NEWS

[mokemoke]

Neil Patrick Harris has been cast as the voice of Spider-Man in the
game Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, reports website Broadway World.
The actor will lend his voice to the upcoming game that is currently
being showcased in San Diego at Comic-Con. Harris previously voiced
the character in 2003 in Spider-Man: The New Animated Series. Spider-
Man: Shattered Dimensions will be available September 7 in Xbox 360,
PlayStation 3, Wii, PC and Nintento DS versions.

[mokemoke]

PETER VICTOR is an economist who has been asking a heretical question:
Can the Earth support endless growth?

Traditionally, economists have argued that the answer is "yes." In the
1960s when Victor was earning his various degrees, a steady rise in
gross domestic product (GDP)—the combined value of our paid work and
the things we produce—was seen as crucial for raising living standards
and keeping the masses out of poverty. We grow or we languish: This
assumption has become so central to our economic identity that it
underpins almost every financial move our leaders make. It is to
economics what the Second Law of Thermodynamics is to physics.

But Victor—now a professor at York University in Toronto—felt
something tugging him in the opposite direction. Ecologists were
beginning to learn that Earth does have limits. Pump enough pollution
into a lake and you can ruin it forever; chop down enough forest and
it might never grow back. By the early '00s, the frailties of the
planet were becoming even more evident—and unsettling—as greenhouse
gases accumulated and chunks of Greenland's glaciers began breaking
off into the sea. "We've had 125,000 generations of humans, but it's
only been the last eight that have had growth," Victor told me. "So
what's considered normal? I think we live in very abnormal times. And
the signs are showing up everywhere that the burden we're placing on
the natural environment can't be borne."


In essence, endless growth puts us on the horns of a seemingly
intractable dilemma. Without it, we spiral into poverty. With it, we
deplete the planet. Either way, we lose.
Unless, of course, there's a third way. Could we have a healthy
economy that doesn't grow? Could we stave off ecological collapse by
reining in the world economy? Could we do it without starving?

Victor wanted to find out. First, he created a computer model
replicating the modern Canadian economy. Then he tweaked it so that
crucial elements—including consumption, productivity, and population—
gradually stopped growing after 2010. To stave off unemployment, he
shortened the workweek to roughly four days, creating more jobs. He
also set up higher taxes on the rich and more public services for the
poor, and imposed a carbon tax to fill government coffers and
discourage the use of fossil fuels. The upshot? It took a couple of
decades, but unemployment eventually fell to 4 percent, most people's
standards of living actually rose, and greenhouse gas emissions
decreased to well below Kyoto levels. The economy reached a "steady
state." And if the model is accurate, then something like it, say some
ecologically minded economists, may be the only way for humanity to
survive in the long term.

Victor's economic theory is radical, but he is not alone. Over the
past few decades, a handful of scholars have been laying the
intellectual groundwork for "no growth" economics, and several recent
books have proposed design principles for a healthy, nongrowing global
economy. Even some of the world's major governments, spooked by the
twin specters of global warming and the recent financial crisis, have
begun exploring this seemingly subversive idea: In 2008, French
president Nicolas Sarkozy asked Nobel economics laureate Joseph E.
Stiglitz to draft new ways to measure prosperity without relying on
GDP as the main indicator. But what would a no-growth society look
like? Would we like it? And could we build one?


Americans'median family incomes
have increased about
85%
since 1957.
Our average assessment of our
own happiness has decreased by
5%.


THE IDEA IS actually quite old. Even Adam Smith, the great-great-
grandfather of capitalism, acknowledged that it might be possible for
an economy to max out its natural resources and stop growing. In the
19th century, economist-philosopher John Stuart Mill argued that
growth was necessary only up to the point where everyone enjoyed a
reasonable standard of living. Beyond that, he said, you could achieve
a "stationary state" that would move past the "trampling, crushing,
elbowing, and treading on each other's heels" that he saw in
unfettered capitalist growth. In 1930, John Maynard Keynes likewise
predicted a period in the future—possibly as soon as his
grandchildren's time—when the economy wouldn't need to grow (pdf)
further to meet our basic needs. Man's "economic problem" would be
solved, and people would "prefer to devote our further energies to non-
economic purposes." Things like art, child rearing, and leisure.

Yet no-growth theory never took off. Politicians came to see growth as
a hedge against deficit spending and high unemployment—that political
third rail—and economists figured that extended periods of growth were
needed to lift people out of poverty. So Western governments fine-
tuned their policies—imposing lower taxes on capital gains than on
labor, for example—to promote growth by rewarding investment. The
obsession with growth was also a practical matter, since it seemed
like the most reliable way to gauge the prosperity of a country. The
methods used to measure things like happiness, for instance, aren't
objective enough to satisfy most economists. Instead, they looked to
GDP as the primary benchmark for whether things are getting better or
worse.

Classical economists didn't spend much time worrying about whether the
environment could support infinite growth. During the formative years
of industrial-age economics, after all, resources did seem limitless.
(Early California residents recalled salmon so bountiful that you
could practically cross streams on the backs of the fish.) Plus, there
was the problem of pricing: Economics doesn't account for things it
can't price, and nobody could easily put a number on the cost of, say,
polluting the Great Lakes, or driving a species to extinction by
clearcutting its forest habitat.

It didn't help that the few early economic thinkers who did worry
about exhausting the planet turned out to be a couple of centuries
premature. Beginning around 1800, Thomas Robert Malthus famously
predicted that population was growing faster than the earth could
support. But his predictions of widespread global famine never came to
pass, because technological improvements in agriculture made land far
more productive than Malthus ever dreamed. He also failed to predict
that rising prosperity would put the brakes on birth rates. (For an in-
depth look at our population conundrum, see "The Last Taboo".)

By the 20th century, growth had become not only an item of faith in
economics, but a deeply held political belief. When Franklin Roosevelt
supported grappling with Great Depression unemployment by decreasing
the workweek to 30 hours, the largest corporations fought back
fiercely. America, they argued, would be saved only by the new "gospel
of consumption." The administration would need to pursue flat-out
growth, loosening labor laws and so forth, so that the industrialists
could revive the nation. Roosevelt backed down.

THE NEXT major challenge to the pro-growth orthodoxy didn't emerge
until the early 1960s and publication of Rachel Carson's Silent
Spring. The first major book to examine the effects of pollution, it
became a best-seller, awakening the mainstream to the idea that
relentless economic activity might wreck the natural world. Alarmed by
this notion, the Club of Rome—an international group of
industrialists, scholars, diplomats, and professionals—asked a team of
MIT scientists led by systems-management expert Dennis Meadows to
determine what would happen if human society continued to grow at its
current pace.

The scientists built a computer model that looked at the main
components of world growth—including population increases and
breakthroughs that make workers more productive. Crucially, they also
calculated—as best they could—the effects of pollution and the extent
of the planet's natural resources, and put those in the model, too.
Then they hit "enter."

The results were bleak. If society didn't change tack, the scientists
determined, global prosperity would rise until some time during this
century, as growth made the good life cheaper and more widely
available. But then the cycle would start to shift disastrously into
reverse. Resources would become so scarce that they would skyrocket in
price, driving the cost of almost everything upward. Global living
standards would collapse.

Meadows and his team published their conclusions in a book titled The
Limits to Growth, and it quickly became a global best-seller, with 12
million copies sold. Soon, governments and NGOs were organizing
nervous conferences wondering if growth would kill us all.

Traditional economists went berserk. In the months following the
book's publication, they counterattacked: One labeled Limits
"alarmist." Another called it "less than pseudoscience and little more
than polemical fiction." An influential essay in Foreign Affairs
derided it as "The Computer That Printed Out Wolf." A big problem,
according to the critics, was that the model didn't include a pricing
mechanism that mimicked Adam Smith's invisible hand; if basic
resources ever became seriously scarce, they insisted, companies would
simply switch materials—or make themselves more efficient, using fewer
materials to deliver the same prosperity payload.

As economies mature, the economists noted, technology "decouples"
economic prosperity from physical stuff: Jobs become more about
providing services, which use fewer raw materials. This, they argued,
was precisely what kept America's GDP growing during the 1980s and
1990s, even as our industrial base eroded.

The Limits dispute wasn't merely scholarly squabbling; it was an
ideological battle, too. Economists had based entire disciplines and
careers on the primacy of growth—not to mention that, in the Cold War
era, suggestions that capitalism was seeding its own ecological
collapse seemed sulfurously Marxist. Some critics distorted the book's
message­—saying the authors had predicted that oil would run out by
1992. (The book had made the more nuanced point that we only had
enough known reserves to last that long, given how fast we were using
it.) A more valid criticism lay in the fact that the team's model—like
many economic models—was simplistic, and based on some pretty big
assumptions. (In a 2008 blog post, Paul Krugman derided the approach
as "garbage-in-garbage-out.") The counterattacks worked. No-growth
economics returned to the fringes.

The idea didn't die, though. Herman Daly, who served for six years as
a senior economist at the World Bank beginning in the late '80s, was
among the researchers inspired by Silent Spring. He remembers the
Carter administration having "some openness" to no-growth thinking.
"But then come the Reagan years, and oh man, forget it," he recalls.
Only a few key thinkers—Daly being the most prominent—continued to
beaver away at no-growth theory, coming to new and powerful
conclusions.

Daly thought the idea of a "decoupled" economy—one that continued to
grow while using relatively fewer raw materials—was a chimera. From
his vantage point, it seemed obvious that when nations virtualized,
shifting to service economies, they didn't stop gobbling natural
resources or even, really, curb their appetites. They merely
outsourced the problem to Asia, Africa, and South America or found
cheap new sources at home. As Daly points out, the Internet economy,
supposedly a great leap into the dematerialization of consumption,
depends on energy and computer components. And making those components
requires exotic metals, some of which are now in such short supply
that they're fueling blood-diamond-style conflicts.

In 1982, Dutch business and labor leaders struck a deal encouraging
people to work fewer hours. What followed came to be known as the
"Dutch miracle."
The growth of greenhouse gas emissions likewise demonstrates that the
free market alone cannot deal with planet-threatening pollution.
Indeed, the low price of coal-fired electricity encourages companies
to keep spewing excessive amounts of carbon dioxide rather than pursue
cleaner energy sources. "This whole idea that we could have a
constantly growing economy that doesn't use natural resources is just
crazy, and the last couple of decades have basically proven it," Daly
says.

Daly's major contribution to the field is the concept of "uneconomic"
growth—growth that actually drives living standards downward. He
believes that America has already reached the point Mill and Keynes
foresaw, where average living standards have grown as high as
necessary to vouchsafe a generally prosperous population. He points
out that the happiness of Americans, as reported by social scientists,
rose steadily after World War II as GDP grew. But by the late '50s,
that connection broke down: Although our median family incomes have
nearly doubled since 1957, the proportion of people who say they are
"very happy" has barely budged (pdf). Daly thinks we simply hit the
point of diminishing returns. Our growth turned uneconomic: GDP now
keeps growing mainly because we are producing gewgaws and services
that don't significantly add to our happiness. Or worse: It grows
because we are spending money to solve problems that growth itself
created.

One of the big problems with using GDP as a yardstick for national
well-being is that GDP rises when really bad things happen, too. If a
company leaks PCBs into a reservoir and local cancer rates spike, the
result is a flurry of economic stimuli: Doctors treat the cancers,
crews clean the reservoir, lawyers busy themselves suing and defending
the polluter. It's still growth—uneconomic growth. By the aughts, Daly
had authored four books exploring these ideas and trying to figure out
how a nongrowing economy might function.

He is no longer so isolated. As concern over climate change has
migrated from the science community to the mainstream, the number of
economists willing to question growth has slowly but surely increased.
Recent books on the subject include Peter Victor's 2008 Managing
Without Growth, and last December's Prosperity Without Growth (pdf) by
Tim Jackson, economics commissioner for the UK's Sustainable
Development Commission. (In 2004, the MIT team published a new edition
of The Limits to Growth, complete with updated versions of their
model.) Though each camp differs in the details, they broadly agree on
a set of economic principles—a road map, as it were, to a world that
doesn't grow, but doesn't collapse either.

SOME OF their conclusions are surprisingly pleasant. For example, to
move away from growth, we'll all have to work a lot less. That's
because no-growth economists agree with mainstream economists on one
big point: Technological advances make workers more productive every
year. In the mainstream view, these labor efficiencies make goods
cheaper, which leaves consumers with more disposable income—which they
invest or spend on more stuff, leading to more hiring to fulfill
demand. By contrast, the no-growthers would do things differently;
they would use those efficiencies to shorten the workweek, so that
most people would stay employed and bring home a reasonable salary. If
new technology continued to drive productivity gains, citizens in a
nongrowing economy would actually work less and less over time as they
divvied up the shrinking workload.

Handled correctly, this could bring about an explosion of free time
that could utterly transform the way we live, no-growth economists
say. It could lead to a renaissance in the arts and sciences, as well
as a reconnection with the natural world. Parents with lighter
workloads could home-school their children if they liked, or look
after sick relatives—dramatically reshaping the landscape of education
and elder care. (Some steady-state thinkers argue that these typically
unpaid forms of domestic labor ought to be included in GDP
calculations and even subsidized by the government, since they
contribute so heavily to national well-being.)

Viewed this way, a nongrowing economy could have broad political
appeal, ushering in the sort of togetherness and family values that
social conservatives celebrate. Liberals might appreciate the concept
of work sharing, which could help narrow the income gap between rich
and poor. Indeed, some countries have already edged towards this
vision. In 1982, labor unions in the Netherlands agreed to limit
demands for higher pay in exchange for policies encouraging people to
work less. Within a decade, the proportion of Dutch citizens working
part-time soared from 19 percent to 27 percent, the average workweek
fell from 30 to 27 hours, and unemployment had plummeted from 10
percent to 5 percent. (They called it "the Dutch miracle.") Work
sharing also has a pedigree in times of crisis: In Austria and
Germany, the Kurzarbeit laws let employers avoid layoffs by scaling
back people's hours and pay—10 percent less money, say, for 10 percent
less work. The government then steps in and covers the salary
difference.

The types of work available (and your take-home pay) would change
significantly in a no-growth scenario. To prevent global warming and
resource depletion, no-growthers favor heavily taxing carbon and other
pollutants. At the same time, they want the government to invest in
clean energy as part of a "Green New Deal" that also encourages
private-sector investment to move people into labor-intensive jobs—
entertainer, preventive health worker, artisan manufacturer, organic
farmer, nurse—that consume relatively few raw materials.

So working less is the fun (or at least the more doable) part. The
hard part is that we would be consuming less—probably far less.

What does that mean, exactly? Daly has suggested that Americans would
need to scale back our energy consumption to 1960s levels (assuming we
stick to a predominantly fossil-fueled economy). Victor, for his part,
points out that 1983 was the last year that "the world economy was
just at the level of the capacity of the planet to support it." Since
then, of course, world population has exploded and global resources
have dwindled even further.
Beyond these big-picture parameters, none of the experts has really
crunched the numbers to envision what daily life might be like in a no-
growth world—though they agree that it's something people had better
start thinking about.
For starters, they say, Western consumption rates would need to shrink
disproportionately so that citizens of countries like India and El
Salvador could enjoy a lifestyle upgrade. Why? The no-growthers argue
that a world with fewer yawning inequities between the rich and poor
would be more stable; but quite apart from that, their models require
stabilizing world population, and raising the economic lot of the poor
is a proven way to do that.
Given the shift in wealth needed to accomplish this, Americans would
need to turn back the clock to well before 1983; in fact, we'd be
pretty lucky even to find ourselves where we were in 1960—when the
median family made $35,994 in today's dollars (versus $61,932 in
2008).
Hardly the plenitude we're accustomed to. Still, technological
advances mean that your dollar buys a lot more than it did back then.
For a couple of bucks, you can score a pocket calculator that does
things it once took a million-dollar university machine to accomplish.
"We're better at making things now," Victor says, so our living
standards would be considerably higher than this figure suggests.
In a no-growth economy, as Daly points out, we would still consume new
stuff—just at a much slower pace. People might need to develop a
renewed appreciation for durable goods that require lots of labor to
make but ultimately use fewer resources than their throwaway
counterparts. We would also have to evolve away from "positional"
consumption—feeling good because you possess something the Joneses
don't.
So maybe hipsters won't be buying the latest iPhone every 12 months­.
Or perhaps we'll seek more fulfillment through activities with a
lighter footprint—sports, music, hiking. The vexing reality is that
the no-growth thinkers simply don't know how things would shake out.
We don't have any realistic examples to learn from, after all. In the
past, the only no-growth societies were agrarian or consisted of
hunter-gatherers.
But when you take the thought experiment a few steps further, no-
growth theory raises a host of questions about psychology and
motivation. How do you prevent people from producing and buying
needless stuff? Would innovation cease if entrepreneurs didn't think
they would sell a million widgets? Could individual companies still
grow—and if not, who would want to invest in them?
In any case, the pathway to America voluntarily reducing its
consumption levels seems obscure at best. Right-wing radio hosts
fulminate against the government merely for placing restrictions on
incandescent lightbulbs; one can imagine their reaction to scaling
back consumption to the Kennedy era. Not to mention that governments
would have to pass new tax laws, seriously tackle income inequality,
and return banking to its traditional role of raising and lending
capital (as opposed to gambling on imponderable derivatives and credit
default swaps).
There are other aspects of no-growth theory—like the population-
stabilizing businesss—that could chill partisans of any stripe. To
halt population growth, you need to reduce global fertility rates to
an average of about two children per couple. But if boosting poor
people's means doesn't defuse the population bomb, what then?
Population control by mandate is essentially totalitarianism.
So, not exactly a walk in the park. But for all the troubling
questions it raises, there's one thing you can say about steady-state
thinking: It is almost cosmically ambitious. Given how numb and static
the world's economic arguments have become, no-growth theory is a rare
beast: a vision of social change that is genuinely radical, almost jaw-
droppingly so. Even talking about such ideas, Victor admits in his
book, "could make a politician unelectable." The no-growthers regard
their job not as promoting specific policies, but widening the field
of debate. "I want to make it possible just to start to think about
growth and its role in economic thought," Victor told me.
Is the world ready, or even interested, in such unorthodox ideas? The
new crop of books hasn't provoked the sort of backlash that Limits
once did. Jackson suspects that climate change may have made us more
receptive. As he's traveled around giving talks on his book, some
politicians and businessmen have grudgingly admitted that hyping
growth has created real problems—even if they can't quite endorse the
solutions. "The response often is that my logic is faultless," Jackson
told me, "but the policy recommendations are bonkers." He also
suspects no-growth theory is still so marginal that it hasn't
attracted much attention—no best-sellers this time—but should it gain
political momentum, the attacks will come.
Daly, who's been arguing his case for four decades, has begun to think
that only the Earth itself will compel people to act. In a few
decades, if basic resources become scarce, prices spike, and climate
change is causing global conflict, no-growth thinking could arrive
whether we like it or not. "It'll be forced on us," he says. In the
end, when it comes to determining the shape of our economy, the planet
may possess the most powerful invisible hand of all.

[mokemoke]

Rich "Populists" Surge Ahead in Florida
— By Andy Kroll

| Thu Jul. 29, 2010 7:31 AM PDT

— Florida's US Senate hopeful—and billionaire—Jeff Greene.

Florida candidate Jeff Greene might succeed in buying the Democratic
nomination for US Senate after all. A new Quinnipiac poll out today
shows Greene leading his Democratic opponent, Rep. Kendrick Meek (D-
Fla.), by 10 percentage points, at 33 percent to 23 percent. Notable,
though, is the fact that while most Floridians with their minds made
up back Greene, the majority of those polled—35 percent—are undecided.
Their support is up for grabs between now and the August 10 primary,
and they will likely decide Florida's primary.

Florida's other wealthy dark horse candidate, Republican gubernatorial
candidate Rick Scott, has likewise jumped out ahead of his opponent,
state attorney general Bill McCollum. Scott leads McCollum 43 percent
to 32 percent, with 23 percent undecided, the Quinnipiac poll found.

The takeaway here: "If there was any doubt that enough money can make
a political unknown into a front-runner, the Democratic Senate primary
and the Republican primary for governor should lay them to rest," said
Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling
Institute. "Both Greene and Scott have come from nowhere to hold
double-digit leads with just a little more than three weeks until the
voting."

