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Comments Posted By choicelady

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“2016- Obama’s America” : The Right Wraps Crazy in a Rational Package

Some say – and I honestly don’t know if this is just a joke – it’s because Obama was a White Sox fan instead of a Cubs fan. I’ve heard that often enough to wonder if this man is so demented that it actually mattered????

Holy cow if that’s actually TRUE.

» Posted By choicelady On August 27, 2012 @ 9:46 pm

Wow Sue – we need to talk about Holder. I work with the DOJ and know what is going on. He’s doing a LOT. We can have this conversation via email.

» Posted By choicelady On August 27, 2012 @ 8:17 am

No Matter what Democrats Think the Presidential Race is a Toss Up Because of the Big Lies

I totally agree, and what is even worse – if there is something worse than voting upon racist fears – is that he is SO inept, as is Ryan and Bagger leadership, that they will absolutely destroy the economic system that is hanging on by a thread. When you see major business figures and GOP leaders saying what a disaster the economic “plan” is for the nation, this is seriously bad stuff. So combine their irrational fears with their utterly ignorant “economics” – all holy hell will be the result.

And no matter what the progressives think – they will NOT be the people who will “pick up the pieces”. They have less understanding of government and economics than do the Baggers!

So who will “win” the outcome of a Mitt-driven disaster is anybody’s guess.

» Posted By choicelady On August 26, 2012 @ 2:50 pm

KQ I do agree that the lies are the thing. I don’t actually worry overly much about the policy lies. Obama is quite capable of reminding people of the truth. What bothers me are the “undercurrent” lies – from the “birther” idiocy on to the meme that catastrophe is looming if Obama is re-elected and many variants on the theme. These are things that don’t actually reach the mainstream media but have a huge impact.

Case in point – the persistent drumbeat that has existed with the NRA and sovereign citizens since Bush I that the government is coming for ya. Black helicopters, UN takeover, roundups of guns, concentration camps etc. The rumors were bad enough under Clinton but are expanding in power and scope today. New book: Amerwrecka says Obama is the most dangerous man EVER and that his re-election will destroy the nation. New film – getting large attention – “2016” by RW pundit and alarmist Dinish D’Souza (himself an immigrant from East Asia) laying out the “dire” truth of Obama’s “real” background and influences.

I thought we’d heard it all back in the 90s when much of this was leveled at Clinton. Yes – it’s precisely what was charged at FDR – a “secret Jew” a “socialist” etc. – but it takes on a new power since this president is Black. We now can see the depths of the roots of fear in the nation against “the other” that influence us powerfully.

Today’s NY Times has a story that is a must read: “Ever Meek, Ever Malleable” by Frank Bruni. It is about a film people cannot accept – “Compliance” that details the horriyingly TRUE story about a series of incidents in 2004 where an authoritative voice of a man on the phone claiming to be a police officer directs other people to do actual, physical harm to totally innocent people on the premise that they stole money. And people complied going as far as sexually assaulting a woman at the direction of this voice.

This is not the first such incident but the only one I know that involves actual harm. In 1963 psychologist Stanley Milgram showed that people would inflict even lethal levels of what they believed to be electric shocks to someone they could hear but could not see. There were no actual shocks, but the subjects did not know that. Sixty-five percent of those supposedly administering shocks of almost lethal proportions, complied EVEN when they were reluctant. Why? A man in a white lab coat told them to.

Milgram was eventually sanctioned for performing the experiment and new ethical guidelines on the use of human subjects was created as a result. It does not, however, change the clear evidence that “being a good German” was not confined to Hitler’s nation. MANY people, even against their best judgment, will comply with horrific directions that cause harm.

Those who refused tended to be “outsiders” – minorities and some women in the main. The rest were not so much in refusal but were emotionally overwhelmed by the experience and could not do it.

Almost NO one challenged the “test” or went to help the “victim”. Obedience to authority – to white coated, white professional authority – was very strong.

So will we believe the Black man whose words and deeds can be verified or the White man whose promises are without credibility? Will we live by the truth – or once again, as we have in many previous circumstances, will we live by the lie?

We will see whether this nation is ready to grow up or not. The outcome will be dire if we do not.

