One mistake that advocates of healthcare reform made was not to discuss the corruption of HMOs and health insurers and the deadly consequences. We need to educate people on why these corporations need to go.

 

Religious extremists do a lot of evil things. Here's one I didn't know about: missionary dating. Here's a description of it from ExChristian.net.

Missionary dating is a term used in evangelical Christian circles to describe a tactic certain believers use to win new converts.
It involves a believer becoming romantically involved with a nonbeliever, with conversion of the nonbeliever being a priority goal for the believer. A quick Google search of the term returns well over 100,000 hits on the subject. Peruse a sampling of them, and you'll find that the majority of sites addressing the topic are Christian sites discussing why missionary dating is a bad idea... for Christians.

Interestingly enough, I have yet to come across a page or site that has anything to say about the impact of missionary dating on its non-Christian victims. There's plenty out there about the damage missionary dating can do to Christians who do it (it can cause backsliding, violation of one's own convictions, doubts, stress, and so on), but nothing on what it's like for someone on the receiving end. No word or thought anywhere, no suggestion that any Christian has ever paused for a moment to consider how a nonbeliever might feel, or what they might think, when they discover that their loved one has been dating for Jesus.

The post goes on to say how it feels from the perspective of one of the victims of one of these scams, though any thinking person with empathy should be able to figure out how awful it is. I'm trying to figure out if this borders on or surpasses the way emotional abuse is defined in domestic violence educational materials. Either way, there just isn't any excuse for it.

As religion slowly fades out from this society, religious extremists are getting more desperate and vicious in their efforts to preserve their failed faiths. Some of them will stop at nothing, morals and ethics aren't even a consideration to them.

Photo: SanFranAnnie

 

1. Tell Barack Bush You Don't Want Any More Offshore Drilling
Now that Barack Bush has announced that he will open up parts of America's coastline to Big Oil and big oil spills, people need to take action. Sarah Palin may like the idea of "drill, baby drill," but responsible people know that we need to end our habit of drilling for more oil instead of building more trains. A lot of the coverage of this focuses on the danger to the beaches and the tourism industry. Those problems are very real, but we also need to keep a focus on impacts on climate change.

People who care about the environment, unlike our President, are urging that he reverse this shocking and disgusting decision. If you aren't familiar with the issue, the Center for American Progress has ten reasons why the drilling shouldn't happen.

Sign 350.org's Petition!

Sign Firedog Lake's Petition!

Also, you can join the Facebook Group Against the Offshore Drilling. (not affiliated with Firedog Lake)

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2. Tell the House and Senate to Pressure the World Bank not to Subsidize Global Warming
Friends of the Earth is working on the following campaign:

The World Bank is expected to vote April 8 on whether to approve a $3.75 billion loan to help South African electricity company Eskom build a massive new polluting coal plant. South African civil society groups are demanding clean energy instead and organizing to fight this loan. They've asked for our help.

Congress controls the World Bank's purse strings, which means that your members of Congress have the power to hold the World Bank accountable.

Ask your representative and senators to take a public stand against dirty coal and urge the U.S. to vote “no” on this loan.

Watch the Friends of the Earth Video

Take Action!

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3. Tell Congress to Block Clearcutting Effort in Alaska Rainforests:
The Wilderness Society and Care2 have a petition against clearcutting in Alaska. The effected rainforests capture a lot of CO2, and the planet can't afford to lose them now.

Legislation currently working its way through Congress could give a single corporation, Sealaska, the green light to log some of the best, oldest and most biologically-rich areas left in Tongass National Forest in Alaska.

The Tongass is one of the last remaining, largely intact temperate rainforests in the world -- home to all five species of salmon, black and brown bears, wolves, whales and rare birds. With more than half of the largest trees clearcut, protecting what is left is of paramount importance.

Sealaska Corporation, which has a history of clearcutting its lands, is seeking ownership of some of the most ecologically and biologically diverse parts of the Tongass National Forest. In fact, the lands targeted by Sealaska have more than ten times the habitat value of other Tongass forest land!

A House hearing is scheduled for March 17th and a Senate Committee could soon decide the fate of the Tongass National Forest. Send a letter to Congress and urge them to protect the Tongass from expanded logging and commercial development.

Their main concern is protecting plant and animal species. My main priority is fighting global warming. Regardless of which is more important to you, the conclusion is the same.

Please Contact Congress!

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There some big battles on climate change, but there are lots of small ones that need to be fought to. Trying to keep our species from thoroughly trashing this planet is a big job.

