finding that under both the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses:

Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples. Because California has no interest in discriminating against gay men and lesbians, and because Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis, the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.

Is that the end of it? Oh, no. Judge Walker is already being flayed alive for the breadth and boldness of his decision. The appeals road will be long and nasty. Walker has temporarily stayed the ruling pending argument on a stay. (Rick Hasen argues it may be wise for him to stay the order pending appeal for tactical reasons.) Any way you look at it, today's decision was written for a court of one—Kennedy—the man who has written most eloquently about dignity and freedom and the right to determine one's own humanity. The real triumph of Perry v. Schwarzenegger may be that it talks in the very loftiest terms about matters rooted in logic, science, money, social psychology, and fact.

http://www.slate.com/id/2262766/

[Jess]

Full text of decision link: http://metroweekly.com/poliglot/2010/08/04/Perry%20Trial%20Decision.pdf
--------------------

Article about opinion- from HOME / jurisprudence : The law, lawyers, and the court.

A Brilliant RulingJudge Walker's decision to overturn Prop 8 is factual, well-reasoned, and powerful.
By Dahlia Lithwick
Posted Wednesday, Aug. 4, 2010, at 9:27 PM ET

Judge Walker ruled Prop 8 unconstitutionalJudge Vaughn R. Walker is not Anthony Kennedy. But when the chips are down, he certainly knows how to write like him. I count—in his opinion today—seven citations to Justice Kennedy's 1996 opinion in Romer v. Evans (striking down an anti-gay Colorado ballot initiative) and eight citations to his 2003 decision in Lawrence v. Texas (striking down Texas' gay-sodomy law). In a stunning decision this afternoon, finding California's Proposition 8 ballot initiative banning gay marriage unconstitutional, Walker trod heavily on the path Kennedy has blazed on gay rights: "[I]t would demean a married couple were it to be said marriage is simply about the right to have sexual intercourse," quotes Walker. "'[M]oral disapproval, without any other asserted state interest,' has never been a rational basis for legislation," cites Walker. "Animus towards gays and lesbians or simply a belief that a relationship between a man and a woman is inherently better than a relationship between two men or two women, this belief is not a proper basis on which to legislate," Walker notes, with a jerk of the thumb at Kennedy.

Kennedy? Hot sauce to go with those words?

But for all the lofty language about freedom and morality, nobody can fairly accuse Judge Walker of putting together an insubstantial or unsubstantiated opinion today. Indeed, the whole point of this legal exercise—the lengthy trial, the spectacularly detailed finding of facts (80 of them! with subheadings!)—was to pit expert against expert, science against science, and fact against prejudice.

It's hard to read Judge Walker's opinion without sensing that what really won out today was science, methodology, and hard work. Had the proponents of Prop 8 made even a minimal effort to put on a case, to track down real experts, to do more than try to assert their way to legal victory, this would have been a closer case. But faced with one team that mounted a serious effort and another team that did little more than fire up their big, gay boogeyman screensaver for two straight weeks, it wasn't much of a fight. Judge Walker scolds them at the outset for promising in their trial brief to prove that same-sex marriage would "effect some twenty-three harmful consequences" and then putting on almost no case.

Walker notes that the plaintiffs presented eight lay witnesses and nine expert witnesses, including historians, economists, psychologists, and a political scientist. Walker lays out their testimony in detail. Then he turns to the proponents' tactical decision to withdraw several of their witnesses, claiming "extreme concern about their personal safety" and unwillingness to testify if there were to be "recording of any sort." Even when it was determined that there would be no recording, counsel declined to call them. They were left with two trial witnesses, one of whom, David Blankenhorn, founder and president of the Institute for American Values, the judge found "lacks the qualifications to offer opinion testimony and, in any event, failed to provide cogent testimony in support of proponent's factual assertions." Blankenhorn's credentials, methodology, lack of peer-reviewed studies, and general shiftiness on cross examination didn't impress Walker. And once he was done with Blankenhorn, he turned to the only other witness—Kenneth P. Miller—who testified only to the limited question of the plaintiffs' political power. Walker wasn't much more impressed by Miller, giving his opinions "little weight."

Then come the elaborate "findings of fact"—and recall that appellate courts must defer far more to a judge's findings of fact than conclusions of law. Here is where Judge Walker knits together the trial evidence, to the data, to the nerves at the very base of Justice Kennedy's brain. Among his most notable determinations of fact, Walker finds: states have long discriminated in matters of who can marry; marital status affects immigration, citizenship, tax policy, property and inheritance rules, and benefits programs; that individuals do not choose their own sexual orientation; California law encourages gay couples to become parents; domestic partnership is a second-class legal status; permitting same-sex couples to marry does not affect the number of opposite-sex couples who marry, divorce, cohabit, or otherwise screw around. He found that it benefits the children of gay parents to have them be married and that the gender of a child's parent is not a factor in a child's adjustment. He found that Prop 8 puts the force of law behind a social stigma and that the entirety of the Prop 8 campaign relied on instilling fears that children exposed to the concept of same-sex marriage may become gay. (Brand-new data show that the needle only really moved in favor of the Prop 8 camp when parents of young children came out in force against gay marriage in the 11th hour of the campaign.) He found that stereotypes targeting gays and lesbians have resulted in terrible disadvantages for them and that the Prop 8 campaign traded on those stereotypes.

And then Walker turned to his conclusions of law, finding that under both the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses:

Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples. Because California has no interest in discriminating against gay men and lesbians, and because Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis, the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.

Is that the end of it? Oh, no. Judge Walker is already being flayed alive for the breadth and boldness of his decision. The appeals road will be long and nasty. Walker has temporarily stayed the ruling pending argument on a stay. (Rick Hasen argues it may be wise for him to stay the order pending appeal for tactical reasons.) Any way you look at it, today's decision was written for a court of one—Kennedy—the man who has written most eloquently about dignity and freedom and the right to determine one's own humanity. The real triumph of Perry v. Schwarzenegger may be that it talks in the very loftiest terms about matters rooted in logic, science, money, social psychology, and fact.

http://www.slate.com/id/2262766/

Wanted to bump this and add a note to keep up with the Same Sex Marriage thread, as folks have been pretty diligent in posting updates regarding same sex rulings all over the world!
Thanks At Last!

[Corkey]

Kagan confirmed as Supreme Court Justice 63-37.

[Greyson]

Two consecutive days of good news. I am going to be sure and write down my thoughts and feelings of the past two very historic days.

[MsMerrick]

Given that its rare to hear me praise the Mayor of New York, I have to give him props.. For his defense of the Mosque at Ground Zero mess.. In fact, he really delivered a ringing endorsement, of separation of Church & State, etc.. noting many of the same things I lost my temper about, a week or so ago.. He delighted me for a change... :)

report of speech click here (http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2010/08/03/mayor-bloomberg-weighs-in-on-ground-zero-mosque/)
Full Speech click here (http://home.nyc.gov/portal/site/nycgov/menuitem.c0935b9a57bb4ef3daf2f1c701c789a0/index.jsp?pageID=mayor_press_release&catID=1194&doc_name=http%3A%2F%2Fhome.nyc.gov%2Fhtml%2Fom%2Fh tml%2F2010b%2Fpr337-10.html&cc=unused1978&rc=1194&ndi=1)

[Greyson]

Age-bias case vs. Google can move forward, state Supreme Court rules

By Mike Swift


mswift@mercurynews.com

Posted: 08/05/2010 11:05:19 PM PDT


In a ruling that could have broad ramifications for workers who sue employers for age bias, the California Supreme Court has cleared the way for a former Google executive who was fired to move forward with a lawsuit accusing the company of age discrimination.

The justices on Thursday unanimously upheld a San Jose appeals court's earlier conclusion that Brian Reid, who was fired from his job as Google's engineering director in 2004, could take his case to trial because he'd presented enough evidence, including "stray comments" from co-workers and a supervisor mocking him for his age, to make a discrimination claim.

"It's a significant victory for employees, and I'm on the management side, so it's a significant defeat for companies," said Dan Westman, co-chairman of the employment and labor group and a partner at San Francisco-based Morrison & Foerster LLP.

A Google spokesman said Reid's termination was not discriminatory and that Google will defend its actions -- and its culture -- in court.

"Brian Reid was not laid off based on his age," said the spokesman, Andrew Pederson. "We look forward to demonstrating in court the legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons why Mr. Reid was let go."

Stock options lost

Google recruited Reid, who had managed the team that built one of the first Internet search engines at AltaVista and who has a doctorate in computer science, in the summer of 2002. But the company fired Reid, then 54, within two years, allegedly saying he was not a "cultural fit," after co-workers and a supervisor had described him as "an old man," "slow," "sluggish" and "an old fuddy-duddy," and made remarks such as that Reid's compact disc cases should be relabeled LPs, according to court documents. Reid's supervisor, Urs Hölzle, then 38, and currently a senior vice president and Google Fellow, regularly told Reid that his opinions and ideas were "too old to matter," according to the documents.

Reid, now 60, lost 131,917 stock options he could have exercised for tens of millions of dollars in the years after Google went public in 2005. Reid's lawyer said the computer scientist plans to take his claims to a trial in which he would air "significant statistical evidence" of age bias in pay and performance reviews by Google management, including internal documents that have remained sealed.

"It was a complete vindication of Dr. Reid," the attorney, Lori Ocheltree, said of the Supreme Court decision. "It says a great deal about Google and what is going on in that company, and specifically what is going on at the head of that company and in the inner circle of that company -- that young 20-year-olds don't necessarily see a place for tremendously talented, experienced 50- and 60-year-olds."

Google does not share statistical data on the age of its work force, but Pederson said the company has many older workers, whose contributions are valued equally. "Age is not a factor for us. If you can do the work, that's all we care about." Google asserted in court documents that Reid was fired because the program he headed was being eliminated and because of poor performance.

Stray comments doctrine

The case was closely watched by employment lawyers, with a host of organizations lining up on both sides of the case, including the AARP on Reid's behalf and the California Employment Law Council for Google. Lawyers who specialize in representing companies accused of discrimination said the ruling will make it easier for workers in California to get their age discrimination suits before a jury, because it allowed the use of stray comments.

Companies had relied on a legal doctrine arising from a U.S. Supreme Court case that an age discrimination case cannot be founded on a collection of remarks in the workplace, such as the "old fuddy-duddy" comments cited by Reid.
The ruling means that in California, "it will be easier for plaintiffs to get to a jury," said Eric Steinert of the law firm Seyfarth Shaw in San Francisco, "because in the past employers relied fairly heavily on this stray remarks doctrine."

"The consequence of that is going to be more trials, more pressure to settle, and perhaps more evidence coming in at trial regarding these remarks," he said.

Westman said another consequence could be that California companies will need to be more vigilant about remarks made in the workplace, given that with an aging population, "it's inevitable that older workers are going to be supervised by younger managers proportionally more in the future."

Younger computer workers

In recent years, Silicon Valley computer workers have tended to be much younger than the valley's overall work force. Data from the 2000 census, analyzed by the Mercury News, shows that while 21 percent of all workers at Santa Clara County companies were older than 50, 9 percent of computer workers were 50 or older. Data from the 2010 census is not yet available.

Reid, who now works at Redwood City-based Internet Systems Consortium, won't be speaking publicly because of pending litigation, Ocheltree said.

"He's delighted. It's been six long years so far," she said. "He's eager to have his day in court."

The impact


Legal experts say the ruling will make it easier for workers in California to get their age discrimination suits before a jury because it allowed the use of stray comments.



http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_15691535?nclick_check=1

[AtLast]

Kind of interesting... perhaps, hopeful!! rice had a whole lotta' Christian followers!! She does have a gay son, but says that is not the main reason for her leaving Christianity.

The Anne Rice defection: It's the tip of the religious iceberg


American Christianity is not well, and there's evidence to indicate that its condition is more critical than most realize - or at least want to admit.

By William Lobdell

latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-lobdell-religion-20100808,0,3621871.story

August 8, 2010

Novelist Anne Rice's surprise post last week on Facebook - she announced she had quit Christianity "in the name of Christ" because she'd seen too much hypocrisy - brought cheers and smug smiles from critics of institutional faith, and criticism and soul-searching among believers.

But there's something more at play here than one of America's most famous Catholics - Rice re-embraced the faith of her youth in 1998 and published a memoir just two years ago, "Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession" - walking away from the church.

Rice is merely one of millions of Americans who have opted out of organized religion in recent years, making the unaffiliated category of faith the fastest-growing "religion" in America, according to a 2008 study by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

The Pew report found that 1 in 6 American adults were not affiliated with any particular faith. That number jumped to 25% for people ages 18 to 29. Moreover, most mainline Protestant denominations have for years experienced a net loss in members, and about 25% of cradle Catholics have left their childhood faith, the study showed.

And in a 2008 study by Trinity College researchers, 27% of Americans said they do not expect a religious funeral.

American Christianity is not well, and there's evidence to indicate that its condition is more critical than most realize - or at least want to admit.

Pollsters - most notably evangelical George Barna - have reported repeatedly that they can find little measurable difference between the moral behavior of churchgoers and the rest of American society. Barna has found that born-again Christians are more likely to divorce (an act strongly condemned by Jesus) than atheists and agnostics, and are more likely to be racist than other Americans.

And while evangelical adolescents overwhelmingly say they believe in abstaining from premarital sex, they are more likely to be sexually active - and at an earlier age - than peers who are mainline Protestants, Mormons or Jews, according to University of Texas researcher Mark Regnerus.

On the bright side, Barna's surveys show evangelicals (defined by Barna as a subset of born-again Christians, which he sees as a broader group with more flexible beliefs) do pledge far more money to charity, though 76% of them fail to give 10% of their income to the church as prescribed by their faith. Various studies show American Christians as a whole give away a miserly 3% or so of their income to the church or charity.

"Every day, the church is becoming more like the world it allegedly seeks to change," Barna has said.

Barna isn't the only worried evangelical. Christian activist Ronald J. Sider writes in his book, "The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience": "By their daily activity, most 'Christians' regularly commit treason. With their mouths they claim that Jesus is their Lord, but with their actions they demonstrate their allegiance to money, sex, and personal self-fulfillment."

How to explain the Grand Canyon-sized gap between principles outlined in the Gospels and the behavior of believers? Christians typically, and rather lamely, respond that shortcomings of the followers of Jesus are simply evidence of man's inherent sinfulness.

But if one adheres to the principle of Occam's razor - that the simplest explanation is the most likely - there is another, more unsettling conclusion: that many people who call themselves Christian don't really believe, deep down, in the tenets of their faith. In other words, their actions reveal their true beliefs.
That might explain why Roman Catholic bishops leave predator priests in ministry to prey on more unsuspecting children. Or why churches on Sunday mornings are said to be the most segregated places in America. It also would explain why most Catholic women use birth control even though the practice is considered a mortal sin.

Culturally, America is still a Christian nation. The majority of us still attend church at least occasionally, celebrate Christmas and Easter, and pepper our conversations with "God bless you" and "I'll be praying for you."

But judging by the behavior of most Christians, they've become secularists. And the sea of hypocrisy between Christian beliefs and actions is driving Americans away from the institutional church in record numbers.

Some, such as Anne Rice, are continuing their spiritual journey on their own, unable to reconcile the Gospel message with religious institutions covered with man's dirty fingerprints. Others have stopped believing in God. Those with awareness who remain Christians are scrambling to find ways, like St. Francis of Assisi, to rebuild God's church.

But remember, St. Francis offered a radical example during a time when the institutional church had grown corrupt and flabby. He was a wealthy young man who took a vow of poverty and devoted himself to the poor. His motto: "Preach the Gospel at all times - and when necessary use words."

A well-informed hunch says American Christians aren't ready for the kind of reformation that will realign their actions with biblical mandates. And in the meantime, the exodus from the church will continue.

William Lobdell, a former Times staff writer, is the author of "Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America - and Found Unexpected Peace."http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=13069

[Nat]

Romania slams France over gypsy expulsion
(http://http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/08/19/2987019.htm?section=justin)

Print Email Share
Romania slams France over gypsy expulsion
By Rachael Brown

Posted 3 hours 14 minutes ago

Romania's foreign minister has accused France of xenophobia as the government in Paris prepares to expel Romanian gypsies.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy has promised to crack down on 300 illegal gypsy camps in a bid to restore his credibility on law and order.

It follows riots sparked by the deaths of young travellers in confrontations with police.

The French government is preparing to send 700 Roma back to Bucharest.

Authorities say the gypsies are in France illegally but have accepted payments to return to Romania.

But Romania's foreign minister, Teodor Basconschi, says he is concerned about populist provocation and xenophobic reactions at a time of economic crisis.

International organisations fear the Roma are being made scapegoats to appease right-wing voters ahead of the country's upcoming presidential campaign.

Tags: world-politics, france, romania

[MsDemeanor]

I've spent the evening glued to MSNBC and their amazing coverage of the last convoy of US troops leaving Iraq. Richard Engel traveled with the troops as they left and crossed the border, and Rachel Maddow reported from the Green Zone (ha, she wasn't on vacation this week, she was hanging out in Iraq!). Engel was the only journalist traveling with the convoy - nice score for NBC. If you missed it, check online; I'm guessing that MSNBC will have all of it available for interwebs viewing. Most of the coverage was during Rachel and Keith's shows, so check there first.

[Zimmeh]

I thought this was interesting. Since I love shopping at Barnes & Noble.

http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/110381/clearance-sale-barnes-noble-didnt-evolve-enough?mod=career-leadership.

[AtLast]

I've spent the evening glued to MSNBC and their amazing coverage of the last convoy of US troops leaving Iraq. Richard Engel traveled with the troops as they left and crossed the border, and Rachel Maddow reported from the Green Zone (ha, she wasn't on vacation this week, she was hanging out in Iraq!). Engel was the only journalist traveling with the convoy - nice score for NBC. If you missed it, check online; I'm guessing that MSNBC will have all of it available for interwebs viewing. Most of the coverage was during Rachel and Keith's shows, so check there first.