» Posted By choicelady On August 26, 2012 @ 10:06 am

How Republicans Are Trying to Sell Dying Younger to Voters

With the changes that Obama has made (and we do hope reimbursements will rise once ACA is in place and smart people are back in charge of the budgeting) the longevity of Medicare has been vastly improved. It could further be improved by eliminating ALL of the privatization of useless expenditures, including Part D, and slightly – ever so slightly – raising the annual contributions.

Once you pull people OUT, you collapse BOTH Medicare AND private insurance as affordable. The entire premise of insurance is “everybody into the pool” and it matters not what program you’re discussing. In private insurance, with ACA gone, there will be NO guaranteed coverage for those with pre-existing conditions meaning you once again are priced out or forced out, and with Medicare crumbling there will be NO options for seniors. And who among us aging folks does not have some kind of “pre-existing condition” even if it’s pretty minor?

Medicare works. Medicare is entirely sustainable. Medicare beats private insurance hands down for those with fixed incomes. Who in their right mind would voluntarily give it up???

Oh – and that right mind issue? Medicare has mental health support. Private insurance usually does not.

» Posted By choicelady On August 17, 2012 @ 10:10 am

Ayn Rand’s Ryan and the Creed of the Elite

My grandfather knew the woman who laid the path for Ayn Rand. She was Rose Wilder Lane, daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder of “Little House” fame.

Rose was devoted to individualism for reasons that made little sense – she was pretty much a personal failure and quickly came to blame her personal losses and family hardship on government even though family setbacks were entirely the result of the 1929 Crash and earlier from railroad exploitations of the Homestead Act. She opposed the New Deal, and it was she, not Rand, who called Social Security a “Ponzi Scheme”.

Like Rand, she was paranoid, hated pretty much everyone, and thought the world was out to get her. She was a rabid anti-communist (in fairness she had seen a lot while acting as a war correspondent after WW I that brought her into contact with the upheavals in the USSR.) She was anti-racist, but her primary focus was on the power of the free market – despite how unfettered capitalism had harmed her and her family.

The cult of hyper individualism cannot be sustained. The mythology of the frontier – the John Wayne images – have no basis in fact. America was built by communities, by sharing resources and by people who cooperated against the harshness of nature and later the pressures of rapacious capitalism. Those who were harmed by unfettered giant capital yet who embraced it as the only social good continue to tie themselves in knots as reality intrudes. By exploiting her mother’s “Little House” books, she may have avoided having to take Social Security as Ayn Rand finally did. But she built her philosophy, the foundational principles of libertarianism, on a fiction about what America was and is.

And why is she less revered than Rand? Apparently she was lesbian. So much for libertarianism in personal issues.

These people are so tiresome. Reasoning from one’s own ideas is solipsism and nothing more. When your philosophy has to be shored up by myths and distortions, you are probably NOT in a position to be telling the rest of us what to think, do, and believe. So Mr. Ryan – take note of how dreadfully marginalized Ayn and Rose and Ron and Rand all are. It’s not that we are commies – it’s that we have better sense than to think we all can be Rockefellers either. Get a grip. The rich do NOT run America or the world – except into the ground.

» Posted By choicelady On August 14, 2012 @ 11:36 am

Is the Smart Money on Romney Actually Being Dumb?

Don’t know you could tell that, but you CAN go back to Robert Coles classic work, “Children of Privilege” to see how kids grow up with no sense of others, with a sense of superiority and entitlement, and with contempt for anyone who is not as rich and privileged as they. Pretty hollow people, pretty much people without any conscience, and pretty scary they are so powerful even in their youth.

» Posted By choicelady On August 9, 2012 @ 7:55 pm

Hey! That’s an insult to Porky who’s cute and nice. He’s no Rovian relative!

» Posted By choicelady On August 9, 2012 @ 7:52 pm

George W. Bush was a grifter. He had nothing at the core of his ability, so he manipulated other people to run and finance his “businesses” using Daddy’s money to attract other money. When he failed because there was no core to his “bidness” sense, he walked away and abandoned those who’d helped him. That is NOT evidence of “good business practices”.

