From an email I received from Progressive Democrats of America:

Immediate calls to Senator Charles Schumer (D) N.Y. requesting that he invite a single payer advocate to participate in the upcoming May 5 and May 14 Senate Finance Committee roundtable discussions on healthcare reform scheduled to take place in Washington, D.C.

Please call Senator Schumer right away at his D.C. office: 202-224-6542 and let him know that a representative from Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) or other single payer advocacy organization should be included if the Finance Committee is to make a full and honest assessment of the financing of reforming our health care system.

To reach National PNHP, Senator Schumer's office can call: 312-782-6006.

When single payer representatives were left out of the White House Summit on Health Care Reform, calls made to the White House prompted them to extend invitations to both Dr. Oliver Fein (President, National PNHP) and Congressman John Conyers.

Let's do it again!

There is broad national support among people and physicians in the U.S. for a single payer system and while the powers that be in Congress have declared single payer off the table - let's make sure they know we will not quietly and passively accept that decision.

Single payer advocates do not have enormous sums of money to influence elected representatives as do the special interests - our most valuable asset is our vote, our voice and the fact that we tell the truth about the only effective fair method of delivering medical care in our country.

So, please join thousands of people across the country and make the call to your New York State Senator: 202-224-6542

Schumer's support of Gillibrand, the Iraq War, torture, and de facto Republicans over real Democrats in the primaries gives people plenty of reason to be alienated by him. Let's hope Schumer acts like a Democrat and supports single payer healthcare.

Learn more about single payer healthcare.

 

Just when you thought Wordpress.com was safe, I have put up a blog there.

Onward Christian Dullards

Catch this week's premiere episode: Adventures in Grocery Shopping. Welcome to Thelma Dullard's world.

 

Photo: fredthompson (Toomey is on the right.)

"Those Republican Apostates" is the name of a tantrum on Townhall.com by former Club for Growth (of income inequality) President Pat Toomey where he slams Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe, and Susan Collins.

This weird rhetoric wasn't just in the headline. Here's a quote from the opinion piece. (bolding mine)

In the end, the support from the three “moderates” was crucial to passing the stimulus bill. Because of Sen. Ted Kennedy’s absence, the GOP needed only one more Senate vote to mount a sustainable filibuster. Had even one of the apostates stood strong, Republicans would have been able to fashion a genuine compromise bill.

Sound familiar? It should. San Francisco Chronicle 7/2/06 (bolding mine):

"There will be no bargaining with the crusaders and the apostates" in Iraq, bin Laden said in a clear reference to efforts by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to draw insurgent groups into negotiations and amnesty agreements with his government. "There will be no half-solutions." Al-Maliki and his appointed predecessors since the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq would be punished as soon as American military forces are defeated, he said.

Pat Toomey always was a fanatic, but his rhetoric has started to resemble that of Osama bin Laden. That Toomey is the favorite to win the Republican nomination in Pennsylvania shows just how crazy that party has become.

At a time when Republicans are the most unpopular they have been at least since Watergate, perhaps the Great Depression, you would think that GOP party leaders would be trying to bring more people into the party. Not de facto GOP party chief Rush Limbaugh (CNN Politicker Blog 4/28/09):

Conservative host Rush Limbaugh said Tuesday he isn't sorry to see Arlen Specter leave the GOP — and that many Republicans wish the Pennsylvania senator would take a few others with him when he goes.

"A lot of people say, 'Well, Specter, take [Sen. John] McCain with you. And his daughter [Meghan]. Take McCain and his daughter with you if you're gonna…" he told listeners, dissolving in laughter.

"…..It's ultimately good. You're weeding out people who aren't really Republicans," he said.

Of course, "Keating Five" McCain is one of the most corrupt people in the Senate, and his overall record is nutty rightist. He should fit in quite well in Gopperland, yet even he isn't crazy enough to satisfy the political bloodlust during this purge.

This is another reason to wonder if the Republican Party is going the way of the Whigs or perhaps the Mastodons.

 

Specter didn't jump. He was pushed.

