The Salt Lake City Weekly has dropped the online column of Dan Savage because he did what any self respecting lesbian, gay, bi, or trans person did. He called for a boycott of the Hate State.

Do these morons think that firing a queer columnist will make us want to rush right out and buy tickets to fly to their racist, sexist, heterosexist, and anti-atheist state? The firing of Dan Savage just gives us queers another reason to boycott them.

There are two lessons in all of this.

1) The problems with Utah are not limited to the Mormons.

2) Salt Lake City definitely is part of the problem.

I am so sick of people from Utah whining about the boycott. Don't complain to me or any other queer about it. Complain to the Mormons and other Utah bigots like the ones that run the Salt Lake City Weekly. What have the whiners done to destroy the Mormon Church, which is Utah's version of the Ku Klux Klan?

(sound of crickets chirping)

 

I would like to thank Mauigirl's Meanderings for the Superior Scribbler Award.

I've admired Mauigirl's compassion and commitment to liberal issues, so I'm grateful to get the award from her.

Here are the rules of the award, which I'm breaking by giving it to six blogs instead of five. Bwahahahahaha! All of the blogs deserve it. So there.

*Each Superior Scribbler must in turn pass The Award on to 5 most-deserving Bloggy Friends.

*Each Superior Scribbler must link to the author & the name of the blog from whom he/she has received The Award.

* Each Superior Scribbler must display The Award on his/her blog, and link to This Post, which explains The Award.

* Each Blogger who wins The Superior Scribbler Award must visit this post (above) and add his/her name to the Mr. Linky List. That way, we'll be able to keep up-to-date on everyone who receives This Prestigious Honor!

*Each Superior Scribbler must post these rules on his/her blog.

Letters from the Sanitarium
In addition to offering wise political analysis, this blog gives personal and political perspectives on mental illness. If you have a stereotype of the mentally ill as somehow intellectually impaired, this blog will shake that belief to its very core.

The Lesbian Said What??
Insightful analysis from this blog alone would make it worthy of an award. This blog also succeeds at something most blogs fail at pretty badly: using historical quotes. These tend to be ones you haven't read before and are more likely to teach you something than the ones on most blogs that feature quotations. The analysis is by no means limited to quotations. It includes a lot of contemporary thought and issues too.

Gold Star Mom Speaks Out
The corporate media treat military families largely as props to feed the war propaganda machine. This blog provides a more realistic view from one of the many military family members who oppose the war in Iraq.

My Two Cents
This blog seamlessly mixes queer politics with queer fun. Some people are clever. Some are smart. This blogger is both.

Queers United
This is probably the best source for queer activism, history, and terminology at the moment. It really is an intellectual treasure trove.

Unbrainwashed
Tired of all the crap you are fed by the corporate media and the politicians? Enjoy snark and reasoning that undermines the garbage. Acknowledging brainwashing in this society itself is largely taboo, which makes the blog's title especially gratifying.

As I did with the Brillante Award, I give this award out with the intent of building community among liberal and progressive blogs and showing solidarity. The quality of the blogs given the award is acknowledged too. I encourage you to visit these blogs and the recipients to pass the award onto equally deserving blogs.

 

It is important for the community to remember our trans sisters and brothers and to amplify their voices with our own. The Day or Remembrance is important to acknowledge, given the violence trans people face merely for being themselves.

About the Day of Remembrance - Transgender.org (Hat tip to Ten Percent)

The Transgender Day of Remembrance was set aside to memorialize those who were killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice. The event is held in November to honor Rita Hester, whose murder on November 28th, 1998 kicked off the “Remembering Our Dead” web project and a San Francisco candlelight vigil in 1999. Rita Hester’s murder — like most anti-transgender murder cases — has yet to be solved.

Although not every person represented during the Day of Remembrance self-identified as transgender — that is, as a transsexual, crossdresser, or otherwise gender-variant — each was a victim of violence based on bias against transgender people.
Read More

Transgender day of remembrance - Stroppyblog

I hope to get a guest post up on the issues at some point, as sadly the issue of discrimination and violence towards trans people is not one always one picked up by lesbian and gay people , let alone the left, and yet they were at the forefront of the Stonewall riots. But more of that at a later date.
Read More

Vigil honors Transgender Day of Remembrance - Penn State Daily Collegian 11/22/08

Students with lit candles participated in a vigil Thursday night in honor of the Transgender Day of Remembrance.