Romney is a buccaneer, a freebooter, a pirate, a knave. He took his own meager talents to make money manipulating the tax codes and write down laws rather than actually running a business building wealth. He stripped assets from everything he touched. It was all perfectly legal, but it is also NOT evidence of good business practices because he created nothing, decreased rather than increased value, never met a payroll, never offered a good or service to the public. Stripping out value to convert to personal riches is not the work of businessmen. It’s what pirates do. Romney is a pirate.

We have to stop equating rich people with business. Hell – any decent bank robber or drug dealer can make what these guys do, but we’d not make them role models for “how to make money”. HOW you make money matters – and business people may have an insight or two, but the grifter-freebooter class? Never in a million years.

» Posted By choicelady On August 9, 2012 @ 7:49 pm

The Right Wing’s Psychotic Version of God

Hi goleafsgo-

I would often agree that the Dem representatives on air are not as aggressive as the RW pundits, but I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. As you note – Eugene Robinson obnoxious? Doesn’t compute! I think the majority of Americans are sick of the “politics of rage”. The quieter voices, ones that can also make us laugh a little at our own foibles, are catching on more and more.

We will see if anger “sells’. I have great hope that honesty and truthfulness (not “truthiness’!) will ultimately save the day. Being foreceful about the facts and the meaning behind them is NOT the same as being obnoxious. Standing firmly upon accuracy will, I hope, make voters pay attention to the candidates who really will work for THEM and not just play on voters emotions only to screw them over once in office.

We shall see if Lincoln was right about who is easily fooled.

» Posted By choicelady On July 24, 2012 @ 8:17 am

Murph – they do want a theocracy, but they for sure don’t want it to be even conservative Anglican. They want it to be Dominionist End Times Born Again Literalists in charge of church AND state.

If you don’t read anything else, read the chapter on revisionist history by the Dominionists in Jeff Sharlet’s “The Family”. The chapter is “Through the Glass Darkly”, and it’s horrifying. It was also a stand alone article in Harper’s in (I think this is right) either Dec. 2005 or 2006. It’s the scariest thing EVER, and it scared the crap out of me that I knew every single person named in that meeting on religious rewrites of US history and had tangled with them over various issues. That means this movement rests in very few but very powerful hands.

They must be stopped!

» Posted By choicelady On July 22, 2012 @ 10:18 pm

KT – that came more out of the 19th century than is remotely reasonable today. We might have been exceptional at our openness to immigrants (though people forget the hostility to so many groups) to religious diversity and to, at times, cultural inclusion. When we’re not banning people and imposing restrictive covenants on our property, we’re pretty darned inclusive. Waxes and wanes a LOT however.

Hardly any developed nation I can think of requires fealty to a national church any longer. I would say there is blowback against Muslims etc. in FRance through the banning of hijabs etc., but Muslims no longer are required (as the French mandated in Algeria) to give up their entire way of life.

So that myth when you hear it is now a code: American Exceptionalism stands for Dominionist adherence. YOU and I are NOT part of that – only the “Christians” are. Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, follower of the Tao or anyone else – we are not considered fulfillment of the AE experience. So what started as a statement of realistic pride in our Constitution now is code for “better be born again or look out”.

Bah!

» Posted By choicelady On July 22, 2012 @ 10:14 pm

He’s NOT a Christian. He’s an Old Testamentarian who loves the “rules” because he can pick out the ones that thump on YOU and ignore the ones he hates (such as sharing his wealth with the poor and making sure they do not remain poor). Jesus’ teachings don’t matter – the End Timers say they have been suspended, so we don’t need the beatitudes, etc. anymore.

It’s warped and dishonest, and it is based on assumptions of God’s loving the rich and famous that simply have been made up to justify the most pernicious of policies benefitting the rich.

To the unnamed person who claims this is inappropriate “politicizing” of the Colorado tragedy – no. Gohmert is the one doing that, and I find it disgusting, offensive to real Christians, and politically motivated narcissism at its worst. Gohmert and his ilk offer nothing to those harmed in the shooting, and they know from nothing about real Christian compassion. Our reaction is outrage based on his appropriating this tragedy to promote his own faux martyrdom. The religions right did it in 1999 with Columbine – they claimed the shootings were a reaction to “permissive abortion murder” rather than part of the spectrum of justified harm inflicted by the self-righteous against those whom they hate.

