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Comments Posted By choicelady

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Evan Bayh to resign—Crisis or opportunity?

Are there Reeps running? If he abandoned this to the Republicans, it’s despicable. That is the end of democracy for at least Indiana. On the other hand, given his tendencies, maybe it’s no loss at all. Damn.

» Posted By choicelady On February 15, 2010 @ 11:33 am

This morning in the Sacramento Bee, there was a story (wire service) that Obama’s popularity is a ‘drag’ on the Dems. So my question is – why is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different outomes NOT an issue of insanity within the party? The failure of Congressional Dems, either house, to do what the people want is what has made Obama seem fruitless. So why keep DOING that? We need massive Progressive action – the polls all show that is what people want. On Andrea Mitchell this morning as well, the discussion was around the “Reagan Dems” – blue collar social conservatives – who like Palin. Frankly, if the Progressives dominated, Obama would be culling many of them. This nation needs someone who champions them, provides solid blue collar jobs, brings back industry, revives the economy for the working and middle class while raising up people from poverty. If someone did THAT, there’d be no room for the Winkin’ and Blinkin’ Sarah or anyone else of her ilk. Why do the party “leaders” seem NOT to get this?

We at the Planet do need our voices in this mix because frankly the elite progressives (lower case intentional) have no clue what laid off auto and steelworkers want or need. Health care, sure – but what else? AH and her buddies have not got a clue. Any of us see the Indiana Dems hearing the REAL voices of people? Does NO one get the polls on health care – that they collapsed when the public option was pulled OUT, not when it was IN?

Why are liberals afraid to be liberals? Why are progressives afraid to be progressive? How did Reagan win when every single policy he and his followers had – every stitch of voodoo economics – has FAILED.

So why are we giving the totally worthless supply side perspectives a second of our time? The teabaggers want Ron Paul – who wants to go back on the GOLD standard that kills credit for small business and ordinary people. How can they support that? What’s the lure of Ayn Rand-ism when she hated working people and supported the elite and Paul’s policies reflect that? What are the messages from Paul that are attracting tea bag supporters when he and his ilk don’t LIKE them????

I’d like to do something about this if I only had a glimmer of insight into what it all means. I am totally shaking my head – I do NOT understand this nation any longer.

» Posted By choicelady On February 15, 2010 @ 10:50 am

PROGRESSIVES AND THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

Daed – you’re absolutely right. I’m a full time lobbyist for a massively socially responsible group, and I mobilize our grassroots members. Raising their voices gives me clout – without them, I’m nothing. But it does not take hours per week unless you do it full time by choice.

Because I am full time, and because of my position, I can’t work the party. BUT that is a huge way to begin. Remember back in the 80s the Christian Coalition did this – there were trainings nationwide, then they infiltrated school boards, etc. all with a mind to control them. We “outed” most of them, but that’s how they got in and got enough clout to choose Bush.

The difference with us is we don’t have a 10-point agenda; we see governance as a broad, democratic PROCESS that, gulp, even includes them. (Teeth gritting noises here.) But we need to take pointers from the ways they did business – move from the city to county to state levels then on to the national. We need to be building progressive coalitions, helping pick candidates, helping run elections. It will be more important than EVER if corporate money is indeed unleashed.

I’ve said it before (YES! We KNOW, say all here on the Planet) that the one thing that can offset money is constituents. Legislators MUST pay attention to voters. My folks have turned six CA Blue Dogs, alone and in coalition, and we have seen the power of the people. We must do this.

That is where building a relationship with the district office of any elected official at any level is essential. Personally I target state officials (it’s my job), but Congress is equally important.

We CAN turn the outcomes of 2010 by also building relationships with other groups, seeking out community meetings, and being heard. We took BACK many of the town hall meetings in CA by sending clergy in, and they calmed the storm and actually got people paying attention to one another. We also did MORE work getting conservative Dems to hear the wants of people, not just the yelling of tea bag people.

So you don’t have to do this 24/7 just because some of us do. What we each can do is what we each should do – however much, whenever we can. Phone calls, visits, invitations to legislators to come to OUR groups, getting to know the staff and being a human being first and always, that all matters. Once a week, once a month – whatever works for anyone.

And for those with more time – get involved with the party! Your voice can change the world. If the religious right could do it – certainly those of us with KNOWLEDGE should be able to do the same!!!

» Posted By choicelady On February 14, 2010 @ 5:26 pm

Did SCOTUS Open The Floodgates?

We have faced this before in Huey Long and others, but never before have we had such a well-oiled machine. If the American people can use the most recent information – insurance rates rise 39% – to begin to see what “free enterprise” is doing to us, maybe there is hope.