The event, hosted by SpeakOut on the HUB lawn, began with more than 10 students lighting candles and reading from placards bearing the images and stories of transgender people or their allies who were killed as a result of their sexual identities.
Read More

A day for remembering what we cannot forget - Some Notes on Living

I’m told that today is the National Day of Remembrance. Catchy, is it not? A day to remember our dead. Those who have been killed for no other reason than who they are. The list grows every year.
Just a few from this year:

Duanna Johnson

Angie Zapata

Lawrence King

Latiesha Green

Sanesha Stewart

Aimee Wilkcoxson

I have seen an estimation that there have been 25 trans people murdered this year worldwide, and to me this figure seems to be insanely low.
Read More

Transgender Day of Remembrance - Africa - TransGriot

Note: On November 20 transgender people all over the world remembered the 30 people we lost (and are still losing) due to anti-transgender violence. There were probably far more killed this year that we'll probably never find out their names or the circumstances concerning how they died.

Sokari Ekine and South Africa's Gender DynamiX reminded us that our transgender brothers and sisters on the African continent are still struggling mightily against transphobia.
Read More

Transgender Day of Remembrance Vigils Held Across the Globe - Queerty

Today is Transgender Day of Remembrance, which honors and commemorates the deaths of transgendered individuals who were murdered because of intolerance. The event comes a week after Duanna Johnson, a Memphis transgendered woman, was killed. Begun in 1999 to remember the life of Rita Hester, the event has spread across the globe, with memorial services and remembrances scheduled across the globe. Tracee McDaniel, who is organizing the Atlanta vigil, said of the day:

"“It’s always emotional for me, but it’s always good to see we have support. We just need to keep awareness out there that there is discrimination against transgender people and until we get some kind of legal protections, employment protections, we will continue to raise awareness.”
Read More

 

I. The Mormon Curtain
This is a well designed site by and for former Mormons. Here's a description of the site from its FAQ.

The primary purpose of the Mormon Curtain is to blog the Ex-Mormon world. This includes "recovery" boards, message boards, sites and more - and provide the very best posts and articles therein. This is to aid Ex-Mormons who are on the road to recovery, Mormons who are looking for more information on their own religion, and Non-Mormons who may be studying the Mormon Church on purpose of possible baptism. The secondary purpose of the Mormon Curtain is to expose to the world that Mormonism is a cult. It is hoped that the information and links contained here will help non-Mormons avoid the Cult of Mormonism. It is also hoped that current members of the LDS Church will find the answers that Mormon leaders have forbidden them from seeing. In addition, those recovering from Mormonism (known as Ex-Mormons) will find links and information necessary to aid in recovery.

II. Recovery from Mormonism
This site has a lot of information about Mormonism from the people who know best, former Mormons.

They also have a useful list of businesses owned by the Mormon Church.

III. Debunking Mormonism
American Atheists debunks a variety of religions. In this case, they are educating people about Mormonism.

 

Image: Andréia

I'm always a bit behind on my blogging, but these news stories are ones you probably haven't read about even now. Hat tip to Ten Percent for publicizing Project Censored Top 25 censored news stories of the last year.

21: NATO Considers “First Strike” Nuclear Option

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) officials are considering a first strike nuclear option to be used anywhere in the world a threat may arise. Former armed force chiefs from the US, Britain, Germany, France, and the Netherlands authored a 150-page blueprint calling for urgent reform of NATO, and a new pact drawing the US, NATO, and the European Union (EU) together in a “grand strategy” to tackle the challenges of an “increasingly brutal world.” The authors of the plan insist that “the first use of nuclear weapons must remain in the quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction.” The manifesto was presented to the Pentagon in Washington and to NATO’s secretary general in mid-January 2008. The proposals are likely to be discussed at a NATO summit in Bucharest in April 2008.

    Read More

22: CARE Rejects US Food Aid

In August 2007, one of the biggest and best-known American charity organizations, CARE, announced that it was turning down $45 million a year in food aid from the United States government. CARE claims that the way US aid is structured causes rather than reduces hunger in the countries where it is received. The US budgets $2 billion a year for food aid, which buys US crops to feed populations facing starvation amidst crisis or enduring chronic hunger.

    Read More

23: FDA Complicit in Pushing Pharmaceutical Drugs

While the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) turns a blind eye, drug companies are making false, unsubstantiated, and misleading claims in their advertising, often withholding mandated disclosure of dangerous side effects. Though companies are required to submit their advertisements to the FDA, the agency does not review them before they are released to the public. A Government Accountability Office report released November 2006 found that the FDA reviews only a small portion of the advertisements it receives, and does not review them using consistent criteria.

