Let's look at the facts.

1) House Republicans were threatening to delay passage of assistance for 911 responders through an unending series of amendments.

2) House Democrats go through a rule which requires a 2/3 vote to pass to get around the obstruction.

3) Republicans vote overwhelmingly against the legislation, blocking it.

The Republicans got exactly what they wanted: no aid to 911 responders. They are making all sorts of bullshit procedural excuses to avoid accountability for what they have done. Who is leading this nonsense? Rep. Peter King, an anti American Republican misrepresenting part of Long Island, is the culprit.

The fact that King is siding with the 911 terrorists against the 911 responders shows his complete lack of patriotism and integrity. He has absolutely no loyalty to New York or to America.

King is unfit to hold public office. He is among the most unpatriotic elements of society, and he always has been.

As frustrated as I am with the Democrats, even they haven't sunk this low.

 

Linda's ad people really screwed up on this one. She'll have to spend millions more undoing the damage done by this commercial. (I also like the messed up dialog, where the wrong character asks about the wrestling stuff.)



Ooooooohhhhhh yeeeeeeeeaaaaaaahhhhhhh!

McMahon's GOP primary opponent, Peter Schiff, is almost as goofy as she is. He is running a controversial ad that repeats the same bit of WWE footage of Ms. McMahon kicking an employee in the balls, while it claims that a rightist like McMahon is a "liberal."



I hope the Democrats run some of the much funnier ads they put up on YouTube on TV in the general election.

 

The right's jihad to close mosques has become more fervent, and the corporate media are happily using Muslims as scapegoats for the pain caused to middle class and poor Americans by wealthy and corporate interests. This is truly disturbing. But, Islam also is disturbing. Every religion is dangerous and evil, especially when its adherents accumulate political, economic, and cultural power. Much of the left in this country refuses to do anything but reflexively defend mosque construction without doing any real analysis. That is hardly surprising because rational analysis and critique of religion is still largely taboo.

The decision of the Anti Defamation League to call for the cancellation of the project to build a mosque and Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero is both fascinating and instructive. It should immediately strike people as odd and ironic that the ADL is trying to suppress the construction of places of worship for minority religious faiths. However, it is as instructive as it is ironic.

The ADL's position as a civil rights organization already had been compromised by its racist and antisemitic bigotry against Palestinians and Arabs in general. For many, this stunt will permanently remove it from the category of civil rights groups. Yet, this needs to be looked at in the broader context.

It certainly is a good thing that Jews are safer and more comfortable in our society. That represents important progress. However, the way that some Jewish people on the right have responded to this is disturbing. Many American Jews have started to see themselves as assimilated whites in a position of dominance over others. This subset of the Jewish community has become Republican, endorsed conservative causes, and has become rather racist against a broad range of minorities in our society, not limited by any stretch of the imagination to Arabs.

The ADL's condemnation of the Ground Zero mosque reflects that mindset. The ADL is starting to see itself as part of the dominant group in society and is doing what religious organizations generally do when they feel power: suppressing faiths with little or no power in society. This phenomenon is hardly limited to Judaism nor is it limited to the USA.

Analysis of the ADL's behavior is useful, but it should serve as a mode of entry into analysis of the anti mosque crusade whose bandwagon the ADL has gleefully jumped on. Anti mosque protesters are largely trying to defeat and destroy (often their words) a minority religious ideology which has gotten a foothold in this country.

Their rhetoric and agenda are highly hypocritical. Islam isn't any more evil than Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, Mormonism, or any other religious faith. If someone wants to oppose the construction of a house of worship for one faith, they are morally obligated to oppose the construction of such places for all faiths.

It's no secret that religion is the main root cause of poverty, war, environmental destruction, racism, sexism, heterosexism, and ignorance in the world. Yet, these protesters want to pretend that their particular religious superstitions are somehow morally superior to other religious superstitions. This shows an incredible level of vanity, hubris, and just plain stupidity on their part.

The anti mosque jihads certainly have their counterpart in majority Muslim countries. In the Maldives, a journalist recently was arrested after being "accused" of being an atheist in a country where Islam is required by law. In Saudi Arabia, Islam not only is mandatory, but failure to show up at mosque can result in a visit from the secret police. In today's Iraq, governed by Islamic religious extremists, Christians are routinely persecuted and sometimes murdered with impunity.