The justification of the murder of pro choice and other people, of giving a pass to Eric Rudolph, James Kopp, John Salvi, Paul Hill, and Michael Griffin, gives carte blanche to zealots telling them that it’s OK to kill anyone you don’t like. It’s the Right Wing that does the murder in America, and it’s crazy people who use that as a template for their own actions.

» Posted By choicelady On July 22, 2012 @ 10:07 pm

Indeed, AB – KQ, KT, anyone who wants both great insight into this 18-year gap (there are real scholars pursuing the issue) and how Jesus fits into the world’s great spiritual inquiries really ought to read “Lamb” by Christopher Moore. It IS being used in a handful of seminaries and is based on real, if not at all widely accepted, scholarship.

Hats off to the Blov for all his work! Would love to read it someday!

» Posted By choicelady On July 22, 2012 @ 9:58 pm

KT – yes, the Western world. That’s the premise in “Lamb” that Jesus traveled to several lands and incorporated the insights and spirituality he found there into his own understanding. “Lamb” is a bawdy and very funny but powerful book that was based on work done by some quite reviled scholars who followed the tracks of “Issa” (Muslims later name Jesus “Isa”) who went to India, Tibet, etc.

It’s Western culture and faith that may have been impacted by Jesus’ learning if all this is true. Why it would be heretical is beyond me, but this is THE cultural war being fought now by those who could not tolerate the notion that Jesus might have been influenced by Buddha, the Tao, and other ideas. How sad – it actually energizes the entire idea of faith if this proves to be true. I suppose if your faith rests on the notion of a “one and only God’s chosen” then admitting Jesus was insightful enough to value other faiths would put a damper on your absolutism indeed.

» Posted By choicelady On July 22, 2012 @ 9:53 pm

There are records of a man named Issa (Muslims name him Isa) in China, Tibet, etc. The man who pursued those records was – as you can imagine – scorned and dismissed, but…

To me this makes Jesus MORE important, not less so. What he taught is, if it derives from Tao, from Buddhism, from other ideas, is singular in its outcome, and it is designed for a Western audience and our cultural heritage. But for the narrow of belief and mind, such things are threats and scary, and so even if they are true, we have to kill the ideas and the messengers who bring them.

Sigh.

» Posted By choicelady On July 22, 2012 @ 7:55 pm

I think contemporary theologians agree that he existed and that what made him profound in our history was a wholly new message that gave massive distance from the rules of the past and opened the door for equality toward spirituality for all in the future.

That, as in AB and my fave book, “Lamb” he might have been influenced by other religions makes this all the more interesting to me. I don’t need miraculous births, resurrection, etc., to be directed by the wholeness of his teachings and the message of what he challenged us to do and be. I think most Protestants would agree – the stories are just stories, but the teachings which arise within those stories are amazing and complex and profound.

» Posted By choicelady On July 22, 2012 @ 7:52 pm

Wow – the idea that Pashtun-wali is not distant from the Hatfields and McCoys is pretty eye opening!

Yup – that pride thing. Gets you every time. And think how it spills over to gang violence and being “dissed”. This is hardly old fashioned then!

Whooo. Heavy issues here!

» Posted By choicelady On July 22, 2012 @ 7:45 pm

Fascinating! I will read more and see if the culture of honor rising from pastoralism is linked to they mythic Southern ethos. I’d be interested in how it’s also tied as a reaction to rapacious capitalism and whether it’s specific in origins to the 19th century and it’s massive upheavals against the common man.

Thanks for the link – this is all new to me!

» Posted By choicelady On July 22, 2012 @ 7:43 pm

bito – I SO agree, as I agree with you and foodchain – no more candlelight vigils, no more teddy bears and mylar balloons!

Somehow, somewhere we need to intervene BEFORE things happen.

If you wish to creep yourself out, take a look at the photo of Jared Loughner after he shot all the people in Tucson, and compare it to the photo of Holmes. And then remember today is the one-year anniversary of Breivik’s horror. And then ask – are these all REALLY unrelated?

The common denominator of extremism in Loughner’s motivation was picked up by Southern Poverty Law Center – and instantly dismissed. Breivik’s self-proclaimed white Christian supremacism was hushed right up. Will we be allowed to know about Holmes’ sources of information?