I query how well the Dems will do responding to this. I fear people such as Rahm are all too willing to cater to the corporations as Jimmy Carter did so eagerly in the 1970s. Had he been a Dem instead of a Lite Republican, much of this would not have occurred. But he bought the corporate global world line, and the fact he was on the Trilateral Commission drove him to accept this deterioration of democracy as a good thing. He, not Reagan, set it in motion. So where are the real progressives? Before Obama was elected, every book in my independent bookstore was a critique of the corporate world. Now only about half are while the other half are poorly written and even more poorly conceived justifications of the corporate and global mentality. Where are our supporters of REAL reform? We have to have them continue to write – what has happened over the past 35 years MUST be stopped.

The single biggest thing I fear is our own (not the Planet people but the Huff afficionados) elitism. I STILL hear snide comments about farmers in Kansas and Iowa, I STILL hear dismissal of the critical importance of restoring industry and the blue collar jobs it produces, I STILL hear snotty feminists state they care nothing about white males’ and their conditions. We have too many in our ranks who hate the others in our ranks and dismiss them out of hand.

I see a massively pernicious purportedly LEFT WING academic view that people (fill in the blanks – Black, Indian, etc.) made their own choices – had “agency” – which led to their own repression! The idea that all of life is in our hands – that we can “reinvent” ourselves, communities, etc. with a wave of the wand – that plays right into neo-fascism. I kow she’d be horrified, but Oprah does the same as does the book, “The Secret”. It makes each of us utterly responsible for the outcomes of our lives, and failure, poverty, want, etc. are because we did not want and work hard enough to have all our dreams fulfilled. Taken to extremes, it makes the Jews responsible for the Holocaust because they did not “want” freedom from genocide enough. Their fault. Not the perpetrators of unequal, violent power. Next we’ll hear how Muslims have been torturing themselves…

It blocks the key issue: that standing in front of every individual dream, hope, want lies a structure of power that is primed to say, “NO”! Whatever movies we can make about one man’s success overcoming all odds, there is the reality of the millions who worked just as hard and failed. Failed because there were obstacles over which they could not come because the system of entrenched power did not WANT them to overcome.

Of course hard work and self discipline are important, but take careful note of how much we are reverting to Social Darwinism – that only the really “fit” survive – or deserve to do so.

We did this 100 years ago during the Gilded Age, and it failed miserably then. Will it fail miserably now? Or will we accommodate the creeping fascism inch by inch until it’s too late? Unlike the situation of the Labor Wars then, post WWII corporate America found ways to accommodate us enough to coopt us well. My only hope is that they have over-reached and impacted enough of us to once again motivate us to act.

We need the movement we’ve started here at the Planet to challenge at every level the fascists AND their phony liberal supporters. I truly fear the outcomes if we don’t because almost anything can be sold to Americans when they act from fear rather than from strength.

American cannot become the Brave New World.

» Posted By choicelady On February 13, 2010 @ 10:36 am

The Party of Lincoln vs The Party of Winkin’

Marion this is marvelous! Succinct history that illuminates as you go. Wow!

I follow the threads through my own family history. One forebear (father’s side) was a founder of the Republican Party via the Ripon Society that gave rise to it in the late 1850s. That good man was a die-hard abolitionist and later went on to invent the first practical typewriter which he sold to Remington because inventing, not being rich, was his goal. Another (mother’s side) ran an underground railroad stop on Owen Lovejoy’s trail up out of Missouri through Illinois to the Great Lakes on to Canada. Both sides of the family were Republican until the Great Depresion at which point most of my mother’s family turned to FDR while my father’s side continued to embrace the failed hopes of Hoover et al. That part of the family still think Nixon was framed and Reagan is God. I have nothing at all to do with them.

One of my heroes is Robert LaFollette the fighting Republican who wanted the party to be what it had been, a reformist party, and not what it was by the early 20th C., the mouthpiece for giant corporate interests. Needless to say, he lost. But he was certainly admirable.

Today I still have hopes that the Dems will remember that they almost alone are responsible for clean air, clean water, the weekend, minimum wage, Social Security and Medicare, for Civil Rights, for union rights, for decent and safe working conditions, for good public transportation, for decent public education, for regulation of public goods such as utilities, for so many things we take for granted that keep our streets clean, our lives safer, our poorer families out of the gutter. We must be PROUD of that legacy! The Republicans indeed were and are elites who have the spoils and wish to keep them.