A defender of the anti mosque movement here in the US might claim that this Christian and Jewish jihad is nonviolent. That is simply not true. Anti Muslim hate crimes in this country are quite common and represent the violent wing of the same movement.

Of course, the persecution of various religious groups feeds on itself. Persecution of Christians in Islamic countries creates fear that motivates Christians to try to block Islam in societies where they predominate. It works the other way around too.

Religious persecution has been the norm ever since people of different religious superstitions encountered each other. There is nothing new here, and people never seem to learn. Religion always has been the greatest source of human division, and that is because of the absolutist claims made by religions. If you depend on the "one true way" to get into heaven or the equivalent, people living their lives happily without that "one true way" pose an existential threat to that faith and the sense of false security it brings. That will never change as long as there is religion. It's the nature of the beast.

Defenders of religion would like to claim that it is only fundamentalist religion is responsible for the problems. However, fundamentalist religion is an inevitable consequence of the belief that certain texts are "holy" and inspired by deities. Also, more moderate versions of religious faiths provide political and cultural cover for the more militant versions.

Many people have been questioning the ability of humans to survive nuclear weapons, our warlike behavior, and environmental destruction for decades. Yet, many of them don't see the connection to religion. It's not difficult to discern, but their psychological dependency on religion keeps them from seeing what is directly in front of them.

If you really are serious about peace and progress, you need to let go of religion.

 

Photo: Muffett

Barack Bush's Cat Food Commission is being marketed as a "deficit commission." The sales strategy is to claim that slashing Social Security and Medicare are necessary to reduce deficits and are the only options.

That is absolute nonsense. Here are some of the far superior options for deficit reduction that are off the table for the Cat Food Commission, proving what a lie the whole thing is.

- Repealing corporate controlled trade agreements like NAFTA, CAFTA, and the GATT agreement that created the WTO which reduce tariff revenues (Tariffs traditionally have been major sources of revenue for governments.)

- Repealing the tax cuts for the rich that passed under Reagan, Carter, and Kennedy

- An immediate and full withdrawal from Iraq

- An immediate and full withdrawal from Afghanistan/Pakistan

- An end to covert operations in Iran

- End of all aid to Israel

- End of aid and support for the fascist dictatorship in Colombia

- Eliminating tax deductions which only rich people can take advantage of

- Closing most military bases abroad

- Legalization of Marijuana

- Sentencing crack like other cocaine

- Repealing cuts in corporate taxes that have passed in recent decades

- Taxing capital gains (other than primary home sales) like income actually earned by working

- Cut back on wasteful military spending

- Cut back on wasteful and unconstitutional homeland security spending

- Instituting a luxury tax

- Legalization of gambling

- Legalization of prostitution

Somehow, these options for deficit reduction never get considered by "deficit hawks" in DC and in the corporate media. Their beloved Cat Food Commission is all about robbing the middle class and poor and giving money to the rich.

 

Photo: blmurch

The white supremacist hate site, "Big Government," has made a dirty name of itself by running deceptively edited videos to promote its racist agenda. Finally, the fightback has begun.

Shirley Sherrod has expressed her intention to sue Andrew Breitbart, the racist behind that bigoted website. Deceptively edited video used to twist peoples' words in order to make false claims about them certainly deserves to be considered libelous. If the courts don't recognize this, then libel law desperately needs updating.

ACORN, an incredibly important organization, was almost completely wiped out by a classist and white supremacist smear campaign involving deceptively edited videos run on the same white supremacist blog. What did ACORN do to generate this attack? They fought poverty, educated people on how mortgages are supposed to work, and they registered poor people and people of color to vote.

Well, somebody decided not to just shut up and take it. A lawsuit has been filed this month by a former ACORN employee who was the target of those misleading videos.

From Alternet 7/14/27:

Juan Carlos Vera is suing James O'Keefe, the ACORN "pimp," and Hannah Giles (his "ho"), for at least $75,000 in accordance with California's Invasion of Privacy Act.

Rightwing dirty-trickster and convicted federal criminal James O'Keefe and his accomplice Hannah Giles are being sued for invasion of privacy by a San Diego ACORN worker.

Juan Carlos Vera was fired by the 4-decade old anti-poverty, pro-democracy community organization after deceptively edited and secretly recorded video tapes of a meeting Vera had with O'Keefe and Giles were released by the pair and published on Republican propagandist Andrew Breitbart's websites. The tapes were then widely aired on Fox "News", as well as non-Rightwing media outlets.