    Read More

24: Japan Questions 9/11 and the Global War on Terror

Testimony in the Japanese parliament, broadcast live on Japanese television in January 2008, challenged the premise and validity of the Global War on Terror. Parliament member Yukihisa Fujita insisted that an investigation be conducted into the war’s origin: the events of 9/11.

In a parliament Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee session held to debate the ethics of renewing Japan’s “anti-terror law,” which commits Japan to providing logistical support for coalition forces operating in Afghanistan, Fujita opened the session by stating, “I would like to talk about the origin of this war on terrorism, which was the attacks of 9/11, . . . When discussing these anti-terror laws we should ask ourselves, what was 9/11? And what is terrorism?”

    Read More

25: Bush’s Real Problem with Eliot Spitzer

The exposure of New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer’s tryst with a luxury call girl had little to do with the Bush administration’s high moral standards for public servants. Author F. William Engdahl advises that, “in evaluating spectacular scandals around prominent public figures, it is important to ask what and who might want to eliminate that person.” Timing suggests that Spitzer was likely a target of a White House and Wall Street operation to silence one of its most dangerous and vocal critics of their handling of the current financial market crisis.

    Read More

So much is censored by the corporate media. Lists like these show the importance of the independent media.

 

The news reports that Obama is leaning towards staying with a bloodthirsty war monger like Robert Gates for the Department of Defense are absolutely sickening. I was already beginning to wonder if Obama is serious about any real change in this country after he made Rahm Emanuel his Chief of Staff and is pushing a lot of other Clinton Administration retreads.

If Obama really does pick war hawks like Gates and Hillary Clinton in addition to the fanatically pro war Emanuel, I'm not too optimistic about even the partial withdrawal Obama promised during his campaign. I'm not the only one who is worried and frustrated. From the Los Angeles Times 11/20/08:

"Obama ran his campaign around the idea the war was not legitimate, but it sends a very different message when you bring in people who supported the war from the beginning," said Kelly Dougherty, executive director of the 54-chapter Iraq Veterans Against the War.

It's pretty bad, according to what is said in the article.

The activists -- key members of the coalition that propelled Obama to the White House -- fear he is drifting from the antiwar moorings of his once-longshot presidential candidacy. Obama has eased the rigid timetable he had set for withdrawing troops from Iraq, and he appears to be leaning toward the center in his candidates to fill key national security posts.

The president-elect has told some Democrats that he expects to take heat from parts of his political base but will not be deterred by it.

Does he really think he will get much support from Democrats in 2012 if 100% of our troops aren't home from Iraq? A president only gets one election to run on hope. The reelection campaign focuses on record and results.

Peace Action West has an Action Alert to try to stop the renomination of Robert Gates. This is terribly important.

Please Take Action Now!

If there are any US troops in Iraq in 2012, Obama's first term will have been a miserable failure, no matter what else he might do.

 

Economic injustice in this society can be brutal, but just how brutal often stays under the radar of the corporate media. Did you know, for instance, that the uninsured are much less likely to get organ transplants than the insured? Check out this 11/17/08 press release from Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP).

The Uninsured Often Donate Organs, but Rarely Receive Them

CHICAGO - November 17 - People who lack health insurance are about 20 times more likely to donate their liver or a kidney for a lifesaving transplant than to receive one, a new study shows.

A team of Harvard University researchers, writing in the current issue of International Journal of Health Services, reports that a representative sampling of U.S. patients in 2003 shows that at least 16.9 percent of organ donors had no health insurance at the time of their hospitalization. In contrast, only 0.8 percent of the transplant recipients were similarly uninsured; in other words, almost all recipients had some kind of health coverage at the time of their procedure.

Among the transplant recipients, equal proportions (44.2 percent) were covered by private insurance or by Medicare, a public program that serves seniors and some of the disabled (including virtually all patients needing kidney transplants). Medicaid, a government program for the poor, covered another 9 percent. About 2 percent were covered under other programs.

Among organ donors, however, insurance coverage was much less extensive. Private insurance was the most common source of payment for their medical bills (44.8 percent), followed by Medicare (14.6 percent) and Medicaid (2.6 percent). One-fifth of organ donors' insurance status was listed as "other," a designation that may have indicated that their bills were paid by organ procurement organizations. Some of these may have been uninsured for other medical care. Yet even assuming that all of these had coverage, the authors found that 16.9 percent of the organ donors were uninsured. By comparison, only 4.6 percent of other inpatients were uninsured.