I was glued to the tube with this, too. LOL... and I was so mad that Rachael & Chris were out again! I can't stand it when they are gone!!

For me, this was very important coverage as some good questions were posed about what was really accomplished and how the people of Iraq feel right now.

My stomach churned a lot in thinking about all of our trrops that died and were hurt there along with the people of Iraq. And yes, the money spent for this war that was based upon fabrications of lunatics.

Also wondering how long of a break do the combat troops that just left will have off before being sent to Afghanistan? Kind of a bitter-sweet feeling throughout my watching this.

[Nat]

I was at the gym just now and I saw on the news a blurb that 1 in 5 americans think Obama is a Muslim. WTF.

[Dutch Leonard]

I was at the gym just now and I saw on the news a blurb that 1 in 5 americans think Obama is a Muslim. WTF.

Cheer up, if tea baggers constitute only 20% of the population, we don't have to worry much about the next election, so long as the sensible people show up in force.

[Jesse]

Really? Guess the proverbial "they" who took this poll do not consider me to be an American, no one ask me. lol Where do they get these nonsense poll results from anyway?

Jesse

I was at the gym just now and I saw on the news a blurb that 1 in 5 americans think Obama is a Muslim. WTF.

[Nat]

Cheer up, if tea baggers constitute only 20% of the population, we don't have to worry much about the next election, so long as the sensible people show up in force.

I just hope it's not catching. :/

I guess it's what warranted this:

Pastors who pray with Obama say he's a devout Christian (http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/08/19/1783910/pastors-who-pray-with-obama-say.html)

[MsDemeanor]

Also wondering how long of a break do the combat troops that just left will have off before being sent to Afghanistan? Kind of a bitter-sweet feeling throughout my watching this.
6 months was what I heard them say during the broadcast.
I was at the gym just now and I saw on the news a blurb that 1 in 5 americans think Obama is a Muslim. WTF.
I think that number is kind of low. I've seen so many polls where the stupidity rate of Americans comes in at 30%, 40%, or more that 20% seems suspicious.

[Nat]

Prenatal Pesticide Exposure May Raise Risk of Attention Issues in Kids (http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/healthday/642281.html)

[AtLast]

I was at the gym just now and I saw on the news a blurb that 1 in 5 americans think Obama is a Muslim. WTF.

And another "survey" showed 1 in 4 believe he is a Muslim "in secret." When is the GOP/Tea Party culture of hate going to end? It continues to grow...

[Gayla]

So, if we started a rumor that "in secret he's a Republican", do you think they would lay off?

[Nat]

So, if we started a rumor that "in secret he's a Republican", do you think they would lay off?

A lot of tea baggers don't even like repubs. Maybe if film were released of him being baptised in a river somewhere and speaking in tongues?

[AtLast]

A lot of tea baggers don't even like repubs. Maybe if film were released of him being baptised in a river somewhere and speaking in tongues?

ROTFL!!!

Might just work!!

[Zimmeh]

http://omg.yahoo.com/news/martin-shorts-wife-nancy-dolman-dies-at-58/46141?nc

[dreadgeek]

And another "survey" showed 1 in 4 believe he is a Muslim "in secret." When is the GOP/Tea Party culture of hate going to end? It continues to grow...

Depends. If things go their way 6 November 2012 then it will end around 21 or 22 January 2013. If things *don't* go their way then you should probably go ahead and lay in for the long haul because the GOP will *keep* up this strategy as long as they stay out of power. And that, kids, is where we find ourselves. We have one of two major parties that, in the nineties, hit on the idea that if they are out of power then they will simply spend that time making certain that nothing happens. It was the *entire* strategy of Gingrich et. al. after 1994 (that's what the impeachment hearing was about) and it's what they are doing now--making it *impossible* for the other party to govern. So when they are out of power they will behave like petulant children, hold their breath and gum up the works so that they can then blame the party in power for not getting anything done while at the same time portraying the Democrats as being more Lenin than Lenin himself. When they are *in* power they will tamp down but not eliminate the rhetoric because they *can't* eliminate it for two reasons.

The first and most salient is that Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are not elected, never have to worry about winning an election and only have to make sure that the ad revenues stay up. This they do and do well. The second is that Republicans with an eye to re-election are *terrified* of their base. Absolutely live in utter fear of them and, I have to say, I don't blame them. If I were a Republican strategist I would see the problem that the GOP has which is, more or less, this--outside of elderly whites in the Deep South, they don't have much of a bloc.

1) Blacks--we're gone, we're not going back to the GOP in any significant numbers anytime soon and everything they have done in the last 18 months makes it less likely that will change. The GOP can clone Michael Steele all they want, nothing he says or does will change the fact that the GOP has lost the black vote for any foreseeable future.

2) Hispanics--while not as solidly gone as blacks, they are headed for the door. The GOP has pretty much bought and paid for the loss of the Hispanic vote.

3) Muslims--while a relatively small minority within the USA every vote counts in building a coalition and while Muslims (along with the other two groups) may not be thrilled with the Democratic party at least there's no reason to believe that the Dems are out to get them.

4) People with higher education degrees. Yes, it does actually track and does so in two dimensions. If you are a white Protestant evangelical then it is very likely that you vote Republican. If you are a white Protestant evangelical it is also unlikely that you have an advanced (post bachelors) degree. (Pew study on America and religion from 2006)

5) The large coastal cities. Now, you would *NEVER* know this if you aren't seriously wonky but the overwhelming majority of Americans live in cities. In fact, the overwhelming majority of Americans live in cities in a coastal state! Now, I want you to think about this--particularly if your zip code is in or around NYC, LA, SF Bay Area, Portland Metro, Seattle Metro, Sacramento Metro, DC Metro, Boston, Philly Atlanta--think about the people you know, the people with whom you interact with on a daily basis. I'm willing to bet that a non-trivial number of them are what we would call liberal. 81% of all Americans live in cities and most large cities are in the coastal states. Now, here's where things get interesting--the *majority* of Americans are being dictated to by the minority. What the GOP and conservatives generally claim to be doing is preserving the 'small-town' values of America. What they mean by this, of course, is an America that is blatantly Christian and while not *hostile* to non-Christians certainly willing to let them know that they are not 'real' Americans, they mean queers living in fear of our livelihoods or our lives, and non-whites adding a little ethnic flavor and color but not actually having power. So 19% of the country is trying to drag the better part of 80% of the country backward.

So, here's what the GOP has going forward.

Older whites who live in the Deep South
White Southerners
Older whites who live in the Midwest and Mountain states
Corporations and the very wealthy

That's it. That's their constituency and of those while the last group is their *true* base, they are not their *electoral* base. Their electoral base are the first three groups. In the short term, the current GOP strategy might work. In the long-term, as long as we continue to have elections, their strategy is doomed and when it occurs to the GOP leadership what they've done to themselves, I will laugh because they will only have themselves to blame. It didn't *have* to be this way but they chose this path back in '68 and now they have to ride it all the way down. That would be okay, if they weren't so damned determined to bring the house down in flames around them while doing so.

Cheers
Aj

[AtLast]

Depends. If things go their way 6 November 2012 then it will end around 21 or 22 January 2013. If things *don't* go their way then you should probably go ahead and lay in for the long haul because the GOP will *keep* up this strategy as long as they stay out of power. And that, kids, is where we find ourselves. We have one of two major parties that, in the nineties, hit on the idea that if they are out of power then they will simply spend that time making certain that nothing happens. It was the *entire* strategy of Gingrich et. al. after 1994 (that's what the impeachment hearing was about) and it's what they are doing now--making it *impossible* for the other party to govern. So when they are out of power they will behave like petulant children, hold their breath and gum up the works so that they can then blame the party in power for not getting anything done while at the same time portraying the Democrats as being more Lenin than Lenin himself. When they are *in* power they will tamp down but not eliminate the rhetoric because they *can't* eliminate it for two reasons.

The first and most salient is that Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are not elected, never have to worry about winning an election and only have to make sure that the ad revenues stay up. This they do and do well. The second is that Republicans with an eye to re-election are *terrified* of their base. Absolutely live in utter fear of them and, I have to say, I don't blame them. If I were a Republican strategist I would see the problem that the GOP has which is, more or less, this--outside of elderly whites in the Deep South, they don't have much of a bloc.

1) Blacks--we're gone, we're not going back to the GOP in any significant numbers anytime soon and everything they have done in the last 18 months makes it less likely that will change. The GOP can clone Michael Steele all they want, nothing he says or does will change the fact that the GOP has lost the black vote for any foreseeable future.

2) Hispanics--while not as solidly gone as blacks, they are headed for the door. The GOP has pretty much bought and paid for the loss of the Hispanic vote.

3) Muslims--while a relatively small minority within the USA every vote counts in building a coalition and while Muslims (along with the other two groups) may not be thrilled with the Democratic party at least there's no reason to believe that the Dems are out to get them.

4) People with higher education degrees. Yes, it does actually track and does so in two dimensions. If you are a white Protestant evangelical then it is very likely that you vote Republican. If you are a white Protestant evangelical it is also unlikely that you have an advanced (post bachelors) degree. (Pew study on America and religion from 2006)

5) The large coastal cities. Now, you would *NEVER* know this if you aren't seriously wonky but the overwhelming majority of Americans live in cities. In fact, the overwhelming majority of Americans live in cities in a coastal state! Now, I want you to think about this--particularly if your zip code is in or around NYC, LA, SF Bay Area, Portland Metro, Seattle Metro, Sacramento Metro, DC Metro, Boston, Philly Atlanta--think about the people you know, the people with whom you interact with on a daily basis. I'm willing to bet that a non-trivial number of them are what we would call liberal. 81% of all Americans live in cities and most large cities are in the coastal states. Now, here's where things get interesting--the *majority* of Americans are being dictated to by the minority. What the GOP and conservatives generally claim to be doing is preserving the 'small-town' values of America. What they mean by this, of course, is an America that is blatantly Christian and while not *hostile* to non-Christians certainly willing to let them know that they are not 'real' Americans, they mean queers living in fear of our livelihoods or our lives, and non-whites adding a little ethnic flavor and color but not actually having power. So 19% of the country is trying to drag the better part of 80% of the country backward.

So, here's what the GOP has going forward.

Older whites who live in the Deep South
White Southerners
Older whites who live in the Midwest and Mountain states
Corporations and the very wealthy

That's it. That's their constituency and of those while the last group is their *true* base, they are not their *electoral* base. Their electoral base are the first three groups. In the short term, the current GOP strategy might work. In the long-term, as long as we continue to have elections, their strategy is doomed and when it occurs to the GOP leadership what they've done to themselves, I will laugh because they will only have themselves to blame. It didn't *have* to be this way but they chose this path back in '68 and now they have to ride it all the way down. That would be okay, if they weren't so damned determined to bring the house down in flames around them while doing so.

Cheers
Aj

Aj!!! You have brought some light into my life!!!

One area that I believe to be significant is the growing Hispanic populations reaching voting age. With the current GOP/Tea Party sentiments, I cannot see this group embracing either. Oh, but there is that Mario Rubio... Will be interesting to see what really happens with that conservative rising-star.

Speaking of breaking news of the past couple of weeks... Isn't it interesting that the Mosque and Obama's citizenship status has continued as the big items while Petraeus has been making quite a few appearances (one on charlie Rose I found quite interesting) and talking about his new tenure over Afghanistan? No one seems to be paying much attention and he has made it rather clear that the July '11 withdrawal date is not all that solid.

Combat troops just leaving Iraq will be in Afghanistan in about 6 months. The very same troops that have been deployed over and over again.....

And news about our jobs crisis and the recently announced decline in the housing industry (dipping big time this summer) that is a major variable with economic recovery is hardly being discussed????

[Rook]

Why do I have such a filthy mind?
hmpf...
I hear "teabagger" and I instantly think of the scene on "Soul Plane"{with d.l. hughley, snoop dogg, tom arnold}..
"A man that squats on top of a womans face and lowers his genitals into her mouth during sex, known as "teabagging"

On a seperate note, w/o derailing...

Martin Short's wife of 30 years passed away after a 3 year battle with Cancer....

And of course, amongst other post-contest shit stirring news, Miss Philippines could've had a chance if she didn't flub her question{same for Miss Puerto Rico had she worn the gown her organizers picked out for her...right}

:glasses:

[Jess]

Aj!!! You have brought some light into my life!!!

One area that I believe to be significant is the growing Hispanic populations reaching voting age. With the current GOP/Tea Party sentiments, I cannot see this group embracing either. Oh, but there is that Mario Rubio... Will be interesting to see what really happens with that conservative rising-star.

Speaking of breaking news of the past couple of weeks... Isn't it interesting that the Mosque and Obama's citizenship status has continued as the big items while Petraeus has been making quite a few appearances (one on charlie Rose I found quite interesting) and talking about his new tenure over Afghanistan? No one seems to be paying much attention and he has made it rather clear that the July '11 withdrawal date is not all that solid.

Combat troops just leaving Iraq will be in Afghanistan in about 6 months. The very same troops that have been deployed over and over again.....

And news about our jobs crisis and the recently announced decline in the housing industry (dipping big time this summer) that is a major variable with economic recovery is hardly being discussed????

Couldn't be choreographed any better....

YouTube- The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas - The Movie Part 11

[Cowboi]

Why do I have such a filthy mind?
hmpf...
I hear "teabagger" and I instantly think of the scene on "Soul Plane"{with d.l. hughley, snoop dogg, tom arnold}..
"A man that squats on top of a womans face and lowers his genitals into her mouth during sex, known as "teabagging"

On a seperate note, w/o derailing...

Martin Short's wife of 30 years passed away after a 3 year battle with Cancer....

And of course, amongst other post-contest shit stirring news, Miss Philippines could've had a chance if she didn't flub her question{same for Miss Puerto Rico had she worn the gown her organizers picked out for her...right}

:glasses:



Hell, I thought that is what teabagging was!!!! LoL

[SuperFemme]

yHpiXmPWPwk

Residents of a neighborhood in Toronto, Canada confronted a group of church members accused of preaching hate outside the home of a gay couple last weekend, reports CTV News. About a dozen members of the Highfield Road Gospel Hall were met with shouts of “Stay the hell out of my neighborhood” by about ten residents of Toronto’s Leslieville neighborhood.

The church group eventually departed.

As the church group prayed outside the home of a gay couple and condemned them as sinners, one of the local residents, Geoff Skelding, recorded a portion of the confrontation and later posted in online. Describing the video on YouTube, Skelding writes the group has been reading the Bible loudly in front of the couple’s house for 7 years. "They may have also driven another couple from the area as well by doing the same thing,” he writes. “Tonight most of our neighbors came out and were successful in getting them to leave. The people who go to that church don't even live in our area!"

[waxnrope]

I love my "sins" of the flesh. I like crisp, so burning a bit is tasty.

[Greyson]

I am going to refrain from giving an editorial on this piece of information. One thing I will say, " We are everywhere. Across all genders, classes, race, ethnicity, nations of origin, religions, philosophies, political parties, lifestyles, belief systems and in nature."

Bush Campaign Chief and Former RNC Chair Ken Mehlman: I'm Gay

By Marc Ambinder

Ken Mehlman, President Bush's campaign manager in 2004 and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, has told family and associates that he is gay.


Mehlman arrived at this conclusion about his identity fairly recently, he said in an interview. He agreed to answer a reporter's questions, he said, because, now in private life, he wants to become an advocate for gay marriage and anticipated that questions would arise about his participation in a late-September fundraiser for the American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER), the group that supported the legal challenge to California's ballot initiative against gay marriage, Proposition 8.


"It's taken me 43 years to get comfortable with this part of my life," said Mehlman, now an executive vice-president with the New York City-based private equity firm, KKR. "Everybody has their own path to travel, their own journey, and for me, over the past few months, I've told my family, friends, former colleagues, and current colleagues, and they've been wonderful and supportive. The process has been something that's made me a happier and better person. It's something I wish I had done years ago."


Privately, in off-the-record conversations with this reporter over the years, Mehlman voiced support for civil unions and told of how, in private discussions with senior Republican officials, he beat back efforts to attack same-sex marriage. He insisted, too, that President Bush "was no homophobe." He often wondered why gay voters never formed common cause with Republican opponents of Islamic jihad, which he called "the greatest anti-gay force in the world right now."


Mehlman's leadership positions in the GOP came at a time when the party was stepping up its anti-gay activities -- such as the distribution in West Virginia in 2006 of literature linking homosexuality to atheism, or the less-than-subtle, coded language in the party's platform ("Attempts to redefine marriage in a single state or city could have serious consequences throughout the country..."). Mehlman said at the time that he could not, as an individual Republican, go against the party consensus. He was aware that Karl Rove, President Bush's chief strategic adviser, had been working with Republicans to make sure that anti-gay initiatives and referenda would appear on November ballots in 2004 and 2006 to help Republicans.


Mehlman acknowledges that if he had publicly declared his sexuality sooner, he might have played a role in keeping the party from pushing an anti-gay agenda.


"It's a legitimate question and one I understand," Mehlman said. "I can't change the fact that I wasn't in this place personally when I was in politics, and I genuinely regret that. It was very hard, personally." He asks of those who doubt his sincerity: "If they can't offer support, at least offer understanding."


"What I do regret, and think a lot about, is that one of the things I talked a lot about in politics was how I tried to expand the party into neighborhoods where the message wasn't always heard. I didn't do this in the gay community at all."


He said that he "really wished" he had come to terms with his sexual orientation earlier, "so I could have worked against [the Federal Marriage Amendment]" and "reached out to the gay community in the way I reached out to African Americans."


Mehlman is aware that his attempts to justify his past silence will not be adequate for many people. He and his friends say that he is aware that he will no longer control the story about his identity -- which will simultaneously expose old wounds, invite Schadenfruede, and legitimize anger among gay rights activists in both parties who did not hide their sexual orientations.