Vera is suing for at least $75,000 in accordance with California's Invasion of Privacy Act which, according to the short, four-page complaint [PDF] filed at week's end in U.S. District Court, "prohibits the recording of confidential communications without the consent of all participants where there is an objectively reasonable expectation that the conversation is not being overheard or recorded."

Now, there is a call by Velvet Revolution for the people responsible for the videos lying about ACORN to be criminally prosecuted.

Yesterday, we filed a formal request with both Maryland state and Baltimore city prosecutors for criminal charges against James O'Keefe, Hannah Giles and Andrew Breitbart for violating Maryland's Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Act. A copy of the letter is here. In short, when the accused videotaped employees of the Baltimore ACORN office without their knowledge or consent, they violated the law which requires two party consent.

The rightist bigots behind all of this are bullies who go after people they think are weak and powerless. However, not all of their victims are weak, nor are they powerless. Breitbart and his band of bigots may have thought that they could intimidate non white voters as well as people who discuss the racism that permeates the teabagger Astroturf scam, but their actions may very well have dire legal consequences.

 

If it really were a legitimate "deficit commission," it wouldn't be meeting in secret.



This video was put up on YouTube by Strengthen Social Security, Don't Cut it. I'm particularly pleased that the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is a member organization, which demonstrates their commitment to queer seniors issues. This disproportionately effects queers who are much less likely to have children to help us when we get older.

I'm often behind on my email, and this was no exception. I thought people should be informed about the events anyway, even though the meeting was last night.

Because of the state budget crisis, Queens Pride House has lost over $80,000 in funding, and we've been forced to lay off 5 of our 8 staff members and reduce the number of hours the center is open. If we can't recoup that funding through contributions from LGBT community members and other sources, we may well be forced to close our doors. Come to Pride House at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, July 27 to help us strategize on how to save the only LGBT community center serving the borough of Queens.

Queens Pride House is a noble start in efforts to provide local services to people in Queens. It has so much promise. It would be a shame to see it fade away.

One of the things that is so frustrating about this is that the "budget crisis" in New York is as fake as the budget crises in other states. If the rich were made to pay their fair share in state and local taxes, deficits throughout the country would be replaced by surpluses. We could also rescue the states by stopping the Iraq or Afghanistan wars and redirecting the money.

America is experiencing the Shock Doctrine, and queers are not exempt.

 

Photo: dereckesanches

I received this in an email from Pride @ Work today. I think it is great that it includes organizations in Nancy Pelosi's district.

From San Francisco Pride at Work, One Struggle, One Fight, GetEqual, Harvey Milk Democratic Club, Transgender Law Center, National Center for Lesbian Rights, El / La, and National Pride at Work

An Open Letter to the House Speaker on ENDA

We are writing to express how extremely troubled we are that the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) has not yet been scheduled for a vote by the full House of Representatives. We believe a floor vote must be scheduled for ENDA immediately.

It would be devastating for LGBT workers for this Congress to not complete its work on ENDA before the end of this session. ENDA would be historic in the number of LGBT people who would benefit from its passage. During this economic crisis, it is more important than ever to prohibit the often impoverishing effects of workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

Most LGBT workers have no protections from workplace discrimination. ENDA would provide legal protection against discrimination nationally. Over and over we have been promised that a vote would be scheduled on ENDA, and these promises have been repeatedly broken. In 29 states, it is still legal to fire someone solely because they are lesbian, gay or bisexual. And in 38 states it is legal to fire someone solely for being transgender. The current version of the bill would outlaw discrimination on both sexual orientation and gender identity.

A 2006 study by the San Francisco Bay Guardian and the Transgender Law Center found that 60 percent of transgender people in San Francisco earn less than $15,300 per year, only 25 percent have a full-time job and nearly 9 percent have no source of income.

Only 4 percent reported making more than $61,200, which is about the median income in the Bay Area. More than half of local transgender people live in poverty, and 96 percent earn less than the median income. Forty percent of those surveyed don't even have a bank account. What this study reveals is that even in a city that is considered a haven for the LGBT community, transgender workers face profound employment challenges and discrimination.

A 2007 meta-analysis from the Williams Institute of 50 studies of workplace discrimination against LGBT people found consistent evidence of bias in the workplace. The analysis found that up to 68 percent of LGBT people reported experiencing employment discrimination, and up to 17 percent said they had been fired or denied employment.