Talking with reporters yesterday, Meek, whose Senate bid has mostly
floundered so far, bashed Greene for his profligate spending and vast
array of investments and financial holdings. After delays, Greene
filed his financial disclosure forms earlier this week, showing
holdings topping $50 million in US Treasury bonds, scores of real
estate holdings, and even investments in Venezuela's state-owned oil
company, Petroleos De Venezuela. Meek also suggested that, should
Greene beat him in the primary, he wouldn't support the Democrat in
the general election. As Meek saw it, a general election pitting
Greene, Crist, and Rubio would be a race "of three Republican
candidates."

Read billionaire Jeff Greene's long-awaited financial disclosure
filing here:

[mokemoke]

Madonna is planning a star-filled Live Aid-style concert as a benefit
in September for her Raising Malawi charity, according to England's
Sunday Mirror. The publication quotes a source as saying, "Plans are
in place to make this the biggest fundraiser the world has ever seen.
Madonna is throwing everything into it. She knows the bigger the event
the more money will be raised." The superstar plans to to give away
60,000 free tickets to fans for the stadium concert in Blantyre,
Malawi and plans are being made to have the concert broadcast
worldwide, much like Live Aid, the 1985 fundraising concert that
raised $225 million for African famine relief at which she performed.

Madonna has adopted two children from the impoverished nation, 5-year-
old Mercy, and 4-year-old David, and is building a school there.

[mokemoke]

A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction against Arizona on
Friday to prevent the state from enforcing a law that would do away
with domestic partnership benefits for gay and lesbian state
employees.

"Contrary to the state's suggestion, it is not equitable to lay the
burden of the state budgetary shortfall on homosexual employees, any
more than on any other distinct class, such as employees with green
eyes or red hair," U.S. district judge John Sedwick wrote, according
to AZCentral.

The law was on track to go into effect on October 1. It would have
stopped coverage for gay and straight unmarried domestic partners as
well as their children.

[mokemoke]

Butch Patrick of 'The Munsters' Set to Marry Big Fan
By Mike Krumboltz, Yahoo! Buzz | Friday, July 30, 2010, 2:02 PM
You know the saying "there's someone for everyone"? Well, it's true.
Butch Patrick, 57, who played young Eddie Munster on "The Munsters" TV
show in the '60s, is getting married. And not to just anybody. He'll
tie the knot with his self-described "biggest fan," with whom he used
to correspond when they were kids.
News of the impending nuptials sent Web searches on the groom sky
high. But not even the surge of interest in all things Butch Patrick
(his signature widow's-peak hairdo is particularly popular in the
Search box) could match the level of lookups for his betrothed, Donna
McCall.

Here's the story: When Mr. Patrick starred on "The Munsters," he and
Ms. McCall would write back and forth to each other. Donna, it turns
out, was a big fan and had a massive crush on the youngest Munster.

According to My Fox Philly, years passed and the two fell out of
touch. Then, Ms. McCall, now 55, tracked him down on the Internet. The
two exchanged phone numbers, talked, and agreed to meet for the first
time at "Dracula Con II" in Philadelphia. Next thing you know, they're
engaged.

Ms. McCall is a former cheerleader with the Philadelphia Eagles, a
fact that helped contribute to the booming searches on "donna mccall
eagles" and "donna mccall cheerleader." In an article for Philly.com,
Mr. Patrick joked that while he does hear from female fans fairly
often, not many are cheerleaders.

Says the future Mrs. Munster: "My first crush was Butch Patrick. I met
him for the first time, but I feel like I've known him forever."

McCall accepted Patrick's proposal (of course), and now the two are
set to tie the knot. "It's a great love story," says Ms. McCall, a
retired pharmacist. "We're very happy together." Congratulations,
guys!


--
"You don't need eyes to see. You need vision."

[mokemoke]

"Let Them Eat Want Ads"
— By Andy Kroll

| Thu Jul. 29, 2010 8:48 AM PDT

— Delaware congressional candidate Michele Rollins. Flickr/Lou Angeli
Digital

Following in the footsteps of Nevada conservative Sharron "the
unemployed are spoiled" Angle, another GOPer, Delaware congressional
candidate Michele Rollins, recently claimed that jobless benefits make
people "continue to do nothing." Ouch. Via Greg Sargent, the
Democratic National Committee got Norris, who's running for Republican
Mike Castle's open House seat, on tape saying this:

"I know this is a bad market and a very bad time. But you just cannot
keep paying people, cannot keep taxing us to pay people to do nothing,
because they will continue to do nothing for a very long time."

Any chance of Rollins winning over the 8.5 percent of Delaware
citizens who are unemnployed just plummeted. Indeed, I'll bet that
those 37,000 or so jobless people in her state would take offense to
her claim that unemployment insurance is the same as "pay[ing] people
to do nothing" and that aid makes people "do nothing for a long time."
I'll bet most of them would tell Rollins they're sending out resumes
every week, showing up at job fairs, dropping in on employers to ask
about openings—hardly sitting around and continuing "to do nothing."

The very premise of Rollins' belief about unemployment aid—that it
makes people "continue to do nothing for a very long time"—is
factually wrong. As Harvard economist Raj Chetty has found,
unemployment aid almost always is not a disincentive to finding a new
job. And in the few instances where aid does somewhat prolong the
duration of unemployment, it's not because some mom or dad found their
check in the mail and got lazy; it's because that dad, who'd stopped
spending time with his family or keeping up on medical appointments or
going grocery shopping because he was looking for work nonstop, can
now afford to see his kids once in a while. All told, Chetty says,
general economic well-being increases when the unemployed receive aid.
(For a thorough debunking of the jobless-aid-makes-people-lazy meme, I
recommend watching Chetty's two-part presentation, here and here.)

Seeing as this bloc of jobless-aid bashers—Angle, Sen. Richard Burr (R-
NC), Wisconsin GOP Senate candidate Ron Johnson—continues to grow,
Greg Sargent has crowned them the "Let Them Eat Want Ads" Caucus. T-
shirts, anyone?

[mokemoke]

Sarah Palin's Kiss of Death?
— By David Corn

| Tue Jul. 27, 2010 9:04 AM PDT

— John Barrett/zumapress.com

Last week, Sarah Palin—via a Facebook note—endorsed former New
Hampshire Attorney General Kelly Ayotte, a Republican Senate candidate
facing two other GOPers in a September primary. Palin called Ayotte a
"mama grizzly," and Ayotte, in return, praised Palin as "a
conservative icon who has brought enormous energy to our Party."
Palin's thumb's up appeared to be a boost for Ayotte. But perhaps only
in the short term.

Polling conducted after the endorsement shows Ayotte slipping in a
match-up against Rep. Paul Hodes, a Democrat running for this Senate
seat. Public Policy Polling reports:

Kelly Ayotte's seen her appeal to moderate voters crumble in the wake
of her endorsement by Sarah Palin and her lead over Paul Hodes has
shrunk to its lowest level of any public polling in 2010—she has a
45-42 advantage over him, down from 47-40 in an April PPP poll.

There's not much doubt that the shift in the race is all about Ayotte.
Hodes' favorability numbers have seen little change over the last
three months.

The polling firm points to Palin's seal of approval as the probable
cause of Ayotte's decline.

The Palin endorsement may well be playing a role in this. 51% of
voters in the state say they're less likely to back a Palin endorsed
candidate to only 26% who say that support would make them more
inclined to vote for someone. Among moderates that widens to 65% who
say a Palin endorsement would turn them off to 14% who it would make
more supportive.

Ayotte's favorability with moderate voters (the largest group of
Granite State voters) has plummeted from +5 at 32/27 to -19 at 27/46.
And Hodes' numbers haven't improved at all vs. the other potential GOP
candidates—just against Palin-endorsed Ayotte. PPP notes that the
Palin endorsement has "certainly helped" Ayotte in the Republican
primary, in which she is already the favorite. But the Palin embrace
will no doubt be an issue in the general election and, most likely, a
liability for Ayotte , if she wins the GOP nomination. And if that
does happen, Ayotte might then want to send Palin into hibernation.

Democrats, meanwhile, are rejoicing at PPP's findings. The Democratic
National Committee sent out an email this morning about the poll. Its
subject line was "Why Sarah Palin endorsements are awesome."

(Last week, Nick Baumann predicted that Palin might be a problem for
Ayotte.)

[mokemoke]

Macomb Township, Michigan state senate candidate Kim Meltzer is facing
a defamation lawsuit for the antigay political smear ad she created to
deface Leon Drolet in the Republican primary.

In her latest mailing, Meltzer's campaign sent out a mailing depicting
a rainbow flag and two male figures aholding hands beneath Drolet's
face, in an attempt to paint him as an extreme liberal.

“It’s all appalling, but the fact that she claims I want to legalize
public sex in restrooms, and introduce legislation to do that, is a
flat-out bold-faced lie. Completely unsupportable and disgusting,”
Drolet says.

In 2003, Drolet voted for a bill to overturn laws banning swearing and
gay sex.

The primary is Tuesday.

[mokemoke]

An Anti-War Movement That Won’t Cave to Obama or Israel
Wed, 07/28/2010 - 13:13 — Glen Ford


by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

For at least two years, there has been no anti-war “movement” worthy
of the term – one that calls the aggressor by his name (starts with
“O”) and gives no pass to apartheid Israel. There’s good reason to
believe a corner has been turned, with last weekend’s anti-war
conference in Albany, New York.



An Anti-War Movement That Won’t Cave to Obama or Israel

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

“U.S. aid to Israel was the most contentious issue to arise at the
conference.”

A renewed anti-war movement is under construction, one that breaks
decisively from the Cult of Obama, demands an end to all U.S. aid to
the Israeli “apartheid regime,” and calls for “immediate, total and
unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. troops, mercenaries and
contractors from Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, and the immediate
closing of all U.S. bases in those countries.”

Nearly 600 delegates – twice the initial expectations – took part in
the United National Anti-War Conference, held at the Crown Plaza Hotel
in Albany, New York, July 23 through 25. The mission: to rescue the
anti-war movement from the rubble of its collapse with the ascent of
Black Democrat Barack Obama to the presidency.

As George Bush exited the White House, the phony anti-war forces –
people and groups that only oppose Republican wars – exited the
movement. Activist and author David Swanson’s list of those that have
made their peace with Obama’s wars include: Campaign for America's
Future, the Center for American Progress, DailyKos, Democracy for
America, Moveon.org, National Organization for Women, Open Left, the
Out of Iraq Caucus, the Progressive Caucus, the Network of Spiritual
Progressives, Talking Points Memo, True Majority.

Black America, historically the most anti-war of all major U.S.
demographic groups, remains emotionally invested in the First Black
President – if not in his foreign and domestic policies. The great
confusion in African American ranks over the true nature of Obama’s
policies represents a huge problem for the Left – especially the Black
Left. Yet, that façade, too, will crumble under the weight of events.

Organized labor’s reflexive instinct is also to back the Democrat in
office, even when that means backing into a knife. But the reality of
Obama, Inc. is by now inescapable to every honest unionist – and the
anti-war movement only has need of the honest ones.

“The reality of Obama, Inc. is by now inescapable to every honest
unionist.”

The conference voted to support the October 2 March for Jobs in
Washington, DC, sponsored by the NAACP and both feuding wings of
organized labor, as well as Rev. Jesse Jackson’s joint venture with
the United Auto Workers for an August 28 mobilization in Detroit.

This writer pressed union-affiliated attendees on whether, in the end,
labor and the NAACP will turn the October 2 march into a “rah-rah”
session for Obama and the Democrats? “Not this time,” said a Black
labor activist from upstate New York.

We shall see. Conference organizers were determined that there be a
large and vocal anti-war contingent to the October 2 action. Leaders
of the Black is Back Coalition say they intend to take part, as well,
unless march organizers impose political conditions that make it
impossible.

In the longer run, a “bi-coastal mass spring mobilization” is planned
for New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles on April 9, 2011.
Organizers envision actions in the interim that build momentum to the
big events, when once again the anti-war movement might put many
thousands of peaceful “boots on the ground.” To accomplish this, the
scope of organizing must be widened. “A prime component of these
mobilizations will be major efforts to include broad new forces from
youth to veterans to trade unionists to civil and human rights groups
to the Arab, Muslim and other oppressed communities to environmental
organizations, social justice and faith-based groups.”

In addition to the demand for unconditional withdrawal from
Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, the Conference called for:

“The allocation of the trillions spent on wars and corporate bailouts
to massive programs for jobs, education, health care, housing and the
environment. Compensation to be paid to the peoples whose countries
the U.S. attacked and occupied for the loss of lives and massive
destruction they suffered,” and

“Reverse and end all foreclosures. Stop the government attacks on
trade unions, civil and democratic rights, and immigrant communities.”

Conferees endorsed a flurry of other “action plans,” from opposition
to U.S. military intervention in Africa, to “no war or sanctions
against Iran,” to the “immediate freedom” of imprisoned human rights
lawyer Lynn Stewart.

“Conference organizers were determined that there be a large and vocal
anti-war contingent to the October 2 action.”

U.S. aid to Israel was the most contentious issue to arise at the
conference. Israel supporters employed delaying tactics in an attempt
to derail the Palestine Solidarity Caucus’s proposal for an “end to
U.S. aid to Israel – military, economic, and diplomatic. End U.S.
support for the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the blockade of
Gaza.” Opponents claimed inclusion of the resolution would make it
impossible for them to recruit labor activists into anti-war ranks –
as if Zionists rule everywhere in the House of Labor. After a series
of dilatory maneuvers by the pro-Israel faction, the Conference
overwhelming endorsed the Palestine Solidarity Caucus position.

Perhaps the most poignant moment of the weekend came when Ralph
Poynter read a letter from his companion in struggle for nearly fifty
years, Lynne Stewart, who had been part of the conference steering
committee. “I have been out of the steering apparatus due to my
unavailability,” she wrote. “Serve the people with honesty, kindness
and respect. Love the struggle.”

[mokemoke]

Why Didn’t You Black Folks Build Some Towns or Something?
July 29, 2010 by Anna Renee



Over the course of our history in the Americas, black folks have gone
through some stuff! Our struggle here began in slavery. We all know
that North America for sure was founded on our black backs. Wall
Street was founded on the auction block of slavery. In spite of the
unspeakable brutality of that institution of slavery, and what it has
done to black people, the spirit of the black man and the black woman
has never failed. In spite of all that was stolen from us, it’s that
black spirit that continues to rise and fight for our lives, our
freedom, our empowerment! We some baaaad folks, y’all!
We’ve heard about those enslaved black people who escaped from
slavery. We know about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. We
know black folks tried to and succeeded in escaping time and time
again. But where did they escape to? How far did black people take the
ideal of self determination? Did we build any towns? Well we know
about the black town of Eatonville, Florida, the home of novelist Zora
Neale Hurston, and Chicago, Illinois being founded by Jean Baptiste
Pointe DuSable, a black haitian man. But are there any other towns and
settlements? Well my friends, I have some good news for you! Despite
every kind of obstacle set before us black folks, we actually have
founded many more towns and settlements and that part of our history
is slowly being forgotten. But this is the Black Culture Blog, so let
me give a hand to keeping some of this rich, lush history alive!
I have unearthed a book by Brother Morris Turner, III, who has
dedicated himself to researching this very important part of our black
history and culture. The title of this book is America’s Black Towns
and Settlements, a historical reference guide, which names all the
black towns and settlements that HE was able to unearth. Here’s a
Youtube piece of one of his visits to the natural splendor of a black
town in Vermont. (It’s worth it to listen to the entire video. The
roosters are screaming over Mr. Turner’s voice, but focus in on him.
He imparts a lot of important information and make a connection to the
Gullah Geechee Nation as well)


A very famous black town in my neck of the woods is called
Allensworth, which is in the San Joaquin Valley of California, a town
which is still in existence to this day. Founded by Colonel Allen
Allensworth, a great man, a Buffalo Soldier, an ex-slave and the
highest ranking black military officer of his time, who served as a
chaplin and was responsible for the moral uplift of the black troops,
who fought in the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and in the
Philippines prior to being stationed at both Angel Island and the
Presidio in San Francisco, (whew!) went looking for self
determination.
He was a man whose philosophy was “self help” and independence from
white people. So he set out and founded the town of Allensworth in a
desolate area, midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles in 1908.
In this town of self determination, a school was erected along with a
church, because brother Allensworth was about moral and spiritual
integrity. This town became an important shipping point along the
Southern Pacific Railroad with trains stopping there eight times a
day. The people of Allensworth manufactured products in their area
such as alfalfa, sugar beets and poultry, and those products were
marketed in the surrounding communities.
The townsite covered almost 900 acres and included grain warehouses, a
cement manufacturing firm, a general store and a ten room hotel. When
the population grew, a bond was passed which raised $5000 for a new
school building. The town formed the Allensworth Rural Water Co, that
had a very generous supply of water from three artesian wells.
Allensworth was all good up until 1914, when the Founder, who was
visiting in another city near Los Angeles, was run over as he stepped
off the streetcar, by a mysterious motorcyclist. The motorcyclist made
sure Colonel Allensworth was dead by turning around to run him over a
second time. Of course no charges were brought against the murderer.
Times became hard. The people of the town had not only the death of
their founder to deal with, but their prized artesian water wells were
later found to be contaminated with arsenic! This forced the community
to have to purchase water from surrounding towns, and haul it back to
Allensworth. There’s no conclusive evidence of it, but there was open
speculation that certain jealous characters of the neighboring towns
poisoned their wells. So hard times certainly followed. Many years
later, in 1976 the town of Allensworth became a recognized historic
site and state park, the only one in the entire US dedicated to
African Americans.
I thank God for brother Morris Turner III who put so much work and
effort and love into researching and finding out and presenting to us
these wonderful historical truths of black self determination in the
face of brutal hardships. We have ALWAYS been able to overcome every
obstacle put before us. It’s nothing short of amazing that our people,
barely a generation away from slavery was able to set out and found
towns for ourselves so as to be able to live in peace and harmony by
the work of our own hands, with pride and love. We sure are
beautiful!!

PS: I got a couple of very interesting comments from The Friends of
Allensworth San Diego Chapter 12, and someone named Buffalo Soldier 9,
giving me links and more information and asking me to talk about
“Black Wall Street”! I’ll do some research on it someday soon!




__._,_.___

[mokemoke]

Will California Legalize Pot?
With only a few months to go until the election, the campaign to
legalize marijuana in California has only $50,000 in cash on hand. The
question now is: How can it win?
July 30, 2010 |




Today, at least a third of Americans say they've tried smoking weed.
Is it possible that after half a century of increasingly mainstreamed
pot use the public is ready for marijuana to be legal? We may soon
find out.
California has long been on the front lines of marijuana policy. In
1996, it became the first state to legalize medical cannabis. This
year, the Tax Cannabis initiative -- now officially baptized
Proposition 19 -- may very well be the best chance any state has ever
had at legalizing the consumption, possession and cultivation of
marijuana for anyone over 21.

Drug reformers are particularly excited about Prop. 19's prospects
because the pot reform stars seem to be as aligned as ever here.
Consider the current state of marijuana in California. For one,
medical cannabis has normalized the idea of pot as a legitimate
industry to many of the state's residents. At least 300,000 and as
many as 400,000 Californians are card-carrying medical marijuana
patients, and the medical pot industry brings in around $100 million
in sales tax revenue each year, according to Americans for Safe
Access.

Add to this the fact that at least 3.3 million Californians consume
cannabis each year, a figure culled from a presumably low-ball federal
estimate, meaning the actual incidence rate may be much higher. In
other words, at least one in 10 Californians uses pot every year.
Plus, 38 percent of Californians say they have tried pot at least once
in their lifetimes.

Next, tie the widespread use of this mild substance -- which has
proven to be less harmful than alcohol and cigarettes -- to the
growing slice of law enforcement resources that are dedicated to
fighting non-violent crimes associated with marijuana. Since 2005,
marijuana arrests have increased nearly 30 percent, totaling 78,000 in
2008, according to figures from the state's Office of the Attorney
General. Of those arrests, four out of five were for simple
possession. Not surprisingly, this overzealous drug war
disproportionately affects minorities and young people.