What are Dems fearful about? Thomas Franks in “What’s the Matter with Kansas” notes that the Dems crashed when they lost touch with their roots. They did nothing for the working rural or urban working people, and we can actually thank Jimmy Carter for that. Many of us muttered in 1976 that he was really Republican Lite, and I think we were correct. When both parties desert the basics of what people need, but one of them taps into social fears (that great cartoon says it all!) then people WILL go with the one discussing social issues since neither is discussing the essential economic concerns.

C’mon Dems – GROW UP and GET A SPINE! The American electorate sent a message that they wanted change, not the same old same old. If the Dems cannot or will not deliver, then what will happen is that Dems who are disillusioned will sit it out.

We the people deserve real reforms. We’ve lived with the Cold War foreign policy and the Reaganomics, neither of which works, for 40-60 years. We want our nation BACK. It’s WE, not the teabaggers, who understand that. The teabagger want the antebellum years back, and sorry, no can do. But there is no reason we can’t have the prosperity of 1945-73 coupled with the civil rights we so bravely won. Those are NOT incompatible goals. And only the Dems can make it right, but they have to remember THEIR history as a party of bold courage.

I see real possibilities rumbling in DC – now it’s up to us to keep the momentum. Come on home, Dems. We’re waiting with open arms.

» Posted By choicelady On February 12, 2010 @ 9:55 pm

Troll Busters! An Introduction

WOW! These are wonderful!

May I add under the religion part as well as health:
From a progressive point of view:

Faithfulreform.org – has a great Vision statement and a PDF delineating the House and Senate bill viewed through a moral prism. Both are on the main page.

Check out California Council of Churches and California Church IMPACT on FACEBOOK for essays and alerts on various state and federal issues.

For critiques of the religious right:

Check out Jeff Sharlet’s articles on The Family in Harper’s. “Through a Glass Darkly” is December, 2006 and a chapter in his book on The Family.

» Posted By choicelady On February 17, 2010 @ 3:53 pm

Americans United

How awful! The folks I knew in NY were just great and smart about their own work. Sad to see even this has cracks in it. I haven’t had much to do with them for over a decade, so it’s probably not a surprise they may have weakened or become stoopid. Sad.

» Posted By choicelady On February 11, 2010 @ 2:58 pm

Maybe that’s why they seem so narrow here – but they are part of a movement to close a foundry in Berkeley that has been there with union jobs since the year dot. I’m not happy about that! A living wage is great – unless you’re trying to kill off working people making more. But, then, this IS California, that IS Berkeley, where self interest can overwhelm even good things. We raised narcissism to a fine art out here!

» Posted By choicelady On February 11, 2010 @ 2:55 pm

Hi Javaz – I think this is just the ticket. I would like to say that something on the cutting edge may already exist upon which we can build though it’s not had a lot of traction. It’s the Working Families party that began as an outgrowth of the labor movement’s disillusion with the Dems and is over a decade old. Their problem is that it did NOT include us, populists with good values, many of the faith community. The time was not then ripe for the disillusionment that has set in today.

While WFP is grounded in NY state it IS expanding into Oregon, Connecticut, Delaware, and South Carolina.

It would be my suggestion that it already has the focus we have, it has a GREAT name, and it has an organizational base upon which we could build. Are they perfect? Nope – they endorse Hillary for Senate from a pragmatic view, but they also understand that getting 2% for their own unknown candidate would, in NY, keep them from being any kind of presence.

Why not the Green Party? Because it does have an anti-labor, anti-manufacturing, anti-working families bias. It’s way too elite and devoted to keeping the good stuff FOR the elite at the expense of ordinary people. Peace & Freedom and other parties of that nature tend also to be single issue focused.

So, (small) warts and all, I’d seriously look at the Working Families Party as a starting point by which we would not have to reinvent the wheel.

Just a thought…

» Posted By choicelady On February 11, 2010 @ 10:16 am

Rashomon 9: Ten Views of Ben Nelson’s Opposition to Obama’s Labor Board Nominee

E, Boomer. Definitely E.

» Posted By choicelady On February 9, 2010 @ 7:14 pm

HATE IN AMERICA, Part 2: Hate Speech and the First Amendment

Dear Cher- how sad it is that with the hope of a year ago, we are still thinking of leaving. I see Obama struggling for the soul of America – and getting hit from left and right for it all. I think he’s magnificent, but I’m not sure there’s anything much left of me to continue here. I’m exhausted. My whole life has been trying to protect the ordinary American from the predations of corporate and elite power, and I keep feeling I’m digging the Grand Canyon with a teaspoon. I’m just finally wearing out.

It’s horrible you are telling your kids to leave – not horrible you’re doing it but horrible we feel that’s better than hanging in with The Great Experiment. I am with you on this – I think the US is killing itself off. I suspect we will never again see a vital nation, that we will not live up to our promise, that we will see the creeping power of negativity take over and hand this country to the rich and repulsive.