Some examples of the people that made being a Gopper execrable for Specter:

FireAndreaMitchell.com

Its not like it even matters benedict Arlen Specter after voting for the porkulus bill, and his previous libtard voting record, made him a RINO, much like Olympia Snowe, John McCain, etc. At least now its official. Spectar will switch his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat and announced today that he will run in 2010 as a Democrat, according to a statement he released this morning. Specter’s decision would give Democrats a 60 seat filibuster proof majority in the Senate assuming Democrat Al Franken is eventually sworn in as the next senator from Minnesota. (Former senator Norm Coleman is appealing Franken’s victory in the state Supreme Court.)

The Conservative Gentleman (What an ironic blog title, BTW.)

This is why we have no respect for the elderly in this country. It is why we toss them into institutions like so much trash into a container. Men like Specter have no self-respect, thus no dignity. So desperate is he to keep his seat in the Senate he has sold his soul to the opposition, become like them, men and women without a shred of decency.

We would have respected you more, you piece of filth, if you’d said, “I relinquish all party affiliation, and will vote my conscience until the end of my term at which time I will not seek reelection.” But you could not say such a thing, you lack the courage.

Quick Daily Hits:

Specter’s departure to the Democrat party is intended to be a slap in the face, maybe a nail in the coffin, of the Republican Party. Not going to work, Arlen, because we all know who you are anyways. It’s Senators like you who have weakened the Republican Party. It’s “Republicans” like you who lose the GOP votes in national elections. We need leaders with backbone who can stand for conservative principles.

To one of the all-time hypocrites who ever made politics his career, I say, See ya, Arlen, don’t let the door hit your butt on the way out. Thanks for finally owning up to who you’ve always been anyways. If you’re going to be a pain in Republican Party’s neck anyways, it’s about time you just set up shop on the other side of the aisle.

One rightist nutjob put Specter's home address on his blog. (No, I'm not going to link to it.)

Remember when Michael Steele tried to put a reasonable facade in front of the GOP. That's over:

WASHINGTON - Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele released the following statement today:

"Some in the Republican Party are happy about this. I am not.

Let's be honest-Senator Specter didn't leave the GOP based on principles of any kind. He left to further his personal political interests because he knew that he was going to lose a Republican primary due to his left-wing voting record.

Republicans look forward to beating Sen. Specter in 2010, assuming the Democrats don't do it first."

The claim that Specter has a "left-wing voting record" is absolutely giggle worthy.

The rightists don't realize that they are not a majority in this country. They never were. Even worse for them, the failures of the Bush regime's rightist policies have further discredited them. The AWOL Rapture has taken much of the starch out of the Christian Taliban.

Instead of trying to work with moderates, the Palin/Limbaugh Goppers are engaging in a purge. The whole thing has been started by The Club for Growth (of Income Inequality) which is mostly made up of super rich Republicans in the very same NYC that far right talkers demonize.

Could it be that the GOP is headed towards being a third party?

 

Mayor Bloomberg's response so far to the swine flu outbreak has been disturbingly lethargic. He's trying to downplay it instead of facing it directly, which would minimize the problem.

His lack of action on closing the New York City public schools is downright reprehensible. Closing school for a couple of weeks would hardly be the end of the world. The kids could make up the time in the summer.

Like it or not, schools generally are the main venues for the spread of colds and flu. Children are notorious for spreading diseases. Closing the schools would be a reasonable precaution that would protect the public health with little or no adverse consequences.

What we have is a failure to govern by a Mayor who is completely out of touch with what is going on in our city.

The Catholic Church also deserves plenty of criticism for not closing its schools for a couple of weeks. It's bad enough that kids there have to worry about child molesting priests. Now, they needlessly face a deadly disease.

We don't need to panic, but our officials need to take reasonable, sensible steps to slow down this epidemic.

 

I just received another web award, this time the one with the best graphic I've seen thus far, the Honest Scrap Award. I got the award from John Abuzz, a blog that has an amazing ability to mellowly discuss things going on that make so many of us liberals apoplectic. I also admire the guy for passing it along, since it promotes community and solidarity among liberal bloggers.

Here's the explanation of the award.