Mehlman, who has never married, long found his sexuality subject to rumor and innuendo. He was the subject of an outing campaign by gay rights activist Mike Rogers, starting when Mehlman was Bush's campaign manager. Rogers's crusades against closeted gay Republicans split the organized gay lobby in Washington but were undoubtedly effective: he drove several elected officials, including Virginia Rep. Ed Shrock, from office, pushed out a would-be presidential campaign manager for George Allen well before Allen was set to run, slung rumors about Sen. Larry Craig's sexual orientation well before Craig's incident in a Minneapolis airport bathroom, and even managed to make homosexuality a wedge issue within the party's activist circles.


In 2006, Rogers caught up to Mehlman and asked him why he gave "so many confusing answers to social conservatives about your homosexuality," and followed up by asking whether Mehlman knew of a man who Rogers had claimed was Mehlman's secret partner. Mehlman denied to Rogers that he had given conflicting answers and said that the man in question was a law school classmate.


In several discussions I've had with Mehlman since he stepped down from the Republican National Committee in 2007, he never volunteered information about his sexual orientation, although charges that he presided over a resurgence in anti-gay sentiment were clearly an ongoing burden to him.


The disclosure at this stage of Mehlman's life strikes one close friend as being like a decision to jump off of a high diving board: Mehlman knows that there is plenty of water below, but it is still very scary to look down and make the leap. Mehlman likes order and certainty, and he knows that the reaction to his public confirmation cannot be predicted or contained.


Mehlman is the most powerful Republican in history to identify as gay.


Because his tenure as RNC chairman and his time at the center of the Bush political machine coincided with the Republican Party's attempts to exploit anti-gay prejudices and cement the allegiance of social conservatives, his declaration to the world is at once a personal act and an act of political speech.


"I wish I was where I am today 20 years ago. The process of not being able to say who I am in public life was very difficult. No one else knew this except me. My family didn't know. My friends didn't know. Anyone who watched me knew I was a guy who was clearly uncomfortable with the topic," he said.


During the Rogers crusades, many news organizations made attempts to confirm rumors and stories about Mehlman's sexuality. Republicans close to Mehlman either said they did not know, or that it did not matter, or that the question was offensive.


Mehlman once joked in public that although he was not gay, the rumors put a crimp on his social life. He admits to having misled several people who asked him directly.


He said that he plans to be an advocate for gay rights within the GOP, that he remains proud to be a Republican, and that his political identity is not defined by any one issue.


"What I will try to do is to persuade people, when I have conversations with them, that it is consistent with our party's philosophy, whether it's the principle of individual freedom, or limited government, or encouraging adults who love each other and who want to make a lifelong committment to each other to get married."


"I hope that we, as a party, would welcome gay and lesbian supporters. I also think there needs to be, in the gay community, robust and bipartisan support [for] marriage rights."


Ed Gillespie, a former RNC chairman and long-time friend of Mehlman, said that "it is significant that a former chairman of the Republiucan National Committe is openly gay and that he is supportive of gay marriage." Although Gillespie himself opposes gay marriage, he pointed to party stalwarts like former Vice President Dick Cheney and strategist Mary Matalin as open advocates for gay rights who had not been drummed out of the party. He acknowledged "big generational differences in perception when it comes to gay marriage and gay rights as an agenda, and I think that is true on the Republican side."


But, Gillespie said, he does not envision the party platform changing anytime soon.


"There are a lot of Republicans who are gay, there are a lot of Republicans who support government sanction of gay marriage, a lot of Republicans who support abortion on demand, a lot of Republicans who support cap-and-trade provisions. They're not single-issue voters." Gillespie acknowledged that the party had been inhospitable to gays in the past, and said that he hopes Mehlman's decision to come out leads the party to be "more respectful and civil in our discourse" when it comes to gays.


Mehlman said that his formal coming-out process began earlier this year. Over the past several weeks, he has notified former colleagues, including former President Bush. Once he realized that the news would probably leak, he assembled a team of former advisers to help him figure out the best way to harness the publicity generated by the disclosure for the cause of marriage rights. He is worried that some will see his decision to go public as opportunistic. Mehlman recently moved to Chelsea, a gay mecca in New York City. He refused to discuss his personal life with me, and he plans to give only a few print interviews on the subject.


Chad Griffin, the California-based political strategist who organized opposition to Proposition 8, said that Mehlman's quiet contributions to the American Foundation for Equal Rights are "tremendous," adding that "when we achieve equal equality, he will be one of the people to thank for it." Mehlman has become a de facto strategist for the group, and he has opened up his rolodex -- recruiting, as co-hosts for the AFER fundraiser: Paul Singer, a major Republican donor, hedge fund executive, and the president of the Manhattan Institute; Benjamin Ginsberg, one of the GOP's top lawyers; Michael Toner, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission; and two former GOP governors, William Weld of Massachusetts and Christie Todd Whitman of New Jersey.


Dustin Lance Black, the Academy Award winning writer of "Milk," said, "Ken represents an incredible coup for the American Foundation for Equal Rights. We believe that our mission of equal rights under the law is one that should resonate with every American. As a victorious former presidential campaign manager and head of the Republican Party, Ken has the proven experience and expertise to help us communicate with people across each of the 50 states."


This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/08/bush-campaign-chief-and-former-rnc-chair-ken-mehlman-im-gay/62065/

[Spirit Dancer]

http://glossynews.com/other-world-games/news-in-brief/201004291405/native-americans-in-arizona-vow-to-deport-all-non-native-americans/
This is older news but I've not seen it here so I'm sharing it.


Tags: Apache, Arizona, Gov. Brewer, Hopi, illegal immigrants, Navajo
Posted by P. Beckert


Navajo Nation – The Navajo, Hopi, all Apache Nations and all other Native Americans who presently reside in Arizona have joined forces in an effort to show the haughty Arizona residents just exactly who has every right to be in that State.

Said Chief Standing Wolf, “it is not those of European decent who should be making the laws of this state, but we, the tribal people, who have been suppressed for too long. Our ancestors have been here for thousands of years, while the white man only came a few hundred years ago. Yet, it is the white man who wants to make ridiculous laws and keep everything lily white. We can no longer stand by and let this happen.”

Short of declaring war on the Arizona government, Chief Standing Wolf instead issued a warning “reverse your laws entitling only English-speaking people to inhabit Arizona. Only then will we back down and allow peace to again grace Arizona, but if you deny our fellow red and brown men their rightful place in this state, there will be bloodshed.”

Of course, Chief Standing Wolf was speaking in his native tongue, so the lawmakers in the State weren’t exactly sure what the message was.

[Corkey]

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2010/08/23/anti-gay-student-loses-legal-appeal/

Another victory for equality.

[Abigail Crabby]

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2010/08/23/anti-gay-student-loses-legal-appeal/

Another victory for equality.


Thanks for sharing this Corkey :hamactor:

[AtLast]

Police: Cab Driver Stabbed By Passenger Who Asked "Are You Muslim?"

A city cab driver is in the hospital after being stabbed by a passenger who allegedly asked if he was Muslim, police tell NY1.

Investigators with the New York City Police Department say it all began Monday night when a 21-year-old man hailed a cab at 24th Street and Second Avenue in Manhattan.

Police say the passenger asked the driver, "Are you Muslim?" When the driver said yes the passenger pulled a knife and slashed him in the throat, arm and lip.

The 43-year-old driver was able to lock the passenger in the back of the cab and call 911.

Both the driver and the passenger were taken to Bellevue Hospital.

As of late Tuesday, no charges had been filed.




http://manhattan.ny1.com/content/top_stories/124338/police--cab-driver-stabbed-by-passenger-who-asked--are-you-muslim--

[Abigail Crabby]

Police: Cab Driver Stabbed By Passenger Who Asked "Are You Muslim?"

A city cab driver is in the hospital after being stabbed by a passenger who allegedly asked if he was Muslim, police tell NY1.

Investigators with the New York City Police Department say it all began Monday night when a 21-year-old man hailed a cab at 24th Street and Second Avenue in Manhattan.

Police say the passenger asked the driver, "Are you Muslim?" When the driver said yes the passenger pulled a knife and slashed him in the throat, arm and lip.

The 43-year-old driver was able to lock the passenger in the back of the cab and call 911.

Both the driver and the passenger were taken to Bellevue Hospital.

As of late Tuesday, no charges had been filed.




http://manhattan.ny1.com/content/top_stories/124338/police--cab-driver-stabbed-by-passenger-who-asked--are-you-muslim--


I read this Susan - I was so dismayed :(

[christie]

The Government's New Right to Track Your Every Move With GPS

By ADAM COHEN – Thu Aug 26, 3:45 am ET

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn't violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway - and no reasonable expectation that the government isn't tracking your movements.

That is the bizarre - and scary - rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants - with no need for a search warrant.

It is a dangerous decision - one that, as the dissenting judges warned, could turn America into the sort of totalitarian state imagined by George Orwell. It is particularly offensive because the judges added insult to injury with some shocking class bias: the little personal privacy that still exists, the court suggested, should belong mainly to the rich.

This case began in 2007, when Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents decided to monitor Juan Pineda-Moreno, an Oregon resident who they suspected was growing marijuana. They snuck onto his property in the middle of the night and found his Jeep in his driveway, a few feet from his trailer home. Then they attached a GPS tracking device to the vehicle's underside.
After Pineda-Moreno challenged the DEA's actions, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled in January that it was all perfectly legal. More disturbingly, a larger group of judges on the circuit, who were subsequently asked to reconsider the ruling, decided this month to let it stand. (Pineda-Moreno has pleaded guilty conditionally to conspiracy to manufacture marijuana and manufacturing marijuana while appealing the denial of his motion to suppress evidence obtained with the help of GPS.)

In fact, the government violated Pineda-Moreno's privacy rights in two different ways. For starters, the invasion of his driveway was wrong. The courts have long held that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their homes and in the "curtilage," a fancy legal term for the area around the home. The government's intrusion on property just a few feet away was clearly in this zone of privacy.

The judges veered into offensiveness when they explained why Pineda-Moreno's driveway was not private. It was open to strangers, they said, such as delivery people and neighborhood children, who could wander across it uninvited.

Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, who dissented from this month's decision refusing to reconsider the case, pointed out whose homes are not open to strangers: rich people's. The court's ruling, he said, means that people who protect their homes with electric gates, fences and security booths have a large protected zone of privacy around their homes. People who cannot afford such barriers have to put up with the government sneaking around at night.

Judge Kozinski is a leading conservative, appointed by President Ronald Reagan, but in his dissent he came across as a raging liberal. "There's been much talk about diversity on the bench, but there's one kind of diversity that doesn't exist," he wrote. "No truly poor people are appointed as federal judges, or as state judges for that matter." The judges in the majority, he charged, were guilty of "cultural elitism." (Read about one man's efforts to escape the surveillance state.)

The court went on to make a second terrible decision about privacy: that once a GPS device has been planted, the government is free to use it to track people without getting a warrant. There is a major battle under way in the federal and state courts over this issue, and the stakes are high. After all, if government agents can track people with secretly planted GPS devices virtually anytime they want, without having to go to a court for a warrant, we are one step closer to a classic police state - with technology taking on the role of the KGB or the East German Stasi.

Fortunately, other courts are coming to a different conclusion from the Ninth Circuit's - including the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. That court ruled, also this month, that tracking for an extended period of time with GPS is an invasion of privacy that requires a warrant. The issue is likely to end up in the Supreme Court.

In these highly partisan times, GPS monitoring is a subject that has both conservatives and liberals worried. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit's pro-privacy ruling was unanimous - decided by judges appointed by Presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

Plenty of liberals have objected to this kind of spying, but it is the conservative Chief Judge Kozinski who has done so most passionately. "1984 may have come a bit later than predicted, but it's here at last," he lamented in his dissent. And invoking Orwell's totalitarian dystopia where privacy is essentially nonexistent, he warned: "Some day, soon, we may wake up and find we're living in Oceania."

Link to story on Yahoo News: http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/08599201315000

[Nat]

How absolutely terrible about the taxi driver - I am so glad he lived and was able to lock the guy in the cab.

The gps tracking is insane. And yet another reason not to drive. I wish more of Texas had public transportation handy.

Anybody who carries a cell phone that is on is leaving a trail of exactly where they've been. In court, they have a rep of the phone company use a map to show the path of a person using cell phone tower triangulation. Gps on the car sucks too, but most people don't think to turn off their phones to protect their privacy.

[SuperFemme]

Ex-Cop Pleads Guilty to Trans Beating

One month before his scheduled retrial, a former Memphis police officer pleaded guilty to beating the late Duanna Johnson, positioning himself to receive a two-year sentence rather than the 10 years he would have faced if convicted by a jury.

According to ABC24 in Memphis, Bridges McRae admitted to using excessive force against Johnson while booking her into the Shelby County Jail in June 2008 on a prostitution charge. The brutal beating was caught on surveillance tape.

“After watching video of the beating, all but one member of the jury wanted to convict Bridges McRae,” reports ABC24. “His April 2010 trial ended with a hung jury. A month before McRae was set to be retried his attorney’s reached a plea deal. Will Batts, Executive Director of The Memphis Gay and Lesbian Community Center is happy McRae will serve time behind bars, but feels two years is a light sentence. “It’s incredibly senseless. It’s hard to imagine somebody watching that and not feeling horror.”

Months after the beating, Johnson was shot and killed outside her home. The murder remains unsolved.

The attorney for Johnson plans to file a civil suit on behalf of her family seeking money and policy changes.

http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2010/08/29/Ex_Cop_Pleads_Guilty_to_Trans_Beating/

[Tommi]

Ex-Cop Pleads Guilty to Trans Beating

One month before his scheduled retrial, a former Memphis police officer pleaded guilty to beating the late Duanna Johnson, positioning himself to receive a two-year sentence rather than the 10 years he would have faced if convicted by a jury.

According to ABC24 in Memphis, Bridges McRae admitted to using excessive force against Johnson while booking her into the Shelby County Jail in June 2008 on a prostitution charge. The brutal beating was caught on surveillance tape.

“After watching video of the beating, all but one member of the jury wanted to convict Bridges McRae,” reports ABC24. “His April 2010 trial ended with a hung jury. A month before McRae was set to be retried his attorney’s reached a plea deal. Will Batts, Executive Director of The Memphis Gay and Lesbian Community Center is happy McRae will serve time behind bars, but feels two years is a light sentence. “It’s incredibly senseless. It’s hard to imagine somebody watching that and not feeling horror.”

Months after the beating, Johnson was shot and killed outside her home. The murder remains unsolved.

The attorney for Johnson plans to file a civil suit on behalf of her family seeking money and policy changes.

http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2010/08/29/Ex_Cop_Pleads_Guilty_to_Trans_Beating/

Maybe a person will want McRae for his lover. Imagine a cop :fastdraq: in jail. He probably will get put in a secure location away from those that would like to get their hands on him though.

[SuperFemme]

Maybe a person will want McRae for his lover. Imagine a cop :fastdraq: in jail. He probably will get put in a secure location away from those that would like to get their hands on him though.

right?

in my heart of hearts i feel that this man has something to do with her murder. if he didn't directly do it himself, then he had a hand in it.

two years for what he did to her is not enough.

the fact that nobody is working to solve her murder? makes me wish he'd bunk with bubba for a few weeks.

no human being deserves what happened to Duanna Johnson. :candle:

[T D]

I hardly think this cop felt that he was in a life threatening situation.

I'm soooooooooooo sick and tired of people hurting others and getting away with it. It disgusts me in so many ways. People get a little power and they'll find all kinds of ways to abuse it, and think they're justified in doing so.

[Nat]

right?

in my heart of hearts i feel that this man has something to do with her murder. if he didn't directly do it himself, then he had a hand in it.

two years for what he did to her is not enough.

the fact that nobody is working to solve her murder? makes me wish he'd bunk with bubba for a few weeks.

no human being deserves what happened to Duanna Johnson. :candle:

Here's news coverage from when she was beaten, including interview footage with her. It's a scary world.

-IAPTk69XPo

I wish her death had been / would be investigated. :(

[AtLast]

I hardly think this cop felt that he was in a life threatening situation.

I'm soooooooooooo sick and tired of people hurting others and getting away with it. It disgusts me in so many ways. People get a little power and they'll find all kinds of ways to abuse it, and think they're justified in doing so.



Oh yeah. Living between two cities that are notorious for police brutality, most specifically against POC and TG and queer people brings this home. It will be very interesting to see the trial and outcome for the female-identified butch that was kid abducted and gang raped then left for dead in Richmond when it finally goes to trial. If the trial is held in Contra Costa county, I doubt these asses will facing much in the way of sentencing, even if they are convicted. Frankly, I want it to go into federal hands due to the kidnapping. But, the actual charges that will be tried have not been released yet.

Frankly, the cops really didn't give a flying fuck about what happened to this butch.

[CrankyOldGuy]

Frankly, the cops really didn't give a flying fuck about what happened to this butch.

sadly, i'd have to agree.

[AtLast]

sadly, i'd have to agree.

Probably true. This kind of stuff makes me crazy!!

[AtLast]

August 31, 2010
TRENDING: White House keeps lid on Obama, Bush talk
Posted: August 31st, 2010 01:21 PM ET

From CNN White House Producer Xuan Thai


President Obama called former President George W. Bush on Tuesday ahead of his Oval Office address Tuesday night.
Fort Bliss, Texas (CNN) – President Obama telephoned former President George W. Bush from Air Force One in advance of Tuesday night's prime time speech regarding the end of the combat mission in Iraq - but the White House isn't saying what the two men discussed.

Obama called his predecessor while flying to Fort Bliss to meet with military personnel Tuesday morning ahead of his Oval Office address. The two spoke for several minutes according to Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton. There were no details about the subject of their conversation and Burton said no read out of the phone call would be provided.

Fort Bliss, Texas (CNN) – President Obama telephoned former President George W. Bush from Air Force One in advance of Tuesday night's prime time speech regarding the end of the combat mission in Iraq - but the White House isn't saying what the two men discussed.

Related: Obama to tip his hat to Bush?

Obama called his predecessor while flying to Fort Bliss to meet with military personnel Tuesday morning ahead of his Oval Office address. The two spoke for several minutes according to Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton. There were no details about the subject of their conversation and Burton said no read out of the phone call would be provided.