All of this in the face of the state's massive debt -- $19 billion for
the month-old fiscal year -- which is closing schools, laying off
police officers, and shutting down key public services while cash-
strapped taxpayers foot the bill for a failed, senseless drug policy.
With little money in state and local municipalities' coffers,
criminalizing marijuana seems a senseless waste of the state's largest
cash crop. In all, marijuana prohibition is both an economic and a
social issue -- and Prop. 19 hopes to convince California voters that
Nov. 2 is the time to end it.

The midterm elections are just over three months away, and Prop. 19 is
seen by many observers as one of the ballot items most likely to
galvanize voters. As the people behind Prop. 19 prepare to launch
their ground campaign in earnest, it's clear the initiative will be
under a magnifying glass every step of the way.

The question on everyone's mind is: How do they win?

The reality of the matter is that Prop. 19 has the deck stacked
against it simply because there is no precedent for a voting public of
a state to endorse removing all civil and criminal penalties
associated with adult marijuana use. All preceding efforts have met
sad ends: A 1972 measure also called Prop. 19 failed in California;
more recently, attempts in Alaska, Colorado and Nevada were also
rejected. In the face of decades of federal and state prohibition, it
is still much easier to vote no than yes, even in the face of
convincing arguments to do otherwise.

"There is no template available that shows what you need to do to
achieve victory," says Paul Armentano, deputy director of the National
Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

Where Prop. 19 stands today

For the past few months since qualifying for the ballot, Prop. 19 has
focused on building up its online support, fund-raising, staffing the
Oakland office, building a coalition, and setting up a network of
volunteers throughout the state who will soon power the ground force.
Over this time, the mainstream media's coverage of the campaign has
mostly focused on poll numbers.

Polls in April and May found support at 56 percent and 51 percent,
respectively. A SurveyUSA poll released this month shows support at 50
percent, 10 points over those against it. A new Public Policy Polling
poll found the divide to be even greater, with 52 percent supporting
and 36 percent nixing it -- and the campaign says these results are
more consistent with its internal polling. But another poll also
released this month, the Field poll, showed that more people oppose
the initiative than support it, at 48 to 44 percent. (This contrasts
with the last Field poll, conducted over a year ago, which found
support at 56 percent.) No matter which numbers you're looking at
though, 50, 52 or even 56 percent isn't all that comforting. It's one
thing to say yes to a pollster, it's quite another thing to get out
and vote that way.

"Progressive drug reform on the California ballot needs to be polling
in the high 50s or low 60s," says Stephen Gutwillig, the California
director at the Drug Policy Alliance. "This is because they generally
have nowhere to go but down because of the fear-mongering that usually
occurs at the hands of the law enforcement lobby which tends to not
need as much money to push their regressive fear-based messages."

Mauricio Garzon, the even-tempered campaign coordinator, admits polls
could be better but is sure that something even more important is
happening. "We're seeing a legitimization of this issue, politically.
There was a time when this was impossible," he says. "You reflect on
this and you see a shift in public sentiment and this is what this
campaign has always been about. Making Americans understand how
important this issue is. It's a real issue and the existing framework
has been devastating to our society."

Indeed, Tax Cannabis has always been framed as a public education
campaign. In this sense, at least, Prop. 19 is really succeeding --
after all, a lot of people are talking about it.

Prop. 19's newly hired field director, James Rigdon, thinks marijuana
legalization has a lot more going for it than other issues. "There's
something appealing about this for everyone -- helping the economy,
incarceration issues, personal freedom ideas, public safety concerns.
People from all walks are willing to come out and support us," Rigdon
tells me. "Our supporters aren't just Cheech and Chong. They're
everyday people who support this because it's good for everybody."

The multi-layered appeal to ending marijuana prohibition even has some
expert election observers believing that ballot initiatives legalizing
cannabis may be the Democrats' answer to the gay marriage bans that
drive Republican voters to the polling places. That theory remains to
be tested in November, but what is certain now is that the far-
reaching benefits that come with legalizing the marijuana industry in
California have attracted a broad coalition of supporters of all
stripes.

In addition to all the major players in the drug reform community,
groups ranging from the NAACP to the ACLU have also signed up as
official endorsers of Prop. 19. So, too, have numerous labor unions,
faith leaders, law enforcement officers, elected officials, and
doctors and physicians. According to Gutwillig, a coalition of
organized labor, civil rights organizations, and the drug policy
reform movement "has not existed before and could be game-changing."

As the coalition of Prop. 19 supporters grows, so does the mainstream
media's coverage. Gutwillig believes Prop. 19 has done a "really good
job of defining the way the media is covering it; coming up with new
and interesting ways of talking about the issue. They are talking
about the failures of prohibition without seeming to encourage greater
consumption of marijuana. And the argument that is increasingly made
is that this is not playing out as criminal justice reform, that this
is playing out as a social or cultural or economic issue. The framing
is different."

Here Gutwillig is referring to the last statewide drug initiative --
Prop. 5 in 2008. That failed measure was framed as a criminal justice
issue and sought to emphasize treatment and rehabilitation for drug
offenders over harsh criminal consequences. So the Prop. 19 campaign's
hope may be to learn from the lesson of Prop. 5 and skew away from
criminal justice arguments. But there could be a downside to this
approach.

"Prop. 19 is talking about this as more of a jobs, revenue issue,
which plays well for the mainstream media which likes to play up the
fiscal side of it because it ties into larger stories, but a more
sinister interpretation may be that it allows the media to talk about
marijuana reform without talking about marijuana reform," Gutwillig
says.

This is tied to another worry Gutwillig observes. "The research and
focus groups I've seen see the whole revenue thing as gravy -- it
matters to people who've already made up their minds about supporting
Prop. 19. But it's not the reason someone is going to come off the
fence. [Talking about revenue] doesn't resonate with voters, nor
should it," he says. "But what does resonate is the other side of the
fiscal coin, which is the opportunity to save and redirect scarce law
enforcement resources. That message makes a big difference. People's
instincts tell them there is something fundamentally hypocritical
about marijuana prohibition."

Prop. 19 hopes to appeal to the instincts of Californians who believe
the drug war has failed.

The campaign's strategy

As Prop. 19 prepares to fan out across California, it has set two very
important, realistic goals. The first is that it will not try to
change the minds of those who believe marijuana prohibition has been a
success. This means that the campaign is out to mobilize those who
already support Prop. 19, and make sure they show up to vote; it also
means they will focus on convincing those who have some sense that
criminalizing pot has done more harm than good that this measure is
the right solution to this policy problem. The campaign expects the
swing demographics to be comprised mostly of blacks, Latinos, mothers,
and young people.

In its second key strategic move, the campaign will especially focus
on the largest areas of voters most likely to vote in midterm
elections -- Los Angeles County, Orange County, the Bay Area, the
Inland Empire, and the Central Valley -- rather than spread itself too
thin across the entire state.

As the campaign prepares to begin its on-the-ground outreach over
these next few weeks, the question of financing arises. After all, big
dollars are behind most successful campaigns.

While Tax Cannabis premiered with a lot of fanfare about its financial
backing, the situation is somewhat different now. Richard Lee, the pot
entrepreneur and co-proponent of the initiative, injected $1.4 million
of his money -- via Oaksterdam University -- to ensure its passage.
While fund-raising has continued at a steady clip, the latest public
filings show that most of the larger cash infusions still come from
S.K. Seymour, LLC, Lee's umbrella organization that runs Oaksterdam
and other cannabis-related businesses. Despite this, Prop. 19 is
committed to raising small amounts from many people, and the filings
show many small-dollar donations have started to flow in. According to
Lee, the campaign has raised $130,000 online and most of these
donations were under $250.

Yet Lee admits that "everything is on track, except fund-raising." The
campaign currently has $50,000 in cash. While the campaign has talked
to the major funders of other marijuana measures throughout the
country -- people like Peter Louis, George Soros, Bob Wilson, and John
Sperling -- none have committed funding yet. All of these men
contributed between $1 million and $2 million each to Prop. 5, the
failed 2008 measure that sought to reform sentencing for drug-related
offenses. A big question remains unanswered: Why are these Prop. 5
donors not funding Prop. 19?

Their non-involvement may be why Garzon says the campaign "can
certainly do a lot with a little." Prop. 19 has not yet planned for a
mass media campaign, which costs a lot of money. For example, a
statewide TV ad buy for a political candidate in California costs
about $1 million per week. That's a daunting figure and so Tax
Cannabis will instead be stressing one-to-one public education, which
will take the form of door-to-door canvassing, phone banks and town-
hall meetings.

"We don't think we need [a mass media campaign] to win. It depends on
our budget -- if we have room for it, we will," Garzon says. "People
are interested enough that we find the person-to-person interaction to
be very successful. When you answer their questions, they're very
supportive."

The Prop. 19 campaign will rely heavily on volunteers. Though the
campaign hasn't yet put out an official appeal, 2,600 people have
already signed on. Many thousands more are expected to comprise the
complete army of volunteers, who will have to learn how to craft
talking points that appeal to different kinds of on-the-fence
Californians.

Already the campaign has some idea of what those talking points will
be. A town-hall meeting in Mendocino County gave Garzon an opportunity
to see what resonated with voters there. The event was billed as "Life
After Legalization," and speakers framed the passing of Prop. 19 as an
opportunity to become "the Napa Valley of cannabis," Garzon said. By
the end of the meeting, a union man had inspired attendees to chant,
"Organize! Organize!"

For Jerome Urías-Cantú, a law student at Stanford, the key issue is
border safety. In a fund-raising appeal sent out to Prop. 19's mailing
list, he wrote about a cousin who lived in Ciudad Juárez, just miles
from the California border, who was killed in the escalating drug war
in Mexico. "Oscar had nothing to do with the drug trade, but he was
shot and killed nonetheless," Urías-Cantú wrote. "That's why I support
the reform of California's cannabis laws. The measure will prevent
needless deaths by reducing the profitability of the drug trade and
putting the violent drug cartels out of business." (The Office of
National Drug Control Policy estimates that Mexican cartels receive 60
percent of their revenue from marijuana sales in the United States.)

Lance Rogers, a volunteer regional director based in San Diego,
believes that besides the border issues, people in his area will be
interested in economic arguments for Prop. 19. "San Diego -- like the
state -- is in a major fiscal crisis. We have an extreme budget
deficit due to pension problems," he says.

And as a criminal defense attorney, Rogers has met others like him who
"see the effects of an overly punitive criminal justice system on
marijuana offenses. I see people go to prison for five or seven years
for sales of less than an ounce of marijuana. Granted, these are folks
who have prior felonies or other things going on, but the fact is that
this person is going to prison for $75,000 a year for doing what Prop.
19 would legalize."

Priscilla A. Pyrk, the regional director for the Inland Empire and the
owner of a medical marijuana collective, thinks dispelling stereotypes
about cannabis consumers and entrepreneurs will be important, too.
"The cannabis industry needs to revamp how people perceive this
industry and its users," Pyrk says. "That's why it's great that we
have a lot of non-traditional cannabis consumers coming on board.
They're coming out of the closet! Doctors, lawyers, businessmen are
coming out and standing up for the initiative."

Women, who were key in the effort to legalize medical cannabis and
have more generally helped mainstream pot use, will also be targeted.
According to Richard Lee, soccer moms in particular are a big
undecided group. "We have to educate them about how Prop. 19 will
protect their kids better than the status quo," he says. "The current
system draws kids into selling and buying cannabis. If alcohol was
illegal, it'd be the same way. There is a forbidden fruit attraction."

Stephen Gutwillig agrees: "The campaign must validate moms' instinct
that there is something whack about marijuana prohibition. The
instinct that marijuana is more like tobacco and alcohol than not, and
safer -- which it is -- and that there's no reason that we shouldn't
be trying to regulate marijuana. They know we're wasting a lot of law
enforcement resources on this futile attempt to enforce these
unenforceable laws."

As Prop. 19 works on the ground, it will count on the field support of
three organizations. One is NORML, the National Organization for the
Reform of Marijuana Laws; the second is the Courage Campaign, a
progressive advocacy group with 800,000 members. Arisha Hatch, the
national field director at Courage, estimates that about 500 to 1,000
of its volunteers will be highly involved with the Prop. 19 campaign's
get-out-the-vote work, which she sees as "the biggest challenge [Prop.
19] will face. We need to get people to actually speak on message and
in a responsible way about what taxing and regulating cannabis will be
like.

"Marijuana legalization is the only thing on the ballot that can
replicate that turnout. I see it as an extremely important issue for
progressives, which is why Courage has made it the initiative we're
supporting this cycle," Hatch says.

The final group supporting Prop. 19 on the ground is Students for
Sensible Drug Policy, which will manage the campus outreach and focus
on bringing out the youth vote.

Aaron Houston, the executive director of SSDP, says he is committed to
proving the conventional wisdom about youth voters and midterm
elections wrong: "What we're going to change with this election is
demonstrate that marijuana on the ballot motivates young people to
turn out and vote. Opportunistic politicians will find out that
marijuana increases youth turnout and that speaking out against drug
reform is to their peril."

Scoping out the opposition

Prop. 19's most vocal opposition comes from the top. Gubernatorial
candidates Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown don't see eye to eye on much,
but they both seem to have decided it's politically expedient to
oppose the measure. Senator Dianne Feinstein also recently came out
against it.

"I was at a party with doctors who said they used to light up with
Jerry Brown," says Garzon. "But you know, the reality is that we know
that politicians aren't going to lead on this issue."

Feinstein, for her part, refers to a Rand study released this month to
justify the idea that "if Proposition 19 passes, the only thing that
would be certain is drug use would go up and the state of California
would run afoul of federal law and risk losing federal funding."

But if you read the actual study, you learn that Rand is still rather
conservative in its ability to prognosticate much: "The proposed
legislation in California would create a large change in policy. As a
result it is uncertain how useful these studies are for making
projections about marijuana legalization."

Yet even a rather staid study like Rand still sees positives such as
tax revenues, which the state has projected could be as high as $1.4
billion annually. As for Feinstein's claim, there is no reason to
believe Prop. 5 would affect federal funding (which Feinstein will
fight for anyway). As Richard Lee says, similar arguments were used
against Prop. 215 but the medical marijuana measure has not resulted
in less funding coming to California. And regarding the senator's
assertion that drug use will go up, the opposite may be true. Other
studies show that marijuana use among youth has actually dropped since
medical marijuana was legalized in California. There was a 47 percent
decline among the state's ninth-graders from 1996 to 2006.

"Sen. Feinstein opposed Prop. 215 although she has now come out in
favor of medical marijuana. It's political math," Lee says. "With
Prop. 215, all the major politicians and statewide candidates were
against it but it passed with 56 percent of the vote. So if you look
at the polling, the voters don't trust politicians on this."

Currently, the No on Prop. 19 movement seems relegated to a few small
groups. The most well-funded one is called Public Safety First, which
claims endorsements from the California Chamber of Commerce, the
California Police Chiefs Association and the California Narcotic
Officers' Association. The group is headed by John Lovell, the
lobbyist for the police and narcotic officers' unions. Public Safety
First has under 250 fans on Facebook -- compared to the over 120,000
Prop. 19 has -- and James Rigdon, the Prop. 19 field director, says at
least 20 of them are fans of Prop. 19, too. "Some of them even work
here," he laughs.

A couple volunteer opposition groups have cropped up, too. Citizens
Against Legalizing Marijuana seems to have little if any money behind
it. Another such group, Nip It In The Bud, boasts little more than a
Web site, which depicts a skeleton holding a scroll reading: "Fix
California with pot??? NOT!"

Prop. 19 seems more concerned with opposition within the movement than
without it.

"From our own side there has been some fragmentation as there is in
all social movements. There's just different people with different
ideas," Garzon says. "We're open to criticism but we're trying to do
things responsibly. We can't please everybody but we've tried to craft
something that makes sense to a mother in Los Angeles, too. This isn't
ultimately about the right to smoke, it's about taxes in our
communities, a failed system, a public health issue."

I told Garzon that a few marijuana activists had written me to say
they were upset about the local control aspect of Prop. 19 -- counties
can decide whether to legalize the sale of cannabis. One had called
the regulatory framework confusing and a bureaucratic disaster waiting
to happen.

"We're not instituting a state government aspect, true. But it'll come
down to who do you want to give your tax dollars to? Local control is
what we need on so many issues but in particular this issue," he said.
Local governments can decide "ideologically, culturally, operationally
what is right for them. What it does is allows the best of the models
to bubble up to the top. If say, one place does it horribly wrong,
then Pasadena can wait and see how Davis does it. Local governments
can decide not to pass it this year -- but those who don't pass on the
opportunity will take advantage of that extra revenue."

Priscilla A. Pyrk, the Prop. 19 organizer in the Inland Empire, also
hopes to assuage some opposition from within the medical cannabis
community: "Prop. 19 does not have anything to do with the medical
side of cannabis. Prop. 215 stays intact. This can help medical
cannabis patients by alleviating any of the judgment that is currently
focused on them."

Not much time left


How do they win? No one can say for sure, but the fund-raising
strategy will be of paramount importance so the get-out-the-vote game
can succeed. This midterm election cycle, the Prop. 19 campaign has to
convince voters that marijuana prohibition hits on many important
issues vital to their lives.

Going forward, the campaign will be heavily publicizing a recently
released report from the non-partisan Legislative Analyst's Office
which finds that Prop. 19 would put police priorities where they
belong, generate hundreds of millions in revenue and protect the
public.

The campaign needs to hammer in several points to stand a chance. Its
messaging has to emphasize how marijuana prohibition has been a
costly, senseless disaster. The drug war has strengthened and enriched
violent cartels while law enforcement resources have been wasted on
arresting non-violent marijuana users, ruining lives and siphoning
from key public services that are sorely needed by all Californians.
Prop. 19 must also make clear that taxing and regulating pot will make
it harder for minors to access pot -- and that medical marijuana has
proven that increased regulation decreases use by kids. Finally, the
campaign ought to appeal to voters by reminding them that this
initiative is their opportunity to take a stand where politicians have
been reluctant to act. In other words, the time is now.

If the campaign is successful, Californians will wake up on Nov. 3 to
find that marijuana prohibition is finally over. If it isn't, at least
we will be a step closer to that possibility.

Daniela Perdomo is a staff writer and editor at AlterNet.



__._,_.___

[mokemoke]

FBI Admits Investigating Howard Zinn for Criticizing Bureau
FBI files show bureau may have tried to get Zinn fired from Boston
University for his political opinions
July 30, 2010 |

Those who knew of the dissident historian Howard Zinn would not be
surprised that J. Edgar Hoover's FBI kept tabs on him for decades
during the Cold War.
But in a release of documents pertaining to Zinn, the bureau admitted
that one of its investigations into the left-wing academic was
prompted not by suspicion of criminal activity, but by Zinn's
criticism of the FBI's record on civil rights investigations.

"In 1949, the FBI opened a domestic security investigation on Zinn,"
the bureau states. "The Bureau noted Zinn’s activities in what were
called Communist Front Groups and received informant reports that Zinn
was an active member of the CPUSA; Zinn denied ever being a member
when he was questioned by agents in the 1950s.

"In the 1960s, the Bureau took another look at Zinn on account of his
criticism of the FBI’s civil rights investigations."

On Friday, the FBI released a 243-page file on Zinn, who died in
January at age 87. The release describes the historian as "radical."
The documents show the bureau taking an active interest in Zinn since
the late 1940s, when he was a student at New York University. The
interest continued through the 1950s, as Zinn worked on his PhD at
Columbia University.

When the FBI again took an interest in Zinn in the 1960s, documents
show the bureau evidently tried to have the historian fired from his
job as professor at Boston University.

In a document from the Boston FBI office (see PDF file here), an FBI
"source," whose name was redacted from the publicly released
documents, was quoted as being outraged over Zinn's comment at a
protest that the US had become a "police state" and that prosecutions
of Black Panther Party members were creating "political prisoners."

The bureau's Boston office then indicated it wanted to help the source
in his or her campaign to unseat Zinn. "[The] Boston [office] proposes
under captioned program with Bureau permission to furnish [name
redacted] with public source data regarding Zinn's numerous anti-war
activities ... in an effort to back [redacted] efforts for his
removal."