“This award is bestowed upon a fellow blogger whose blog content or design is, in the giver’s opinion, brilliant.”

"Scrap means left over, fragments, discarded material. Many times truth and honesty are discarded material, considered fragments and left over. People like us need to tell it like it is, and let the scraps fall where they will.

This gives me a chance to acknowledge more great blogs and do my little bit to link liberal and progressive bloggers. Solidarity is a concept that Americans hear little about. It's time to practice it. That's what I want to brag about.

These are in no particular order, and I have limited myself to choosing seven blogs in case I get another award in the future. (I'll put all the rules and regulations at the end.)

Genocide for Jesus
This blog does an excellent job of monitoring and debunking the activities of heterosexist religious extremists. It's a dirty job, and I'm glad I have this blog doing it for me. The blog's name rocks too.

Mock, Paper, Scissors
Skewering the annoying and hypocritical is entertaining. It can be quite informative if it is done as effectively as they Scissorheads do. All the crap that is going on makes having a good laugh quite therapeutic.

Cindy Sheehan
Ms. Sheehan's questioning of the bullshit we are constantly fed did not end with the war on Iraq. She is asking just the kind of questions all of us should be considering about the roles of the banksters, the broksters, and the politicians in making our society dysfunctional.

ENDABlog
This blog is an excellent resource to keep informed on transgender issues. It also does an excellent job expressing the perfectly reasonable frustration and disappointment so many in the transgender community experience at the way conservative lgbt organizations like the HRC have thrown them under the bus. It can be painful reading at times, but non-trans queers like myself have an ethical obligation to read and pay attention anyway.

Preserve, Protect, and Defend
If you want to know why people are liberal, not just that they are liberal, this blog is a good place to start. When you read the postings there, you get at the underlying reasons for the blogger's liberal views, even when the subject is the latest thing bombarding us from the corporate media's news cycle.

Intolerant Faith
This blog focuses on what is a touchy issue for many: the cruel and senseless religious faith can motivate people to do. Breaking a media taboo is one of the most important thing a blogger can do. This blog does it quite well.

Green Is the New Red
If you think you are aware of the full extent of human rights abuses started under the "war on terror," think again unless you know that environmental and animal rights activists are being included in this. Whether you agree or disagree with the views and actions of the people being targeted, conflating vandalism (or plain old dissent) with terrorism endangers anyone whose political views are outside what corporate interests consider acceptable. It also cruelly mocks the victims and families of victims of actual terrorism.

Rules and Regulations

These are the rules and the instructions for the 'chosen ones:

1.You must brag about the award

2.You must include the name of the blogger who bestowed the award on you and link back to the blogger

3.You must choose a minimum of seven (7) blogs that you find brilliant in content or design. Or you may improvise by including bloggers who have no idea who you are because you don’t have seven friends (hey, I haven't been actively blogging that long myself)!

4.Show their names and links and leave a comment informing them that they were prized with Honest Weblog. Or think of it this way--show the seven random victims' names and links and leave a harassing comment informing them that they were , prized with Honest Weblog Award. Well, there's no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon.

5.List at least ten (10) honest things about yourself. Then pass it on with the instructions!

Ten Things About Me

(I stuck this at the end because I figured this is the part people would find least interesting on a political blog.)

1) I adore chocolate.

2) My favorite artists (not in order): Childe Hassam, Renoir, Rachel Whiteread, René Magritte, Max Ernst, Jaspar Johns and his lover Robert Rauschenberg (I loved their work before I found out about their personal lives.), Doris Salcedo

3) I prefer men who don't shave their bodies.

4) I hate okra.

5) I wish telepathy existed but am sensible enough to acknowledge that it does not.

6) I hate websites with small font sizes even though I can read the text.

7) I hope I never have to spend time in Texas again.

8) Twitter appears to me to be the most effective boring content generator in the history of the Internet.

9) I love orchids.

10) I wish I was not allergic to dogs.

 

Our nation is involved in one of the deadliest wars on Earth right now, the war on Iraq. Over 1.3 million Iraqis have been killed in this war, a number that dwarfs the disturbing US death and casualty numbers. The hundreds of billions we have spent destructively in another country are a major contributing factor to our banking crisis and our deep recession.