Deputy National Security Press Secretary Ben Rhodes previewed Tuesday evening's Oval Office address with the traveling press saying Obama will speak about the broader context of the drawdown of 100,000 troops in Iraq, the enduring partnership between the U.S. and Iraq and the Iraqi's responsibility going forward.

According to the White House, troops at Ft. Bliss have served in every stage of the Iraq war from the initial invasion through today's new mission.


http://www.cnn.com/

Hummmmmm....

[Greyson]

Slate

CEO Crybabies

Corporate bosses are whining, even though they're reporting record profits.

By Daniel Gross

Posted Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2010, at 12:56 PM ET
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It's hard out there for a CEO. There's a Democrat in the White House, and Washington is being ruled by a coalition of socialists and anti-capitalist thugs. There's uncertainty about taxes and policy. Business leaders are constantly being vilified for taking home huge paychecks without providing meaningful returns to shareholders, or creating jobs, or boosting wages. The newly passed financial reform bill requires CEOs of public companies to measure and report the ratio of their pay to that of their workers. Blackstone Group CEO Steve Schwartzman is complaining that the Obama administration is like Hitler invading Poland.

With government and the media making life so difficult for CEOs, it must be nearly impossible to turn a profit. Right? Um, not really.

The headline number from the quarterly GDP report released by the Commerce department last Friday was the sorry 1.6 percent growth rate of the economy in the second quarter. But the release also provided detailed data on corporate profits. And while the GDP number was disappointing, the latter was impressive. Corporate profits, which stood at $1.5 trillion in 2007, fell sharply to $1.26 trillion and essentially stagnated in 2009. But since the Obama presidency started, the trajectory in quarterly profits has reversed. Quarterly profits (reported at an annualized rate) rose from $1.18 trillion in the 2009 second quarter to $1.42 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2009 to $1.64 trillion in the second quarter of 2010. In the second quarter of 2010, corporate profits were up 39.2 percent from the year-before quarter.

Corporate profits aren't just rising in absolute terms, they're rising in relative terms. Corporate profits as a percentage of GDP are back up to nearly record highs. Check out this assemblage of quarterly GDP data for the last several years. If you divide line 17 (corporate profits with inventory and capital consumption adjustments) into line 1 (overall GDP), you can calculate corporate profits as a percentage of GDP—i.e., the chunk of the economy that corporations are keeping as profits. If companies and business were under assault, you might expect that this proportion would be falling. But as the chart here shows, that's not what is happening.


After hitting a low point in the fourth quarter of 2008, the measure has risen in every quarter and checked in at 11.25 percent in the second quarter of 2010—the highest level since the last quarter of 2006. In other words, the chunk of the economic pie being reserved for business owners and bosses has been rising sharply in the past couple of years, despite slow growth, and is generally back at the levels it was during the business-friendly Bush administration.
Why is corporate America doing well when so many powerful forces seem to be arrayed against it? Some sectors are benefiting from government policy. Banks are profiting from low interest rates and the ongoing federal subsidies and guarantees. Even as the industry squawks loudly about demonization and tough regulation, banks just reported their best quarter results in three years, according to the FDIC.
But CEOs deserve most of the credit for this turnaround. When the economy slowed dramatically in late 2008 and early 2009, they prepared for Armageddon: They slashed costs, restructured, made cold and swift decisions, and relentlessly pursued productivity and efficiency. The result: America's CEOs collectively re-engineered their businesses so they could produce profits with a lower volume of business. They've also continued—and intensified—their long-standing practice of beating the living daylights out of America's labor force. Despite Democratic control of Washington, labor has never been weaker. Organized labor continues its long decline. Union membership fell again in 2009 as percentage of work force, to 12.3 percent, down from 13.4 percent in 2000. And in an age of excess capacity and high unemployment, disorganized labor isn't doing so hot either. In the past year, employee compensation as a percentage of GDP has fallen a bit.

To review: Corporate profits have largely recovered to pre-crisis levels. A disproportionate share of economic growth is finding its way into the coffers of corporate America. CEOs are in an extremely strong negotiating position vis-à-vis their employees. And yet America's bosses think they are members of an oppressed minority.


Daniel Gross is the Moneybox columnist for Slate and the business columnist for Newsweek. You can e-mail him at moneybox@slate.com and follow him on Twitter. His latest book, Dumb Money: How Our Greatest Financial Minds Bankrupted the Nation, has just been published in paperback.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2265653/

[Greyson]

I am not a fan of Castro nor many of our leaders here in the USA. I do think Castro shows some humility and humanity in admitting seemingly without reservation the injustices suffered by LGBTQ people living under his regime.

Also, see this link. http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2010/08/fidel-castro-i-take-responsibility-for.html ______________________________________________

Castro admits 'injustice' for gays and lesbians during revolution

By Shasta Darlington, CNN

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Cuba sent openly gay men to labor camps with no charges in the '60s and '70s

Fidel Castro acknowledges "persecution" of gays and lesbians during the Revolution

Castro says the U.S. embargo against Cuba encouraged his country to be creative

Havana, Cuba (CNN) -- Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro said he acknowledges the persecution of gays and lesbians during the Revolution in his country, according to a newspaper interview published Tuesday.

Throughout the 1960s and '70s, Cuba sent openly gay men to labor camps without charge or trial.

"They were moments of great injustice, great injustice!" Castro told journalist Carmen Lira Saade from the Mexican daily La Jornada. "If someone is responsible, it's me."

His comments came in the second installment of a two-part interview. The first half of the interview -- a wide-ranging, five-hour conversation at his home -- was published Monday.

"We had so many and such terrible problems, problems of life or death, that we didn't pay it enough attention," Castro said of the way gays and lesbians were treated.

In 1979, Cuba decriminalized homosexual acts and more recently, there have been efforts to legalize same-sex unions.

The former leader, whose popular Revolution seized power in 1959, ruled the island nation until ill health forced him to transfer power to his younger brother Raul Castro in 2006.

In the La Jornada interview, Fidel Castro also talked about the impact of the five-decade U.S. embargo on Cuba.

"The biggest problem was always medicine and food, which is true even today," he said.

While the embargo prevented Cuba from trading with much of the world, it also encouraged the country to be more creative, Castro said.

"The fight, the battle that we had to carry out, led us to make greater efforts than we would have made without the blockade," he explained.

The United States imposed the embargo against Cuba in 1961 after Castro's government began seizing private land and nationalizing private companies, and Havana levied heavy taxes on American goods.


Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/08/31/cuba.castro.gays/index.html?eref=rss_topstories&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_topstories+%28RSS%3 A+Top+Stories%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

[Tommi]

http://source-www.petco.com/assets/product_images/0/019014250042B.jpgP&G VOLUNTARILY RECALLS A SMALL AMOUNT OF DRY CAT FOOD

Company Estimates Fewer Than 60 Bags Purchased


CINCINNATI, August 31, 2010 - The Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) is voluntarily recalling a small number of bags from a specific lot of one of its dry cat food products due to potential salmonella exposure.

No illnesses have been reported, and no other Iams pet food products are involved.

Only one code date is affected by this announcement:

Product Name Version Code Date UPC Code
Iams Indoor Weight Control with Hairball Care dry cat food 6.8 lb bag 02304173 (B1-B6) 1901403921

The company successfully traced and retrieved nearly all of the affected product and estimates that fewer than 60 bags from this production run may have been purchased by consumers.

This production run was sold through a single retailer in the following states: Illinois, New Mexico, Texas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Kansas, Wisconsin, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming and Colorado.

Consumers who have purchased one of these few bags with the specific code date listed above should discard it. For a product replacement or refund, please call P&G toll-free at 800-862-3332 (Monday – Friday, 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM EST).

People handling dry pet food can become infected with salmonella, especially if they have not thoroughly washed their hands after having contact with surfaces exposed to this product. Healthy people infected with salmonella should monitor themselves for some or all of the following symptoms: nausea, vomiting, diarrhea or bloody diarrhea, abdominal cramping and fever. Rarely, salmonella can result in more serious ailments including arterial infections, endocarditis, arthritis, muscle pain, eye irritation and urinary tract symptoms. Consumers exhibiting these signs after having contact with this product should contact their healthcare providers.

Pets with salmonella infections may have decreased appetite, fever and abdominal pain. If left untreated, pets may be lethargic and have diarrhea or bloody diarrhea, fever and vomiting. Infected but otherwise healthy pets can be carriers and infect other animals or humans. If your pet has consumed the recalled product and has these symptoms, please contact your


http://www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/default.htmveterinarian. FDA Recalls, Market Withdrawals, & Safety Alerts

[Tommi]

http://www.couragecampaign.org/page/s/thankyouppm

Thank Peter, Paul & Mary for their support of marriage equality!
Read their cease-and-desist letter telling NOM to stop playing "This Land Is Your Land"

During their recent “Summer for Marriage” tour the National Organization for Marriage played a Peter, Paul & Mary recording of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” during their rallies, without the permission of the artists.
Kathleen Perrin, a participant on the Courage Campaign's Prop8TrialTracker.com, contacted Peter Yarrow and told him. Yarrow called the use of the song by NOM “heartbreaking” and said that he would be contacting NOM asking them to stop. Please read the letter to Brian Brown from Peter Yarrow and Noel Paul Stookey, surviving members of the group who performed as Peter, Paul & Mary (Mary Travers passed away in 2009).
Then take a moment to sign our "Thank You!" card to Peter, Paul & Mary for taking a stand in support of marriage equality.

[Greyson]

Barak to Haaretz: Israel ready to cede parts of Jerusalem in peace deal

Ahead of start of direct peace talks in Washington, Defense Minister Ehud Barak says Jerusalem's Arab neighborhoods will be part of a Palestinian state; a 'special regime' to govern holy sites.

By Ari Shavit

Ehud Barak has always vacillated between peace and security, dovishness and hawkishness, left wing and right wing. Even when he left south Lebanon, offered the Golan Heights to Hafez Assad and the Temple Mount to Yasser Arafat, he didn't do this as a bleeding heart. He always spoke forcefully, talked about the importance of sobriety. He always spoke about how Israel must survive in a jungle. It must do so even now, on the eve of the peace summit in Washington.

This time, however, Barak is surprisingly - even unusually - optimistic. Perhaps it is because he contributed quite a bit to the summit's unveiling. Maybe it is due to the fact that the summit is his political lifejacket. The defense minister believes in the 2010 peace summit even more than the principals taking part in it.

These past few weeks have been volatile, between the Galant document affair, the appointment of a new chief of staff, the meeting with Jordan's King Abdullah and the sit-down with Mahmoud Abbas. And perhaps more than anything else, Barak was feverishly preoccupied with trying to push Netanyahu across the Rubicon, trying to convince him that there is no choice, trying to convert Benjamin Netanyahu from Yitzhak Shamir to Menachem Begin. Did he succeed?

Up until the last minute, the man who has signed up to also take on the role of foreign minister doesn't know whether he succeeded or not. Perhaps this is why he has chosen to make unequivocal, remarkable statements to Haaretz.

Yet the last-minute-meeting that Barak held with Netanyahu prior to the premier's departure for the United States fueled his optimism. When Barak said what he said from his office at the Defense Ministry headquarters in Tel Aviv, his sense was that there is a good chance that Netanyahu will surprise us.

Ehud Barak, is there any chance that you and Benjamin Netanyahu will succeed in reaching peace with the Palestinians now, the same peace which you did not succeed in achieving in 2000 and Ehud Olmert did not succeed in achieving in 2008?

"In the current reality that is encircling us, there are remarkable changes underway. Thirty years ago, the Arabs competed amongst themselves in spouting rejectionist slogans that were reminiscent of [the three "nos" at] Khartoum. Today the Arab states are competing amongst themselves in arguing over which peace initiative will be adopted by the international community. The same situation is taking place with us. When I returned from Camp David a decade ago, the most vocal critics of my "irresponsible" concessions were Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni. Take a look at where they are today. It doesn't mean that the task is a simple one. The gaps are wide and they are of a fundamental nature. But I believe that there is a real chance today. If Netanyahu leads a process, a significant number of rightist ministers will stand with him. So what is needed is courage to make historic, painful decisions. I'm not saying that there is a certainty for success, but there is a chance. This chance must be exploited to the fullest.

What are the principles of a peace deal that you believe can be agreed upon by the conclusion of the talks?

"Two states for two nations; an end to the conflict and the end of all future demands; the demarcation of a border that will run inside the Land of Israel, and within that border will lie a solid Jewish majority for generations and on the other side will be a demilitarized Palestinian state but one that will be viable politically, economically, and territorially; keeping the settlement blocs in our hands; retrieving and relocating the isolated settlements into the settlement blocs or within Israel; a solution to the refugee problem [whereby refugees return to] the Palestinian state or are rehabilitated by international aid; comprehensive security arrangements and a solution to the Jerusalem problem."

What is the solution in Jerusalem?

"West Jerusalem and 12 Jewish neighborhoods that are home to 200,000 residents will be ours. The Arab neighborhoods in which close to a quarter million Palestinians live will be theirs. There will be a special regime in place along with agreed upon arrangements in the Old City, the Mount of Olives and the City of David."

Does the terror attack near Beit Hagai prove the extent to which the current efforts for peace are useless?

"This is a very serious incident, the likes of which we haven't seen for a long time. The Israel Defense Forces and the Shin Bet security service are acting with all their strength to get their hands on those who perpetrated the attack. There will be those who will say that this is the result of weakness and that Netanyahu must return from Washington because they are killing Jews. Yet in looking at the situation in a level-headed way, there is no doubt that this is an attempt to harm the start of the peace talks. So while we are steadfastly safeguarding our security and waging a determined campaign against the perpetrators, we cannot be deterred from working toward the success of the peace negotiations."

[Corkey]

http://bigthink.com/ideas/23877

[Greyson]

http://bigthink.com/ideas/23877


Corkey, I don't get it. All I see when I click it open is an Disney animated redering of Peter Pan.

[Corkey]

Corkey, I don't get it. All I see when I click it open is an Disney animated redering of Peter Pan.

Try it again Grey, for some reason it posted goofy birthday pic and didn't pick up the link the first time, but it works now.

[Greyson]

Try it again Grey, for some reason it posted goofy birthday pic and didn't pick up the link the first time, but it works now.

Okay, now I get it, another Oil Rig explosion in the Gulf. It should be pretty clear by now, big business and government many times gives "lip service" to environmental concerns. Pay the small monetary fines and back to business as usual.

[AtLast]

White House responds to new Gulf Oil explosion

(NECN/CNN) - Federal officials are learning more about today's new oil rig explosion off the Louisiana coast. A large fire broke out on a rig about 100 miles off shore.

"We will continue to gather information as we respond," said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs. "We obviously have response assets ready for deployment should we receive reports of pollution in the water."

He said President Obama was in a national security meeting, and he did not know if the president is aware of the news yet or not.
The rig's owner, Mariner Energy, reports that all 13 of the rig's crew members were able to escape safely. They were all found floating in the water wearing "gumby suits" that stick close together.

Coast Guard commander Cheri Ben-Iesau says all crew members were airlifted to the hospital, and one person was injured, though Mariner Energy says there were no injuries.

While the Coast Guard initially reported an explosion on the platform, Mariner Energy says it was a fire. The company also says that the platform wasn't involved in any drilling operations at the time, and it doesn't look like anything has spilled so far.

Tags: barack Obama, White House, Fire, Robert Gibbs, oil spill, Gulf Coast , oil rig explosion

http://www.necn.com/09/02/10/White-House-responds-to-new-Gulf-Oil-exp/landing.html?blockID=303045&feedID=4207

[MsTinkerbelly]

Oil platform explodes off La. coast, spreading oil

AP – By ALAN SAYRE, Associated Press Writer Alan Sayre, Associated Press Writer – 1 min ago
NEW ORLEANS, La. – An oil platform exploded and caught fire Thursday off the Louisiana coast, spreading a mile-long oil sheen into the Gulf of Mexico. All 13 crew members were rescued from the water in their protective "Gumby suits."

It was the second such disaster in the gulf in less than five months. Coast Guard Petty Officer Bill Coklough said the sheen, about 100 feet wide, was spotted near the platform, 200 miles west of the site of BP's massive spill. Firefighting vessels were battling the flames.

The company that owns the platform, Houston-based Mariner Energy, did not know what caused the blast, which was reported by a helicopter flying over the area. Seven Coast Guard helicopters, two airplanes and three cutters were dispatched to the scene.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said Mariner officials told him there were seven active production wells on the platform, and they were shut down shortly after the fire broke out.

Photos from the scene showed at least five ships floating near the platform. Three of them were shooting great plumes of water onto the machinery. Light smoke could be seen drifting across the deep blue waters of the gulf.

The platform is in about 340 feet of water and about 100 miles south of Louisiana's Vermilion Bay. Its location is considered shallow water, much less than the approximately 5,000 feet where BP's well spewed oil and gas for three months after the April rig explosion.

Responding to any oil spill in shallow water would be much easier than in deep water, where crews depend on remote-operated vehicles access equipment on the sea floor.

A homeland security update obtained by The Associated Press said the platform was producing 58,800 gallons of oil and 900,000 cubic feet of gas per day. The platform can store 4,200 gallons of oil.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said the administration has "response assets ready for deployment should we receive reports of pollution in the water."

Crew members were found floating in the water, huddled together in insulated survival outfits called "Gumby suits" for their resemblance to the cartoon character.

"These guys had the presence of mind, used their training to get into those Gumby suits before they entered the water," Coast Guard spokesman Chief Petty Officer John Edwards said.

[Glenn]

Lithium ETF is the talk of the town this summer. There are better things to invest in than crude oil. A major breakthrough in battery technology is what we have been looking for. Contracts for Lithium mining seems to be the new boom. ETF.About.com. ETFtrends.com

[MsDemeanor]

The smartest guy on the planet finally 'gets' it:

'God did not create the universe and the "Big Bang" was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, the eminent British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book.

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist," Hawking writes.