If so, off I go, right along with your kids. Damn.

» Posted By choicelady On February 9, 2010 @ 9:09 pm

Khirad – I will lay odds it’s not your age but your, what, persona (no good word for this – aura?) that people sense. I know it’s not true that you can always “see” a person’s personality on their faces, but you do see something of their demeanor, their state of mind, and yes, over time, their overall attitude. Laugh lines are just different from squints and frown lines. Older people tend to have mouths that curve down from disappointment or disapproval. My highly judgmental mother never EVER laughed with her mouth open (God forbid she might appear to approve of you) where I throw my head back and just laugh out loud. I smile at everyone, bet you do, too. I meet eyes – can you think of a worse “rule” than to tell white people never to look at Black people (esp. men) and never EVER smile at them????? Who wouldn’t cop an attitude if every white person skittered by you with a scowl as if you were trash? So I’m betting you give off great emotions of personhood, acceptance, curiosity, openness. More than your age – it’s YOU.

So what’s the Cape Breton query, eh?

» Posted By choicelady On February 9, 2010 @ 8:58 pm

Canada has not got one of the world’s great historical track records on human rights. Their treatment of “aboriginal people” (the approved term even by the people) has been nearly as horrific as ours.

However, I was in Ottawa,Canada in 1974 for a conference (I was young, wrote my first paper for an academic conference, and was wowed with my good fortune) when I found myself in the room next to Richard Cardinal who was in Ottawa with others protesting the second-class citizenship of indigenous people. I saw his actions on Parliament Hill on TV, then walked out of my room, met up with him coming from his, and rode down in the elevator with him. I was in awe. I realized I was witnessing a man who was changing history. And that WAS a turning point for Canada. He made such an impassioned plea for justice, the nation could NOT turn its back. From that day forward, Canada has been on the path of righteousness.

When Martin Luther King, Jr. marched, lived, and died, we did make huge strides. But we are moving if not back – I don’t think that – but sideways. The largest difference between Canada and the US is the legacy of slavery. A huge portion of this nation cannot get past it – some justify it, some want to sweep it under the rug, some hate it, some cannot let it go. But we are all affected. I do understand the white immigrants who had nothing to do with it – who were themselves near slaves in the northern mills – but it still is our history and our burden of shame.

What we have steadfastly failed to do is to link slavery with that wage slavery because to do that is the most dangerous thing in America. It would show, in all ways, that white people, Black people, and immigrants of all backgrounds have a great deal more in common together than either will have with the power that holds all of them down.

I lived in Cape Breton some years ago and found they have made that bridge. There is an awareness of class, of its power, of its injustice that this nation will NOT confront. Back in the 1970s I did corporate power research, and we were on the brink of showing to all Americans the insidious nature of corporate and class dominance of our nation when the mis-steps of Carter led to Reagan led to a whitewash and refusal to look at who created the hell we lived with then. Even the massive recession under Reagan did not generate enough pushback. Instead he used the “welfare queen” code for Black woman to divide and conquer.

Why are Americans so stupid about this? Why do they believe their fortunes lie with their oppressors rather than their neighbors? Other nations have overcome significant amounts of their racism – what’s wrong with US?

I have some hope for the younger generations who seem far more comfortable in multicultural and multiracial settings. Maybe it just takes that – slow exposure and change – but it is so hard to watch my own supposedly enlightened Boomer generation fall back on the worst of what we protested in the 60s.

America is the greatest experiment, but I’m watching it fail. Other nations that never portrayed themselves in such lofty ways are slowly doing so much more, so much better. I am an American through and through, but I’m not sure I will live out my days here. It’s too hard, too painful to watch a society fragment and fail over – nothing. Hate is an amazingly powerful force, and I’m not sure we will win this time.

» Posted By choicelady On February 9, 2010 @ 7:31 pm

WE need more entrepreneurs in media on our side such as Air America. We lost our voice in Sacramento – they went gospel!!!! We must have some way to be heard, to talk with one another, to get a different perspective out there. And I once tangled with Mike Malloy over his denunciation of Islam which was based on the cultural acts of one man – and he freaking read my email on the AIR!!!! Cool for him! You see anyone ELSE doing that???

Where are the investors in progressive media – Air America needs outlets and we need more than just Air America! We progressives HAVE to put our money where our hearts are. NOW!