Yet, our corporate media only mention it on an occasional basis. The economic consequences are censored from coverage entirely. We have so much media consolidation and corporate power over news content, our nation is sleepwalking through one of the biggest crimes ever committed in our name.

However, it isn't just the corporate media that are at fault. The peace movement has focused little on Iraq ever since Obama has been in the White House. Living under the delusion that the Obama Administration and the Democratic controlled Congress are friendly on peace issues, peace groups have put way too much time into pushing ever conceivable issue that interests them, ignoring the political reality that focusing on one or two issues is necessary for any progress in a hostile governmental environment.

It's as if many peace groups have decided to let President Obama put a fig leaf over the continued occupation and slaughter of the Iraqi people. They are more interest to access to politicians and getting invited to meetings than they are in stopping the Iraq War. Every day, every leader of every peace organization should be asking herself or himself the following question.

“What else can I do to stop the Iraq war?”


Blood and Oil 2 by ~shattercat on deviantART

 

Columbia's government carries the trappings of democracy, and the US corporate media presents that regime as a freely elected government. Never mind that political opponents are routinely detained, harassed, and even killed by the rightist government and its death squads.

Because the Uribe regime in that country panders to US corporate interests (explaining the Bush regime's obsessive effort to try to pass a corporate controlled trade deal with them), our delightful corporate media discusses at length how the FARC rebels are involved in the drug trade, while leaving out the fact that the government there is at least as much involved.

Gee, can you imagine that?

Anyway, the Uribe dictatorship has recently been investigated by some parliamentarians from Britain's Labor Party (acting against the wishes of Gordon Brown and his cabinet ministers) and other human rights advocates. Here is their 4/11/09 press statement, sans signatories. (Hat Tip Ten Percent)

PRESS STATEMENT: JUSTICE FOR COLOMBIA DELEGATION

We are a delegation of British Parliamentarians and British, American and Canadian trade unionists, and have spent seven days here in Colombia gathering information on human and labour rights abuses. We have met a wide range of individuals and groups across Colombian society, covering civil, political, legal and military interests, including trade unions, students and teachers, indigenous peoples, peasant farmers, trade union lawyers, human rights defenders, and former FARC hostages. We have travelled to Arauca province to hear the testimonials of communities and individuals caught up in the conflict in that part of the country. We visited Buon Pastor prison in Bogota and spoke to the women political prisoners incarcerated there; we also met with Martin Sandoval, imprisoned unjustly in Arauca. We had the opportunity in speaking also with senior members of Alvaro Uribe's government and the President himself. We are grateful to all those individuals and groups who have generously given us their time.

We are shocked at what we have heard, and have no doubts on the evidence given that the Colombian government of Alvaro Uribe, and the security forces, are complicit in human rights crimes. We are convinced also that the murderous activities of the paramilitary forces are condoned and actively supported by the government and army. These crimes are aggravated by the impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators and the failure of the legal system to prosecute the criminals and those who issue the orders.

Instead of imprisoning the real criminals, the Government has locked up trade unionists, members of the political opposition and human rights defenders like Martin Sandoval. We call for his immediate release and that of other political prisoners and trade unionists.

On our return to the United Kingdom and North America we will be calling for:

# an immediate end to all military aid and support to the Colombian Government;

# no Free Trade Agreements until human and labour rights are respected in an internationally verifiable way;

# the public exposure of multinational companies, such as for their complicity in human and labour rights violations in Colombia;

# an immediate end to the criminalisation of legitimate and democratic opposition, including Senator Piedad Cordoba, Senator Gloria Ramirez, Congressman Wilson Borja and Dr. Carlos Lozano and others;

# support for dialogue, a peace process and a humanitarian exchange;

# An end to extrajudicial executions and 'false positives' carried out by the Colombian army.

A full account of our findings and recommendations will be published in the near future.

When the rightist pundits demonize Hugo Chavez with false allegations, they seem to get their inspiration from the actual actions of the Colombian dictatorship.