The bureau's response to the request does not appear to have been
included in the released documents.

The FBI notes that its investigations of Zinn -- three in total, over
25 years -- "ended in 1974, and no further investigation into Zinn or
his activities was made by the FBI."

Zinn had harsh words for the FBI during his academic career. In a
paper published not long before his death, Zinn said the best thing
the public could do to curb the FBI's powers was to "continue exposing
them."

Of the FBI, he said, "They don’t like social movements. They work for
the establishment and the corporations and the politicos to keep
things as they are. And they want to frighten and chill the people who
are trying to change things. So the best defense against them and
resistance against them is simply to keep on fighting back, to keep on
exposing them."

(Raw Story reporters will continue to mine through the documents for
more details. If you want to help, you can view the FBI files here,
here and here (PDF). Send us what you find to ti...@rawstory.com.)

[mokemoke]

http://gayrights.change.org/blog/view/texas_priest_tells_straight_people_theyre_immoral_if_they_support_gay_rights

Texas Priest Tells Straight People They're Immoral If They Support Gay
Rights

August 02, 2010 Change.org

On Sunday mornings throughout the country, millions of folks grab the
paper, pour some coffee, and ease into their day smoothly and
serenely. But if you were in El Paso yesterday, and you were flipping
through the pages of the El Paso Times, you might have had a coffee
spit take when you meandered over to the opinion pages. That's because
instead of nice and easy, the El Paso Times featured something a bit
brutal: an article from a Catholic official warning straight people
that if they support homosexuals, they're committing mortal sins.

That priest would be Rev. Michael Rodriguez, a pastor at San Juan
Bautista Catholic Church. And make no mistake: on the day that many
people are resting and relaxing, Fr. Rodriguez was throwing rhetorical
Molotov cocktails.

read article here:
http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_15649815?source=most_emailed

"Any Catholic who supports homosexual acts is, by definition,
committing a mortal sin, and placing himself/herself outside of
communion with the Roman Catholic Church," Fr. Rodriguez writes.
"Furthermore, a Catholic would be guilty of a most grievous sin of
omission if he/she neglected to actively oppose the homosexual agenda,
which thrives on deception and conceals its wicked horns under the
guises of "equal rights," "tolerance," "who am I to judge?," etc."

Now wicked horns do make an excellent costume accessory. But
digression aside, what Fr. Rodriguez spelled out in his opinion piece
seems like a stepped up campaign by the institutional church to
demonize straight people for supporting equal rights. And on some
level it makes sense, given that Catholics in the pews overwhelmingly
disagree with the Church hierarchy on issues related to gay rights. If
demonizing LGBT people hasn't helped shape popular opinion among lay
Catholics, perhaps demonizing straight Catholics who support LGBT
people will?

Fr. Rodriguez calls both abortion and homosexuality "intrinsic evils,"
and says that just because a majority of people might support equal
rights for America's LGBT population, doesn't mean that it's the right
thing to do.

"One would have to be ghastly morally decrepit to think that if 51
percent of Americans opine that rape is OK, then rape becomes, in
effect, all right. Sure, the majority is politically capable of such a
vote, but this could never make rape morally right," Fr. Rodriguez
concluded.

So rape is now akin to homosexuality? Wow, now that's pastoral.

I kind of like the phrase "morally decrepit" used by Fr. Rodriguez.
Except I wouldn't use it to describe the vast majority of Americans.
I'd use it to describe the deeply out of touch Church hierarchy that
persistently harshes on homosexuality, while people remain poor. I'd
use it to describe a pastor who in the wake of worldwide hunger and
international terrorism, thinks that two people loving one another is
an intrinsic evil. And I'd use it to describe an institutional Church
more hellbent on preventing LGBT relationships than weeding out
corruption within their own ranks.

Fr. Rodriguez finished his piece by assuring gays and lesbians that
although he thinks they're damned to hell, they should still be
respected. "I urge all of the Catholic faithful to treat homosexuals
with love, understanding, and respect. At the same time, never forget
that genuine love demands that we seek, above all, the salvation of
souls. Homosexual acts lead to the damnation of souls."

Maybe Fr. Rodriguez should open up a dictionary, turn toward the "R"
section, and look up the definition of respect. Because best as I can
tell, you can't eternally damn someone with one hand, and treat them
with "respect" with the other hand.

[mokemoke]

Jamaica police detained in killing caught on tape



KINGSTON, Jamaica — Jamaican police detained three of their own on
Saturday after a video surfaced allegedly showing them beating and
shooting a suspect to death.

Police initially reported that the man stabbed a woman to death and
then attacked the officers. They were said to have acted in self-
defense.

That story changed after the amateur footage, recorded by an unknown
eyewitness, was broadcast on several television channels the following
night.

Police Chief Owen Ellington said Saturday the man was apparently
unarmed and subdued when he was killed.

Ellington praised whoever came forward with the video and said the
department deeply regrets the incident.

Jamaica has one of the highest rates of police killings in the Western
Hemisphere, according to Amnesty International. It also has one of the
world's highest murder rates.

Thursday's killing took place in the town of Buckfield, about 20 miles
(30 kilometers) from the resort city of Ocho Rios.

[mokemoke]

The White House Correspondents Association is moving Fox News up to
the front row in the briefing room, according to sources familiar with
the process. The WHCA board's decision was unanimous. [It's now
confirmed; see update below.]

Since the retirement of veteran journalist Helen Thomas, three news
organizations — Fox News, Bloomberg News and NPR — each argued that it
should move to the front row. Fox News will join the broadcast
networks and CNN up front.

However, Fox News will not be taking Thomas' long-held seat in the
center.


The Associated Press moves to the center under the new set-up, with
Fox News taking the wire service's spot in the front row. (The Upshot
reported last week on briefing room speculation that this is how the
move would play out.)

The idea of moving AP — which normally gets the first question at
presidential news conferences — was under discussion in recent years,
long before Thomas retired.

[Photo flashback: Veteran journalist Helen Thomas through the years]

Bloomberg remains in the second row, while NPR moves up from the third
row to Fox's current second-row seat.

Several news organizations also petitioned to get regular seats in the
briefing room (or keep their current seats).

The Financial Times will now get a regular seat, while U.S News &
World Report — a news organization that has been scaled back in recent
years — lost its seat. The foreign press pool also now gets its own
seat.

In addition, Politico and American Urban Radio Networks moved up to
the third row. The Washington Times, which has cut back significantly
in the past year, moves from the third to fourth row.

UPDATE: The WHCA, in a statement, confirmed the news and described the
decision as "very difficult." However, the board said, it was
"persuaded by Fox's length of service and commitment to the White
House television pool."

[mokemoke]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-thayer/why-we-are-protesting-aga_b_666811.html

Andy Thayer

Anti-war activist and co-founder of the Gay Liberation Network in
Chicago
Posted: August 2, 2010 12:53 PM The Huffington Post





Why We Are Protesting Against "Americans For Truth About
Homosexuality"




Beginning August 5, a group which calls itself Americans For Truth
About Homosexuality (AFTAH) is organizing what they call an "academy"
to "train young people (as well as older pro-family advocates) how to
answer 'gay' activist misinformation and fight the homosexual-bisexual-
transsexual agenda."

AFTAH has a long history of telling lies about Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual
and Transgender (LGBT) people, and recently was designated a "hate
group" by the Southern Poverty Law Center. AFTAH's literature about
their forthcoming "academy" calls the LGBT rights movement
"destructive to America" and invites people to donate money to fund
scholarships for people as young as 14-years-old to attend.

***

So many things about AFTAH's forthcoming anti-gay "academy" are
offensive on their face that it's easy to lose sight of the broader,
strategic reasons for organizing public protests against organizations
like AFTAH.

* Many rightly have a visceral reaction against organizations that try
to turn back the clock to a time in American history when it was
openly acceptable to scapegoat minorities who had already endured
plenty of hate and discrimination, thank you very much.

* Organizations like AFTAH that target young people for indoctrination
with bigotry - their anti-gay "academy" says that it's for people as
young as 14-years-old - recall historical pictures of adult white
supremacists bringing their children to rallies against African
Americans, Jews and "communists."

* Organizations that peddle their paranoia about "the Other" in times
of economic distress, like today's "Great Recession," recall earlier
times in history when such scapegoating had devastating effects on the
lives and opportunities of those targeted.

Important as these reasons are for protesting AFTAH, our own LGBT
civil rights struggle shows that there are civil rights opportunities
to be gained by not taking an "ignore them and they'll go away
approach" towards groups like AFTAH.

Reading through AFTAH's propaganda materials, one is struck by the
great lengths they go to portray themselves as simple, "good
Christians" (albeit far better than those lapsed, "fake" Christians).
Besides wrapping themselves in Biblical godliness, they're hyper-
patriots, boisterously proclaiming their Americanism. And diabetics
beware - their sanctimonious tracts about what they call family values
contain so much sugar they are hazardous to your health. They're just
about as Godly, Pro-American and Pro-Family as you can get.

Why so much emphasis on God, patriotism, Mom and apple pie? Because
the real product they're selling is one that, when Americans think
about it more deeply, is something many will find repugnant. This is
where marketing comes in.

AFTAH is in favor of denying equal access to employment, housing and
public accommodations - including government services like equal
Social Security and marriage benefits - to a whole group of people.
AFTAH's central mission is to prevent the spread of full LGBT legal
and social equality and to roll back those gains that we have already
made. In order to accomplish these goals, they must expand further the
territory they've already secured for "acceptable" anti-gay bigotry in
mainstream politics and among the wider public.

Their problem is that, while Civil Rights Movement for African
Americans certainly wasn't popular in many quarters in the 1960s, it
did win at least surface acceptance over time. And part of its legacy
was that it eventually established in the United States a popular
repugnance among many against those who overtly oppose legal equality
for African Americans and indeed against anyone who peddles hate and
discrimination against whole groups of people.

Like present-day anti-gay bigots, in the 1960s opponents of the
movement for African American civil rights also boisterously wrapped
themselves in faith, family and country. And it is no accident that
many prominent anti-gay leaders of this century, such as the Mormon
Church and the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, were strident opponents of
African American legal equality in the last century. Falwell, for
example, infamously labeled the Black freedom movement "the civil
wrongs movement."

So as anti-gay groups like AFTAH promote themselves as godly,
patriotic, and pro-family, this is not just stylistic exuberance.
Rather, it is part of a carefully thought out strategy aimed at
countering those who label them as haters. And when mainstream LGBT
leaders advise our community to ignore groups like AFTAH or go lightly
on them, they are playing right into their hands.

By contrast, in the late 1970s when the pro-gay movement which brought
us Harvey Milk defeated the anti-gay movement represented by Anita
Bryant, they did it by successfully labeling Bryant as a narrow-minded
bigot very reminiscent of the bigots which the African American Civil
Rights Movement organized against. All the "pro-family" and "Save Our
Children" saccharine in the world could not protect her from a pro-gay
movement which peeled away the patriotic and "Christian" façade to
reveal a nasty bigot underneath.

For the most part, our present-day mainstream LGBT leaders repeatedly
fail to take on the present-day Anita Bryants. Instead, while AFTAH
and the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) spew out vitriol
suggesting that we are a bunch of disease-ridden child molesters, pro-
gay leaders typically pull their punches and prefer to shy away from
labeling creeps in AFTAH and NOM as the anti-gay bigots that they are.
The result, in contrast to our 1978 victory over California's anti-gay
Briggs Amendment, is our defeat in many eminently winnable anti-gay
referenda fights over the past few years, including in places like
Maine where we held a 2-to-1 fundraising advantage.

Rather than paint the Catholic and Mormon Church leaderships as bigots
opposed to equal rights and painting them into a corner the way that
Harvey Milk, et al, did against Anita Bryant, most LGBT leaders give
anti-gay leaders like the Pope a pass; instead, they try to compete on
the same terrain by setting up "faith-based" divisions at
organizations like the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and out-doing the
bigots in demonstrating our "godliness" and "pro-family
values" (whether we're Christian or not, or whether we consider
ourselves part of families or not).

With dozens of defeats in recent statewide referenda, this is a
spectacularly failed strategy.

The question is why do mainstream LGBT groups and their leaders
obsessively persist in this failed strategy? Part of the answer lies
in their fear of taking on still-powerful religious hierarchies like
the leaderships of the Mormon and Catholic Churches - the latter still
very dominant in American life despite the repeated pedophilia
scandals and the gradual growth of agnosticism and atheism among the
public.

But this alone does not explain LGBT leaders' hesitancy to take on
religious anti-gay leaders. After all, until California's anti-gay
Briggs Amendment, Anita Bryant also appeared to be hugely powerful, a
seemingly unstoppable force in the late 1970s, rapidly overturning pro-
gay legislation in city after city while a seemingly friendless gay
community gathered virtually no support from established institutions
in American society. Yet our young gay movement took her on and was
successful.

The core of our present-day problem lies in our movement's reliance on
leaders who themselves have intimate ties to the Democratic Party and
explicitly or implicitly take their marching orders from it. And the
fact remains that most significant leaders in the Democratic Party
oppose marriage equality and other aspects of full citizenship for
LGBT people.

Part of the reason mainstream LGBT leaders fail to more actively take
on anti-gay religious leaders is that for them to do so, while failing
to also take on their anti-equality politician-allies, would make them
look like hypocrites. So in the face of anti-gay leaders' vitriol and
slander, these mainstream gay leaders in groups like HRC and the
Stonewall Democrats take the easy way out. Rather than earning respect
by taking the battle to our enemies by labeling their opposition to
LGBT equality to be plain and simple bigotry, they earn people's
contempt by pathetically pleading for "fairness" and "tolerance."

So as important as it is to oppose AFTAH's nasty attempt to
indoctrinate the next generation with anti-LGBT hate, our protest on
Thursday night is about much more than that, too. It is also about
breaking from the failed strategy which gave us the California Prop 8
and Maine Question 1 defeats. It's about rejecting a "kids-glove"
treatment towards anti-gay leaders who, like AFTAH's Peter LaBarbera,
relentlessly push anti-equality legislation and constitutional
amendments when given half a chance.

***

The protest against Americans For Truth About Homosexuality's anti-gay
"academy" will take place at 7:30 PM sharp, Thursday, August 5 in
front of "Christian Liberty Academy," 502 W. Euclid Avenue, Arlington
Heights, IL. Those traveling from Chicago will meet at 6 PM sharp in
front of the Ogilvie Transportation Center Metra station, 500 W.
Madison Street, Chicago (just look for the Pride flag!). For
information, email or call the Gay Liberation Network at
LGBTlib...@aol.com or 773.209.1187

[mokemoke]

The man Bill and Hillary Clinton hired to plan their daughter
Chelsea's wedding is gay.

Boston-based event planner Bryan Rafanelli has been blocked from
talking to the media for weeks. The 48-year-old Rafanelli is known for
his lavish events, and the Clinton nuptials reportedly cost more than
$2 million.

TowleRoad.com points out that Bill Clinton hired a gay man to plan the
wedding despite having signed the Defense of Marriage Act.

But this is the latest in a long line of events Rafanelli has planned
for the Clintons. In 2004, he planned a party for them during the
Democratic National Convention. In 2008, he did a Florida fundraiser
for Hillary Clinton.

During her 2008 presidential bid, Rafanelli's partner, Mark Walsh
served on Hillary Clinton's staff as her director of lesbian, gay,
bisexual, and transgender outreach.

[mokemoke]

Antigay Republican Tom Emmer is making headlines for benefiting from
Target Corp.’s $150K contribution to a conservative PAC supporting his
bid for governor of Minnesota.

What isn’t making many headlines is the identity of his likely
opponent. Pro-gay former U.S. senator Mark Dayton is in the lead
heading into the August 10 Democratic primary, facing off against for
the gubernatorial nomination against Minnesota House Speaker Margaret
Kelliher. An heir to Dayton-Hudson Corp. fortune, Mark Dayton is the
great-grandson of George Dayton, who stared the Dayton’s department
store chain. In 1962, Dayton's opened the first Target, a discount
department store.

“Mark Dayton’s connection to Target is mostly a historical one,” his
deputy campaign manager Katharine Tinucci told The Advocate.

But she says the campaign takes Target's support of Emmer "as a sign
the CEO and other executives take Mark Dayton’s promise to tax the
richest Minnesotans" more seriously.

Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel defended Target’s contribution in an e-
mail to employees Tuesday, saying the company supports “candidates on
both sides of the aisle who seek to advance policies aligned with our
business objectives, such as job creation and economic growth.” He
went on to defend the company’s commitment to LGBT rights as
“unwavering,” writing that inclusiveness is a “core value” of the
company.

But gay activists aren’t pleased with the donation, and a boycott of
Target is gaining momentum.

Meanwhile, Dayton is continuing to remind voters of his strong record
on gay rights, including a campaign promise to fight to legalize gay
marriage in Minnesota if he’s elected.

“Mark stands strong on his commitment to gay Minnesotans,” Tinucci
said. “He’s dedicated to equality for all.”

[mokemoke]

Congressman Barney Frank spoke with The New York Times Magazine on
Sunday, and said that he told Kathy Griffin that his inability to pass
a "don't ask, don't tell" repeal within one day would not be the only
"bitter pill" she would have to swallow that week.

Times question and answer columnist Deborah Solomon asked Frank, "Why
would you let her film you in your office in Washington for a show
called 'My Life on the D-List'?"

Frank responded, "She asked me if I would do it, and if you say no,
then you get demonized as someone who is afraid. So she came to my
office and said, 'I demand that you pass the repeal - don't ask, don't
tell - by tomorrow, and if not, it will be a bitter pill.' I said,
'Well, it won't be the only pill you swallow this week, I'm sure.'"

Asked whether he meant to imply that Griffin was a "pill popper,"
Frank responded, "I said what I said."

Frank also recently wrote a critical letter to Griffin after she
referred to the daughters of U.S. senator Scott Brown as "prostitutes"
on her show. Solomon also asked the out congressman about that.

[mokemoke]

Despite Apple's constant attempts to keep the iPhone wholesome, the
adult market has flocked to the new phone's FaceTime videoconference
software, and porn companies are even hiring models specifically for
the product.

FaceTime, a software program designed for face-to-face videoconference
on Apple's new iPhone 4, is one of the phone's top selling points.
Marketed in a series of commercials that feature friends and family
sharing touching moments across the distance, FaceTime is finding a
whole new audience through sites like Craiglist.

Recently, postings have appeared on Craigslist featuring language like
"Hey what's up my girl and I are looking for a couple or another guy
to video chat" and "must have iPhone 4 with Face Time." Individuals
aren't the only one taking advantage of the erotic possibilities,
however.

According to AP, adult production companies like Pink Video and
CamWorld are well prepared for the market's potential, in some cases
arranging services before the phone went on sale. "It has a very
personal feel," explained Quentin Boyer, a Pink Video spokesman.

Apple has always endeavored to prevent pornographic and adult
applications from selling through iTunes, but many feel that FaceTime
creates an uncontrollable outlet that could open up new problems for
parents, as cell phones are not as easy to monitor as a family
computer. Jonathan Zittrain, cofounder of the Berkman Center for
Internet and Society at Harvard University, thinks Apple will emerge
unscathed, however: "Apple can't be seen as responsible any more than
makers of routers or hardware are responsible for the content you are
looking at."

Apple has sold over 3 million fourth-generation iPhones since the
product's debut in mid June of this year.



__._,_.___

[mokemoke]

The Associated Press

Minn. pastor back in pulpit after gay report

By PATRICK CONDON,
Associated Press Writer
Monday, August 2, 2010

(08-02) 14:02 PDT MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- A Lutheran pastor in Minneapolis
who
opposes homosexuals being allowed to lead congregations said Monday he
is
attracted to men, but that he's not a hypocrite because he never acted
on his
urges.

The Rev. Tom Brock told The Associated Press he has known for years he
is
sexually attracted to men, but doesn't consider himself gay because he
never
acted on it.

In June, the Minnesota gay magazine Lavender reported that Brock was a
member of
a support group for Christians who struggle with same-sex attraction.
Brock's
church, the Hope Lutheran Church, placed him on leave while a task
force looked
into the matter. The Rev. Tom Parrish, the church's executive pastor,
said the
investigation determined Brock's story checked out.