» Posted By choicelady On February 8, 2010 @ 8:37 pm

Oh dear Hopeington – you send chills down my spine! The comment about people trying to run you over in crosswalks is so true! When I was 19 I was with a Black man in the “wrong” place in the City of Brotherly Love, and two guys backed up and hit me with their car. I thought such things had stopped, but clearly that is not true. I really feel for what you’re experiencing, and I know the ‘privilege’ of being white and seeing the reality of the hate. We get to hear what white people say when they think of course we must agree. It’s beyond belief. Anyone who says it does not exist says that from a profound ignorance. You’re right – they never put themselves in that position, never see first hand how slavering and rabid the racism still can be.

And yes, the religious right can be racist to the core, homophobia runs like icewater in their veins, and anti-Semitism on all levels is their mother’s milk. They are vile. Those evangelicals who rise above it are glorious – but they are thin upon the ground I fear. And they need to do some denouncing instead of hiding! It’s no longer OK to be timid. This is 1959 all over again. We need to step out and speak out. It’s NOT all right to hate!

» Posted By choicelady On February 8, 2010 @ 8:33 pm

Oy – this is once again so hard. I work against hate crime and speech and have for over 20 years. But speech, mostly, is protected. The “imminent danger” cited here historically was SUCH a miscarriage of justice. Debs was anything but an “imminent danger”. We have moved a long way toward increased freedom since then, so most free speech remains free. Disgusting, yes, but unpunished. It is VERY hard to punish speech, and that, frankly – even when the attacks have been against ME – is something I support.

The ‘true threat’ of the “Wanted” posters and the Nuremberg List were, I think, warranted, since after Dr. Slepian was killed in NY in 1998, the wackos converted said list and posters into REAL targets against pro-choice people. They had NOT been such prior to that physician’s murder. The Army of God made clear they were using these as a “shopping list” of people to kill. That is the ‘true threat’.

Hate speech is definitely protected. That’s why pastors in RW churches have no ground (and damn well know it) for claiming that if they preach against homosexuality they’ll be taken away in chains. Nope. Sorry. No martyrs today. But if they call for the murder of GLBTQ people and their members DO harm someone, whole different ball game. And they know that, too.

Hate crimes largely cover ACTS. You can hate someone all you like, but your right to hate stops at YOUR property line AND the end of their nose. You may not harm their or public property; you may not rough them up, push, shove, beat, pummel or do anything violent to them or people with them at all.

Now as to Muslims – I work with CAIR in both Southern and Northern CA and adore them. I work with the Islamic Shura Council and love them. I work with Muslims for Progressive Values and absolutely love them. I have stood in so many press conferences while they denounce VIOLENCE COMMITTED BY MUSLIMS I have lost count. There is a fatwah (religious command) AGAINST all violence issues by the national Shura Council in No. America becauses using jihad as an excuse to bomb, kill, maim is ANTI Islamic. I’ve read a lot of this in the Qur’an, and it is NOT a part of Islam to kill others. Self defense, sure (see the Bible for these issues; we’re a LOT more violent in the Old Testament than is the Qur’an!) There is NO passage in the Qur’an that would permit Al Q’aeda to do what it does. They, like the RW Christians, mostly make that stuff up to justify what they do.

I am so admiring of my Muslim allies who get pilloried by everyone but who consistently stand against violence committed BY Muslims. Where are the Christians (other than the progressives) denouncing people like Roeder, Tim McVeigh, et al. who did their acts “in the name of God”????? You won’t see Rick Warren hopping on that issue, now will you?

Now – if you don’t KNOW that Muslims are consistently denouncing acts of violence such as Ft. Hood, the Christmas Day Underpants bomber, et al. that’s because it’s once again NOT reported. Since I’m there much of the time, standing in front of the microphones with them, I KNOW what got said, who said it (including me), and how much it dies on the cutting room floor.

So don’t assume, again, it’s not getting said. Ask yourselves why you are not hearing this when good sense would tell you that people living in the US probably don’t hate the US for the most part. If they left their homes to come here, they probably WANT to be here. To assume that Muslims are indifferent to hate crimes committed by other Muslims is just wrong. They are in agony every time it happens.

The only way we’re going to fight back against hate crimes is to move swiftly every time it happens. EVERY time. Fundamentally these people are cowards and bullies. Bush let it fester because they liked him (what’s not to like in a RW cowboy?) but it allowed them to gain strength. We need swift and certain action, swift and certain denunciation, swift and certain avowal of our community as human beings. And that’s going to be damned hard to pull off since we have few outlets for our voices. But we do need to keep on keepin’ on.

Sorry to say, we have to renew the Civil Rights movement and solidarity all over again. Thought we’d been there. Thought we’d won that. Apparently we have to go back and start again. Sigh.

Life. Part II.