Photos: www78

Xa'at

 

Swim - Jack's Mannequin

 

In case you wondered why the wealthcare bill didn't make it legal for people to buy cheaper drugs from Canada and why it didn't include medical marijuana provisions...

From National Journal 3/17/10:

Under his tenure, PhRMA has spent well over $100 million on ad drives backing health care reform legislation, a strategy that grew out of a deal Tauzin struck with the White House and key Democrats in the Senate that's provoked some criticism from parts of the drug industry. Early this year, Tauzin announced he would be departing PhRMA after five years at its helm and a search is underway for a replacement. Tauzin earned $4.5 million in 2008, according to IRS documents.

PhRMA is the trade association that lobbies for the drug companies.

If you have seen an ad promoting the wealthcare bill, chances are better than 50/50 that they paid for it. We need public financing of campaigns as much as we need single payer.

 

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's opposition to my inalienable right as a crime victim to gun control is one of the most important reasons why I will never vote for her for any public office. New York deserves a Democratic Senator who supports the policies of New York's Democratic voters.



I encourage you to learn more about Jonathan Tasini's primary challenge against Ms. Gillibrand.

 

Last week, President Obama went to Iowa, which always has been friendly territory to him, to market his wealthcare plan. If you look at the text of the speech, it's amusing to see just how much bullshit he included with it. Let's look at some of the lies.

Lie:
"If people like their plan, they will keep their plan."

Facts:
The wealthcare bill will seriously damage the plans of at least two groups of people with coverage now. The plans won't be even close to the same.

1) People on "Medicare Advantage" (the HMO version of Medicare) will face dramatic reductions in services because of funding cuts. Even worse, the HMO version of Medicare is a trap. Once people are in that version, they can never go back to regular Medicare. The tradeoff of a lack of premiums and lower quality care already existing in "Medicare Advantage" mean that the population of seniors most likely to be hurt by these cuts are the elderly poor.

2) People With Mediocre Plans, which the corporate media call "Cadillac Care" (they must really, really hate Cadillacs) will face cutbacks in care, higher premiums, and higher copays when the excise taxes on those plans go into effect in 2018.

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Lie:
"The days of the insurance industry running roughshod over the American people are over."

Facts:
1) The insurance companies and HMOs wrote this bill. They already have started discussing the loopholes they put into place which will keep them from having to cover sick children.

2) The regulations in this bill require sick people and their families to enforce them. If they are relatively lucky, they can go to court. The HMOs and insurance companies have all the best lawyers in the field. However, if the contract for the HMO or insurance company requires arbitration, then people are forced to go to an arbitration system that is completely rigged in favor of the corporations.

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Lie:
"And so if you already have insurance, this reform will make it more secure and more affordable."

Fact:
Every time insurance companies have managed to get laws passed making any kind of coverage mandatory, they have shot premiums through the roof.

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Lie: (worded differently in different parts of the speech)
"And costs will come down for families, businesses, and the federal government, reducing our deficit by more than $1 trillion over the next two decades."

"But we have built into the law all sorts of measures to assure that in years to come, health care inflation, which has been rising about three times as fast as people's wages, will start slowing."

Fact:
This cynically ignores the fact that instituting heavy fines for not buying defective insurance will cause premiums to go up dramatically.

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Deception:
"And I want seniors to know: despite what some have said, these reforms will not cut your guaranteed benefits."

Fact:
This bill will result in cutbacks for many in benefits not guaranteed by law. (This is a trick more than a direct lie, though the intent to deceive is the same.)

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Two Lies in One Sentence:
"Once this reform is implemented, health insurance exchanges will be created, a competitive marketplace where uninsured people and small businesses will finally be able to purchase affordable, quality insurance."

Facts:
The new lie contradicts the fact that HMOs and health insurers don't provide quality insurance. They provide something which is universally known to be a defective product. Even with the subsidies, the insurance won't be affordable for the overwhelming majority of the uninsured. Insurance will become more expensive for people who already have it.

(I should note that, in this sentence, Obama reminds me of one of the hucksters who sell crap products on cable TV as "affordable, quality" products. They leave out that the junk they are selling is "not available in stores" because the stores don't want to deal with the returns.)

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I'm not going to pretend that I'm surprised by a politician lying. But, what really is surprising is that so many liberal blogs aren't calling President Obama on it. This is the same wealthcare proposal Bush and the Republicans would have pushed through if they were in power, and the sales pitches would be only modestly different.