"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."

linkyloo (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100902/lf_nm_life/us_britain_hawking)

Now, if he could just convince everyone else. Instead, I envision lots of folks buying his book just to burn it, maybe even a call to burn scientists at the stake. Hey, if this country is going to go backward in time, we might as well go all the way back (by which I mean white folk history back, like to the early settlements and witch burnings. I realize that some of y'all were here long before that).

[AtLast]

The smartest guy on the planet finally 'gets' it:

'God did not create the universe and the "Big Bang" was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, the eminent British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book.

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist," Hawking writes.

"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."

linkyloo (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100902/lf_nm_life/us_britain_hawking)

Now, if he could just convince everyone else. Instead, I envision lots of folks buying his book just to burn it, maybe even a call to burn scientists at the stake. Hey, if this country is going to go backward in time, we might as well go all the way back (by which I mean white folk history back, like to the early settlements and witch burnings. I realize that some of y'all were here long before that).

Oh yeah... this book will be burned. Great kindling for loonies! ARGH!!!

[dreadgeek]

MsD:

I saw this on HuffPo and I'm so looking forward to the book being released. I'm happy it'll be out before classes start again so I can lose a weekend to the book. :)

At any rate, one thing that Hawking states is that the discovery of extra-solar planets shows that our conceit that Earth--or even our solar system--is somehow special and a sign that there's a creator is misplaced. It's very true. Something one hears quite a bit is that *because* the Earth is in the habitable zone of our local star it shows that a divine being *must* have created the planet since what odds are there that a planet would be in the particular orbit we are in.

Here's the thing, around any star--of any size--there will be some number of stable orbits. One or more of those orbits will be in the HZ which means that it will be both warm enough and cool enough for liquid water to exist on the surface. What orbit that will be is going to be determined by the size of that star, its luminosity and its color. Stars run from Blue - Red (In descending order of heat--Blue, Blue-White, White-Yellow, Yellow, Orange-Red, Red) and from Very Bright (luminous) Supergiants to Dwarf stars (also called main sequence stars), to white dwarf stars. The HZ for any one of these stellar types will be different. Our star--which is small and relatively cool (as these things go)--has a HZ at around 80 - 100 million miles (if we find that life got started on Mars then the HZ would extend to Mars' orbit at 140 million miles). A Blue Supergiant star (which would be about the size of our entire solar system if you can imagine that) would have a very different orbit (probably beyond the Kuiper belt and Oort cloud and possibly halfway to our nearest stellar neighbor four light years from here).

An intelligent species, living on a planet orbiting a blue supergiant, would likely think that there was something special about being 2 light years from their primary star--until they developed science and built space-based telescopes and started looking for planets outside their solar system.

I'm not saying there is no god--that's not for me to say although I don't believe that there is--and neither is Hawking. But what Hawking *is* saying is that there is nothing that requires a god for the universe to work. In a universe with gravity, you're going to get stars and you're going to get planets, after that all you need are enough stars, enough planets, and enough time--all of which the universe has in abundance. There are an estimated 100 *billion* galaxies in the observable universe and each one of these galaxies has hundreds of millions of stars, astronomers are finding that planets are not all that rare--about half of all stars have them--so there are, at least hypothetically, billions upon billions of planets and some of them are going to be in the HZ of their primary so life has at least a fighting chance to get booted up and that's just a matter of time (surprisingly little time, as it turns out. Earth may have had life starting as early as 500 million years after the planet formed and cooled).

Cheers
Aj


The smartest guy on the planet finally 'gets' it:

'God did not create the universe and the "Big Bang" was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, the eminent British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book.

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist," Hawking writes.

"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."

linkyloo (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100902/lf_nm_life/us_britain_hawking)

Now, if he could just convince everyone else. Instead, I envision lots of folks buying his book just to burn it, maybe even a call to burn scientists at the stake. Hey, if this country is going to go backward in time, we might as well go all the way back (by which I mean white folk history back, like to the early settlements and witch burnings. I realize that some of y'all were here long before that).

[Greyson]

MsD:

I saw this on HuffPo and I'm so looking forward to the book being released. I'm happy it'll be out before classes start again so I can lose a weekend to the book. :)

At any rate, one thing that Hawking states is that the discovery of extra-solar planets shows that our conceit that Earth--or even our solar system--is somehow special and a sign that there's a creator is misplaced. It's very true. Something one hears quite a bit is that *because* the Earth is in the habitable zone of our local star it shows that a divine being *must* have created the planet since what odds are there that a planet would be in the particular orbit we are in.

Here's the thing, around any star--of any size--there will be some number of stable orbits. One or more of those orbits will be in the HZ which means that it will be both warm enough and cool enough for liquid water to exist on the surface. What orbit that will be is going to be determined by the size of that star, its luminosity and its color. Stars run from Blue - Red (In descending order of heat--Blue, Blue-White, White-Yellow, Yellow, Orange-Red, Red) and from Very Bright (luminous) Supergiants to Dwarf stars (also called main sequence stars), to white dwarf stars. The HZ for any one of these stellar types will be different. Our star--which is small and relatively cool (as these things go)--has a HZ at around 80 - 100 million miles (if we find that life got started on Mars then the HZ would extend to Mars' orbit at 140 million miles). A Blue Supergiant star (which would be about the size of our entire solar system if you can imagine that) would have a very different orbit (probably beyond the Kuiper belt and Oort cloud and possibly halfway to our nearest stellar neighbor four light years from here).

An intelligent species, living on a planet orbiting a blue supergiant, would likely think that there was something special about being 2 light years from their primary star--until they developed science and built space-based telescopes and started looking for planets outside their solar system.

I'm not saying there is no god--that's not for me to say although I don't believe that there is--and neither is Hawking. But what Hawking *is* saying is that there is nothing that requires a god for the universe to work. In a universe with gravity, you're going to get stars and you're going to get planets, after that all you need are enough stars, enough planets, and enough time--all of which the universe has in abundance. There are an estimated 100 *billion* galaxies in the observable universe and each one of these galaxies has hundreds of millions of stars, astronomers are finding that planets are not all that rare--about half of all stars have them--so there are, at least hypothetically, billions upon billions of planets and some of them are going to be in the HZ of their primary so life has at least a fighting chance to get booted up and that's just a matter of time (surprisingly little time, as it turns out. Earth may have had life starting as early as 500 million years after the planet formed and cooled).
Cheers
Aj

It is not a secret that I do believe in a God, Universal Power, One that manifests and expands through every living thing. I read about this forthcoming book earlier this morning and I will be reading it. Not to dismiss his thoughts nor to burn it. There are "believers" that do not minmize "God" to be only what my mind can phantom, comprehend.

[dark_crystal]

It is not a secret that I do believe in a God, Universal Power, One that manifests and expands through every living thing. I read about this forthcoming book earlier this morning and I will be reading it. Not to dismiss his thoughts nor to burn it. There are "believers" that do not minmize "God" to be only what my mind can phantom, comprehend.

I'm with you Greyson...and also, maybe gravity is God. Fundies won't like that b/c how can gravity have created us in it's own image? On the other hand, i would think some would be pleased that God is a LAW

[dreadgeek]

I'm with you Greyson...and also, maybe gravity is God. Fundies won't like that b/c how can gravity have created us in it's own image? On the other hand, i would think some would be pleased that God is a LAW

Can you expand on that? What do you mean by 'gravity is god'. What would that look like?

(And I'm rather oversimplifying about gravity. Basically, in any universe with the four forces we have--gravity, electromagnetic, strong and weak nuclear--you'll get stars and you'll get planets. All the forces are important and gravity certainly makes life as we know it possible and without it there would be no stars but gravity is, ironically, the weakest of the four forces)

Cheers
Aj

[Corkey]

Perhaps dark matter, the stuff that is the rest of the Universe?

[dark_crystal]

Can you expand on that? What do you mean by 'gravity is god'. What would that look like?

(And I'm rather oversimplifying about gravity. Basically, in any universe with the four forces we have--gravity, electromagnetic, strong and weak nuclear--you'll get stars and you'll get planets. All the forces are important and gravity certainly makes life as we know it possible and without it there would be no stars but gravity is, ironically, the weakest of the four forces)

Cheers
Aj

I just think that religion only ever has anything to fear from science when we insist on seeing God as an entity with a consciousness similar to ours...i don't see how we lose anything by seeing God as a force, or even four forces.

although, i guess it is harder to imagine how he knows the number of hairs on our head or has his eye on the sparrow, etc, but that just shows the limits of our imagination. i can see how it's not personal enough for some people, though

[dark_crystal]

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/09/02/maryland.discovery.channel/index.html?hpt=Sbin

i know we've been hearing about this all day...but i am just trying to figure out how many people that is who have lost their sh!t like this in the past couple years? Here is what i recall:

May 31, 2009 George Tiller shot
June 1 2009 arkansas recruiter shooting
June 10, 2009 Holocaust Museum shooting
Nov 9, 2009 Fort Hood
February 12, 2010 University of Alabama in Huntsville shooting
February 19, 2010 Plane crash at IRS
August 3, 2010 Hartford Distributors Shooting
September 01, 2010 Discovery Channel

what am i leaving out

and

does that seem like A LOT to anyone else?

[MsDemeanor]

At any rate, one thing that Hawking states is that the discovery of extra-solar planets shows that our conceit that Earth--or even our solar system--is somehow special and a sign that there's a creator is misplaced. It's very true. Something one hears quite a bit is that *because* the Earth is in the habitable zone of our local star it shows that a divine being *must* have created the planet since what odds are there that a planet would be in the particular orbit we are in.

It's the ultimate arrogance of mankind to think that out of all that stuff out there, we're the only ones and we're somehow special. In the big picture, our dinky little solar system isn't even anything special.

[Greyson]

It's the ultimate arrogance of mankind to think that out of all that stuff out there, we're the only ones and we're somehow special. In the big picture, our dinky little solar system isn't even anything special.

I agree with your statement. For me, because I believe it is not an indication that I think "we're the only one and we're somehow special." I am not posting this in the spirit of "one upping" you are trying to change your belief system. I am trying to convey that although we may not share the same belief system about a God existing, it does not rule out the possibility that we do hold similar beliefs in all of this.

[MsDemeanor]

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/09/02/maryland.discovery.channel/index.html?hpt=Sbin

i know we've been hearing about this all day...but i am just trying to figure out how many people that is who have lost their sh!t like this in the past couple years? Here is what i recall:

May 31, 2009 George Tiller shot
June 1 2009 Arkansas recruiter shooting
June 10, 2009 Holocaust Museum shooting
Nov 9, 2009 Fort Hood
February 12, 2010 University of Alabama in Huntsville shooting
February 19, 2010 Plane crash at IRS
August 3, 2010 Hartford Distributors Shooting
September 01, 2010 Discovery Channel

what am i leaving out

and

does that seem like A LOT to anyone else?

There's the 3 cops in Pittsburgh. We recently had some guy get in to a shootout with the Oakland PD while on his way to attack the Tides Foundation in SF. I'm sure that there are plenty more.

It's a lot, but expected. The nutters come out of the woodwork every time a Democrat moves in to the White House, and now that the man there isn't white, it's much worse than usual. What pisses me off is that the media and the authorities refuse to call these people terrorists.

[dark_crystal]

It's the ultimate arrogance of mankind to think that out of all that stuff out there, we're the only ones and we're somehow special. In the big picture, our dinky little solar system isn't even anything special.

kinda reminds me of the "Earth History Compressed Into One Year" lesson and how humans don't even appear till halfway through the last day. So our dinky little species on our dinky little solar planet in this dinky little solar system is nothing special either, really

[dark_crystal]

There's the 3 cops in Pittsburgh. We recently had some guy get in to a shootout with the Oakland PD while on his way to attack the Tides Foundation in SF. I'm sure that there are plenty more.

It's a lot, but expected. The nutters come out of the woodwork every time a Democrat moves in to the White House, and now that the man there isn't white, it's much worse than usual. What pisses me off is that the media and the authorities refuse to call these people terrorists.

But what about previous decades, like the 70s/80s/90s?

was there this many people flipping out so spectaculary? I mean, i remember OK city obviously and the Killeen Luby's, but we're at at least 7 so far this year...

[MsDemeanor]

I agree with your statement. For me, because I believe it is not an indication that I think "we're the only one and we're somehow special." I am not posting this in the spirit of "one upping" you are trying to change your belief system. I am trying to convey that although we may not share the same belief system about a God existing, it does not rule out the possibility that we do hold similar beliefs in all of this.
I'll not take it in the spirit of "one upping" :) Completely outside of the scope of religion, I've never understood why the prevailing assumption is "we're the only ones until we can prove otherwise" instead of "there's gotta be others, let's go find them".

[Nat]

I heard this the other day and thought it was interesting.

Is Believing In God Evolutionarily Advantageous? (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129528196)

These supernatural agents, Bering adds, might have very different names. What some call God, others call Karma. There are literally thousands of names, but according to Bering they all have the same effect.

"Whether it's a dead ancestor or God, whatever supernatural agent it is, if you think they're watching you, your behavior is going to be affected," he says.

.......

Why would the human brain have evolved to work in that way?

For Bering, and some of his friends, the answer to that question has everything to do with what he discovered in his lab — the way the kids and adults stopped cheating as soon as they thought a supernatural being might be watching them. Through the lens of evolution then, a belief in God serves a very important purpose: Religious belief set us on the path to modern life by stopping cheaters and promoting the social good.

[MsDemeanor]

kinda reminds me of the "Earth History Compressed Into One Year" lesson and how humans don't even appear till halfway through the last day. So our dinky little species on our dinky little solar planet in this dinky little solar system is nothing special either, really

At least not until the electric company payment is 60 days late, anyway *wink*

[MsDemeanor]

But what about previous decades, like the 70s/80s/90s?

was there this many people flipping out so spectaculary? I mean, i remember OK city obviously and the Killeen Luby's, but we're at at least 7 so far this year...

The ACLU shows activity way up. The Secret Service reports record level threats. It hasn't been this bad in modern times.

[Corkey]

I don't believe we are the only organisms in the Universe, but so far we on this planet who are cognizant, are the only ones we know of. Discovery of others will put everything in perspective I think. Till then I will assume there is a power grater than myself and act accordingly. Doesn't mean you have to believe the same thing I do, and that is a wonderful thing about diversity, we don't have to. It also doesn't mean that I believe in mumbo jumbo and false logic. It means that I have an open mind, and know how to use my brain.

[MsDemeanor]

Religious belief set us on the path to modern life by stopping cheaters and promoting the social good.
*cough bullshit cough* Churches are stuffed to the gills with folks who pray on Sunday and then go out and hate, extort, abuse, lie, cheat, etc. I'd bet that pretty much all of those CEOs that laid off tons of folks and then gave themselves big pay raises have a religious belief. Glenn Beck spouts god and lies in the same sentence. It takes about two minutes of looking at the history of the Catholic church to see the destruction caused by people with those beliefs. I've spent a lot of time online arguing with folks who spout god and love and compassion and stuff but then show an incredible lack of compassion for anyone who doesn't live up to their behavioral standards.

[dreadgeek]

kinda reminds me of the "Earth History Compressed Into One Year" lesson and how humans don't even appear till halfway through the last day. So our dinky little species on our dinky little solar planet in this dinky little solar system is nothing special either, really

If there were one thing that I wish I could communicate to everyone on the planet it would be this: all that we hold dear, all that we are so rightfully impressed with ourselves for, is not even a blink of an eye in the life of the universe. To give you a sense of perspective (I have one of those history of the universe in a year posters in my home office but I'm not at home while writing this so I'm working off of memory):

If the Universe begins on January 1, the Milky Way forms in March, our Sun and the planets form in August, the earliest life shows up in September and stays single-celled until November, vertebrates and land-based plants show up around mid-December, dinosaurs show up right around Christmas eve, mammals show up Christmas day, birds show up a couple of days after that. A couple of days before the end of the year, dinosaurs disappear from the planet. Around mid-morning of the last day of the year apes (us, chimps, bonobos, orangutans) show up. Hominids hit on the trick of walking upright between 9 and 10 on the 31st. About five minutes before the end of the year anatomically (but not behaviorially) modern humans show up. With about 20 seconds left in the year, agriculture and writing are invented. With about 10 seconds left in the year, the Pyramids are built in Egypt. One second before the end of the year, Columbus sails from Spain.

The last 500 years you need an Olympic quality stopwatch in order to track the time. The last 100 years you need an atomic clock because no stopwatch is accurate to within hundreds of thousandths or millionths of a second.

I love that image because it puts us in perspective. We are a very brief species--whose tenure on this planet is only measured in tens of thousands of years--living on an ordinary rocky planet, orbiting a perfectly pedestrian yellow-dwarf star, at the outer edge of an absolutely ordinary spiral galaxy. That said, we are also the legatees of an unbroken lineage going back to about half-a-billion years after the planet formed.

Cheers
Aj

[Nat]

*cough bullshit cough* Churches are stuffed to the gills with folks who pray on Sunday and then go out and hate, extort, abuse, lie, cheat, etc. I'd bet that pretty much all of those CEOs that laid off tons of folks and then gave themselves big pay raises have a religious belief. Glenn Beck spouts god and lies in the same sentence. It takes about two minutes of looking at the history of the Catholic church to see the destruction caused by people with those beliefs. I've spent a lot of time online arguing with folks who spout god and love and compassion and stuff but then show an incredible lack of compassion for anyone who doesn't live up to their behavioral standards.

this just seems really ugly to me. :/

[SuperFemme]

this just seems really ugly to me. :/

which part?

[Nat]

which part?

I find the entire post pretty hateful really. My mom goes to church, my brother goes to church, my grandparents go to church, some of my friends go to church, I occasionally go to church (though I'm not Christian), I grew up going to church, my ex husband goes to church, my coworkers go to church, some people I very much admire go to church - and none of those people who go to church deserve to be painted as the most horrible people who also go to church. There are definitely people who "hate, extort, abuse, lie, cheat, etc." who also go to church, and there are people who do that without going to church too. The Christians I know are not monsters.