"I am a 57-year-old virgin," Brock told the Hope Lutheran congregation
during
services upon returning to the pulpit on Sunday.

Brock and Parrish would not share the full task force report, but
Parrish said
its members could find no evidence Brock ever had sex with men. They
confirmed
that Brock sought counseling and enlisted another minister as an
"accountability
partner" with whom he frequently discussed his struggles.

Brock said he intends to step down as senior pastor at Hope Lutheran,
but will
retain his affiliation with the church and still preach there from
time to time.
Having preached on Twin Cities cable access for about 20 years, he
told the AP
he hopes to take his broadcasts to a wider national audience with a
new message:
"You can have this struggle with same-sex attraction, say no to it,
and still
follow Christ."

Brock's broadcasts, in which he espoused conservative viewpoints on a
number of
scriptural issues, brought him some measure of prominence in
Minnesota. He
testified at the state Capitol about his opposition to same-sex
marriage, and he
was one of the most vocal opponents of the decision last summer by
the
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to allow non-celibate gays in
committed
relationships to serve as clergy.

A few months ago, the publisher of Lavender got a tip that Brock was
attending
meetings of Courage, a Catholic support group for people trying to
resist
same-sex urges. A freelance writer attended the group posing as a
prospective
member, then wrote about Brock's attendance there — a move viewed by
many as
journalistically unethical.

John Townsend, the article's author, said Monday he felt Hope Lutheran
had the
right to reinstate Brock and he hoped the pastor's openness would make
members
of the congregation more sympathetic to gay people.

As for Brock, "He's free to do what he wants to do and say what he
wants to
say," Townsend said. "But he will have less credibility on that now,
I'm
afraid."

Brock said he has personally forgiven Lavender and Townsend for
publishing the
piece, though he insists it contained erroneous information. He said
he probably
won't continue to attend Courage meetings, but will keep seeking
counseling and
spiritual guidance to overcome his same-sex attractions.

Brock said he does not believe people are born gay. "I think we're all
born
heterosexual actually, and then stuff goes wrong," he said.

He said he can't conclusively identify the origin of his own
attraction to men,
but said he believes it's related to a distant relationship with his
father, who
is now deceased, as well as having an older brother who was more
athletic and,
Brock felt, got more affection from other family members.

Brock said even if scientists were to establish definitive proof that
homosexuality is genetic, that wouldn't deter his views. He said he
believes
people who engage in homosexual acts will go to hell, but he doesn't
believe
that makes him a bigot.

"My message doesn't change at all. I still think homosexual behavior
is a sin,"
Brock said. "Because I struggle with it doesn't make it right."


I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure
suffering
and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the
oppressor,
never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the
tormented. - Elie
Wiesel (survivor of the Holocaust)

Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never
were and
say why not. - Robert Francis Kennedy

I am not a champion of lost causes, but of causes not yet won. -
Norman Thomas

[mokemoke]

The New York Times
July 30, 2010
The Bay Citizen

Episcopal Committee Is Working on Gay Rite

By RICHARD PARKS

Armed with a new $400,000 grant and the support of the Episcopal
Church, a
Berkeley seminary is convening priests from across the country to
craft the
liturgical rite for same-sex couples to receive religious blessings.


The new rite, which will take years to complete, will most likely
consist of a
series of original prayers, Bible readings and two essays: one on the
theological meaning of same-sex blessings, and one advising priests
who
administer the new rite. If approved, the new blessing would be just
the third
addition to Episcopal liturgy since 1979.


“This is very significant,” said the Rev. Ruth Meyers, chairwoman of
the
church’s Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music, who is heading the
effort.
“It does acknowledge a fuller participation of gays and lesbians in
the life of
the church.”


The Episcopal Church approved the development of “theological and
liturgical
resources” for the blessing of same-sex relationships at its 2009
convention,
citing “changing circumstances in the United States and other
nations.” It then
partnered with the Berkeley seminary, Church Divinity School of the
Pacific,
which last month received a grant from the Arcus Foundation, a gay
rights
organization in Kalamazoo, Mich., to coordinate the effort.


Most of the grant money will finance travel and accommodations for a
series of
meetings to garner contributions from all 110 Episcopal dioceses, most
in the
United States.


An official blessing would formalize what has long been an unofficial
practice
at some dioceses across the country. Unofficial blessings have taken
place in
Bay Area churches since at least the 1980s.


But not all Episcopalians support adding the blessing.

“Doing this will cause great fracturing and great pain,” said the Rev.
Canon
Kendall Harmon of the Diocese of South Carolina. “It represents a
willful
American embrace of something that the Anglican Communion has said is
out of
bounds.”


Ms. Meyers has appointed four priests to draw up the new rite. They
represent
the progressive side of a schism in the worldwide Anglican Communion,
which is
fracturing over gender issues.


The Rev. Jay Emerson Johnson, a theologian from the Center for Lesbian
and Gay
Studies in Ministry at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley,
will draft
the theological essay. The Rev. Canon Susan Russell, who has performed
same-sex
blessings at a Pasadena church for decades, and the Rev. Canon
Thaddeus A.
Bennett, a priest in Vermont, where same-sex marriage is legal, will
write the
essay on pastoral care. And the Rev. Patrick Malloy, a liturgical
scholar at
General Theological Seminary in New York City, will lead the drafting
of new
prayers and select biblical readings.


“We’re taking this as an opportunity to offer these resources to the
whole
church,” Mr. Johnson said, “not just for the sake of gay and lesbian
couples but
as an opportunity for everybody to reflect theologically on what it
means to be
in a committed relationship.”

[mokemoke]

The city of London is hoping to drum up excitement among gay sports
fans for the 2012 Olympic Summer Games by selling Olympic Pride pins
on Ebay.

According to the description, "This is the first in a series of pin
badges to celebrate diversity and engage all communities in support of
the London 2012 Games. This pin badge features the rainbow flag and
the London 2012 Olympic logo and is launched in support of the
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community."

Bids for the pins start at five pounds, or about $8.

[mokemoke]

A transgender woman said a Muncie, Ind. hospital staff mocked her and
denied her treatment after she came to the emergency room coughing up
blood.

Erin Vaught showed up at the Ball Memorial Hospital on July 18 with
her wife and son, according to the Chicago Tribune. When she tried to
submit her information for hospital records, two workers entered her
gender as male, despite her identification being female. Vaught said
she pointed out that her ID card identifies her as female, to which
one worker snickered and the other made an annoyed face. When she was
taken to the examination room, hospital staff referred to her as "he-
she," "it," and a "transvestite."

Two hours passed before she saw a doctor, who then said he couldn't
treat her because she is transgender.

"The irony here is that we spend so much time teaching about
transgender issues at Ball State University," said Vivian Benge,
president of the Indiana Transgender Rights Advocacy Alliance. "And
yet there is Ball Memorial Hospital treading a transgender like this.
It is so sad."

Ball Memorial spokesperson Will Henderson said hospital authorities
are looking into the matter.

[mokemoke]

If you need further proof that singer Justin Bieber has officially
arrived, look no further than the Westboro Baptist Church's website.
Bieber, 16-year-old Canadian singing sensation, is "teaching sin,"
according to the hate-spewing church.

A message posted on the church's website reads: "[Bieber] has a
platform given to him by God to speak to this world; he has a duty to
teach obedience by his actions and words. He refuses to do that
because he knows his concert halls would be empty! So, he teaches you
to sin and rebel against God's commandments."

It's become a rite of passage for performers to be singled out by
Westboro, and Bieber is just the latest in a long string of
entertainers that includes Lady Gaga who have incurred the wrath of
the right-wing congregation, known for picketing events ranging from
Pride festivals to private funerals. Yet the church's attempts to lash
out against LGBT people and their supporters continue to backfire and
are frequently met with derisive laughter. Last week, while picketing
outside Comic-Con in San Diego, WBC demonstrators were greeted with a
crowd of counterprotesters who chanted, "What do we want?" "Gay sex!"
"When do we want it?" "Now!"

[mokemoke]

Lawyers for a Christian graduate student in counseling who lost her
case against Eastern Michigan University for refusing to treat a gay
client have vowed to appeal the case all the way to the Supreme Court,
if necessary.

According to AnnArbor.com, last week a federal court upheld EMU's move
to boot graduate student Julea Ward from its counseling program when
she refused to affirm a gay client's relationship during a practicum.
Ward believes that homosexuality is immoral, and that it is a choice.

"But Ward's lawyers said the case is far from over," reported
AnnArbor.com. "They will file an appeal, and in the meantime are
setting the stage for a battle between the religious rights of
students and a university's power to set and uphold its own ethical,
disciplinary and curricular standards. The case could have
implications reaching far outside of Ypsilanti."

In her lawsuit, filed with support from the Alliance Defense Fund,
Ward charged that her dismissal for refusing to treat the gay client
violated her rights to free speech, religion and due process.

ADF lawyer Jeremy Tedesco said his group would press the case as far
as necessary, according to AnnArbor.com.

"If it's upheld, Christians can be told you have to abandon your
beliefs to get a degree in counseling," he said. "They could be
excluded from counseling programming."

[mokemoke]

Call To Action: Campaign and Vote For Charlie Ramos For The New York
State Senate 9-14 Primary Election
32nd District, South Bronx, New York

Fight Back New York: Help Defeat Homophobic New York State Senator
Ruben Diaz Sr. What’s in Ruben’s Closet?

From Fight Back New York:
Sen. Ruben Diaz has spent the last few years showing that he will stop
at nothing to attack and insult LGBT New Yorkers. When we asked you to
vote on which senators you wanted us to send packin’, Diaz topped the
list. We heard you. Now Fight Back New York is gearing up to build the
case against New York’s most notoriously anti-gay state senator.

Let’s be clear – this isn’t a typical Fight Back NY race. Ruben Diaz
has an annoying political survival instinct, but we want to set the
record straight. Fight Back New York can play a unique role in this
race by showing in a very public and powerful way that Ruben is not
just bad for LGBT people, he’s bad for New York. In order to do this
effectively, we need your help; we need more ammunition. We need to be
able to show voters in his district that he does not represent their
interests and is not fit to serve New Yorkers.

Ruben has a murky past, but what exactly is he hiding? Here’s what we
propose: Fight Back NY will hire expert political researchers to find
every piece of information we can on Ruben Diaz. What he’s said, how
he’s voted, what he’s done, and what he thought he got away with.
We’ll post everything online, so Diaz’s opponents, the media, and
voters in his district will be able to use the facts against him in
the primary.

But we need your help to do it. We’re only 6 weeks away from the
primary election – which will be the one real shot at getting rid of
Diaz. Help us fund a search into Ruben’s closet. We need to send a
clear message to Ruben Diaz – and other senators who think like him:
You can’t vote and speak out against equality without paying a price.
Donate what you can today. We need your help to uncover the real Ruben
Diaz.

Take action here:

http://fightbackpac.com/closet/


Call To Action: Campaign and Vote For Charlie Ramos For The New York
State Senate

9-14 Primary Election, Bronx, New York

Vote Out Obstructionist Ruben Diaz Sr.

Please pass this on to everyone, especially to those in the Bronx, New
York

Countdown to the September 14th Primary Election
Charlie Ramos Vs. Ruben Diaz Sr.
New York State Senate 32nd District, South Bronx, New York

On December 2nd, 2009, by a vote of 38 Nays to 24 Yeas, The State
Senate Voted Against Marriage Equality. Every single Republican and
eight Democrats voted for discrimination. Our goal is to defeat and
remove all 38 from office, Bronx State Senator Ruben Diaz Sr. lead
the vote against equality and we must lead him out of the Senate doors
by electing Charlie Ramos to fill his Albany Senate seat.

In addition to leading the Senate against Marriage Equality, Diaz once
suggested that the Gay Games would encourage homosexuality and spread
H.I.V. In 2003, he sued the city to shut down a high school for gay
and transgender students. Diaz recently joined forces with convicted
felon and former Senate leader Joe Bruno to block every single piece
of pro equality legislation from reaching the Senator floor. He lead
the fight to block initiatives by Governor Paterson, effectively
shutting down the Senate last year and affecting all New Yorkers. He
threatened to shut down the Senate again if a vote on Marriage
Equality was brought to the floor. When it was, he led the Senate to
defeat the bill. More recently, Diaz blocked GENDA and stripped tax
equality rights from couples married in other states.

Diaz has also angered Teachers and workers unions, and he has used his
religious Fundie pulpit to blur the separation of Church and New York
State at every turn.

It is time to send Reverend Diaz packing to bang his Bible elsewhere,
and replace him with Charlie Ramos in the September 14th primary
election in the South Bronx. I urge you to get involved and join us in
this effort. Please pass this message on to everyone in your address
book.



Charlie Ramos

1- Join The Charlie Ramos Campaign, Volunteer, Contribute, and Spread
the word here.

This September, we have the opportunity to bring real change to New
York State and to the South Bronx. These times demand bold and honest
leadership. For far too long, we have accepted the status quo, but we
deserve more, much more. It is time to put an end to the reign of
politicians who do not share our values and betray our trust over and
over again. We must fight to restore faith in our state government and
uphold the values of our community.

If you believe in real democracy and freedom for all, you know that we
the people have a choice in what kind of leadership we need in 2010.
We need your help to bring a true, honest, and hardworking leader to
Albany.

Charlie Ramos' Vision:
Civil Rights: Every individual’s civil rights must be protected;
discrimination and harassment based on race, ethnicity, gender,
religion, sexual orientation, or physical and developmental ability
should be banned.

Reproductive Freedom: Women and men – not politicians – deserve the
right to make personal decisions about their reproductive health in
accordance with their own personal and moral beliefs.

Health Care: Every individual should have affordable, quality health
care.

Education: It is essential that we invest in quality public education
for all.

Environment: We must commit to restoring and protecting our
environment.

Economic Justice: Prosperity should be accessible to everyone, not
merely the few.



Join the campaign and contribute here:


http://www.charlieramos2010.com/


Charlie Ramos's email is: prch...@gmail.com


2- Sign Up for FIGHT BACK NEW YORK

This fabulous organization is dedicated to replacing the anti-equality
members of The NewYork State Senate.
Sign up here:
http://fightbackpac.com/

3- Join the Andrew Cuomo For Governor campaign.

Attorney General Cuomo is a equality strong ally. He has pledged to
make marriage equality in New York State a top priority. We thank
outgoing Governor David Paterson for his strong pro-equality advocacy
and activism.

Sign up here:

http://www.andrewcuomo.com/

4- Join Marriage Equality New York MENY

Organization committed to securing the right to civil marriage for
same-sex couples. Blog with related news and calendar of upcoming
events.

http://www.meny.us/


5- Join Tommy's Yahoo Group dedicated to electing a pro-equality New
York State Senate.


On December 2nd, 2009, by a vote of 38 Nays to 24 Yeas, The State
Senate Voted Against Marriage Equality. Every single Republican and
eight Democrats voted for discrimination. Our goal is to defeat and
remove all 38 from office, most especially Bronx State Senator Ruben
Diaz Sr; who lead the vote against marriage equality.

Click Here:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NewYorkStateSenateForCivilRights/



Charlie Ramos for Senate!

[mokemoke]

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/08/04/1760058/keeping-faith-losing-religion.html

Keeping faith, losing religion

By LEONARD PITTS JR.
lpi...@MiamiHerald.com

`Today, I quit being a Christian.''

With those words last week on Facebook, Anne Rice delivered a wake-up
call for organized religion. The question is whether it will be
recognized as such.

``I remain committed to Christ as always,'' she wrote, ``but not to
being `Christian' or to being part of Christianity. It's simply
impossible for me to `belong' to this quarrelsome, hostile,
disputatious and deservedly infamous group. For 10 years, I've tried.
I've failed. I'm an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.''

You will recall that the author, famed for her vampire novels, made a
much-publicized return to the Catholicism of her youth after years of
calling herself an atheist. Now, years later, she says she hasn't lost
her faith, but she's had it up to here with organized religion.

``In the name of Christ,'' she wrote, ``I refuse to be anti-gay. I
refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth
control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular
humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life.''

If that was not nearly enough for atheist observers, one of whom
berated her online for refusing to completely give up her
``superstitious delusions,'' it was surely plenty for people of faith.

But Rice is hardly the only one who feels as she does.

According to a 2008 study by Trinity College, religiosity is trending
down sharply in this country. The American Religious Identification
Survey, which polled more than 54,000 American adults, found that the
percentage who call themselves Christian has fallen by 10 since 1990
(from 86.2 percent to 76 percent) while the percentage of those who
claim no religious affiliation has almost doubled (from 8.2 to 15) in
the same span.

Small wonder atheist manifestos are doing brisk business at bookstores
and Bill Maher's skeptical Religulous finds an appreciative audience
in theaters.

Organized religion, Christianity in particular, is on the decline, and
it has no one to blame but itself: It traded moral authority for
political power.

To put that another way: The Christian Bible contains numerous
exhortations to serve those who are wretched and poor, to anger slowly
and forgive promptly, to walk through this life in humility and faith.
The word ``Republican'' does not appear in the book. Not once.

Yet somehow in the last 30 years, people of faith were hustled and
hoodwinked into regarding the GOP platform as a lost gospel.

Somehow, low taxes for the wealthy and deregulation of industry became
the very message of Christ. Somehow, hostility to science, gays,
Muslims and immigrants became the very meaning of faith. And somehow
Christianity became -- or at least, came to seem -- a wholly owned
subsidiary of the Republican Party.

Consider that, after the election of 2004, a church in North Carolina
made news for kicking out nine congregants because they committed the
un-Christian act of . . . voting for Democrat John Kerry.

Who can blame people for saying, If that's faith, count me out. Has
atheism ever had a better salesman than Jerry Falwell blaming the
Sept. 11 attacks on the ACLU or Pat Robertson laying Haiti's
earthquake off on an ancient curse?

But what of those who are not atheists? What of those who feel the
blessed assurance that there is more to this existence than what we
can see or empirically prove? What of those who seek a magnificent
faith that commits and compels, and find churches offering only a
shriveled faith that marginalizes and demeans?

Its response to those people, those seekers, will determine the future
of organized religion. And it might behoove keepers of the faith to
keep in mind the distinction Anne Rice drew in her farewell:

Christ didn't fail her, she said. Christianity did.

[mokemoke]

Judge's ruling ready in Calif. gay marriage case

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hOiMLmsztmiGlNvjNLQLw4N41h1QD9HCHBTG0

Judge's ruling ready in Calif. gay marriage case
By LISA LEFF (AP) -August 4, 1010

SAN FRANCISCO - The first word on whether California's same-sex
marriage ban passes scrutiny under the U.S. Constitution is scheduled
to come down today, August 4, when a federal judge issues his ruling
in a landmark case.

Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker has reached a decision on
whether to uphold or overturn the voter-approved ban known as
Proposition 8 and plans to publish his opinion in the afternoon, court
spokeswoman Lynn Fuller said.

His verdict comes in response to a lawsuit brought by two same-sex
couples and the city of San Francisco seeking to invalidate the law as
an unlawful infringement on the civil rights of gay men and lesbians.

Proposition 8, which outlawed gay marriages in California five months
after the state Supreme Court legalized them, passed with 52 percent
of the vote in November 2008 following the most expensive campaign on
a social issue in U.S. history.

Attorneys on both sides have said an appeal was certain if Walker did
not rule in their favor. The case would go first to the 9th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals then the Supreme Court if the high court
justices agree to review it.

Anticipating such a scenario, lawyers for the coalition of religious
and conservative groups that sponsored Proposition 8 in 2008 filed a
legal brief Tuesday asking Walker to stay his decision if he overturns
the ban so same-sex couples could not marry while an appeal was
pending.

"Same-sex marriages would be licensed under a cloud of uncertainty,
and should proponents succeed on appeal, any such marriages would be
invalid," they wrote.

Walker presided over a 13-day trial earlier this year that was the
first in federal court to examine if states can prohibit gays from
getting married without violating the constitutional guarantee of
equality.

Supporters argued the ban was necessary to safeguard the traditional
understanding of marriage and to encourage responsible childbearing.

Opponents said that tradition or fears of harm to heterosexual unions
were legally insufficient grounds to discriminate against gay couples.