Public opinion polling shows that Americans are overwhelmingly in favor of making sure LGBT Americans get the same employment opportunities as everyone else. In fact, the latest surveys shows that nearly 90% of Americans support workplace fairness for LGBT workers.

As you know, in a few weeks, Congress will finish it's legislative business for the year so that they can return to their districts to run for re-election. Last month at a LGBT Pride event, Congresswoman Jackie Spier announced to the LGBT community that not only would we not get ENDA before the end of the legislative session, that she did not think we would get it for five years because we won't have enough votes in Congress again to ensure passage. It is ironic that Congress plans on leaving town and going home to campaign for their own jobs while leaving thousands of LGBT workers without protections for the next five years. When 90% of Americans support workplace fairness, it is challenging to believe that anyone fears a backlash from the voters. The time to pass ENDA is now. The American people support it, the politicians promised it. No more broken promises. We demand that a vote be scheduled now.

Sincerely,

SF Pride at Work, One Struggle, One Fight, GetEqual, Harvey Milk Democratic Club, Transgender Law Center, National Center for Lesbian Rights, El / La and national Pride at Work

The most bizarre thing about this is that passing ENDA would help the Democrats politically, especially in the midterm elections where parties need to turn out their base. Heterosexism not only is trumping human decency, but it also is trumping sound electoral strategy.

I'm not terribly surprised that a labor organization like Pride @ Work gets it in terms of the importance of ENDA. That's why having a voice from organized labor in the queer community is so critical.

 

I has previously blogged about Nancy Pelosi's sneak attack against Social Security. In that post, I describe the Catfood Commission.

You may have been reading about Obama's "deficit commission" in DC. The name is misleading. Some people call it the "catfood commission" because its real goals are raising the Social Security retirement age to 70, cutting benefits in that program, slashing Medicare, and putting 20% of the Social Security trust fund in the stock market. Healthcare Now has been fighting hard to resist this attack on the livelihoods of the elderly and the futures of the young.

The last thing we need as a nation is to have future generations of elderly people reduced to eating catfood when meager incomes fail most of us. Alternet isn't going along with this. They have put up a petition on Change.Org against the Catfood Commission. The background information follows.

Right-Wing "Deficit Hawks" and their enablers are on a march to destroy the social safety net we built for our seniors and retirees. Shockingly, some of the most notorious advocates are actually in charge of the presidential commission that will soon determine the future of Social Security and Medicare. We need to stop them in their tracks! Join us in calling on Congress to Stop the Catfood Commission.

The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform has been dubbed by progressives the "Catfood Commission" because its goal appears to be cutting benefits so drastically that retirees will only be able to afford to eat pet food. It's hard to tell exactly what the commission is planning because its meetings are closed to the public and the press. Based on past statements and the background of its members the proposals are likely to include raising the retirement age to 70, turning large portions of Social Security over to Wall Street, and cutting Medicare benefits.

The commission's co-chairman Alan Simpson, a former Republican senator from Wyoming, has stated he believes the founders of the Social Security program never expected anyone to actually live to 65 and collect. "People just died," he has said. "Social Security was never [for] retirement." Erskine Bowles, the other co-chairman, negotiated a secret but ultimately unsuccessful deal between Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich to cut Social Security benefits. Any chances that the commission would make cuts to the US defense budget in its pursuit of fiscal responsibility seem slim owing to the fact that the CEO of Honeywell, a major defense contractor, is a member of the panel.

We can't sit back and count on a Democratic-controlled Congress to protect our social safety net. Just a day before the July 4th holiday weekend, the House of Representatives passed a measure that would guarantee an up-or-down vote on the Catfood Commission's recommendations in the current session of Congress if they pass the Senate. With this measure House Speaker Nancy Pelosi relinquished her power to prevent the vote from coming to the floor.

Your representatives need to hear from you NOW. Let's stop the Catfood Commission from raiding the Social Security trust fund and slashing medical benefits for current and future retirees.

Please Take Action to Stop This Attack on Social Security and Medicare!

Also:

Please Contact the President and Tell Him to Disband the Catfood Commission!

Photo: Sunfox

 

Linda McMahon is spending tens of millions of dollars of WWE money to try to buy the Connecticut Senate seat this year. This is the more disturbing side of how the WWE generated that revenue when she was CEO.



The WWE is a major advertiser, which is why you read and see little mention of things like this or the simulated necrophilia the WWE put on nationwide TV. If they covered this important news story, McMahon would have trouble getting 20% in the general election.