Don't get me wrong - I am extremely bothered by the bad things churches and individual Christians do and have done - but I think it's extremely inaccurate and insulting to paint all Christians(?) or people of faith with the same broad and ugly brush. Also, since we're in a community that does comprise quite a few Christians and those who love them, it just seems like a very attacking and community-dividing stance to take.

[Nat]

Active minds delay dementia but speed decline once it hits (http://www.usatoday.com/yourlife/health/medical/alzheimers/2010-09-02-braingames02_ST_N.htm)

Poring over crossword puzzles, reading and listening to tunes may slow or delay brain decline at first, but being mentally active might speed up dementia once it hits, new research suggests.

"The person who has had a more mentally stimulating lifestyle may have more signs of disease in his brain, but the brain has been able to compensate for it better," says study author Robert Wilson, professor of neurological sciences and behavioral sciences at Chicago's Rush University Medical Center, whose research appears in Neurology this week.

The 12-year study evaluated mental activities of 1,157 people 65 years or older without dementia at the start. Participants were assessed at baseline, and then for Alzheimer's at the six-year mark. Then, every three years, they answered questions about how often they participated in activities such as listening to the radio, reading, playing games and going to a museum. They were rated on a five-point cognitive activity scale. The more often people participated in mentally stimulating exercises, the more points they tallied.

The study found that the rate of cognitive decline in people without dementia was reduced by 52% for each point on the cognitive activity scale. For those with Alzheimer's, however, the average rate of decline per year increased by 42% for each point on the cognitive activity scale.

"The rationale the authors are using is somewhat similar to what people call 'cognitive reserve,' " says Ron Peterson, director of Mayo Clinic's Alzheimer's Disease Research Center.

He says the theory is that in the active mind, the brain creates new neural pathways when damage occurs to circumvent the problems.

Alzheimer's expert Steven DeKosky, dean of the University of Virginia School of Medicine, uses this metaphor: The active brain is like a piece of good wood that's been varnished and revarnished over the years. The inactive brain has fewer coats or lower-quality varnish, he says.

"You don't get symptomatic until you sand down to the bare wood," DeKosky says.

Wilson says researchers don't fully understand why active-minded people suffer such a rapid decline once they develop Alzheimer's, but the study shows the advantages of using your brain because of the early benefits.

That the active-minded person spends less total time in a cognitively disabled and demented state is "a universal good thing," Wilson says. "It's good for the affected person, good for their family and friends and good for our public health system."

[Greyson]

Active minds delay dementia but speed decline once it hits (http://www.usatoday.com/yourlife/health/medical/alzheimers/2010-09-02-braingames02_ST_N.htm)

Poring over crossword puzzles, reading and listening to tunes may slow or delay brain decline at first, but being mentally active might speed up dementia once it hits, new research suggests.

"The person who has had a more mentally stimulating lifestyle may have more signs of disease in his brain, but the brain has been able to compensate for it better," says study author Robert Wilson, professor of neurological sciences and behavioral sciences at Chicago's Rush University Medical Center, whose research appears in Neurology this week.

The 12-year study evaluated mental activities of 1,157 people 65 years or older without dementia at the start. Participants were assessed at baseline, and then for Alzheimer's at the six-year mark. Then, every three years, they answered questions about how often they participated in activities such as listening to the radio, reading, playing games and going to a museum. They were rated on a five-point cognitive activity scale. The more often people participated in mentally stimulating exercises, the more points they tallied.

The study found that the rate of cognitive decline in people without dementia was reduced by 52% for each point on the cognitive activity scale. For those with Alzheimer's, however, the average rate of decline per year increased by 42% for each point on the cognitive activity scale.

"The rationale the authors are using is somewhat similar to what people call 'cognitive reserve,' " says Ron Peterson, director of Mayo Clinic's Alzheimer's Disease Research Center.

He says the theory is that in the active mind, the brain creates new neural pathways when damage occurs to circumvent the problems.

Alzheimer's expert Steven DeKosky, dean of the University of Virginia School of Medicine, uses this metaphor: The active brain is like a piece of good wood that's been varnished and revarnished over the years. The inactive brain has fewer coats or lower-quality varnish, he says.

"You don't get symptomatic until you sand down to the bare wood," DeKosky says.

Wilson says researchers don't fully understand why active-minded people suffer such a rapid decline once they develop Alzheimer's, but the study shows the advantages of using your brain because of the early benefits.

That the active-minded person spends less total time in a cognitively disabled and demented state is "a universal good thing," Wilson says. "It's good for the affected person, good for their family and friends and good for our public health system."

Ut oh! Something I suspected all along. I live in my head. Hey, I think you should post this over in the Bromosexual thread. Mister Bent and EzeeTiger could give their Bromosexual analysis of this piece. I think theirs is a unique perspective that deserves to be widely read and discussed. Even better, they are funny.

[Queerasfck]

Ut oh! Something I suspected all along. I live in my head. Hey, I think you should post this over in the Bromosexual thread. Mister Bent and EzeeTiger could give their Bromosexual analysis of this piece. I think theirs is a unique perspective that deserves to be widely read and discussed. Even better, they are funny.

An active mind is the devil's workshop. I learned it in CCD. Word.

[MsDemeanor]

Nat, you completely missed the entire point of the argument and instead went on the defensive and accused me of attacking all christians.

You put forth a theory that believing in god makes one a better person. I countered that some of the most evil people in our society and in history believe in god, therefore the theory is false. Some good people believe in god, some bad people believe in god, some good people don't believe in god, and some bad people don't believe in god. Your theory is false.

BTW, though I gave examples of christian-based bad people, I assume that the article referred to all gods (and maybe even goddesses?) and religions, not just your version of a christian god.

[firie]

I have always wondered about the banning of the number "zero" as heresy and the ways that has set us back in "evolution"--the figuring out of ways to either sustain the planet or get off it, yanno? Perhaps we'd be exploring other planets right now, or living on them, or discovering the universe more so than we are doing now, if we hadn't lost so much time due to punished heresy (say, female doctors, even, for example). I don't know--I guess I think of "evolution" as something else and don't put it in terms of morality, such as the impact of cheating or whathaveyou, so that is a bad example for me. I guess I am jaded entirely and see religious beliefs as a set back, spirituality as a set back to science.

There seems to be a catch 22 when it comes to altruism too, but then I am just a jaded athiest, I guess. I have never needed god to put me on a path to altruism and usually want to sin big in the eyes of god. God tends to make me a bit of a deviant.

[Nat]

Nat, you completely missed the entire point of the argument and instead went on the defensive and accused me of attacking all christians.

You put forth a theory that believing in god makes one a better person. I countered that some of the most evil people in our society and in history believe in god, therefore the theory is false. Some good people believe in god, some bad people believe in god, some good people don't believe in god, and some bad people don't believe in god. Your theory is false.

BTW, though I gave examples of christian-based bad people, I assume that the article referred to all gods (and maybe even goddesses?) and religions, not just your version of a christian god.

Your reference to "Churches stuffed to the gills with folks who pray on Sunday and then go out and hate, extort, abuse, lie, cheat, etc." did seem to be a reference very specifically to Christians and it also seemed to suggest that you weren't just talking about "some of the most evil people in our society" but rather people who go to church.

As far as the theory goes, I thought it was interesting - that the experiment with the kids was interesting - and I don't think you know whether it is false for every person of faith. However it's not "my theory" and I didn't agree with everything in the article.

Personally, regarding my own faith, I do feel that thinking of the earth as something holy, as a mother, does help me to be a better person. It's not important for me whether it's a factual, provable belief or not, because that's not what it's about for me. It's more about beauty, meaning, a sense of connection with the universe and other people and other living things. It nourishes me in a way being an atheist did not. It's fine with me if the earth is just the earth and the universe is just the universe, because these things seem pretty awesome to me, even if you look at them only through a scientific lens.

I don't think I misread your disdain for people of faith or Christians, but I'm not omniscient - so maybe I did. If so, I apologize. :) Thanks for clarifying your thoughts.

[Diva]

The Governor of Arizona says she's only human......bless her heart.

http://www.realestateradiousa.com/2010/09/03/arizona-governor-jan-brewer-debate-debacle-video/

[Toughy]

I do feel that thinking of the earth as something holy, as a mother, does help me to be a better person. It's not important for me whether it's a factual, provable belief or not, because that's not what it's about for me. It's more about beauty, meaning, a sense of connection with the universe and other people and other living things. It nourishes me in a way being an atheist did not. It's fine with me if the earth is just the earth and the universe is just the universe, because these things seem pretty awesome to me, even if you look at them only through a scientific lens.

This post reads like you must have a god to be a lover of the earth. I strenuously object to the idea that being a mother is holy. Being a mother does not make one holy. Holy is about religion. Motherhood has nothing to do with religion.

One does not need to be a 'believer' to see the beauty of the universe. You don't need god to make a connection with the universe. A god is not required to appreciate people or to have meaning in life.

If you found msdemeanor harsh concerning Christian (or any) monotheists, you certainly will not like what I think of them in general. It is a rarity to find a Christian today who has any idea what was taught by their Jesus.

[betenoire]

It is a rarity to find a Christian today who has any idea what was taught by their Jesus.

I believe Jesus existed. I think he sounds like a pretty good guy, I think I would have liked him - I hope he would have liked me. I do not, however, believe for a second he was the Son of God. Please.

Jesus was a rebel. He was anti-capitalism. He distrusted the wealthy. A lot of what he said lined up well with socialism. He liked the idea of living communally and pooling resources. He didn't like the idea of "owning" and "consuming" a bunch of stuff - he wanted you to give your shit away to people who had none.

[Nat]

I'm quite sure plenty of people love the earth without religious sentiment and I understNd others don't enjoy the idea of a maternal deity or any deity. I don't advocate anybody believe as I do - I am just tired of seeing Christian-hating going unchecked in the lgbtq community. I think this rather rampant behavior costs the community and also serves to divide the community from within.

[julieisafemme]

This post reads like you must have a god to be a lover of the earth. I strenuously object to the idea that being a mother is holy. Being a mother does not make one holy. Holy is about religion. Motherhood has nothing to do with religion.

One does not need to be a 'believer' to see the beauty of the universe. You don't need god to make a connection with the universe. A god is not required to appreciate people or to have meaning in life.

If you found msdemeanor harsh concerning Christian (or any) monotheists, you certainly will not like what I think of them in general. It is a rarity to find a Christian today who has any idea what was taught by their Jesus.

But the word holy from the Hebrew just means unique, singular, set apart or not ordinary. Moshe Habertal came to our synagogue and talked about this. Holy or kadosh from this perspective is not about religion. The word is applied to G-d because in Judaism G-d is the One. But the word itself can be applied to other things. This happens a lot when we start to use short hand explanations for things. The nuance is lost. I know it is not a nuance you care about Toughy! I do though and I like to understand the root of words.

But you are right in that a belief in anything is not necessary to appreciate people or find meaning in life.

[dreadgeek]

MsD:

Actually, the point that Nat invoked is actually pretty good, solid evolutionary biology. I understand the point you are making and don't, necessarily, disagree with any particular point of it. However, the idea that religion is an evolved adaptation has some fairly good support for it. While reams of paper has been used to delve into this matter, I'm going to try to give a Cliff's Notes version of it. Before I start the explanation though (which is elegant and I hope I can do it justice) I have two caveats that I ask you to keep in mind: 1) When I talk about nature "designing" or "wanting" or "intending" I mean it *only* in a metaphorical sense. Things happen in nature, some of those things are solutions to various engineering problems, when looked at in retrospect it appears as-if nature was trying to get to a particular solution when, in fact, things just happened. 2) I am not a fan of group selection models, I think they are fundamentally flawed most times, however religion *may* be one of those instances where there is some selection pressure on groups. However, we can get to the same place without invoking group selection but for these purposes here, I'm going to use an explanation *as-if* groups were the unit of selection in regards to religion. So that out of the way...

Humans are a social species and in the environment in which we evolved we lived in small, fairly tight-knit bands of around 150 people or so. While there was, of course, out-breeding most members of any given band were related to one another through either blood or marriage. What this meant is that in any given group, your genetic interests and my genetic interests were similar while not being identical. Because our genetic interests are similar, it behooves us to cooperate and maintain social harmony most of the time. However, because they are not *identical* if you can get the best of me and get away with it then you can promote your genetic interests over mine. This is the problem of any social species that aren't hymenoptera (ants, bees, etc.)--we need to cooperate but *perfect* cooperators are vulnerable to free riders. So for species like ours the most stable strategy is cooperate most of the time and cheat if you can get away with it.

There are certain things that are destructive to social harmony. There's the obvious big ones--theft, murder, rape, lying and infidelity, however there's *also* things like hoarding or boasting that can be destructive to harmony and group cohesion. Most tribal groups have prohibitions against, for instance, being a braggart. Even the best hunter, who everyone in the group *knows* is the best hunter, will face disapproval if HE claims to be the best hunter. But how to enforce these rules? Well, you can *try* to just convince people that this is in the their best interest. However, that argument may not work effectively. Far better if human brains had one or more modules that could be exploited for the purpose of making people believe that they were always being observed and that a breach of the rules or taboos would result in punishment. So are there such modules?

Yes, there are at least in play. The first is an overactive agency detector. The second is our penchant for bartering. The third is an overactive belief engine. The agency detector works sort of look like this; imagine you're out on the savanna in the tall grass. You hear the grass rustle and now there's a question before you; is it a lion or is it the wind. The answer can have serious consequences to one's reproductive fitness, to say the least. If you guess wind and it's a lion, you're eaten. We are the descendants, however, of people who imputed agency to the rustling grass and decided that it was caused by a lion. Here's the thing, even if you impart agency (the lion) to the rustling and it turns out that you're wrong and it was just the wind, you're out some calories but you live. If you get it wrong the other way, you're lunch. So our brains are tolerant of false positives (guess lion when it's wind) but not of false negatives (guessing wind when its lion). The penchant for bartering is so obvious that I won't belabor the point. The belief engine deserves some explanation. Anyone who has raised children know that kids will believe what the adults in their lives tell them. Again, there are very good evolutionary reasons this should be so.

So there we are: We tend to believe what our parents or elders tell us (the gods will be angry if you do X which is why X is not done). We tend to believe that, for instance, since the Sun moves across the sky someone must be behind the movement (imputing agency) and we tend to barter with other intelligent agents. None of those brain modules are 'for' religion but there are lots of parts of our behavioral repertoire that are cases of us hijacking one mental tool to achieve a different end. For example, we are all doing it right now as you read this. We didn't evolve to read, our brains did evolve to use language and we hijack the language module(s) and bond them with the vision modules to allow us to read.

So having explained the mechanics of it, why would this evolve? Imagine two groups living on opposite sides of, say, a valley. There are limited resources in this valley and both groups have need of those resources. Now, one group has a belief that they are watched by the gods or their ancestors. Even when tempted to cheat the thought that the gods or ancestors can restrain people. When conflict arises with the other group the group with gods is more cohesive *and* more willing to see the other as alien and deserving of destruction. Over time, any genes that create the right mental conditions for religious belief will proliferate through a population and become fixed.

This can *all* be true in the EEA (environment of evolutionary adaptation) while having quite different effects in the current environment. Whenever we're talking about human behavior that evolved, it is useful to jettison--as much as possible--everything you know about humans living in modern cities and think about us as nomadic, hunter-gatherers living on the African savanna because while that's not where our *bodies* live anymore, our brains haven't gotten that memo.

Cheers
Aj



*cough bullshit cough* Churches are stuffed to the gills with folks who pray on Sunday and then go out and hate, extort, abuse, lie, cheat, etc. I'd bet that pretty much all of those CEOs that laid off tons of folks and then gave themselves big pay raises have a religious belief. Glenn Beck spouts god and lies in the same sentence. It takes about two minutes of looking at the history of the Catholic church to see the destruction caused by people with those beliefs. I've spent a lot of time online arguing with folks who spout god and love and compassion and stuff but then show an incredible lack of compassion for anyone who doesn't live up to their behavioral standards.

[dreadgeek]

This post reads like you must have a god to be a lover of the earth. I strenuously object to the idea that being a mother is holy. Being a mother does not make one holy. Holy is about religion. Motherhood has nothing to do with religion.

One does not need to be a 'believer' to see the beauty of the universe. You don't need god to make a connection with the universe. A god is not required to appreciate people or to have meaning in life.

If you found msdemeanor harsh concerning Christian (or any) monotheists, you certainly will not like what I think of them in general. It is a rarity to find a Christian today who has any idea what was taught by their Jesus.

Two good points, T! Firstly, I used to be a theist and I have found that my appreciation for nature--in all its form, horror and splendor--has only been deepened by jettisoning any kind of divine being and just letting nature be, well, nature. There is something deeply humbling to realize that my brief life doesn't even *register* in the Universe. 80 years? That's nothing at all. You can't even really track geological changes that short and astronomical changes are right out! When I contemplate what a cat looks like to a bird or a rodent, I am in awe that both the bird and the cat are evolved creatures. When I think about the fact that birds are the only surviving descendants of the dinosaurs, I am awed. When I think about the fact that at the center of our galaxy is a supermassive black hole that is *billions* of times more massive than our local star, I am awed. When I think about the distance between us and the sun (93 million miles) and that it takes light 8 minutes to get here, I am made painfully aware of my own smallness. These are all good things.

I'm quite sure plenty of people love the earth without religious sentiment and I understNd others don't enjoy the idea of a maternal deity or any deity. I don't advocate anybody believe as I do - I am just tired of seeing Christian-hating going unchecked in the lgbtq community. I think this rather rampant behavior costs the community and also serves to divide the community from within.

Nat, you make a good point however, it can't be said that Christianity hasn't--in some very significant ways that need not be belabored--*earned* the distrust and/or wrath of the GLBTQ community. Do I hold all Christians responsible for the behavior of some Christians? No. Do I hold Christianity responsible for its own theology? Yes. The theology of Christianity--at least traditionally--isn't the warm, fuzzy, ecumenical Christianity that most LGBTQ Christians practice. I sit somewhere between your position and MsD's and Toughy's although clearly closer to theirs than yours. I tend to think that divine beings are unnecessary kludges and inelegant hypothesis however I also recognize that I am a distinct minority of all human beings who have ever lived.