[mokemoke]

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/08/prop8-gay-marriage.html

Judge strikes down Prop. 8, allows gay marriage in California

Los Angeles Times: August 4, 2010 | 1:48 pm

A federal judge in San Francisco decided today that gays and lesbians
have a constitutional right to marry, striking down Proposition 8, the
voter approved ballot measure that banned same-sex unions.

U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker said Proposition 8, passed
by voters in November 2008, violated the federal constitutional rights
of gays and lesbians to marry the partners of their choice.. His
ruling is expected to be appealed to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of
Appeals and then up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

[Updated at 1:54 p.m.: "Plaintiffs challenge Proposition 8 under the
Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment,"
the judge wrote. "Each challenge is independently meritorious, as
Proposition 8 both unconstitutionally burdens the exercise of the
fundamental right to marry and creates an irrational classification on
the basis of sexual orientation."

Vaughn added: "Plaintiffs seek to have the state recognize their
committed relationships, and plaintiffs' relationships are consistent
with the core of the history, tradition and practice of marriage in
the United States."

Ultimately, the judge concluded that Proposition 8 "fails to advance
any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of
a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does
nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion
that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples. . Because
Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional
obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis, the court concludes
that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional."]

Walker, an appointee of President George H.W. Bush, heard 16 witnesses
summoned by opponents of Proposition 8 and two called by proponents
during a 2½-week trial in January.

Walker's historic ruling in Perry vs. Schwarzenegger relied heavily on
the testimony he heard at trial. His ruling listed both factual
findings and his conclusions about the law.

Voters approved the ban by a 52.3% margin six months after the
California Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage was permitted
under the state Constitution.

The state high court later upheld Proposition 8 as a valid amendment
to the state Constitution.

An estimated 18,000 same-sex couples married in California during the
months that it was legal, and the state continues to recognize those
marriages.

The federal challenge was filed on behalf of a gay couple in Southern
California and a lesbian couple in Berkeley. They are being
represented by former Solicitor General Ted Olson, a conservative, and
noted litigator David Boies, who squared off against Olson in Bush vs.
Gore.

A Los Angeles-based group formed to fight Proposition 8 has been
financing the litigation.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown refused to
defend Proposition 8, prodding the sponsors of the initiative to hire
a legal team experienced in U.S. Supreme Court litigation.

Backers of Proposition 8 contended that the legal burden was on the
challengers to prove there was no rational justification for voting
for the measure. They cited as rational a view that children fare best
with both a father and a mother.

But defense witnesses conceded in cross-examination that studies show
children reared from birth by same-sex couples fared as well as those
born to opposite-sex parents and that marriage would benefit the
families of gays and lesbians.

[mokemoke]

Day One: After You've Tested Positive



(BlackDoctor.org) -- A positive HIV antibody test is scary news but
it's not a death sentence. As better therapies continue to be
developed, it's entirely possible to live out a normal lifespan after
testing positive. The key to living a long life with HIV is availing
yourself of health care and suitable therapies.

A positive result is an important medical message that may help you
save and extend your life. Whether you took the test or not, sooner or
later you would have learned of your HIV status.

If you learn by testing, you have a chance to slow or prevent some of
the possible health outcomes. Even if you didn't get tested, HIV would
present itself at some point as an infection or damage to your immune
system. And, if you had waited for HIV disease to present itself, many
of your best medical options would already be lost.

Most testing sites provide counseling to help people handle the news.
The real work, however, is up to you. Given the right attitude and the
right information, most people can live for a long, long time. Getting
informed and taking charge of your health will help you make the best
of your situation.

This publication can help you with the things you need to do:

Develop a strategy to adapt to your new situation;
Learn more about HIV and how it can affect you;
Understand the medical tests you'll use; and
Find ways to promote and maintain your health.
Reading this publication is a good first step. It's a little long, but
it's worth the time. It's about saving your life.

HIV and Your Immune System

HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) is the virus that causes AIDS
(Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome). Being HIV-positive does not
mean that you have AIDS, but it does mean that you may develop AIDS.
HIV attacks your immune system, gradually impairing how it functions.

Your immune system helps keep your body healthy by recognizing and
attacking foreign substances, like viruses or bacteria. Over time, if
it becomes seriously damaged or weakened by HIV, your body loses its
ability to fight certain infections and cancers. These are called
oppor­tunistic infections (OIs).

AIDS is the most serious outcome of HIV infection. It occurs once your
immune system has been significantly damaged. If you have certain OIs,
it will lead to an AIDS diagnosis. This is because the presence of
these OIs in your body points to a significantly damaged immune
system.

An AIDS diagnosis will also be given if the counts of your immune
system cells (called CD4+ T cells or simply CD4s) fall below 200.
These cells are the key players in your immune system. Their "normal"
range in a healthy HIV-negative person is 500–1,500 cells/mm3.

This gradual destruction of the immune system doesn't happen the same
way in everyone, or even at the same pace. In some, it may not happen
at all. In a small percentage of people, HIV destroys their immune
systems very rapidly, in just a few years. But others remain well for
10–15 years or longer. On average, without using HIV therapy, most
people remain well for about ten years before facing their first
serious symptoms.

A number of things are well known about HIV infection:

Viral load tests measure the amount of HIV in the bloodstream. They
can generally predict how quickly HIV will damage the immune system.
In effect, these tests predict the loss of CD4 cells: the higher the
number, the greater the risk of damage to your immune system. Using
effective treat­ments can greatly reduce the level of HIV and slow its
rate of disease progression.
CD4 cell count tests measure the level of CD4 cells, a certain type of
white blood cell. These tests can measure the decline of your immune
health. However, taking HIV therapy can slow the decline of your
immune health. In fact, many people who start HIV therapy experience a
significant increase in their CD4 counts.
For long periods, often several years, the body copes effectively with
HIV in many people. The number and percentage of CD4 cells fall, but
slowly. During this period, most people feel normal and suffer no
obvious ill effects. Despite this, most researchers believe that
damage is still being done to the immune system. Many scientists
believe that early inter­vention during this time may have the
greatest impact, though others remain skeptical. They believe the
possible side effects from early treatment might outweigh its
benefits.
Without treatment, the body slowly loses its ability to fight
infections. Some infections, like Pneumocystis jiroveci pneumonia
(sometimes called PCP), become likely when CD4 counts fall below 300
or 200. Minor infections can occur at counts above 300. Other life-
threatening infections become more likely when the count falls below
100 or 50.
Disease Progression

HIV is a "spectrum" illness: all who are infected have the same
disease, but there are different stages to it. AIDS is the name given
only to the later most serious stage. In the earlier and less serious
stages, people are HIV-positive, meaning they tested positive on an
HIV antibody test but they have no life-threatening symptoms of
illness. If left untreated, most people generally progress along the
spectrum toward AIDS.

HIV disease can progress slowly or quickly. Several studies have
researched the rate at which it progresses when left untreated. Most
conclude that about half of HIV-infected people progress to AIDS if
left untreated within about ten years of infection. About three out of
four (75%) reach AIDS by the 15th year.

These studies conclude that HIV is a progressive disease that leads to
symptomatic illness in most people over time. Children born with HIV
and people infected through blood trans­fusion seem to get sick more
quickly. Studies suggest that when women have access to and seek
regular care and monitoring, their progression rates are similar to
and perhaps even slower than men. Studies that include people with
hemophilia are inconclusive about their rates of progression.

Why people progress at different rates is uncertain. It may be due to
differences in the strain of HIV a person gets. Others believe it is
influenced by genetic differences in people, while others suspect that
lifestyle factors make a difference.

Checking on Your Immune Health

With most illnesses, we wait until a disease shows up before doing
anything about it. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." But in HIV
disease, the immune system starts to "break" immediately, not just
when OIs show up. So keeping an eye on the health of your immune
system is critically important. Two common ways to do this are: (1)
noticing when symptoms occur and (2) getting lab tests done. Each can
appear to have advantages and disadvantages.

Noticing When Symptoms Occur

This approach waits for active infections and disease to occur. In
HIV, this means watching out for such things as thrush (yeast
infections), PCP, Kaposi's Sarcoma (KS) lesions and so on.

Advantages

It is easier to believe and take action when we are faced with an
obvious illness. People who feel sick usually want to treat the
illness as soon as possible.

Disadvantages

HIV disease progresses even before symptoms appear. By the time they
do appear, treating the underlying problem may be less effective
because your body i

[mokemoke]

President Obama signed a law today designed to change the way that
crack and powder cocaine are handled in court
The Fair Sentencing Act is "a bipartisan bill to help right a
longstanding wrong by narrowing sentencing disparities between those
convicted of crack cocaine and powder cocaine," Obama said last week
in a speech to the National Urban League. "It's the right thing to
do."

The law targets what the Drug Policy Alliance calls the problem of the
100-to-1 ratio.

Previously, a person caught with 5 grams of crack cocaine would
receive a mandatory sentence of five years -- that same person would
have to possess at least 500 grams of powder cocaine to earn the same
sentence. This discrepancy tended to fall harder on African Americans,
who are charged more often with crimes involving crack cocaine.

"By signing this reform into law President Obama will save taxpayer
money, reduce racial disparities, and better prioritize federal law
enforcement towards major crime syndicates instead of low-level
offender," said Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the Drug
Policy Alliance.

The disparity is not totally eliminated, however, as the Drug Policy
Alliance explained in a statement:

Advocates pushed to totally eliminate the disparity but ultimately a
compromise was struck between Democrats and Republicans to reduce the
100-to-1 disparity to 18-to-1. The compromise also eliminated the five
year mandatory minimum sentence for simple possession of five grams of
cocaine (about two sugar packets worth). The repeal of that mandatory
minimum is the first repeal of a mandatory minimum drug sentence since
the 1970s. Overall, the compromise bill is expected to reduce the
federal prison population by thousands of offenders and save an
estimated $42 million in criminal justice spending over the first five
years.

Back in April, our colleague Mimi Hall wrote about a man seeking
clemency for a life sentence related to crack cocaine.

A bipartisan congressional delegation watched Obama sign the new bill

[mokemoke]

San Francisco Chronicle
Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Same-Sex Marriage Ban Overturned in California

Aug. 4 (Bloomberg) -- A federal judge overturned California's ban on
same-sex marriage, or Proposition 8, the constitutional amendment
passed by 52 percent of the state's voters in 2008.

U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker in San Francisco sided with the city
of San Francisco and couples from Berkeley and Burbank, who argued
that the amendment deprives gays and lesbians of equal rights and
protections afforded by the U.S. Constitution. The case was the
nation's first federal trial over whether it is legal to ban marriage
by people of the same sex.

The amendment outlawed same-sex marriage after it was legalized by the
state Supreme Court five months earlier. Walker's decision will
probably be appealed and the case may ultimately be decided by the
U.S. Supreme Court. Proposition 8 supporters have asked Walker to
suspend his ruling so that same- sex couples couldn't marry while an
appeal is pending.

"Because Proposition 8 is unconstitutional under both the Due Process
and Equal Protection Clauses, the court orders entry of judgment
permanently enjoining its enforcement," Walker wrote.

That notion of marriage is supported by the U.S. Congress, 7 million
Californians and 70 out of 108 judges who have examined the issue,
Cooper said.


Liberty and Freedom

Theodore Olson, a former U.S. solicitor general, argued on behalf of
the gay couples seeking marriage rights. He said the U.S. Supreme
Court has determined in 14 cases going back to 1888 that marriage is
tied to rights of privacy, liberty and freedom. He said Proposition 8
proponents can't show that California has any rational basis or
compelling interest to take away that right.

"For the hundreds of thousands of Californians in gay and lesbian
households who are managing their day-to-day lives, this decision
affirms the full legal protections and safeguards I believe everyone
deserves, " California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said in a
statement. "At the same time, it provides an opportunity for all
Californians to consider our history of leading the way to the future,
and our growing reputation of treating all people and their
relationships with equal respect and dignity."

About 18,000 gay couples married in California before Proposition 8
was passed. As of 2006, there were an estimated 109,000 gay couples in
California, more than any other state, according to U.S. Census data
compiled by the University of California Los Angeles.

The case is Perry v. Schwarzenegger, 3:09-cv-02292, U.S. District
Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).

\--With assistance from Karen Gullo in San Francisco. Editors: Peter
Blumberg, John Pickering

[mokemoke]

Judge rules California's ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional

(CNN) -- A federal judge in California on Wednesday overturned the
state's ban on same-sex marriage, saying the voter-approved rule
violated the constitutional rights of gays and lesbians.

The decision, issued by Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker in San
Francisco, is an initial step in what will likely be a lengthy legal
fight over California's Proposition 8, which defined marriage as a
union between a man and a woman.

At stake in the trial was whether California's ban on same-sex
marriage violated the constitutional rights to equal protection and
due process of two gay couples that want to marry.

The case was watched closely by both supporters and opponents of same-
sex marriage, as many say it is likely to wind its way up to the U.S.
Supreme Court. If it does, the case could end in a landmark decision
on whether people in the United States are allowed to marry people of
the same sex.

"We are thrilled with today's ruling, which affirms that the
protections enshrined in our U.S. Constitution apply to all Americans
and that our dream of equality and freedom deserves protection," said
Geoff Kors, executive director for Equality California, shortly after
the decision.

LINKS
PDF: Ruling on Proposition 8
RELATED TOPICS
Proposition 8
U.S. Supreme Court
Kristin Perry and Sandy Stier, along with Jeffrey Zarrillo and Paul
Katami, are the two couples at the heart of the case, which if
appealed would go next to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals before
possibly heading to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Outside a San Francisco courthouse, a small group of same-sex marriage
supporters waited for the decision. They waved flags and carried signs
that read: "We all deserve the freedom to marry." Rallies were planned
for later in the day.

Proposition 8 is part of a long line of seesaw rulings, court cases,
debates and protests in California over the hotly debated issue of
same-sex marriage. It passed with some 52 percent of the vote in
November 2008.

Prior to Wednesday's decision, Rick Jacobs, founder of the Campaign
Courage, which supports same-sex marriage, said he was hopeful about
the possibility of victory, but prepared for a long legal battle.

Same-sex marriage is currently legal in five U.S. states and in the
District of Colombia. Civil unions are permitted in New Jersey.

"The significance of the case is earth-shattering," said Jacobs.

[mokemoke]

Lady Gaga denounced the new immigration law in Arizona when she took
the stage in Phoenix for her Monster Ball tour Saturday. The pop icon
stopped short of calling for a boycott of the state, saying that it
was preferable to “peaceably protest” the controversial measure, which
includes harsh penalties against illegal immigration.

“I want you to reject any person or any thing or any law that have
ever made you feel like you don’t belong,’ said Gaga to screaming
fans, as captured in the video. She mentioned that she dismissed
recent pleas from some “really big rock and rollers, big pop stars,
big rappers” who wanted her to boycott Arizona because of the law,
formally known as SB1070.

Gaga said she told her colleagues in the music industry, “Do you
really think that us dumb fucking pop stars are going to collapse the
economy of Arizona?”

Instead, said Gaga, “We have to be active. We have to actively
protest, and the nature of the Monster Ball is to actively protest
prejudice and injustice and that bullshit that is put on our society.”

Gaga concluded her statement with a shout-out to her LGBT fans, and
she encouraged all the attendees to leave her concert with a more
positive self-image.

“You’re a superstar, no matter who you are, or where you come from,
and you were born that way,” she said.

[mokemoke]

The Chicago-area Cook County Human Rights Commission ruled recently
that there is "substantial evidence" a former northern Illinois school
superintendent was fired because he was gay - even though he was also
at the center of a videotape scandal defaming some of his fellow
teachers.

Former Bremen community school district superintendent Rich Mitchell
was dismissed in 2006, and he alleges his sexuality led to his firing,
reports the Chicago Sun-Times.

Mitchell also says the changes he hoped to implement to the school
district were stymied by the school board.

Mitchell was suspended and fired shortly after a videotape surfaced of
him interviewing new teachers; the video was edited by Mitchell so
that the teachers appeared to be admitting to drug use, and in some
instances, murder. At the time, Mitchell called the video a joke.

The Human Rights commission will now investigate the Mitchell's firing
in a full hearing.

[mokemoke]

X-Factor winner Joe McElderry says Simon Cowell and the other
producers of the show have been very supportive of his decision to
come out.

McElderry came out in TheDaily Mirror last week - just one week after
telling his mother he's gay. The 19-year-old singer says he gave a
heads up to Cowell and other executives at his record label before
agreeing to do the interview.

"I spoke to Simon direct. He said, 'Hi, it's Simon. You know, I 100
per cent agree with what you are doing. It's fantastic. I am here at
the end of the phone if you need any support and we are thrilled for
what you're doing'.' It's great. It would have been a bit of a
nightmare had they said they didn't want this to happen, but they've
been totally fine."

[mokemoke]

Lindsay Lohan was released from a Los Angeles County jail early Monday
morning and expected to go directly to a treatment facility. The 24-
year-old actress had served 13 days for violating probation on a
conviction for driving under the influence.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Lohan left the Century Regional
Detention Facility in Lynwood around 1:35 a.m., and a sheriff's
spokesman said her next stop was a substance abuse treatment center,
which he refused to name.

Convicted of driving under the influence in 2007, Lohan was sent to
jail on July 20 for not attending classes regularly in an alcohol
education program, which she has completed, according to the Times.

"Lohan was kept away from other inmates for security reasons," the
Times reported. "With reductions for good behavior and a program to
relieve jail crowding, Lohan had been expected to serve about 13 days
of a 90-day sentence ordered by Beverly Hills Judge Marsha Revel."

[mokemoke]

Comments from an interview with The Daily Mail in which actor Tom
Hardy talked about the men he slept with in his twenties were
reportedly taken out of context.

E! Online reports that a source close to the actor claims he was
talking about a role when he made those comments and the reporter
changed the interview around to make it seem like he was talking about
himself. The source says Hardy was quoting from a script.

According to The Daily Mail, when asked if he'd ever slept with men,
the Inception star replied: "As a boy? Of course I have. I'm an actor
for f--k's sake. I've played with everything and everyone."

E! Online suggests this may also be a case of a young actor distancing
himself from some headline-grabbing comments, citing that according to
his resume, he's only played gay once, in the action film RocknRolla.
In that film, Hardy played a mobster, not an actor.

[mokemoke]

Houston mayor Annise Parker visited Shanghai, one of China's most
welcoming cities for LGBT people, on Monday and praised its open
attitudes as smart business.

According to GayPolitics.com, Parker is on her first trip abroad since
being elected in December, when Houston become the largest U.S. city
to date to elect an openly gay mayor. The purpose of her visit to
China is to encourage business links, especially new direct air
carrier routes, between Houston and Shanghai.

"Leading a delegation of some 60 Houstonians to the city, Mayor Annise
Parker today praised Shanghai, China as a welcoming and open to its
LGBT citizens, a stance she said is good for business," reported
GayPolitics.com.

According to the Xinhua news agency, Parker spoke at Houston Day at
the USA Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo and said, "Shanghainese
and Houstonians are similar. They care about what you do, not who you
are."

[mokemoke]

George Brown, president of the Potter County Tea Party, has issued a
public apology for his protest of the acclaimed documentary Out in the
Silence when it screened at a local library on its tour throughout
Pennsylvania.

In an interview with The Advocate, Joe Wilson, codirector of Out in
the Silence, explained the project's mission: "The purpose of the
whole tour was really to use this film to raise awareness and
visibility about the lives of LGBT people in rural communities and
small towns and help strengthen the ability of LGBT people in these
communities to begin organizing for change." The tour has so far
covered over half of Pennsylvania's 67 counties. Yet upon setting up
shop in Coudersport, Pa., Wilson and Dean Hamer, his partner and
codirector, met with controversy.

The film was set to be screened at the public library, Wilson
explained, emphasizing, "just as any community group can do, or any
citizen can use the public library for a program." All was well until
the duo received a call from the library director announcing that the
event would have to be canceled. "She was receiving angry calls from
local pastors for having scheduled a gay and lesbian program at the
library. They were making threats that they were going to call for the
library to be defunded," Wilson said

An article that ran Monday on CoudyNews.com provides quotations both
from Pete Tremblay, pastor of the Free Methodist Church and the Tea
Party's Brown. Tremblay issued a request for people to "call the
library ... and in a Christian manner inform them that this event is
not a benefit to our community, and ask that it be canceled." Brown
took a different approach: "Should this agenda be continued, we may
need to ask if the library should be defunded."