 

National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair's efforts in a recent memo to rationalize the crimes against humanity committed by the CIA are dangerous and unAmerican. While he did try to justify ending some torture, the Obama Administration policy, other aspects of the memo have the primary effect of obstructing justice.

For instance, Blair's memo makes the dangerous and factually inaccurate claims about the efficacy of torture. CNN 4/22/09:

"High-value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qaeda organization that was attacking this country," retired Adm. Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, said in the two-page memo dated April 16 and sent to colleagues.

Credible sources on interrogations say that torture doesn't provide accurate information. How are we going to restore the American peoples' confidence in the intelligence community when we are told such preposterous lies to the contrary.

Let's look at what actually happened. The Bush regime and CIA employees following criminal orders repeatedly tortured detainees until the torture victims said whatever the Bush regime wanted. Consider the "intelligence" gathered by the torture.

Phony Intelligence: Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party regime was aligned with Al Qaida.
Fact: The two groups were mortal enemies.

Phony Intelligence: Iraq was had chemical and biological weapons and had a nuclear weapons program.
Fact: Iraq had discarded all of their chemical and biological weapons roughly a decade before and had made no efforts whatsoever to obtain a nuclear weapons capability

Remember the fake "terror alerts" the Bush regime put out at very convenient times during the 2004 presidential campaign. Guess where the "intelligence" came from.

Torture was used by the Bush regime, the CIA, the NSA, crony contractors, and who knows who else to defraud our country into an Iraq war that has cost the lives of over 4000 US troops, an unknown number of mercenaries, and over 1.3 million Iraqis. Torturing wasn't limited to being a crime against humanity itself, it also was part of propaganda efforts to commit one of the worst crimes against humanity: a war of aggression. German generals who had nothing to do with the Holocaust were successfully prosecuted for just such war crimes after World War II.

Until everyone involved in torture is prosecuted, patriotic Americans will have no way to trust or respect the CIA.

Dennis Blair doesn't want anyone prosecuted. America needs a Director of Intelligence we can trust. Blair simply is not that person. He needs to go.

 

Catholic pontiff Joseph Ratzinger's habit of spewing heterosexist nonsense is not only a legitimate subject of condemnation. It also is a legitimate subject of inquiry and analysis.

The Catholic Church has changed its attitudes on the Earth revolving around the sun. It hasn't been so long since they admitted that evolution happened. Yet, they still make barbaric and superstitious claims about homosexuality.

Why?

Part of it is something that is pretty much secret to most heteros. Most Catholic priests are sexually active gay men. One weird rite of passage for so many gay Catholic men is to see a priest that sermonized against homosexuality at a gay bar, bookstore, pride celebration (frockless) or at a bathhouse. Closeted queers are often vocal in their homophobic comments, hoping that those comments will divert any questions about their sexual orientations or gender identities. Expand that to trying to keep most of a global priesthood in the closet, and you can see part of the reason why Ratzinger, regardless of what his sexual orientation actually may be, is so fanatical in his bigoted comments against the queer community.

Another reason has to do with the disturbing minority of priests who are child rapists. Ratzi and so many other Catholic clerics have tried to cover this up for years, though that strategy has backfired. Getting the flock all riled up over homosexuality or abortion is a great way to divert attention.

But, there is more to it than that. Although priests raping girls and boys both are common occurrences, raping boys gets more public attention because of our society's heterosexism and misogyny. Many of the boys used by the rapist priests are gay, which makes them more vulnerable to sexual exploitation. If those boys can be convinced that being gay is wrong, they are more likely to believe that they are at fault or to feel too self conscious to go public. Even delaying the coming out process of young gay victims of priestly rape can protect the perpetrators via the statute of limitations. The repugnant reality is that the heterosexist rantings of the Catholic Church are partly designed to protect the church from the victims of its pedophile priests.

The other reason, of course, is that the Bible is homophobic, and Christianity is a homophobic religion. However, the Catholic clergy routinely reject other things in the Bible according to the dictates of the latest Pope. Their clinging to homophobic bigotry cannot be explained by the generic bigotry of Christianity alone.

Photo: eürodäna