» Posted By choicelady On February 8, 2010 @ 8:23 pm

Hi-

Well, we mainstream faith people denounce this stuff every day. Yeah – and just TRY to get some coverage in the MSM about what we say! We can’t get a word in edgewise. The MAJORITY of Protestants denounce homophobia – and you’ll never hear it unless you’re in the pews, in our gatherings, get my postings to our members.

How does one have ‘free speech’ when it falls with a thud at your feet? When sense and sensiblity no longer are remotely interesting as part of public discourse, then the public has to presume – yes PRESUME – that they are not being given the whole story.

The mainstream faith communities speak out. Vigorously. They just never get heard.

» Posted By choicelady On February 8, 2010 @ 7:56 pm

Why Conservatives are Always WRONG

Wow Sanity – this is GREAT. I am definitely keeping this link since it’s masterful.

There are elements of “conservatism” that are useful, but they tend to be those policies and practices that worked such as the New Deal and, even older, the Colonial “moral economy” that put the sustainability of the economy for ordinary people ahead of accumulation by the few. But you don’t see contemporary conservatives upholding THOSE values, now do you?

I think we should start labeling conservative mythology for what it is – the Boy Who Cried Wolf. Just because they keep saying it doesn’t mean a thing.

Brilliant post for which we thank you!

» Posted By choicelady On February 8, 2010 @ 11:02 am

Super Bowl XLIV Thread

Gosh – I slept through the whole thing. I gather the Saints won, which is lovely, though I like Indianapolis for various reasons, but I’m interested in how this all got translated into cereal. Y’all lead some interesting lives!

But I still won’t watch CBS anymore. Boycotting since they did those ads.

» Posted By choicelady On February 7, 2010 @ 8:01 pm

Choice under new attack from Operation Rescue

We have the right, and probably the responsibility, to boycott CBS. Let’s begin with the other sponsors of the Super Bowl and include ALL their programming.

The whole world does not revolve around one woman’s personal decision. When other women have followed suit, they died or were maimed. Others had their desire to have a healthy baby cut short. These are tricky decisions involving a woman’s overall health. Not every woman is the same. To politicize this as what ALL women should do because one woman had a good outcome is to falsly equate one moral decision into a generalizable one that may cost other women their lives. This is dangerous and irresponsible – it’s like ads telling women in the 19th Century that they can ingest tapeworms for weight control because it worked well for a handful of women who did not die from anemia and other complications.

CBS is selling one image, and they need to hear from us that we aren’t buying.

» Posted By choicelady On February 7, 2010 @ 7:56 pm

It will go nowhere. This is not an assault on their right to be bigots – that’s protected free speech. It’s another round of “I’m the VICTIM! I’m the VICTIM!” by the religious right. They will discover, to their sorrow, that we don’t give a damn about what they say so long as they do not directly advocate or do harm. Hate crimes punish actions, not thoughts and speech.

Now – if they decide that hating gays and lesbians entitles them to beat the crap out of one, quite another issue.

The foggy area is whether they have to hire GLBTQ people (or at least “out” ones as opposed to the covert folks who have long populated their ranks). It is my understanding that as long as they do not take tax money, they can hire only 4’9″ straight, albino, hairless Estonians and have no problems. The problem comes when they want tax support AND the right to discriminate. That’s SUCH a no-no. And they simply do NOT get it. Or choose not to get it.

So let ’em sue. It at least diverts their money from other, probably more hideous activities.

Yawn.

» Posted By choicelady On February 6, 2010 @ 7:01 pm

Yup – but even with the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances law, all it came down to was acts of harassment that were not aggregated into true threats. The law does not cover by-standers, escorts, pro-choice people in general, only clinic staff and patients. So police pretty much have to take each act as an individual one, and they amount to misdemeanors at best. Acts of vandalism were mere trifles. This is why hate crimes laws exist – each act may be fairly minor, but the patterns of harassment and intimidation amount to a HUGE crime. This is not true for FACE violations yet unless it is itself an act of major violence.

I do feel safer under Obama than under Bush – we all should. But under Obama rather than Bush, violence is growing just as under Clinton. It’s OR’s way of showing contempt for our president.

Never EVER underestimate them.

» Posted By choicelady On February 6, 2010 @ 4:53 pm

Thank you, Boomer. GREAT letter, very powerful. Now – be prepared for retaliation, possibly big time. These people have NO sense of anything but self righteousness. I am seriously telling you to be careful – unless you have an address buried so deeply they cannot find it, you may find them on your doorstep. I did. I don’t work for clinics and never have, but I offended them on various levels and have been stalked three times by them with deep and abiding threats to my life. So be careful PLEASE. They don’t fool around.