The library's board of directors ultimately supported the film, saying
they would not be threatened. The event was a success, Wilson
reported: "It was the largest event in the library in a long time. We
had a very supportive crowd from high school students all the way up
to elderly people. There were conflicting viewpoints present during
the discussion, though Hamer believes these were positive as well, as
it made it clear how challenging it can be to be LGBT in that kind of
environment."

Brown issued an official apology for his actions Thursday, stating,
"The Tea Party is not concerned with a gay movie, but I as a person
was concerned with the library being the venue for the movie, and
frankly that had little to do with our Tea Party mission either. In
retrospect I should of used my personal email to voice my opinion."

[mokemoke]

Glee creator Ryan Murphy confirmed at Saturday night's Television
Critics Association awards that Cheerios Brittany and Santana will
kiss in season two.

"We're filming that episode on Monday," he told AfterEllen.com. He
said there will definitely be a kiss between them. "Maybe more."

The maybe bi, maybe just a lot of talk cheerleading duo dropped
several hints in season one that they were more than just friends.
Actresses Naya Rivera (Santana) and Heather Morris (Brittany) were
upgraded to series regulars for the show's second season.

[mokemoke]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/08/05/national/a111450D66.DTL


The Associatd Press

Target apologizes for Minn. political donation

By BRIAN BAKST,
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, August 5, 2010

(08-05) 12:56 PDT ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) -- The head of Target Corp.
apologized Thursday over a political donation to a business group
backing a conservative Republican for Minnesota governor, which
angered some employees and sparked talk of a customer boycott.

Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel wrote employees to say the discount
retailer was "genuinely sorry" over the way a $150,000 contribution to
MN Forward donation played out. Steinhafel said Target would set up a
review process for future political donations.

MN Forward is running TV ads supporting Republican Tom Emmer, an
outspoken conservative opposed to same-sex marriage and other gay-
rights initiatives that have come before Minnesota's Legislature.

Steinhafel said the contribution from the corporate treasury to a
political effort, which until this year wasn't allowed, was designed
to support Emmer's stance on economic issues. Ads run by the group
were focused on budget policy, not social issues.

"While I firmly believe that a business climate conducive to growth is
critical to our future, I realize our decision affected many of you in
a way I did not anticipate, and for that I am genuinely sorry,"
Steinhafel wrote.

He added, "The diversity of our team is an important aspect of our
unique culture and our success as a company, and we did not mean to
disappoint you, our team or our valued guests."

A phone message left with a Target spokeswoman for more details on the
company's new policy was not immediately returned.

OutFront Minnesota, a gay-rights advocacy group, posted an open letter
urging Target to take back its money from MN Forward. And "Boycott
Target" Facebook groups began to appear.

"We appreciate they are taking this really seriously," said Monica
Meyer, OutFront's executive director. "People will feel good about
being heard. Some will still probably be holding back to wait and see
what the next statement and the next move is."

Target is known in Minnesota for helping sponsor the annual Twin
Cities Gay Pride Festival.

The reaction to Target's donation highlights the potential risks for
businesses that seek to take advantage of a recent U.S. Supreme Court
ruling that threw out parts of a 63-year-old law that prohibited
campaign donations from company funds. The ruling changed regulations
in about half the states, but the Target donation in Minnesota was
among the first major new corporate moves to come to light.

Howard Davidowitz, chairman of New York-based Davidowitz & Associates
Inc., a retail consulting and investment banking firm, said he thought
any consumer backlash against Target would have been small and only a
small group of customers would have been angry enough to stop shopping
there.

"They don't want this to go further," Davidowitz said. "What Target
did today is called damage control. And I think damage control is
perfectly appropriate."

MN Forward has attracted at least $60,000 in donations since the
Target backlash erupted and more than $1 million in total since it was
formed. The group has also broadened its political profile. On
Thursday, it sent out mail pieces on behalf of six legislative
candidates — three Democrats, three Republicans.

Brian McClung, the group's director, said MN Forward planned to push a
bipartisan slate of candidates "from day one."

"This group of candidates has varied backgrounds and positions on many
issues, but they all have been focused on making Minnesota a better
place to grow jobs," he said.

According to public campaign reports, other contributors to MN Forward
include Red Wing Shoe Company Inc., Best Buy Co., Pentair Inc.,
Hubbard Broadcasting Inc., Davisco Foods International Inc. and
Polaris Industries Inc.


Associated Press writers Martiga Lohn in St. Paul and Doug Glass in
Minneapolis contributed to this report.

[mokemoke]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/08/06/notes080610.DTL&type=printable

Gay marriage makes the world shrug
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, August 6, 2010

Argentina, at last check, is not yet writhing in flames. Canada, as
far as I can see from my window, is still right up there, stoic and
mild, smelling of pine trees and bitumen, watching lots of hockey,
shooting guns, being Canadian. The Netherlands? Why, still crisp and
clean, efficiently blonde as ever. It's shocking, really.

After all, you'd think they'd be downright miserable. You'd think
they'd be in country-wide group therapy, hating and hurling and
spitting, maybe a few riots, some stabbings, panic in the streets, the
very fabric of their various shell-shocked societies unraveling like
Mel Gibson at a bat mitzvah.

In fact, it would appear that millions of people across a surprisingly
large number of dashing, industrious countries all over the world --
including Belgium, Spain, South Africa, Norway, Sweden, Portugal and
even adorable little Iceland -- are still not yet imploding, not yet
suffering the furious wrath of God, not yet dying in unchecked anguish
before our very eyes.

What to make of it? After all, in each and every one of these sinful
nations, gay people have been happily and legally getting married
(and, presumably, divorced, remarried and tossed about on the same
socio-emotional rollercoaster as their straight brethren) every single
day, for months and years and -- in the case of the Netherlands --
nearly a decade now.

What the hell is wrong with them? Didn't they get the newsletter?
Don't they know how very wrong, sinful, sick and perverted they all so
obviously are? Haven't they heard the hoarse wails of the terrified
Mormon elders, the raspy screams of the obsolete Vatican, the
tightened bowels of confused fundamentalists of nearly every major
religion worldwide, all of them absolutely positive that allowing
certain kinds of consenting adults who love each other to get married
will spell the end of civilization, families, innocence, the military,
God's bitter and judgmental love as we know it? Someone should send
them a pamphlet.

Meanwhile, back here in the land of fear and rainbow flags and rivers
of fundamentalist misinformation flowing like Coors Light at a NASCAR
rally, we still can't seem to figure anything out. The stillborn
bastard troll known as Prop 8 has finally been overturned by a fine
federal judge, deemed unconstitutional by a mile, not to mention
unconscionable, unrealistic, not a little bit hateful, and just plain
dumb.

No matter. It has, of course, already been appealed by tiny groups of
angry people who really hate other groups of people, and will be
contested and argued over, debated and slapfighted for months on its
way to the wonky Ninth Court of Appeals, all possibly culminating in a
grand and furious finale as the case finally stumbles into the
conservative, uptight U.S. Supreme Court by 2012 or so, just in time
to induce/commemorate the apocalypse. Perfect.

And then what? Where will we be by then? Or, more importantly, will
any of it matter? I'm not so sure anymore.

Let's ask it this way: If the high court doth indeed snicker, snarl
and follow the Scalia/Alito roadmap to conservative backassedness and
overturns Judge Walker's powerful, intensely worded ruling, or even if
some miracle of fairness and progress occurs and Prop 8 is ruled to be
exactly as ugly as ignorant as anyone with an open heart knows it to
be, well, will the world even blink? Shrug? Will we all die and be
reborn in a laughing, sweating heap of what the hell were we thinking?

Or will America be like the very last virgin Catholic schoolgirl, the
drunken snail to crawl across the finish line, long forgotten and
nicely obsolete, 10 years late and an ideology short, with the rest of
the world sighing and smiling and saying "Geez, what the hell took you
so long?"

This is what we are learning: The U.S. matters less and less in the
grand public debate, the global shift, the Great Understanding. In the
past few decades we've seen nation after nation fly right by us in
many a happy category, from humanitarianism to education, health care
to drugs, sexuality to the arts, prison systems to pollution,
transportation to spiritual awareness. What a sad, strange trip it's
been.

Perhaps you recall that impossible, rose-colored time when all eyes
were on America, when we largely set the (wobbly, inconsistent, but
still somehow noble) standard for the world's cultures, governments,
arts? How we once represented, at least on paper, at least in our own
adorably egomaniacal minds, a kind of delirious, experimental, rough-
hewn freedom?

No longer. Our educational system, once the best in the world not 25
years ago, now ranks near the bottom. Our health care system, despite
Obama's brutally fought-for reforms, has a long way to go to be
anywhere near efficient and beneficial. Our military is insanely
bloated, absurdly out of scale for our actual needs, and the single
biggest drain on the U.S. economy, by far.

What's more, our own U.S. Congress is more fractured and acidic than
at any time in recent history; it can barely move, breath, speak, make
a decision without members' clawing each others' eyes out. The
divisions are deep and wide, the scar of Bush disgustingly permanent.
In short, we ain't what we once were.

That's the bad news. The good news is, the world doesn't really need
us anymore. Our melodramas and majestic decisions, our nasty wars and
our religious pulings do not make the world start, shake the universe,
terrify all comers, reshape global consciousness on a dime. Ain't it
grand?

Do not misunderstand. Should gay marriage finally be released from its
cage of ignorance and fear here in America, the rush of positive
energy and emotion that will explode all over the land of milk and
money will be like few other love bombs in recent memory. It will
indicate no less than a grand upheaval, the last, great civil right
finally realized. It will not merely be the end of an ignorant and
outdated law, nor merely a proper slapdown to a silly, cult-like
religion that can't deduce its way out of a coffee mug. It will be no
less than a new way of understanding ourselves, our genders, our
culture.

But at the same time, much of the civilized world will already have
passed us by, long ago. Gay rights is and will be a foregone
conclusion in a dozen nations, a widely accepted, almost yawningly
obvious non-issue. America's really big deal really won't be such a
big deal after all. Which means that maybe, just maybe, we can finally
get over ourselves, and move the hell on.


Mark Morford's new book, 'The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant
Journalism,' is now available at daringspectacle.com, Amazon, BN.com,
and beyond.

Join Mark on Facebook and Twitter, or email him. His website is
markmorford.com.

Mark's column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SFGate. To join
the notification list for this column, click here and remove one
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This column also has an RSS feed and a very handy archive page.

[mokemoke]

The Starlite Lounge, a long-celebrated fixture of the Brooklyn gay
scene, closes its doors Saturday after a rocky year.

In a message posted on the home page of the Starlite Lounge website,
the establishment's management and staff remark, "It is with a heavy
heart that we are forced to announce that the Starlite Lounge has lost
its highly-publicized battle to stay open in its landmark location."
The lounge is described on the site as "the oldest black-owned non-
discriminating bar/club in the heart of Brooklyn, New York."

The lounge's clientele ranges from drag queens and locals to fashion
models and celebrities. Even Madonna is rumored to have visited the
Starlite.

Press outlets ranging from Brownstoner blog and Gothamist to The New
York Times have covered the establishment's plight over the past year.
Anxieties were first stirred when the property changed hands
unexpectedly in 2009. As Gothamist reported that year, Starlite
manager Tim Leviticus explained, "Without us knowing, the old landlord
sold the building - not even giving us the right to purchase it. We
haven't met the new owner yet, but we've heard he wants the building
to be empty."

Susan Dominus followed up in her January New York Times article, where
she reported that the bar's owners were unable to find anyone to
negotiate a new lease "in good faith."

The bar, located at the corner of Nostrand Avenue and Bergen Street,
has been a longtime safe haven in Brooklyn for gays and others and has
served as a hangout for people of all backgrounds. Dominus quotes a
patron in her article as saying, "People like that there was no fear
there." Now many patrons fear that the Starlite will be irreplaceable.

There may be hope, however: The bar's farewell message cryptically
promises, "There are plans for a fresh, new beginning for the Starlite
Lounge."

[mokemoke]

Gay Games VIII kicked off Saturday in Cologne, Germany. Germany's gay
Secretary of State Dr. Guido Westerwelle opened the games with
appearances by gold medalist Matthew Mitcham, Swedish pop star Agnes
and Taylor Dayne.

Shortly after the opening ceremonies, Mitcham updated his Facebook
page with this message: "Warning: mushy moment. I have found some of
these people so inspirational it has moved me to tears, and that
hasn't happened since Beijing 2008."

Check back to Advocate.com for Gay Games updates and follow the games
at Outsports.com.

[mokemoke]

Now here's something you wouldn't expect. Coca-Cola is being sued by a
non-profit public interest group, on the grounds that the company's
vitaminwater products make unwarranted health claims. No surprise
there. But how do you think the company is defending itself?

In a staggering feat of twisted logic, lawyers for Coca-Cola are
defending the lawsuit by asserting that "no consumer could reasonably
be misled into thinking vitaminwater was a healthy beverage."

Does this mean that you'd have to be an unreasonable person to think
that a product named "vitaminwater," a product that has been heavily
and aggressively marketed as a healthy beverage, actually had health
benefits?

Or does it mean that it's okay for a corporation to lie about its
products, as long as they can then turn around and claim that no one
actually believes their lies?

In fact, the product is basically sugar-water, to which about a
penny's worth of synthetic vitamins have been added. And the amount of
sugar is not trivial. A bottle of vitaminwater contains 33 grams of
sugar, making it more akin to a soft drink than to a healthy
beverage.

Is any harm being done by this marketing ploy? After all, some might
say consumers are at least getting some vitamins, and there isn't as
much sugar in vitaminwater as there is in regular Coke.

True. But about 35 percent of Americans are now considered medically
obese. Two-thirds of Americans are overweight. Health experts tend to
disagree about almost everything, but they all concur that added
sugars play a key role in the obesity epidemic, a problem that now
leads to more medical costs than smoking.

How many people with weight problems have consumed products like
vitaminwater in the mistaken belief that the product was nutritionally
positive and carried no caloric consequences? How many have thought
that consuming vitaminwater was a smart choice from a weight-loss
perspective? The very name "vitaminwater" suggests that the product is
simply water with added nutrients, disguising the fact that it's
actually full of added sugar.

The truth is that when it comes to weight loss, what you drink may be
even more important than what you eat. Americans now get nearly 25
percent of their calories from liquids. In 2009, researchers at the
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health published a report in
the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, finding that the quickest
and most reliable way to lose weight is to cut down on liquid calorie
consumption. And the best way to do that is to reduce or eliminate
beverages that contain added sugar.

Meanwhile, Coca-Cola has invested billions of dollars in its
vitaminwater line, paying basketball stars, including Kobe Bryant and
Lebron James, to appear in ads that emphatically state that these
products are a healthy way for consumers to hydrate. When Lebron James
held his much ballyhooed TV special to announce his decision to join
the Miami Heat, many corporations paid millions in an attempt to
capitalize on the event. But it was vitaminwater that had the most
prominent role throughout the show.

The lawsuit, brought by the Center for Science in the Public Interest,
alleges that vitaminwater labels and advertising are filled with
"deceptive and unsubstantiated claims." In his recent 55-page ruling,
Federal Judge John Gleeson (U.S. District Court for the Eastern
District of New York), wrote, "At oral arguments, defendants (Coca-
Cola) suggested that no consumer could reasonably be misled into
thinking vitamin water was a healthy beverage." Noting that the soft
drink giant wasn't claiming the lawsuit was wrong on factual grounds,
the judge wrote that, "Accordingly, I must accept the factual
allegations in the complaint as true."

I still can't get over the bizarre audacity of Coke's legal case.
Forced to defend themselves in court, they are acknowledging that
vitaminwater isn't a healthy product. But they are arguing that
advertising it as such isn't false advertising, because no could
possibly believe such a ridiculous claim.

I guess that's why they spend hundreds of millions of dollars
advertising the product, saying it will keep you "healthy as a horse,"
and will bring about a "healthy state of physical and mental well-
being."

Why do we allow companies like Coca-Cola to tell us that drinking a
bottle of sugar water with a few added water-soluble vitamins is a
legitimate way to meet our nutritional needs?

Here's what I suggest: If you're looking for a healthy and far less
expensive way to hydrate, try drinking water. If you want to flavor
the water you drink, try adding the juice of a lemon and a small
amount of honey or maple syrup to a quart of water. Another
alternative is to mix one part lemonade or fruit juice to three or
four parts water. Or drink green tea, hot or chilled, adding lemon and
a small amount of sweetener if you like. If you want to jazz it up,
try one-half fruit juice, one-half carbonated water.

If your tap water tastes bad or you suspect it might contain lead or
other contaminants, get a water filter that fits under the sink or
attaches to the tap.

And it's probably not the best idea to rely on a soft drink company
for your vitamins and other essential nutrients. A plant-strong diet
with lots of vegetables and fruits will provide you with what you need
far more reliably, far more consistently -- and far more honestly.


To learn about inexpensive and healthy foods and beverages, and
practical steps you can take toward greater quality of life and
economic freedom, read John Robbins' critically acclaimed new book The
New Good Life: Living Better Than Ever in an Age of Less. For more
information about his work, or to sign up for his email list, visit
johnrobbins.info

[mokemoke]

Martyred Houston Panther leader honored

By Gloria Rubac
Houston
Published Aug 6, 2010 11:03 AM

Carl B. Hampton, the leader of People’s Party II in Houston, was
assassinated by the Houston police 40 years ago on July 26. His life
and legacy, however, are very much alive in the hearts and actions of
those who worked with him, those who remember him and those who
treasure his history but were not yet born when he was killed.

The Carl B. Hampton 40th Anniversary Memorial Committee organized five
days of activities from July 22 to 26. These events brought together
former leading Black Panther Party members from around the country,
Houston activists who knew and worked with Hampton, and hundreds of
people from all over this city who were eager to learn about Houston’s
revolutionary African-American history.

In 1969, while in Oakland, Hampton discovered and was inspired by the
BPP, and he decided to begin a chapter in Houston. Since the BPP was
not then authorizing new chapters, he created People’s Party II in
recognition that the BPP was the “first People’s Party.” He began
organizing in early 1970, but months after PPII opened, Houston police
assassinated Hampton.

After Hampton’s death, due to his great sacrifice, the BPP leadership
granted chapter status to PPII and it became known as the Houston
chapter of the Black Panther Party.

“Carl Hampton was only 21 when he was gunned down, but he was educated
and wise beyond his years,” said Charles “Boko” Freeman, who organized
PPII with Hampton and was a leader of Houston’s BPP chapter.

The 40th anniversary commemorations began with a Black Panther Party
art exhibit with framed front pages of more than 50 newspapers
illustrated by BPP Minister of Culture Emory Douglass; revolutionary
art by Freeman; historical photography and posters. Douglass and
former Panther Billy X Jennings gave an art presentation with more
than 150 slides of revolutionary art that chronicled the BPP’s
history. Freeman had reproduced prints of his beautiful painting
depicting Hampton’s life, which were available to participants.

Playwright Parnell Herbert presented his new production of “The Angola
3,” about three BPP members and political prisoners in Louisiana’s
Angola State Prison. The audience responded very enthusiastically to
the play.

John King, the only one of the Angola 3 who has been released from
prison, was an honored guest at the play. The other two, Herman
Wallace and Albert Woodfox, have been in solitary confinement for more
than 37 years for a crime they did not commit. (www.angola3. org)

Community rally, gravesite remembrance

The main event was a community rally at Emancipation Park, which is
across the street from the first BPP headquarters. A highlight was the
introduction of Hampton’s son, Maasai, who was six months old when his
father was gunned down. Maasai, who was on the commemoration’ s
planning committee, thanked all the activists there for teaching him
about his father’s history. Hampton’s sister and nieces were also
introduced.

Emotions ran high as six of the Houston members of the PPII/BPP took
the stage. Bobby Reed, Claude Frost, Sensei Benton, Loretta Freeman,
Bunchy Crear and Freeman received a warm standing ovation.