The authors analyzed data from the 2003 National Inpatient Sample, a representative sample of hospital stays compiled by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Using AHRQ guidelines, the research team extrapolated their results from the coded hospital records of 1,447 solid organ donors (including donors of kidneys, pancreases, livers, hearts, lungs and corneas) and 4,962 recipients.

The finding that most transplant recipients were insured at the time of their transplant had previously been known. However, "our finding that uninsured patients frequently serve as organ donors is both new and poignant," the authors write. "The U.S. health care system denies adequate care to many of the uninsured during life. Yet, in death, the uninsured often give strangers the ultimate gift."

Strikingly, lack of insurance was a stronger predictor of organ donation than was any hospital characteristic or demographic factor other than age (older people's organs are more often diseased and unsuitable for transplantation).

The authors emphasize that the asymmetry of who donates organs and who receives them does not reflect "the values or intentions" of the medical transplant community, whose members avow a "commitment to equal access for all patients."

They also point out that, because organ transplantation uses a "scarce resource that can only come from fellow human beings," special protocols, including guidelines adopted by Congress, have been developed to improve equity in the transplantation of organs.

The lead author of the study, Dr. Andrew Herring, commented: "If you lack the financial resources to afford a transplant either through insurance or otherwise, few centers will consider you as a candidate. The 1984 National Organ Transplant Act stipulates that transplants should be equally available to all Americans, regardless of their ability to pay. Unfortunately, the health care system is presently not funded adequately to make this a reality." Herring is currently an emergency medicine resident at Highland Hospital in Oakland, California. He performed the study while he was a medical student at Harvard.

Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a co-author and associate professor of medicine at Harvard, said, "The fact that many organ donors were uninsured dramatically highlights the lack of fairness in the U.S. health care system as a whole. The only way to surmount this problem is to adopt a single-payer national health insurance program, which would guarantee comprehensive and affordable care to everyone without exception."

The lack of health coverage is responsible for at least 18,000 deaths annually, according to the Institute of Medicine. In August, the Census Bureau reported that 45.6 million Americans lacked health insurance in 2007.

"Insurance status of U.S. organ donors and transplant recipients: The uninsured give, but rarely receive," Andrew A. Herring, M.D.; Steffie Woolhandler, M.D.; and David U. Himmelstein, M.D. International Journal of Health Services (New York), Vol. 38, No. 4.

A copy of the study is available at http://www.pnhp.org/organ_donors

###

Physicians for a National Health Program, a membership organization of over 15,000 physicians, supports a single-payer national health insurance program. To contact a physician-spokesperson in your state, call (312) 782-6006 or visit www.pnhp.org/stateactions.

Obviously, this information is an example of why we need Single Payer Healthcare in this country. However, there is a broader point that shouldn't be lost. Since 1980, most Democrats and virtually all Republicans have worked to make this society more unjust economically, often with deadly consequences for people who don't make that much money.

We cannot honestly call our country "civilized" as long as these kind of things continue to happen.

 

The racist, sexist, heterosexist, and anti atheist decision of the Sundance Festival to stay in the Hate State of Utah is truly disturbing. The people that run the festival are perfectly aware of the fact that there is no way to hold a major event in Utah without financing the Mormon Church's multitude of crusades to promote discrimination and violence against people they hate.

For years, the Sundance Festival and Channel have economically exploited lgbt film lovers. Yet, they see no reason to pay the queer community back by getting out of Utah. That one sided and abusive relationship must come to an end. Queers need to boycott the Sundance Festival and block the Sundance Channel until the festival is taken out of the Mormon theocracy of Utah.

The fightback should not be limited to Sundance. The Marriott Hotel chain is trying to distance itself from the bigotry of its upper management and its major Mormon shareholders. Yet, these people give shitloads of money to a white supremacist, misogynist, homophobic, and anti atheist hate group: the Mormon Church.

There is no way to stay in a Marriott Hotel without financing bigotry and oppression against a variety of minority groups. The same is equally true about traveling to Utah. Those facts may make people uncomfortable, but facts don't stop being facts because some people don't want to face them.

Many who oppose these boycotts are too emotionally attached to their stereotype of gay and bisexual men as weak and helpless, completely unwilling to defend ourselves from our oppressors. The opponents of the boycott will just have to get over it.

 

In a previous posting, I discussed how Summers' efforts for deregulation and corporate controlled trade deals make him too dangerous and incompetent to be Treasury Secretary. Summers' misogyny and racism are important concerns as well.