I have no answers. Every move to intercept someone prior to acting violently opens the possibility of harassment and supression of others who are truly innocent.But it’s past time we find a legal and constitutional way to at least slow them down. No more teddy bears. No more mylar balloons. No more candlelight gatherings. Enough.

» Posted By choicelady On July 22, 2012 @ 7:39 pm

Kes – you’d probably like “Rebirth of a Nation”, an excellent discussion of the many ways in which “upheaval and renewal” were the essential parts of spiritual and material regeneration in Protestantism. (Well – it used to be. We’re getting over it. We left a pretty ugly trail behind.) It’s by historican Jackson Lears, and it’s pretty readable.

» Posted By choicelady On July 22, 2012 @ 7:25 pm

KT – no one in progressive faith circles would insist on your believing in God. We have no idea what God means anymore. I have members for whom God is a deep and abiding friend. That moves me. Who’s to say it’s wrong? I have members who think God is an abstract power of good – the collective wisdom and consciousness of us all – and who’s to say that’s wrong? I have members who are totally atheist (so why are they part of a progressive Protestant organization – ’cause we are waaaay cool in advocating justice, that’s why) because the larger than life forces are, for them, entirely about human consciousness and choices. And you know what – NONE of that is wrong. All of it is correct. And no one will be able to know for sure. That is why it’s belief and not science. And there is nothing freaking wrong with seeing truth as a journey for all of us always. The hope is that we can share it with one another.

Fundies anywhere are possessed of the SAME drive to dominate, to have power over others, and I suspect FEAR that they might be wrong. All of the forces that insist they have the ONE way and everyone must submit do so, I suspect, out of worry that their belief is too fragile to be sustained in a complex, diverse society.

I agree that being an atheist may disqualify one for public office, but not in every sphere. Several Congress people who admitted it are in fact elected and re-elected by constituents who probably sigh in relief for they are the same. Pete Stark is one – and he’s doing fine, thanks. But there was a spew of hate mail from a few constitutents when he revealed he was a-theistic. I didn’t know we were electing a theological leader…

But Pete could not “play in Peoria” for sure. Pick your targets would be my advice. The world is changing, but in some regions it’s pretty much glued in place.

The future of faith may be ultimately that there is no theism, but it does not spell the end of query, the end of quest, the end of transcendence, or the end of good. It simply changes the way we go about it.

And I really hope always there will be room for the kid who wrote to God, “Dear God. Will you be in church Sunday? I hope so. I will show you my new shoes.”

There is something about that simple trust that makes me want to cry for the absolute beauty of the connectedness it reveals. I’d like us not to lose that, especially if we can grow to have it directed toward one another rather than an abstraction.

Simple trust is very much in short supply.

» Posted By choicelady On July 22, 2012 @ 7:21 pm

It’s all Paul’s fault that the message got “churchified” and distorted.

KQ and Murph – the anthropological and historical evidence shows Jesus – a human being – did exist and, different from the prophets of his time – had this new message of inclusion, of prophetic vision on compassion toward all, and of making “rules” vastly less important than care for those needing both charity and justice.

Today’s Dominionists are not Christians because they have gone so far as to say the Beatitudes and other revolutionary teachings are “suspended” or “abolished” now that “End Times” are upon us. They follow Old Testament rules that Jesus said were NOT the point – that you can follow them (e.g. circumcision) but if you adhere to Old Testament rules but continue to ignore the drive toward compassion and inclusion, you have utterly betrayed the message.

Well Paul – who never knew Jesus – did a lot of that – he was obsessed with the place of sex in human lives, with the role of women, with the real message. His was a drive to make Christ the new King – a drive it was pretty clear Jesus himself never wanted. And so the fossilization of religion began with Paul. It took hundreds of years to accomplish, but insitutionalization did triumph.

It’s been a massive fight to get free of that rule-bound, purse-lipped form of religiosity to find the way to the light which is always a quest, never a destiny. That’s where the contemporary fight lies – imposing the old rules vs. pursuing the message and enlightenment.

» Posted By choicelady On July 22, 2012 @ 2:06 pm

I would as well, bito! But I think Moyers would NOT be embarrassed except FOR Gohmert. Moyers is a Methodist minister, and compassion is his middle name. I’d love to see that, too. We don’t get a lot of human kindness in public these days.