[waxnrope]

This post reads like you must have a god to be a lover of the earth. I strenuously object to the idea that being a mother is holy. Being a mother does not make one holy. Holy is about religion. Motherhood has nothing to do with religion.

One does not need to be a 'believer' to see the beauty of the universe. You don't need god to make a connection with the universe. A god is not required to appreciate people or to have meaning in life.

If you found msdemeanor harsh concerning Christian (or any) monotheists, you certainly will not like what I think of them in general. It is a rarity to find a Christian today who has any idea what was taught by their Jesus.

My reading of Nat's post, if read to the end, professes her personal belief, on the one hand, and an admission of other possibilities, on the other hand, Toughie. Neither makes a lot of difference to her. She simply states her marvel with nature, or "creation," as something sacred to HER.

I agree with you, Toughie, that MANY Christians do not have a clue about who/what Jesus was, or their views are limited. However, I would not even say most, unless you speak primarily of those in the U.S. There has been, after an unsuccessful attempt to snuff it out, a rebirth of Liberation Theologies.

The first of these initially began at Medulin, by Catholic Latin American theologians (who were all, at that time, all male). Using the framework of Paulo Freire's Pedogagy of the Oppressed, these theologians reread the Greek Bible through Friere's lens and from their own experiences working with the poor. They developed what is known as the "preferential option for the poor" theology, something that they read in the words and life of Jesus.

Following the Latin American Liberation theological movement, came the Black Liberation Theology, then, Feminist, and so on. These liberation theologies and theologians, especially in "Latin" America, fought oppressive governments and many were martyred with the people. The Pope silenced many of these men. Some were not to be silenced. A few left the church. The movement was thought to be dead.

In the interim, Latin American, Womanist, and Mujerista theologies developed. There followed women from various parts of Africa and of Asia. There is a new LT movement afoot. It is only a few years old, and for the first time, women and men are working together. The primary focus is the liberation of the poor and the oppressed. NO MATTER WHAT THEIR, the poor's, CONSTRUCTION OF GOD/S OR THE UNIVERSE.

There is a new Bible ... well, it is a few years old now ... the exegesis of original writings and the reflection of its meanings by Biblical scholars in Germany (not translated). The team that worked on this translation was led by Feminist and Liberation Theologian, Luise Schottroff and Dorothea Solle (RIP). The government terrorized these scholars because they have gone against tradition in their work. Luise taught in the U.S. for a while. I was one of her students. Her teaching on antiJudaism in biblical exegesis opened the eyes of many.

In the midst of fundamentalist religionS (deliberate capitalization) all over the world, in the midst of their loud truth claims, there are others who have a different voice, a different word, a different understanding. They are not a "few", they are many, but their voices are not loud enough, any more than ours are loud enough here on this website to counter the homophobia that presses down on all of us. But they, like we, continue.

Like Nat, I am disturbed with the anti-Christian rhetoric that seems to be in vogue in the community. Should we eliminate MLK's work and vision because he was a Christian. His Christianity, his understanding of the Bible is what led him to be the spokesperson that he was. Should Ivone Gebara, a Brazilian nun who works with the poor who live on the garbage heaps and writes of ecofeminism and the poor, be discounted because she is Christian? Should Adi Maria Issasi Diaz, who, in her work, En La Lucha, describes the theorizing of poor women, be dismissed because she is Christian? Should Katie Canon, whose PhD was based on Alice Walker's definition of womanist, and who is an episcopal priest, be dismissed? Katie has an international group of woman, religious women, mostly, but not all, Christian (some are Muslim, some both Muslim and Christian ... how novel - sarcasm here). Rosemary Radford Ruether stays within the Catholic church, bless her heart, and has/is helped women in the process of ordination, against the wishes of the Pope. Rosemary has written brilliant essays on why priests should marry. She is powerful enough to have the University of San Diego, undr pressure from the Bishop, retract the invitation to be the speaker at graduation there year before last. She is so powerfully feared that the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley's three Catholic institutions threatened to pull out of the Union if she came there as Professor. She came as Professor of Theology in the most liberal of the schools ... and the Catholic institutions did not leave afterall. Should she be dismissed? That is what the Catholic Church is doing to her.

There are people all over the globe who are making efforts to change their various churches and denominations. They are struggling against the fundamentalists truth claims. For me, it is sad that there is so little understanding of the struggles going on within Christianity. Evertime I hear some universalizing statements about Christians, it makes it feel that the struggle is so much harder. IMO, people who are trying to undo the wrong, to move in different, more progressive directions, should receive support, not condemnation, or be judged "guilty by association" (with Christianity). People are making changes, but are condemned by association by both "sides." How strange is that?

As for me, I call myself a Christian because of who Jesus was, and what he said. Like Betonoir, at least to some extent, I find it difficult to believe that one man was sent in one particular point in time, to save one people (and later learned from a WOMAN that he had to stretch further!). I believe that people are sent, or come along, according to the culture and needs of a particular time. And, of course, they are "sacrificed." Like Ghandi. Like MLK.

Please excuse the length of this tome. This is a troubling discussion for me. I came to work early to use the computers in the lab so that I can get this off my chest, and to also lend support to Nat. Thanks for your patience!

[julieisafemme]

My reading of Nat's post, if read to the end, professes her personal belief, on the one hand, and an admission of other possibilities, on the other hand, Toughie. Neither makes a lot of difference to her. She simply states her marvel with nature, or "creation," as something sacred to HER.

I agree with you, Toughie, that MANY Christians do not have a clue about who/what Jesus was, or their views are limited. However, I would not even say most, unless you speak primarily of those in the U.S. There has been, after an unsuccessful attempt to snuff it out, a rebirth of Liberation Theologies.

The first of these initially began at Medulin, by Catholic Latin American theologians (who were all, at that time, all male). Using the framework of Paulo Freire's Pedogagy of the Oppressed, these theologians reread the Greek Bible through Friere's lens and from their own experiences working with the poor. They developed what is known as the "preferential option for the poor" theology, something that they read in the words and life of Jesus.

Following the Latin American Liberation theological movement, came the Black Liberation Theology, then, Feminist, and so on. These liberation theologies and theologians, especially in "Latin" America, fought oppressive governments and many were martyred with the people. The Pope silenced many of these men. Some were not to be silenced. A few left the church. The movement was thought to be dead.

In the interim, Latin American, Womanist, and Mujerista theologies developed. There followed women from various parts of Africa and of Asia. There is a new LT movement afoot. It is only a few years old, and for the first time, women and men are working together. The primary focus is the liberation of the poor and the oppressed. NO MATTER WHAT THEIR, the poor's, CONSTRUCTION OF GOD/S OR THE UNIVERSE.

There is a new Bible ... well, it is a few years old now ... the exegesis of original writings and the reflection of its meanings by Biblical scholars in Germany (not translated). The team that worked on this translation was led by Feminist and Liberation Theologian, Luise Schottroff and Dorothea Solle (RIP). The government terrorized these scholars because they have gone against tradition in their work. Luise taught in the U.S. for a while. I was one of her students. Her teaching on antiJudaism in biblical exegesis opened the eyes of many.

In the midst of fundamentalist religionS (deliberate capitalization) all over the world, in the midst of their loud truth claims, there are others who have a different voice, a different word, a different understanding. They are not a "few", they are many, but their voices are not loud enough, any more than ours are loud enough here on this website to counter the homophobia that presses down on all of us. But they, like we, continue.

Like Nat, I am disturbed with the anti-Christian rhetoric that seems to be in vogue in the community. Should we eliminate MLK's work and vision because he was a Christian. His Christianity, his understanding of the Bible is what led him to be the spokesperson that he was. Should Ivone Gebara, a Brazilian nun who works with the poor who live on the garbage heaps and writes of ecofeminism and the poor, be discounted because she is Christian? Should Adi Maria Issasi Diaz, who, in her work, En La Lucha, describes the theorizing of poor women, be dismissed because she is Christian? Should Katie Canon, whose PhD was based on Alice Walker's definition of womanist, and who is an episcopal priest, be dismissed? Katie has an international group of woman, religious women, mostly, but not all, Christian (some are Muslim, some both Muslim and Christian ... how novel - sarcasm here). Rosemary Radford Ruether stays within the Catholic church, bless her heart, and has/is helped women in the process of ordination, against the wishes of the Pope. Rosemary has written brilliant essays on why priests should marry. She is powerful enough to have the University of San Diego, undr pressure from the Bishop, retract the invitation to be the speaker at graduation there year before last. She is so powerfully feared that the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley's three Catholic institutions threatened to pull out of the Union if she came there as Professor. She came as Professor of Theology in the most liberal of the schools ... and the Catholic institutions did not leave afterall. Should she be dismissed? That is what the Catholic Church is doing to her.

There are people all over the globe who are making efforts to change their various churches and denominations. They are struggling against the fundamentalists truth claims. For me, it is sad that there is so little understanding of the struggles going on within Christianity. Evertime I hear some universalizing statements about Christians, it makes it feel that the struggle is so much harder. IMO, people who are trying to undo the wrong, to move in different, more progressive directions, should receive support, not condemnation, or be judged "guilty by association" (with Christianity). People are making changes, but are condemned by association by both "sides." How strange is that?

As for me, I call myself a Christian because of who Jesus was, and what he said. Like Betonoir, at least to some extent, I find it difficult to believe that one man was sent in one particular point in time, to save one people (and later learned from a WOMAN that he had to stretch further!). I believe that people are sent, or come along, according to the culture and needs of a particular time. And, of course, they are "sacrificed." Like Ghandi. Like MLK.

Please excuse the length of this tome. This is a troubling discussion for me. I came to work early to use the computers in the lab so that I can get this off my chest, and to also lend support to Nat. Thanks for your patience!

Can you tell me if the woman who coined the neologism "kyriachy" is part of this Liberation Theology movement. I know she is a theologian at Harvard? I can't remember her name. Excuse me if you mentioned it above.

[Toughy]

I say I am a Dianic Wiccan. That does not mean I believe in a Creator/personal diety. I don't.

The (goddess) archetypes found in giving a name to the attributes of the people and the world speak to me. It gives me a way to order parts of my world. I need that because I believe I need to feed both my intellect and my emotion. Intellectual understanding and emotional understanding are two different critters.

The mind is an amazing thing. Electricity and Chemistry combined. Your brain can create a feeling of the 'hand of god' with electrical stimulation only. Your brain can create hallucinations all by it's self. I like accessing that part of my brain chemistry that elicits joy, peace, love. I can do that with any of the forms of Buddist/Hindu meditation and chanting. Meditating is not really about asking for something from someone outside your self.

I do not pray because prayer is asking for something from outside myself. All the answers are inside me. I am.

----
lgbtqi folks having issues with or hating Christians is divisive because some of us are Christians???.............I for the life of me have no idea how any member of this community would want to be a follower of the God of Abraham. It makes absolutely no sense to me. But it's not my choice and it's not my problem. To each their own. It is not my place to judge anyone (within certain boundaries).

As to hate............I don't hate anyone. I repeat I don't hate anyone. I wonder how anyone can live with themselves if they live in hate. Such an awful place to be. Hate and fear go hand in hand. I am not about to give my power to hate and fear. I give my power to compassion and joy.

[waxnrope]

Can you tell me if the woman who coined the neologism "kyriachy" is part of this Liberation Theology movement. I know she is a theologian at Harvard? I can't remember her name. Excuse me if you mentioned it above.

That would be Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza. And, you are correct, she is at Harvard, the list time I heard.

I did not mention her, although she crossed my mind. There are just do many.

I'm back on the smartphone ...:(

[firie]

I believe Jesus existed. I think he sounds like a pretty good guy, I think I would have liked him - I hope he would have liked me. I do not, however, believe for a second he was the Son of God. Please.

Jesus was a rebel. He was anti-capitalism. He distrusted the wealthy. A lot of what he said lined up well with socialism. He liked the idea of living communally and pooling resources. He didn't like the idea of "owning" and "consuming" a bunch of stuff - he wanted you to give your shit away to people who had none.

He was also a radical Jewish activist according to quite a few Jewish scholars. Christians have totally coopted him, if he did exist in my opinion. And then some, not all, will say Jews are screwed and facing hell. That kinda logic is not in my definition of "evolved".

[Toughy]

The message of Jesus was liberation theology/social justice. The Catholic Church sure did defrock a bunch of priests over that.

What appears to be mainstream Christianity has nothing to do with that message or Jesus. Mainstream Christianity is rapidly becoming a message of hate. You cannot deny that.

I use the word appears for a reason. Where are this generation's MLK or other great leaders to counter the message of hate? The overwhelming majority of media is about hate, not social justice. That appears to be mainstream then. Where are the social justice leaders?

[Soon]

and, now, Beck spits out the words *liberation theology* like it is a disgusting concept perverting the message of Christ and/or Christianity.

[SuperFemme]

I don't think there is a pretty answer to wrap up the divide between the GLBTQ community and what many of have suffered/are suffering at the hands of those who invoke their Christianity as a means to hate us. The Christian, Mormon, and Catholic unabashed disdain for our community is not something we can say doesn't exist.

I had a band of christian mothers demand that my son be expelled from school because of the presence of myself with my partner at that many concerts and performances because it's a Fine Arts Academy. I swear to GOD they went all the way to the school board.

Do I hold all Christians responsible? No. Do I hate Christians? No. Want to know why? Because REAL CHRISTIANS would not participate in that kind of hatred. Unfortunately, this country is brimming with people who think that they are Christian while at the same time practicing a religion that in no way resembles the teachings of Christ.

Should I pretend things like this video are not prevalent in my life? I can't. But I promise that it doesn't mean I'm a God hater because I refute the hatred thrown my way.

EmWdExg4kic

[waxnrope]

Toughie, I did not mean to infer that you hate. I don't believe that I said that. My address above came from frustration, not so much from your post, but the collective put downs.

To each his/her own. I no longer believe in goddess worship because, for ME, it has only swung the tables on patriarchy. It is not rational to me to eliminate half the population from edification. Whatever it is that is within me, I do not believe has a gender at all. Nor a material form. Like Shug Avery, in the Color Purple, *I* think that G-d is an "it."

All this does not exclude my annual participation in the SF Goddess Conference. I am simply drawn to rituals. Many are beautiful and meditative. My "religion" is truly synthetic. There are bits in many that hold value for me

[Soon]

I don't think there is a pretty answer to wrap up the divide between the GLBTQ community and what many of have suffered/are suffering at the hands of those who invoke their Christianity as a means to hate us. The Christian, Mormon, and Catholic unabashed disdain for our community is not something we can say doesn't exist.

I had a band of christian mothers demand that my son be expelled from school because of the presence of myself with my partner at that many concerts and performances because it's a Fine Arts Academy. I swear to GOD they went all the way to the school board.

Do I hold all Christians responsible? No. Do I hate Christians? No. Want to know why? Because REAL CHRISTIANS would not participate in that kind of hatred. Unfortunately, this country is brimming with people who think that they are Christian while at the same time practicing a religion that in no way resembles the teachings of Christ.

Should I pretend things like this video are not prevalent in my life? I can't. But I promise that it doesn't mean I'm a God hater because I refute the hatred thrown my way.

EmWdExg4kic

That's so messed up, SuperFemme, and am sorry you and your family experienced such hatred and ignorance.

I am curious as to how the Board and/or school responded or resolved these complaints if you don't mind sharing.

[dreadgeek]

I just think that religion only ever has anything to fear from science when we insist on seeing God as an entity with a consciousness similar to ours...i don't see how we lose anything by seeing God as a force, or even four forces.

although, i guess it is harder to imagine how he knows the number of hairs on our head or has his eye on the sparrow, etc, but that just shows the limits of our imagination. i can see how it's not personal enough for some people, though

If people want to view god as a force or a person, that's fine. I think religion does fine if it doesn't try to answer scientific questions. Religion gets itself in trouble when it tries to answer questions better left up to science. The problem is that a world where there is an activist, interventionist, creator deity is going to look *very* different than one that is the result of blind and impersonal forces.

I'm not a theist and I don't have a lot of kind words for theism--but I recognize that humanity is stuck with religion and thus theism for any foreseeable future. So I'm trying to be at peace with that. However, I will demarcate and defend the boundaries of science against attempts by religious people to make science conform to their parochial, sectarian interests. That's not what science is for. Science is for discovery and understanding. Most modern science is complicated enough that cluttering the subject up with religious beliefs that must be conformed to. (For example, creationism being taught as if it were a viable alternative theory to naturalistic evolution when it most manifestly is not.)


Cheers
Aj

[waxnrope]

and, now, Beck spits out the words *liberation theology* like it is a disgusting concept perverting the message of Christ and/or Christianity.

of course he does ... it is a threat to (his) the order of things ...

[SuperFemme]

That's so messed up, SuperFemme and am sorry you and your family experienced such hatred and ignorance.

I am curious as to how the Board and/or school responded or resolved these complaints if you don't mind sharing.

The Principal called in this group of parents for a meeting with us after three weeks of my son being told that his Mom was an Evil Whore who was going straight to Hell and that he was a Faggot going to the same place. Day after day.

We met with the parents in hopes that we could quell the problem, but their words for us were that we were an abomination and sick and a walking representation of Satan at that school. (public school). One parent even attacked my son at a school rummage sale telling him that he was a worthless piece of shit and a "waste of faggot space on this earth".

The Principal made it clear that further words would result in expulsions and suspensions. So parents went to the school board. The school board decided that a mandatory tolerance workshop for both parents and students was in order (teachers as well), and it did wonders. We found out that there are three other kids who have same sex parents at our school, and now that they all know of each other they have comfort in numbers.

It's been some times now, and the issue in no longer an issue. I have to say that the kids who were being persecuted handled it with great dignity and grace and I dare anyone to say that kids from same sex households aren't healthy and socially responsible little people.