Politics isn't team sports. Policies have very real impacts on peoples' lives, and that has to be taken a lot more seriously than many blogs on the left are doing so far. We need to stop cheering on the donkeys vs. the elephants and pay attention to what's actually going on.

 

This is a submission to the annual Blog Against Theocracy blogswarm.

There are a lot of things about the Vatican that don't get the attention they deserve. One of them is the fact that it is a pure theocracy. It has a dictator, the Pope, who is selected by a group of Cardinals appointed by previous Popes. That dictator has absolute power over the Vatican's foreign and domestic policy.

Because the Roman Catholic Church claims that their dictators are infallible, any Roman Catholic who questions the dictates and behavior of that pontiff is automatically suspect and sinful in the eyes of her or his church.

Under these circumstances, it isn't that difficult to see how difficult it is to root out any kind of corruption from such a structure. The area of Vatican corruption that is finally getting some of the media attention it deserves is the Vatican's coverups of the rampant child molestation in the Roman Catholic clergy.

Revelations of Vatican coverups are popping up all over the world. One of the most recent ones was the discovery that a now dead Bishop in Tuscon tried to get child raping priests fired only to have the Vatican block him. This is terrible, but it is equally commonplace.

Theocratic corruption is hardly limited to the Vatican. The Taliban sold heroin and banned all music they couldn't make money off of. We know about the litany of corruption among televangelists who would like to set up America as their own private theocracy.

People are correctly concerned about the dangers to human freedoms posed by theocracy. What gets lost is that in theocratic governments, dissent is suppressed and people are brainwashed into thinking they are evil when they question anything. This sets up a system where any kind of corruption that humans are capable of inventing can take hold. It also creates an environment where it is incredibly difficult to stop those corrupt practices, whether they be financial or physically brutal. This problem is by no means limited to the Vatican.

 

Terrible spin efforts have happened before, but I never thought a Vatican propagandists would sink this low. From the NY Times 4/2/10:

Father Cantalamessa quoted from what he said was a letter from an unnamed Jewish friend. “I am following the violent and concentric attacks against the church, the pope and all the faithful by the whole world,” he said the friend wrote. “The use of stereotypes, the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt, remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.”

Putting these words in a letter from a phony "Jewish friend" only makes it more heinous.

Of course, there hasn't been any violence in response to the heinous acts of violence committed by Roman Catholic priests against children of that faith. However, that lie is nowhere as unconscionable as the comparison. Even the most imaginative critics of the RCC couldn't make this shit up.

I really don't know how those fuckers sleep at night.

 

The more I learn about the wealthcare bill that the Obama administration pushed through Congress on behalf of the HMOs and health insurers, the worse it gets. From the Washington Post 3/27/10 (Hat Tip: No Blood for Hubris):

The bill restores $250 million over five years for states to sponsor programs aimed at preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases by focusing exclusively on encouraging children and adolescents to avoid sex. The funding provides at least a partial reprieve for the approach, which faced losing all federal support under President Obama's first two budgets.

"We're very happy to see that funding will continue so the important sexual health message of risk avoidance will reach American teens," said Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Abstinence Education Association, a Washington-based lobbying group. "What better place to see such an important health issue addressed than in the health legislation?"

Now we know the other reason why Bart Stupak voted for the wealthcare bill. The better known reasons were the woman hating restrictions on abortion in the Senate version of the bill and President Obama's misogynist Executive Order on abortion.

This is disturbing for so many reasons. These "abstinence only" scams promote teen pregnancy, and the kind of unsafe sex that causes pregnancy also spreads HIV. This action by Obama is typical of an administration that treats AIDS as one of its lowest priorities.

Also, these fraudulent "sex educations" programs represent deliberate religious indoctrination in the public schools. This violates the Establishment Clause, and it discriminates against atheists. Obama and the "Democrats" in Congress have had a really lousy record on state/church separation issues thus far, and it doesn't look like it will be getting better any time soon. I wonder if the same groups that will get funding for "abstinence only" scams also will get money under Obama's expanded hate based initiatives.

Is it too much to want actual Democrats in Congress and the White House?

 

Sadly, it's not an April Fools Day joke. There's a lot of rightist venture capital behind Facebook too. (Hat Tip: The Peace Tree)



It's all pretty sobering.

This article from the Electronic Frontier Foundation shows how to hide your Friends list from the entire world.

However, Facebook may be revising its Privacy Policy to let websites that you go to have your Friends list and other personal information. They seem determined to force users to repeatedly opt out to protect their data, which suggests they really want to wear people down until they give up on any privacy at all.


I would still recommend using a pseudonym if you go on Facebook at all.