Sorry, but there's nothing funny this time.

 

I never know whether to laugh or cringe when some corporate media hack claims that the DailyKos is a "liberal" or "progressive" website. It's run by highly partisan, conservative Democrats who are trying to move liberals to the right at every opportunity.

Seldom has it gotten so cynical or disturbing as a posting by "angry mouse" with the misleading title "Why liberals should love the Second Amendment."

There are so many disturbing things about this. She goes along with NRA terrorist propaganda about the Second Amendment, claiming it is about personal ownership of handguns while ignoring what the 2nd Amendment actually says.

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.

As you can clearly see from the text, the 2nd Amendment only applies to government sponsored militias that are well regulated. Claims that the 2nd Amendment applies to private gun ownership are deceptive NRA terrorist propaganda that cost the lives of almost 30,000 Americans every year, and which results in far more frequent rapes and robberies. That's right. Having guns legal causes the equivalent of ten 911s every year, from murders, other homicides, suicides, and accidental shootings.

Angry mouse also makes the following nonsensical and dangerous claim about the constitution:

No. 1: The Bill of Rights protects individual rights.

Claims that the first ten amendments of the Constitution only protect "individual rights" involve a specious distinction that originates from the minds of rabid segregationists and has nothing to do with the text of the Bill of Rights. This farcical claim has been used venomously by white supremacists and misogynists to attack Affirmative Action and civil rights in general.

It's also willfully ignorant of who and what human beings are. Human beings are individuals, but we also are social organisms who belong to groups. Parsing out "individual rights" (which also is a rightist code phrase) has the effect of creating numerous civil and human rights violations against individuals who belong to groups in society that face discrmination.

It really should be astonishing that the author actually makes the claim that gun ownership is a "civil liberty." This is fatuous nonsense. Taking away peoples' guns is merely a minor inconvenience. Let's look at the main reasons why people own guns.

1) Misuguided attempts at self protection that actually do far more to endanger the gun owners and the people who live around them.

2) The commission of robbery, rape, murder, and other serious crimes.

3) Killing animals. This is often referred to as "sport hunting," despite the fact that it is too one sided to honestly be referred to as a sport. If people want to hunt for sport, they should be using spears or clubs, not guns.

There simply is no basis for thinking that any of these remotely resembles a "civil liberty." This nonsense comes from the Tom Delay brand of "civil liberties" that considers the ability to put toxic pesticides on food a "civil liberty."

The author turns the civil liberties issue on its head. Gun owners are the ones who are violating the civil liberties of gun crime victims like myself. Present and future gun crime victims have an inalienable right to live in gun free societies. There is no greater violation of civil liberties than living as a gun crime victim in a society where you are surrounded by guns.

How many more people are going to have to get robbed, raped, and murdered before the gun extremists care?

The gun nut who wrote the rant then went on to make the most dangerous claim of all.

No. 3: It doesn't matter that it's not 1776 anymore.

When the Founders drafted the Bill of Rights, they could not have imagined machine guns. Or armor-piercing bullets (which are not available to the public anyway, and are actually less lethal than conventional ammunition). Or handguns that hold 18 rounds. A drive-by shooting, back in 1776, would have been a guy on a horse with a musket.

Of course, they couldn't have imagined the internet, either. Or 24-hour cable news networks. Or talk radio. When they drafted the First Amendment, did they really mean to protect the rights of Bill O'Reilly to make incredibly stupid, and frequently inaccurate, statements for an entire hour, five nights a week?

Actually, yes. They did. Bill O'Reilly bilious ravings, and Keith Olbermann's Special Comments, and the insipid chatter of the entire cast of the Today show are, and were intended to be, protected by the First Amendment.

By this "logic," everyone would have a Constitutional right to nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, all of which are "arms." This is just plain nuts.

There is an entire industry of death merchants who profit off of this dangerous and irresponsible propaganda. Claims that the 2nd Amendment protects private ownership of guns or that gun ownership is a "civil liberty" are as deceptive as Big Oil and Big Coal's propaganda about Global Warming. Meanwhile, the resulting rapes, robberies, and murders continue.

This is dangerous Rand Paul/Sarah Palin wingnuttery at its most extreme. If I wasn't already aware that the DailyKos is a rightist website, I would be shocked. I have to say, though, if there were truth in advertising laws for politics, the DailyKos would be legally required to stop referring to itself as "progressive" and refer to itself as "rightist" or "corporatist."