Throughout Operation Rescue’s history, from Randy Terry to Troy, they have pretended to be non-violent but in fact were supportive or any violence that happened. Behind the scenes, undercover participants from the pro-choice community saw and heard their viciousness but never could get the goods on them for complicity in the murders and other violence that has been done.

When you believe, or purport to believe, that God is telling you to do things of violence, that God will tell you to violate GOD’s laws, you have crossed into mass insanity. These people are absolutely NO different from insane phony-jihad Muslims or Tamil Tigers, or the Japanese cults with ricin. They are demented, all of them.

I’ve read often here and elsewhere that religion is a corrupting element in human life, and I’d not disagree. OR has bastardized Christianity just as Focus on the Family has done, and it is both crippling to the practitioners and dangerous to the rest of us. How and why America has honed this religious extremism that touts the sanctity of all life (until it emerges from the womb) and then uses that to justify murder is a total mystery to me.

As a sidebar – Focus on the Family joined the CA Catholic Conference during the Yes on 8 campaign to bar marriage equality in CA. They jointly took out an ad threatening to “out” anyone who donated to No on 8 UNLESS they also donated to Yes on 8. Now they want the identities of Yes on 8 people buried because they claim they’ve received death threats. Well, so have NO on 8 people, and while there is not one incident of actual violence against a Yes on 8 supporter, there are hundreds of acts documented against LGBTQ and straight supporters of marriage equality. I don’t doubt the threats – I do doubt evidence of actual actions against the Yes on 8 people. Well – who raised the issue of threat if not FOTF and the Catholics? And so it goes. They now portray themselves as victims, while they were the perpetrators. What sheer hypocrisy.

Same with OR and anti-abortion people. They’ve never EVER been harmed by anyone other than the same pushing and shoving that occurs by them as well.

Beware the bully who portrays him or herself as the victim. They are truly dangerous. Troy is offering this $10K “reward” because the vast majority of doctors and clinics CANNOT be impeached for their compliance with medical standards and practices. Frankly, the pro-choice community should be the first line of “outing” bad doctors and practices – we are supposed to be FOR women, not procedures or practitioners. Of course there are lousy abortion providers just as there are lousy cardiac specialists. So we should turn them in! I’d love that – to see PPFA be the ones claiming Troy’s $10K!!! OR folks have tried this for years. No success. This “reward” has been on the table for at least a decade. It’s sheer grandstanding.

They don’t care about you, Boomer, or any woman. They also care nothing for children. One has only to watch how they treat their own kids. I’ve seen more than one example of child abuse on their picket lines. Backhanding kids across the face; keeping kids outside in scorching heat and freezing rain, always without adequate protection, food or water; forcing them to talk to people they’ve been told want to kill them; shaking their kids because the children are hungry and tired! They’re outrageously bad parents in too many instances. One of the reasons the numbers on the picket lines goes down is that their kids grow UP and leave the ranks, leave their families, leave the abuse. I’ve rarely seen such looks of hate as some children of protesters give to their own parents. I’ts chilling and telling – especially when it’s a girl looking at her father. One cannot help but wonder…

Over the years I’ve met some really compassionate and loving pro-life people outside clinics, but they tend to leave the ranks when they see the “leaders” and their behavior. So what’s left are the hard core, the nut jobs, the crazies. And they are deadly. We used to get told not to worry too much about the people we see every day but to look out for the stranger, the loner. But Roeder and Kopp and Hill were all familiar faces at clinics. And they all killed good people.

The only hope I have is that OR is fragmenting under the weight of sheer ego. Randy Terry and Troy Newman are at odds over the use of the name, Operation Rescue, while Flip Benham and Rusty Thomas are at odds with both of the others. But never EVER think they cannot come together. In Wichita in 2001 the pro-violence people were side-by-side with OR and Operation Save America, all giving high fives and hugging. They aren’t any of them opposed to murder of pro-choice people.

Will there be more killings? Undoubtedly. And the only question in my mind is whether it will continue to be physicians or whether it will now expand to other supporters of choice as well. If this is a Holy War, then none of us is ‘innocent’.

These people think they’re called to bring about the Second Coming by ridding the world of all evil – prochoice people, feminists, Muslims, non-believers, etc., etc., etc. So all here who have tangled with them – be careful. You are not immune from their insanity. Will they kill again? Indeed. Please let it not be any of you.

» Posted By choicelady On February 6, 2010 @ 3:59 pm

Tea Party Conventional Wisdom or Nightmare

Hi KQ – missed you earlier in this. Well said here. Populists began in the Gilded Age as reformers standing against the powerful corporate interests of their day, namely the railroads. So yes indeed – tea bag folks who insist they never met a corporation they did not LIKE, are not populists at all. Thanks for the really concise assessment of what a fraud this movement is.