» Posted By choicelady On July 22, 2012 @ 1:56 pm

kes – historians and sociologists and probably geologists and soothsayers have been asking why there is such a radical disconnect between the US and Canada culturally, politically, and socially.

The two key differences – the presence of a large and powerful minority culture of the French making the nation bi-lingual and therefore less likely to be SO xenophobic. More to the point there is no legacy of slavery that still divides, creates huge guilt, and around which fantasies have had to grow. There also was not a “Great Awakening” driving both the religious conservatism of the 18th and 19th centuries and the slavery justifications that grew from too much of that movement.

IMHO – I think slavery and all it bred and all that impelled it is the key issue in America that keeps us from reaching our full potential as an inclusive democracy. Canada shares a common history of abuse toward First Nations people, but because they don’t have to live the lie of the Confederacy, they have been able to apologize and begin making amends. We have nothing but defensiveness and self justification toward First Nations people and toward slaves. That baggage is huge for the US. Canada has no such chain around its collective history and heart.

» Posted By choicelady On July 22, 2012 @ 1:53 pm

KQ – one of the most bizarre spill overs from this version of Christianity propagated by Gohmert et al. is the degree to which the anti-religious Left buys into it. I have had way too many Left secular progressives tell me what I HAVE to believe if I purport to be a Christian. How nuts is that?

The denial by Harris and other atheists that anyone can engage with faith concerns and still be rational, accept science, and be complex about theology and ethics rather than rule bound is partly political. Admitting there are majorities among Abrahamic faiths who are intelligent, rational, and spiritual all at once simply annoys the hell out of fundamentalist atheists. (And yes – that is NOT a mistake – there are evangelical atheists, too.)

This absolutism from the Left has contributed its share to the bifurcation of ideas, to binary thinking, to segregation of people who, under most other circumstances would be able to have lively and impassioned conversations and use them to grow. Everwhere we are forced to take hard core stands on issues instead of using thoughtful judgment.

Those who are central to the operation of my organization refuse to be put in a box. That is infuriating for all sides, but it is important to continue to affirm the complexities of issues rather than accept Louie’s or Sam’s reductionism. Life is not black and white. It is always complicated. “Situational ethics” is the hallmark of compassion and the capacity to evaluate each person’s condition fairly. Was Jean Valjean not vastly different from Bernie Madoff?

We here at the Planet and on several other blogs are working very hard to regain nuance, retain compassion for even those with whom we disagree, affirm intellectual complexity, and promulgate human kindness. These are attributes and qualities desperately needed. It’s a struggle well worth having everywhere we go.

» Posted By choicelady On July 22, 2012 @ 10:44 am

Yes, bito – you ARE hard to find. Even I don’t know where you are, and I LIKE you! Well done, my friend. Well done!

» Posted By choicelady On July 21, 2012 @ 9:17 pm

Well AdLib, “use” often means just brandishing. But they are seriously dangerous because, for one thing, you have no clue if they have ANY idea how to use guns, and there is nothing more risky to be around than a trigger happy untrained idiot. But way too many of them do know, are perfectly happy to shoot you, and want “stand your ground” laws everywhere. There are now over 1000 of these types of groups in America. All just itching to blow someone away. In Jesus’ name, of course.

» Posted By choicelady On July 21, 2012 @ 9:15 pm

Oh I LIKE that, bito, thank you!

» Posted By choicelady On July 21, 2012 @ 7:57 pm

If he was Presbyterian, that would be enough to make him a rampant devil worshipper in Gohmert’s eyes, bito.

We mainline Protestant types are considered the Devils tools. We are not “Christians” but merely protestants. Christians are those who worship the Old Testament, obey rules (that create hell for others but never those affecting themselves), and seek tax relief for the rich because clearly God prefers the rich – the Apostles were “businessmen”, doncha see? Oh yeah – you gotta be born again (the first time is never enough) and keep Jesus in your hip pocket so you will go straight to heaven no matter what the hell you do after you’re reborn.

This kid couldn’t begin to fulfill Gohmert’s standards.

» Posted By choicelady On July 21, 2012 @ 7:53 pm