[waxnrope]

If people want to view god as a force or a person, that's fine. I think religion does fine if it doesn't try to answer scientific questions. Religion gets itself in trouble when it tries to answer questions better left up to science. The problem is that a world where there is an activist, interventionist, creator deity is going to look *very* different than one that is the result of blind and impersonal forces.

I'm not a theist and I don't have a lot of kind words for theism--but I recognize that humanity is stuck with religion and thus theism for any foreseeable future. So I'm trying to be at peace with that. However, I will demarcate and defend the boundaries of science against attempts by religious people to make science conform to their parochial, sectarian interests. That's not what science is for. Science is for discovery and understanding. Most modern science is complicated enough that cluttering the subject up with religious beliefs that must be conformed to. (For example, creationism being taught as if it were a viable alternative theory to naturalistic evolution when it most manifestly is not.)


Cheers
Aj

I agree with some of your post, AJ. However, as with many things, change is afoot. There is a Center for Science and Religion in Berkeley, and similar institues elsewhere. People are talking WITH each other and listening.

[dreadgeek]

I agree with some of your post, AJ. However, as with many things, change is afoot. There is a Center for Science and Religion in Berkeley, and similar institues elsewhere. People are talking WITH each other and listening.

Certainly things are changing but here's the thing, Wax, religion would--in my opinion--be FAR better off if it fled as far away from subjects covered by the sciences as fast as possible. Let's say, for instance, that someone is arguing that evolution is the way that God created all the diverse life forms. Okay, as far as it goes. But then some nasty biologist like me comes along and asks the question "what does God have against caterpillars?" The question is relevant because there's a species of wasp where the female stings a caterpillar which paralyzes it but doesn't kill it. She then lays her eggs in the body of the *still living caterpillar*. When the eggs hatch the larvae eat their way out. Caterpillars can feel pain. Imagine being alive and being eaten, quite literally, from the inside out.

Now, if both the wasp and caterpillar are the results of blind forces that don't *care* about either then, as gruesome as it is, it at least makes sense. But if an intelligent entity *designed* things that way, that's messed up! At least it could have made caterpillars incapable of feeling pain. That would at least show some mercy.

There's a scene in Terry Pratchett's book, "Unseen Academicals" where the Patrician, Vetinari--who is ruthless and Machiavellian--relates a story from his youth where he sees a mother otter catch a salmon, the mother otter splits the salmon open and eggs spill out which are then devoured by the baby otters. At the end of this story, he says, "if there is a divine being, it is our job to be his moral superiors".

The universe is too heartless, too pitiless, too completely comfortable with misery, pain and fear to be the product of any entity that could be called 'loving' or 'kind' or 'merciful' by even the most generous definition. Think about the last second of a gazelles life just before it is brought down by a leopard. Imagine its fear, it's pain. Now, imagine the pain of starving for the lion (and her cubs) if she *doesn't* get the gazelle. No matter what, someone has a horrific experience--either the gazelle dies quickly, painfully and in terror or the lioness and her cubs die slowly, painfully, in a lingering fashion. Religion should want no part of that and would be best served if it didn't try to explain why that happens.

Cheers
Aj

[dark_crystal]

i realize the "Breaking News" thread has now been off-topic for like 3 pages, but i did want to add one last note regarding religion:

One of my favorite scriptural passages is The Parable of the Sower from Mark chapter 4:

A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain. Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, multiplying thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times."
Then Jesus said, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear."

When he was alone, the Twelve and the others around him asked him about the parables.

Then Jesus said to them, "Don't you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable? The farmer sows the word. Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them. Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful. Others, like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop—thirty, sixty or even a hundred times what was sown."

We have it from Jesus's own (alleged) mouth that we can expect 75% of Christans to be completely clueless.

i actually live by an over-extrapolation of this parable called Jenny's 75% rule, which states that three-quarters of the people one meets are going to be idiots. This then has to be tempered with the Golden Rule, which requires that i expect this while still giving the benefit of the doubt to whoever's in front of me at any moment

oh yeah and regarding morality outside of religion, the categorical imperative still applies, i think

[Toughy]

waxnrope...........I was not directing my comments about hate to you personally. I don't believe you said anything about me and hate.........:hangloose:

---
Aj......I have hope that theists and scientists can come together and stop this adversarial either/or rhetoric. Change comes mostly slowly as time and evolution teach. There are baby steps being made.

Although........laughin.........Stephen Hawkings has certainly made a whole bunch of people go :shocking: . I am actually gonna go by the book. I will have to check local booksellers first..........if they don't have it, then it's order from Powell's.

(I don't buy from chain bookstores....one form of social justice that is easy to do :toypony:)

[SuperFemme]

Family indicted after thrice kidnapping gay relative

By JPOST.COM STAFF (updatesdesk@gmail.com)
09/02/2010 13:41

The crimes were committed after victim published pictures in drag on Facebook; he was chained and locked up by relatives.

A family from the Arab village of Tamra (http://newstopics.jpost.com/topic/Tamra), including one minor, have been indicted on Thursday for kidnapping a relative after finding pictures of him in drag on Facebook.

The indictment includes contact in order to commit a crime, kidnapping with intent to imprison, kidnapping with intent to threaten, imprisonment, threats and attacks, all because of the man's sexuality and photographs he published online, in which he is wearing a bridal gown.

The crimes were allegedly committed four times over the past four months, in order to "defend the family's honor," according to the indictment.

The first kidnapping attempt occurred in May. The accused told their victim that him mother is sick, and they should visit her in Tamra. When he refused, they dragged him into the car, and brought him to his parents' home, where they beat and slapped him, tied him up, and locked him in the room. The victim's brother released him, after the victim told a friend to call the police.

He was attacked again at a family wedding, during which he ran into the woods and did not come out until police came. Three weeks before the wedding, his mother called and warned him to remove the pictures in which the victim is in drag, saying "the family will come get you, and that'll be the end of you."

On August 23, the family members came to the victim's Tel Aviv (http://newstopics.jpost.com/topic/Tel_Aviv) apartment, sprayed pepper spray in his face, and pushed him into a car that was waiting for him outside. They tied his hands with belts, blindfolded him with scotch tape and threatened to stab him if he resists. Once they arrived in Tamra, the accused chained him to a window and locked him in a room.

http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=186841

[AtLast]

I agree with some of your post, AJ. However, as with many things, change is afoot. There is a Center for Science and Religion in Berkeley, and similar institues elsewhere. People are talking WITH each other and listening.


I find these kinds of organizations to be very important in combating what I call intellectual benign neglect. Question, question, question... replicate, replicate, replicate!

Accepting anything, including scientific claims, blindly, is not a good thing to me. This certainly bothers me with theism. Without sound research methods and replication of theory, science is not trustworthy either. Put the lack of funding for scientific inquiry in the US in the equation as well as the corporate mega-bucks for certain kinds of scientific inquiry, and there is a big problem. When new research such as this comes out, the first thing I want to know is how it was funded and where.

Unfortunately, there are at times, people behind scientific investigation that are not interested in pure science and have ulterior motives. Seems like that can be said for those in many forms of theology. In fact, there is scientific study into a God Gene that can be viewed as part of this group. On the other hand, that science is revolutionary in terms of neuropsychological interpretation and applications. It has it's place in scientific investigation because science delves into all.

Many scientific discoveries that are simply brilliant have been used in horrible ways- the atomic bomb is certainly one. Reading how Oppenheimer felt about his work and how it ended up being used is very interesting and heartbreaking. The guy had so may other ideas for how this science could be used that would have had such different social consequences that were positive.

For me, a state of spiritual awareness is indeed based upon molecular variables within the bio-neuro- physiological realm of sensation, perception and cognitive underpinnings. Paranormal investigation is something that is advancing in our scientific world and has a place in all of this. I can't define this for anyone else. I don’t even care to.

I do know that accepting science at first glance without checking the methods obtained and not seeing replication is not being a good scientist. If I had done this as a professional, I would have been neglectful as well as unethical. In terms of professional ethics, simply taking scientific research at face value can be a deadly mistake.

Hawkins has demonstrated a history of solid scientific inquiry. He is well respected among his peers (and that is something to consider as well- prominent scientists do exist in an Ivy League elitist vacuum mostly). I will certainly take his theory into consideration. Although, I don't consider creationism to be valid, anyway. I see other applications for what Hawkins is bring to light (no pun intended). But, his work will have to stand the test of time and further scientific study and criticism to earn validity. And Hawkins, as a phenomenal scientist knows this.

This work is a significant contribution in science, but, it needs to be treated as all good science is, with continued and un-biased scientific inquiry. The idea is to build on theory from the past and into the future. That is what good scientist’s do- they keep asking questions and refining their research. Keep going at ideas.

Who knows, Hawkins work might lead to another Scopes Trial and change the course of educational curriculum. I for one wouldn’t mind this at all. I do agree that creationism theory just does not stand as a bona fide theory to be taught in our public schools (public being the operative- let alone separation of church and state).

[SuperFemme]

Montana Tea Party President Condones Violence Against Gays in Facebook Post Supporting Traditional Marriage

http://towleroad.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c730253ef013486bc25fd970c-800wi

This seems to have been posted in late July, but several people have brought it to my attention today. Tim Ravndal, the President of Montana's Big Sky Tea Party Association, expressed his views that marriage should be between a man and a woman in a Facebook posting. The post was in response to an ACLU lawsuit in Montana (http://www.towleroad.com/2010/07/seven-gay-couples-sue-state-of-montana-for-equal-protection.html) brought by seven gay couples who want to get married.

Then Ravndal expressed support for a commenter who (in apparent reference to the Matthew Shepard murder) said, "I think fruits are decorative. Hang up where they can be seen and appreciated. Call Wyoming for display instructions."

Answered Ravndal: "Where can I get that Wyoming printed instruction manual?"

In related news, the Montana GOP Platform calls for making homosexual acts illegal (http://www.towleroad.com/2010/06/new-montana-gop-party-platform-criminalize-gay-sex.html)

http://www.towleroad.com/2010/09/montana-tea-party-president-condones-violence-against-gays-in-facebook-post-supporting-traditional-m.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+towleroad%2Ffeed+%28Towleroad +Daily++%23gay+news%29

[SuperFemme]

Springfield Cathedral High School athletic director Christine Judd loses job after same-sex marriage

Published: Thursday, September 02, 2010, 4:41 PM Updated: Friday, September 03, 2010, 9:28 AM
http://media.masslive.com/breakingnews/photo/090210-christine-juddjpg-373e9eed135a9fa5_large.jpg

Cathedral High School athletic director and dean of students Christine Judd lost her job at the Catholic school after marrying her partner.

SPRINGFIELD - The athletic director at Cathedral High School lost her job this week, saying she was pressured to leave after marrying her female partner in August.

Christine M. Judd, who served as athletic director and dean of students, said she is no longer an employee of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield school system after a meeting Wednesday with administrators of the Catholic high school.

The diocese listed her departure as a resignation, but Judd said she is still exploring her legal options.

“I was given a choice of termination or resignation,” Judd said. “I’m hurt, but I wish nothing but the best for Cathedral, its students, the parents, the athletic teams, administration and faculty. I bleed purple (the school’s color).”

Judd, a Springfield resident, worked for the Catholic school for 12 years, beginning as a science teacher in 1998. She became dean of students six years ago and was given the added duties of athletic director three years ago.

“I married my partner this summer,” Judd said. “I was hoping that my loyalty, my professionalism the last 12 years would supersede the current hypocrisy that has already been shown with the Diocese of Springfield.”

Asked to elaborate on her claim of hypocrisy, Judd said she questions if there are lay persons who work for the Catholic diocese who divorce and remarry without an annulment, or employees who use birth control, or men who have had vasectomies, or individuals who are pro-choice on abortion.

Same-sex marriage became legal in Massachusetts in 2004.

Mark E. Dupont, a spokesman for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield, said Judd did resign, but declined to respond to Judd’s comments, or on the issue of her marriage in August.

Related stories


Coen: Springfield Diocese should be ashamed

“Because it’s an employment matter, we are not at liberty to discuss the specifics,” Dupont said.

Judd said she knows she will find new employment.


She said state law gives her the right to same-sex marriage, but it is not allowed under diocesan policy, leading to her job loss.

“Cathedral had nothing to do with this,” Judd said. “This was a diocesan decision. In the end, the timing of this issue really affects the kids. That is where it has the most effect.”

Cathedral's website describes Judd as "one of the key members of the faculty and staff who serve as positive role models for the students."
Farrand Violette, who is the new football coach at Cathedral, has been named interim athletic director for the rest of this year, Dupont said. Violette has past experience as an athletic director at the New Leadership Charter School.

No decision has been announced yet regarding the dean of students position.

Judd said her decision to leave the school followed a meeting with the school principal, John Miller, and the business director.

“Without being specific to this matter, it should be clear that all employees of our Catholic schools are made aware of our policies and regulations,” Dupont said. "This includes language that clearly states that whenever by public example, an employee engages in or espouses conduct which contravenes the doctrine and teaching of the Catholic Church, that employee may be subject to disciplinary action. To do otherwise would be in contradiction to the values we believe in and are teaching in these same schools. So while we certainly want to be compassionate and understanding, we must be true to who we are.”

“We are certainly thankful to Ms Judd for her past service at Cathedral High School and wish her the best in the future,” Dupont said.

http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2010/09/springfield_cathedral_high_sch.html

[Soon]

[B][SIZE=3]

“Without being specific to this matter, it should be clear that all employees of our Catholic schools are made aware of our policies and regulations,” Dupont said. "This includes language that clearly states that whenever by public example, an employee engages in or espouses conduct which contravenes the doctrine and teaching of the Catholic Church, that employee may be subject to disciplinary action. To do otherwise would be in contradiction to the values we believe in and are teaching in these same schools. So while we certainly want to be compassionate and understanding, we must be true to who we are.”

l[/URL]


And like Ms. Judd said, they DO NOT go after the employees who are divorced, or living together, use birth control etc. It is only members of the LGBT group that lives openly that these Catholic Boards go after.

[SuperFemme]

And like Ms. Judd said, they DO NOT go after the employees who are divorced, or living together, use birth control etc. It is only members of the LGBT group that lives openly that these Catholic Boards go after.

right.
but all they do is transfer the priests who sexually abuse parishoners.
they are not defrocked, are they? at least i know that in the past the
diocese would just move the offender from place to place with no warning
to the new place of what may come to pass.

it is EXACTLY these kinds of situations that make the GLBTQ community wary of religious organizations.

[waxnrope]

waxnrope...........I was not directing my comments about hate to you personally. I don't believe you said anything about me and hate.........:hangloose:

---
Aj......I have hope that theists and scientists can come together and stop this adversarial either/or rhetoric. Change comes mostly slowly as time and evolution teach. There are baby steps being made.

Although........laughin.........Stephen Hawkings has certainly made a whole bunch of people go :shocking: . I am actually gonna go by the book. I will have to check local booksellers first..........if they don't have it, then it's order from Powell's.

(I don't buy from chain bookstores....one form of social justice that is easy to do :toypony:)

Toughie, c'mere and let me give you a butch hug :)
I saw the announcement, and am interested in what he had to say. Let's face it, no one is likely to change their podition, but having respect for one another's ideas, sharing our stories like SF, that shit is holy to me. So thanks.

[waxnrope]

AtLast, I can't quote your post on my phone ... its too long :( ... but want to thank you for putting things in perspective.

Don't get me started on the absolution of science, and the oops! never mind, or atrocities commuted in the name of. Cornell West does a masterful job with respect to race, for one. Michel Foucault and Anon are others. There is a history of abuse in most, if not all, disciplines. How do we elicit thought and behavior change so that we all flourish is, IMHO, the key.

Each of us posting these past pages have the "good" in mind. We need be more than tolerant, because tolerance implies superiority. We need to agree that there are some points that we do not agree, some points that, because our learning is narrowly focused, we don't understand. We need to realize that our experience of a specific area may be true for that instance, but not expect everything within a broader umbrella may be true as well. The contradictions are inherent in nature.

Dang phone won't allow multiple quotes, and I apologize for this as well as any typos that make you go "huh" because there is a self correcting thingy.

SF, thanks for posting. You have, in the way only you can accomplish, presented the various sides of these discussions through your own lived experiences. I'd like to say more, but won't press my luck on the phone in one long post. It's never let me go so long before.

AJ, yore post is brilliant. However, Process Theology, started by a physicist, Alfred Lord Whitehead, says simply that G-d does not intervene because G-d cannot. G-d, Process Theologians say, acts by luring us to do good. We have free will, however, and can chose not to listen ...

Ok, I'm gone ...

[Cyclopea]

Hawking writing religious texts now? How strange...

Now that he's disproved the existence of god maybe he will disprove the existence of bigfoot or the loch ness monster.

:koolaid:

[Toughy]

Terry...............<<<<doing the dual butch hand grasp to the chest with other hand pat on the back>>>>> We need to have coffee soon.

Tolerance. I have always had trouble with being 'tolerated'. It somehow implies something is wrong, but can be dealt with at an arm's length.

Acceptance. That is what I strive for and what will move evolution of humans forward. Acceptance implies the concept of 'Namaste' or 'I See You'.

[Nat]

Hawking writing religious texts now? How strange...

Now that he's disproved the existence of god maybe he will disprove the existence of bigfoot or the loch ness monster.

:koolaid:

I hope not - then I'd have to cry :)

[Cyclopea]

I hope not - then I'd have to cry :)

*chuckle* Don't cry! Here's some chocolate: :chocolate:

[Toughy]

Hawking writing religious texts now? How strange...

Now that he's disproved the existence of god maybe he will disprove the existence of bigfoot or the loch ness monster.

:koolaid:

I have not read this new book. What I get from the one big quote I read and could not quickly find is this: There is no NEED for a creator diety for the universe to come into existence. What I read does not make a comment on the existence of a deity, but rather comments on the need of a deity.

I await further comment on this new book until I have read it. My understanding is the book is NOT about religion. Rather it is about how the universe came into existence. Context is everything and he certainly could have said a creator deity does not exist.

ps............I hate koolaid and I rarely if ever drink it.