Some people are saying that Summers is no longer a favorite to be chosen as Treasury Secretary. I don't think we can take chances. That useless whack job must be stopped. If he gets the job, I'm almost certain there will be another stock market crash.

Here are some good blog postings against Summers. Let's hope Obama is serious about real change and doesn't pick one of the worst Clinton administration retreads imaginable.

Larry Summers So Brilliant He Forecast the Financial Crisis After It Started!

Tell me he won't do this!

Obama's Appointments: Change or More of the Same?

Larry Summers Should Not Be Treasury Secretary (excellent points about what Summers did to Russia and the Russian people are included)

 

In a functioning democracy, the process of elections is even more important than the outcome.

After Obama won, I remember hearing people question how could Obama have won only by 6 or 7% over "Keating Five" McCain in this economic client and after an unpopular and seemingly endless war in Iraq. Racism explains part of it, but massive GOP election fraud also played a role in keeping the election as close as it was.

It may also be that election fraud was the causal agent in the "victory" of Proposition 8 in California. From Marc Crispin Miller 11/14/08:

As we think about the possibility that Prop 8 was not really passed by California’s voters, let’s note something that the press, and others, won’t discuss: i.e., that the entire apparatus of computerized voting in this country–the e-voting machines and op-scans and central tabulators, etc.–is largely owned by members of the
Christianist far right.

Diebold and ES&S were both begun by Bob and Todd Urosevich, two ardent Oklahoma theocrats, while Triad, which makes the central vote tabulators used in Ohio in 2004, is owned by the Rapp family. SmartTech, the company that helped Bush/Cheney steal that state, is owned by evangelical Jeff Averbeck; and his associate Mike Connell, owner of GovTech Solutions, which also helped to steal Ohio, among other races, was motivated to such work by his desire “to save the babies,” according to Stephen Spoonamore.

Why are there so many Christianists among the owners of those companies? Because the rigging of elections is the only way that that fringe movement ever could impose its theocratic program on the rest of us. As Paul Weyrich used to say out loud, the Christianists despise democracy. After all, that system, if allowed to stand, would put the sinful secular majority in charge–and that can’t be allowed.

And so, whether or not it turns out that Prop 8 was rigged to pass, we need to take a good hard look at those machines, and at the companies that own them–and keep them out of our elections.

Meanwhile, let’s all stop assuming that last week’s outcome was legitimate, and look closely at the evidence around Prop 8.

This analysis is disturbing enough. Yet, there is another way that elections can be stolen with these machines: outside hacking.

Ars technica has an article on how easily these electronic voting machines can be hacked by someone with tech skills. There are plenty of Christian extremists who would be more than happy to do something like this. They would be stupid enough to think that this kind of dishonest behavior would get them into heaven.

Voting rights issues have become critically important to anyone challenging the agenda of the Christian Taliban.

 

Thanks to Some Notes on Living for reminding me that I need to blog on this issue.

Here's some info from the AFL-CIO about the Employee Free Choice Act.

WHAT IS THE EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE ACT?

The Employee Free Choice Act (H.R. 800, S. 1041), supported by a bipartisan coalition in Congress, would enable working people to bargain for better wages, benefits and working conditions by restoring workers’ freedom to choose for themselves whether to join a union. It would:

* Establish stronger penalties for violation of employee rights when workers seek to form a union and during first-contract negotiations.

* Provide mediation and arbitration for first-contract disputes (PDF).

* Allow employees to form unions by signing cards authorizing union representation.

The area that the corporate media are attacking the most is the last, usually refered to by both sides of the issue as "card check." Traditionally, employees get to vote on whether or not they want to be unionized by what is supposed to be secret ballot. However, employers use all sorts of intimidation tactics that cause problems for pro-union employees in the confrontational atmosphere of union authorization votes. The employers often fire union organizers and sometimes fire employees merely for saying they will vote for the union. Under current labor law, the worst the employers will have to face is giving the employees back pay and giving them their jobs back. Often, employees have to spend enormous amounts of time (and money if they don't get help from the union) to win even this back.

Card check allows a majority of employees to choose to be union without giving employers the chance to harass them directly or through union busting consultants. Labor laws in this country are highly anti union, and the standard of living for middle class Americans has suffered terribly for it. Even non union people get screwed over by this, since unionization tends to increase pay and benefits while improving working conditions throughout industries and localities.

Now that you have read the preceding two paragraphs, you can consider yourself inoculated from corporate media bs that will make card check sound downright sinister.

Please Sign the Petition Supporting the Employee Free Choice Act!