» Posted By choicelady On February 6, 2010 @ 10:31 pm

Upon reflection over Tancredo and Palin, et al., the really burning issue is that we have no civics or literacy test before people RUN for public office. That I might well get behind!

» Posted By choicelady On February 6, 2010 @ 10:28 pm

WTS – THAT deserves a “WOW”!!! VEry cool!

» Posted By choicelady On February 6, 2010 @ 7:27 pm

I keep looking at our history of nativism and seeing that while it has been a force without doubt, NO candidate that ran as a nativist ever won. Millard Fillmore came the closest and that’s because he was already president, but he got defeated on his Know Nothing platform. Nativism has a huge impact in terms of its ability to create uproar and even violence, but it has little staying power as a political force for the White House. I don’t see it even half so powerful today – too regional an issue and too uncomfortable for most Americans.

» Posted By choicelady On February 6, 2010 @ 7:23 pm

Remember Bush did NOT get elected twice, perhaps not at all. And herein lies the difference. To do what Bush did requires ties to the mightiest of powers which he had. Palin does NOT and in fact has pissed off the powers that be.

She is the equivalent of George Wallace, not G.W. Bush. Certainly not Adolph Schiklegruber! She has a small and vigorous following, but she has not got the money and support that it takes to get elected. And she is too erratic to get and keep it. She annoys the power brokers – the corporate money where the real work of elections gets done. Her followers are equally peripheral – they are the same sorts of high visibility, low elite support rightwingers that she is.

It worries me a LOT more that Scotty might rise. Though I frankly think his pro-choice record CAN be stopped by the party leaders. I think he’s not yet the ‘new wave Reep’ – too soon for that. As long as the litmus test of abortion, god, guns, gays, and no taxes is all the party is about, Scotty won’t work either. All the real potential candidates have some sort of fatal flaw. She’s the worst of the lot, so I don’t think she’s likely. She, like Goerge Wallace, is simply hot stuff for the media, not for the party, not for voters.

I’m not saying don’t worry, but I think she’s not the likely one. Kalima is right – OUR work is to get good programs and policies passed so we have solid ground for later this year and 2012.

» Posted By choicelady On February 6, 2010 @ 7:14 pm

A whole 600? Six HUNDRED? That’s IT? Seems to me that would reflect a serious lack of participation. We had more by over half at a poorly-reported conference on race in America in Oakland a year ago. That, BTW, was joyous, coming on the heels of the election.

I have hope for America since there is no thing under the sun that reflects ordinary Americans’ (irrational as well as rational) fears that the conservatives cannot co-opt and then screw up. I want the lady with the tea bags on her hat (the iconic lady, you know whom I mean) to tell me how it benefits HER to have corporate power unleashed in America to fund campaigns, speak for us, direct policy, and tell us all how to vote and live. I’d also like McCain to tell us how HE opposes the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. Now that’s an acrobatic trick I really want to see unfold!

Any American earning less than $250K needs to tell us how they continue to see hope in the ‘tea party’ movement now that it’s become corporate driven. That’s another pretzel move I need to see and hear. OK middle America – how is AIG now your new BFF????

I love that there is a counter tea bag movement outside this convention. Are these the soggy baggers? Left dripping on the plate are they?

Americans need to get a serious grip on reality. Some may not feel comfy with a Black president, but they really ought to suspend their animus until they seriously find out what he wants FOR them and FROM them. So far all I hear from them is “more taxes” (we got a cut) and “gun confiscation” (not even on the radar). So they on the right join the lazy progressives on the left with stupid half truths and actions that are diametrically opposed to good sense.

Maybe we do need a ‘literacy test’ but if we did, it for sure would weed out a LOT of people, mostly these guys. After all, these folks worship at the feet of their leaders who claim there was NO terrorist attack under G.W. Bush. If you can simultaneously hike 9/11 on the halyard AND deny it in the same breath, you SERIOUSLY should not be allowed to vote.

Have fun in Nashville, Tea Bag People. I’ll be waiting for the acrobatic pretzel verbiage and spin.

» Posted By choicelady On February 6, 2010 @ 1:10 pm

Bill Moyers Hits Another Homerun

What I find fascinating is how he’s changed over the decades. As the press secretary for LBJ during the worst of Vietnam, most of us boomers who opposed the war did not trust him an inch. When he left the White House and politics, he used his time for real reflection and growth. Indeed – what WILL we do when this voice for sanity, morality, and good sense is retired? I hope he writes more about his moral journey. I think what he learned could be useful to us all.

» Posted By choicelady On February 6, 2010 @ 12:52 pm