A guest speaker was Kathleen Cleaver, the first woman member of the
Black Panther Party Central Committee, who is currently a law
professor at Emory University School of Law.

Panthers United for Revolutionary Education sent a special message of
solidarity from Texas’ notorious death row. It was read by Regina
Guidry, a member of the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement.

Also attending the rally were former members of the John Brown
Revolutionary League and the Mexican American Youth Organization.
Hampton had organized Houston’s Rainbow Coalition in 1970 with these
two groups, and they held many joint protests and rallies.

Other events were a Strategies for Change Conference at Texas Southern
University and a Panther Film Festival, organized by BPP historian and
archivist Jennings. That was held at the SHAPE Community Center.

The final event took place on July 26, exactly 40 years after
Hampton’s murder. His comrades, family and supporters gathered at his
gravesite to remember and speak about his contributions to the
Panthers, to African-American history and to the revolutionary
movement of the 1960s. Former Panther Geronimo ji Jaga sent a special
message from Tanzania, which Benton read.

Dr. Charles E. Jones, founding chair of the Department of
African-American Studies at Georgia State University in Atlanta,
presented his newly released booklet in honor of Hampton at the
commemorative events. Its title is “Arm Yourself or Harm Yourself:
People’s Party II and the Black Panther Party in Houston, Texas.”

Dr. Jones wrote, “[T]he perseverance, dedication and courage of the
members are undisputable. They left a legacy of self-defense,
multi-racial coalition politics, and community empowerment built in
the face of rampant police repression. ... Most importantly, these
young African-American men and women dared to challenge racial
oppression and to struggle on behalf of black and other oppressed
people.”

[mokemoke]

Isiah Thomas And Son Come Out Against Prop 8

Isiah Thomas, men's basketball coach of the Florida International
University Golden Panthers, and his son, Joshua Zeke Thomas, a DJ,
have come out against Prop 8.

The men were featured in the NOH8 Campaign that opposes California's
gay marriage ban. Father and son were photographed with their mouths
duct taped and “NOH8” written on one cheek. In individual photos,
Isiah is seen holding a basketball and Joshua a record above his head.

“We posed for the NOH8 Campaign because we believe that all hate and
discrimination is wrong,” the men said. “It is time for full equality
and equal rights for everyone, regardless of race, sexual orientation,
religion or gender.”

Isiah Thomas played in the NBA for nearly a decade before turning to
coaching. He was named one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History
in 1996.

The campaign struck gold last year when Cindy McCain, the wife of
Arizona Senator John McCain, and their daughter Meghan, a pro-gay
Republican, approached the group to offer their endorsement.

[mokemoke]

NEWBERRY, S.C. — A grand jury has indicted a white South Carolina man
on charges he killed his black friend and dragged his body behind a
truck.

Prosecutor Jerry Peace said 19-year-old Gregory Collins was indicted
Friday for murder, desecrating a body and possessing a weapon during a
violent crime. Peace said it becomes a case on the active docket.

Collins was arrested in June and accused of killing 30-year-old
Anthony Hill. Authorities say Collins shot Hill, then dragged his body
11 miles behind a truck.




The New Black Panther Party has held protests and rallies in Newberry,
asking federal authorities to charge Collins with a hate crime.

Last week, a judge decided last week not to issue a gag order in the
case.

[mokemoke]

A female impersonator who claims he was portrayed as a transvestite on
Britain's Got Talent wants Simon Cowell and other producers of the UK-
based reality show to pay up for defaming him.

Philip Grimmer made it to the semi-finals of the show with a tribute
to Madonna. He says he was made a laughing stock by Cowell when he
appeared on the show in December, 2009 and that producers made it
appear to audiences that he is gay.

"I'm a female impersonator, that's what I put on my application.,"
Grimmer told The Sun. "It's my niche, I'm not gay or a transvestite."

A producer for Britain's Got Talent's production company says they are
unaware of any pending suit.

[mokemoke]

Photographer Spencer Tunick has released his highly anticipated
photograph of some 5,000 nude Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras
revelers that he shot at the Sydney Opera House in March.

"The Base" is New York-based Tunick's attempt to create a "human base"
for the Opera House, he said. Tunick is known for posing large numbers
of nude people at iconic locations around the world.

Each of the 5,200 participants will receive a copy of the photograph.
Click here for more information.

[mokemoke]

- Vampire Diaries stars Paul Wesley and Ian Somerhalder.
The Vampire Diaries creator Kevin Williamson says he’s not quite sure
when, and he’s not quite sure who, but coming soon, one of the show’s
characters will come out.

The gay writer/director says he doesn’t want a repeat of the coming
out storyline on Dawson’s Creek, but it’s important to him to have a
gay character on the show.

I always feel like I don't have enough diversity on my show, and that
is one of the things I'm very conscientious of,” Williamson said The
CW’s party for the Television Critics Association press tour. “And not
just gay characters. Any diversity. In anything, I want everyone
represented. I want everybody on the show."

The Vampire Diaries is frequently The CW’s highest rated show. It will
return for a second season September 9.

[mokemoke]

Oil in Haiti?
The Possibility Could be a Solution or Another Problem
Monday, April 19, 2010
By Del Walters

There are two major concerns coming out of the situation in Haiti
these days. One concern is that not enough is being done, or if it is
being done than the job is much larger than anyone anticipated.
Quietly, however, a new concern is emerging - that there may be other
factors when it comes to Haiti, especially the ulterior motivating
factor known as “Oil”.

Bloomberg News is reporting that there may indeed be oil offshore in
Haiti, and natural gas reserves that could reshape the economic
landscape of the island nation:
The Greater Antilles, which includes Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican
Republic, Puerto Rico and their offshore waters, probably hold at
least 142 million barrels of oil and 159 billion cubic feet of gas,
according to a 2000 report by the U.S. Geological Survey. Undiscovered
amounts may be as high as 941 million barrels of oil and 1.2 trillion
cubic feet of gas, according to the report.

Among nations in the northern Caribbean, Cuba and Jamaica have awarded
offshore leases for oil and gas development. Trinidad and Tobago,
South American islands off the coast of Venezuela, account for most
Caribbean oil production, according to the U.S. Energy Department.

What this means is that a decade ago the United States Government,
knew there was oil off of Haiti at a time when the Bush administration
was choking the country’s foreign aid. Keep in mind we’re talking
about the same Bush administration that went to war in Iraq for what
many believe was to only to get at that country’s oil. It is the same
administration that declared Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez public enemy
number one, Venezuela being another oil rich nation.

What does this mean for Haiti’s reconstruction? That is the question
being whispered inside the beltway by those who are concerned about
Haiti’s survival.

I attended a meeting on Friday where the major concern was that NGOs
(Non Governmental Agencies) such as churches and other groups have
spent millions in Haiti and yet there are still reports coming out of
Port Au Prince that the best efforts so far haven’t made a dent in the
devastation. Privately some of those in attendance expressed concerns
that oil means Haiti needs an honest broker. They feared oil
interests would trump humanitarian interests and pointed to the
massive U.S. Embassy on the island. Clearly not enough is being done.

That same day, Natasha Archer wrote in the Washington Post, of her six
weeks in Haiti:

There are few words other than "horrible" to explain the stench
emanating from the nursing school at General Hospital, as Hôpital
Universitaire d'État d'Haïti is known. I couldn't hold my breath the
entire time it took to walk by the remains of the building, which
collapsed during exams and killed essentially a first-year class of
nursing students.”

She goes onto say when seeing the same things that I saw at the same
hospital:
"…inspiration" is not among the things that come to mind --
especially not when walking past cribs with dead babies in them. The
most neutral response about my time in Haiti is "challenging." It was
physically challenging. With the temperature always 90 degrees or
hotter, the tents, especially the pediatric tents, were like
incubators -- at least 10 degrees warmer than outside.”

Oil could make Haitians rich. It could also muddy the political will
to do the right thing. It is too soon to tell which scenario will
play out. Right now replacing tents with more permanent structures
and getting food and water to those affected seems to be the
predominant battle. The problem is, when I got off the plane in Haiti
I noticed some of those familiar figures I have seen in other
regions. I saw people with muscular builds, dark sunglasses that
didn’t look like doctors or aid workers, but instead, freelance
soldiers. They are the type of freelance soldiers that so often
accompany big businesses seeking to invoke their will on the
government of some third world nation. I have seen them before in
places like Liberia, West Africa.

So is there cause for concern? Bloomberg quotes Stephen Pierce, a
geologist who once worked for Mobil as saying, ““Haiti, from the
standpoint of oil and gas exploration, is a lot less developed than
the Dominican Republic,” Pierce said. “Neither nation produces oil or
gas. As much as 1 trillion cubic feet of gas may be trapped in a
border formation near the earthquake fault. One could do a lot more
work there,” Pierce continued. The question is when will that work
begin and will that work affect the other work to rebuild Haiti?

Oddly the discovery of oil in Haiti is nothing new. Bloomberg also
reported that, “Abraham Lincoln’s consul to the Dominican Republic
reported oil seeps there in 1862.” With that much of a head start,
perhaps it is time that we pay more attention to the poorest island in
the Western Hemisphere. It may be a lot richer than anyone thinks.
That type of money brings with it a special type of problem. The type
of problem that gets in the way of good intentions even when it comes
to disaster relief.

[mokemoke]

A young unmarried girl discovers that she is pregnant.

Scared,

She confides this 'news' to her mother.

Shouting, cursing, crying, the mother says, "Who was the pig that did
This to you?

I want to know!"

The girl picks up the phone and makes a call.

Half an hour later a Ferrari stops in front of their house; a mature
And distinguished man with gray hair and impeccably dressed in a very
expensive suit steps out of it and enters the house.

He sits in the living room with the father, the mother and theGirl,
and tells them: "Good morning, your daughter has informed me of the
Problem. However, I can't marry her because of my personal family
Situation, but I'll take responsibility. If a girl is born I will
bequeath her 2 retail stores, a townhouse,
a beach villa and a $1,000,000 bank account. If a boy is born, my
legacy will be a couple of factories and a $2,000,000 bank account.

If it is twins, a factory and $1,000,000 each.

However, If there is a miscarriage or unsucessful delivery , what do
you suggest I do?"

At this point, the father, who had remained silent, places a hand

Firmly on the man's shoulder and tells him, "You can try again!"

[mokemoke]

Mexico Supreme Court Upholds Same-Sex Marriage Law
Mexico's Supreme Court upheld the law that permits gay-marriage in
Mexico City yesterday, rejecting an appeal from the federal attorney
general's office, which argued that the law is destructive to
families. In the 8 to 2 decision, the majority stressed that that
while the Mexican constitution guarantees protections for families, it
does not define what a "family" is, according to the Associated
Press.

Justice Jose Gudino, a Mexico Supreme Court Justice said of the
decision that, "It does not appear to me to be unconstitutional…the
concept of the family established in the constitution...is an open
concept," according to the Associated Press.

The same-sex marriage bill was approved in December and explicitly
granted married homosexual couples all the same rights as heterosexual
married couples, including adoption rights. Since the law went into
affect in March, over 300 same-sex couples have been married,
according to Reuters. The country's Supreme Court will decide next
week whether the law should extend to states outside of the Mexico
City and on the constitutionality of same-sex couples adopting
children.

Media Resources: Feminist Daily Newswire 12/22/10; Associated Press
8/5/10; Reuters 8/5/10

[mokemoke]

Malaysian Woman Not Allowed to Convert to Hinduism
A Malasian woman's attempt to nullify her childhood Muslim conversion
was dismissed by the secular High Court, who said they did not have
the jurisdiction to nullify it. Malaysia has two different justice
systems, Shariah (Islamic law), for the 60% Muslim population, and a
secular court for non-Muslims, according to the Associated Press. The
court told the woman, Siti Hasnah Bangarama, to take her case to the
religious court, which tends to rule in favor of Islam in interfaith
disputes. Bangarama and her lawyer, Gooi Hsiao Leung, are now
preparing to appeal.

Yaacob Mohammed of the secular high court ruled that the conversion is
valid because it is "the universal right of a parent, irrespective of
what the religion is" to bring up a child in the faith in which they
believe, reports Sify News. However, Bangarama said that she was
converted to Islam by welfare officials in 1989 after she and her
siblings were put into an orphanage. Under Penang Islamic law,
children cannot be converted without the consent of their parents. In
addition, while the court says there is compelling evidence that she
was converted in 1983, her conversion papers say 1989.

Because Muslims are not legally able to marry non-Muslims in Malaysia,
Bangarama's 2001 marriage to her husband, who is Hindu, cannot be
officially recognized. She also can't register her husband as the
father of their two children on their birth certificates. According to
Agence France-Presse, her Malaysian identity card, which has her
Muslim name (Siti Hasnah Bangarama Abdullah) and says that she is
Muslim, further complicates the case.

"Why must I be forced to accept Islam?" Banggarma said. "I was born an
Indian, a Hindu and I remain so until I die. They have no rights over
me."

[mokemoke]

America Goes Dark
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: August 8, 2010
The lights are going out all over America — literally. Colorado
Springs has made headlines with its desperate attempt to save money by
turning off a third of its streetlights, but similar things are either
happening or being contemplated across the nation, from Philadelphia
to Fresno.

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Paul Krugman

Meanwhile, a country that once amazed the world with its visionary
investments in transportation, from the Erie Canal to the Interstate
Highway System, is now in the process of unpaving itself: in a number
of states, local governments are breaking up roads they can no longer
afford to maintain, and returning them to gravel.
And a nation that once prized education — that was among the first to
provide basic schooling to all its children — is now cutting back.
Teachers are being laid off; programs are being canceled; in Hawaii,
the school year itself is being drastically shortened. And all signs
point to even more cuts ahead.
We’re told that we have no choice, that basic government functions —
essential services that have been provided for generations — are no
longer affordable. And it’s true that state and local governments, hit
hard by the recession, are cash-strapped. But they wouldn’t be quite
as cash-strapped if their politicians were willing to consider at
least some tax increases.
And the federal government, which can sell inflation-protected long-
term bonds at an interest rate of only 1.04 percent, isn’t cash-
strapped at all. It could and should be offering aid to local
governments, to protect the future of our infrastructure and our
children.
But Washington is providing only a trickle of help, and even that
grudgingly. We must place priority on reducing the deficit, say
Republicans and “centrist” Democrats. And then, virtually in the next
breath, they declare that we must preserve tax cuts for the very
affluent, at a budget cost of $700 billion over the next decade.
In effect, a large part of our political class is showing its
priorities: given the choice between asking the richest 2 percent or
so of Americans to go back to paying the tax rates they paid during
the Clinton-era boom, or allowing the nation’s foundations to crumble
— literally in the case of roads, figuratively in the case of
education — they’re choosing the latter.
It’s a disastrous choice in both the short run and the long run.
In the short run, those state and local cutbacks are a major drag on
the economy, perpetuating devastatingly high unemployment.
It’s crucial to keep state and local government in mind when you hear
people ranting about runaway government spending under President
Obama. Yes, the federal government is spending more, although not as
much as you might think. But state and local governments are cutting
back. And if you add them together, it turns out that the only big
spending increases have been in safety-net programs like unemployment
insurance, which have soared in cost thanks to the severity of the
slump.
That is, for all the talk of a failed stimulus, if you look at
government spending as a whole you see hardly any stimulus at all. And
with federal spending now trailing off, while big state and local
cutbacks continue, we’re going into reverse.
But isn’t keeping taxes for the affluent low also a form of stimulus?
Not so you’d notice. When we save a schoolteacher’s job, that
unambiguously aids employment; when we give millionaires more money
instead, there’s a good chance that most of that money will just sit
idle.
And what about the economy’s future? Everything we know about economic
growth says that a well-educated population and high-quality
infrastructure are crucial. Emerging nations are making huge efforts
to upgrade their roads, their ports and their schools. Yet in America
we’re going backward.
How did we get to this point? It’s the logical consequence of three
decades of antigovernment rhetoric, rhetoric that has convinced many
voters that a dollar collected in taxes is always a dollar wasted,
that the public sector can’t do anything right.
The antigovernment campaign has always been phrased in terms of
opposition to waste and fraud — to checks sent to welfare queens
driving Cadillacs, to vast armies of bureaucrats uselessly pushing
paper around. But those were myths, of course; there was never
remotely as much waste and fraud as the right claimed. And now that
the campaign has reached fruition, we’re seeing what was actually in
the firing line: services that everyone except the very rich need,
services that government must provide or nobody will, like lighted
streets, drivable roads and decent schooling for the public as a
whole.
So the end result of the long campaign against government is that
we’ve taken a disastrously wrong turn. America is now on the unlit,
unpaved road to nowhere.

[mokemoke]

Fulvio Rossi, the leader of the Socialist party in Chile, said he
plans to sponsor a marriage equality bill, and that he hopes the Roman
Catholic Church will become less hostile toward the proposal.

The plan, which Rossi announced Sunday, is expected to encounter
opposition from religious leaders, conservative president Sebastian
Pinera, and other members of Congress, according to Reuters Canada.
Last month, Argentina, a neighbor of Chile, became the first country
in predominantly Catholic Latin America to legalize same-sex marriage.

According to Reuters Canada, Rossi told reporters, "This is a project
that I will present ... and I am also calling on the Church to be more
welcoming, and I say that as part of the Church."

Chilean Cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuriz has called the same-sex
marriages in Argentina an "aberration."

[mokemoke]

Congregations Gone Wild
By G. JEFFREY MacDONALD
Published: August 7, 2010
Swampscott, Mass.

THE American clergy is suffering from burnout, several new studies
show. And part of the problem, as researchers have observed, is that
pastors work too much. Many of them need vacations, it’s true. But
there’s a more fundamental problem that no amount of rest and
relaxation can help solve: congregational pressure to forsake one’s
highest calling.

The pastoral vocation is to help people grow spiritually, resist their
lowest impulses and adopt higher, more compassionate ways. But
churchgoers increasingly want pastors to soothe and entertain them.
It’s apparent in the theater-style seating and giant projection
screens in churches and in mission trips that involve more sightseeing
than listening to the local people.

As a result, pastors are constantly forced to choose, as they work
through congregants’ daily wish lists in their e-mail and voice mail,
between paths of personal integrity and those that portend greater job
security. As religion becomes a consumer experience, the clergy become
more unhappy and unhealthy.

The trend toward consumer-driven religion has been gaining momentum
for half a century. Consider that in 1955 only 15 percent of Americans
said they no longer adhered to the faith of their childhood, according
to a Gallup poll. By 2008, 44 percent had switched their religious
affiliation at least once, or dropped it altogether, the Pew Forum on
Religion & Public Life found. Americans now sample, dabble and move on
when a religious leader fails to satisfy for any reason.

In this transformation, clergy have seen their job descriptions
rewritten. They’re no longer expected to offer moral counsel in
pastoral care sessions or to deliver sermons that make the comfortable
uneasy. Church leaders who continue such ministerial traditions pay
dearly. A few years ago, thousands of parishioners quit Woodland Hills
Church in St. Paul, Minn., and Community Church of Joy in Glendale,
Ariz., when their respective preachers refused to bless the
congregations’ preferred political agendas and consumerist
lifestyles.

I have faced similar pressures myself. In the early 2000s, the
advisory committee of my small congregation in Massachusetts told me
to keep my sermons to 10 minutes, tell funny stories and leave people
feeling great about themselves. The unspoken message in such
instructions is clear: give us the comforting, amusing fare we want or
we’ll get our spiritual leadership from someone else.

Congregations that make such demands seem not to realize that most
clergy don’t sign up to be soothsayers or entertainers. Pastors
believe they’re called to shape lives for the better, and that
involves helping people learn to do what’s right in life, even when
what’s right is also difficult. When they’re being true to their
calling, pastors urge Christians to do the hard work of reconciliation
with one another before receiving communion. They lead people to share
in the suffering of others, including people they would rather ignore,
by experiencing tough circumstances — say, in a shelter, a prison or a
nursing home — and seeking relief together with those in need. At
their courageous best, clergy lead where people aren’t asking to go,
because that’s how the range of issues that concern them expands, and
how a holy community gets formed.

Ministry is a profession in which the greatest rewards include
meaningfulness and integrity. When those fade under pressure from
churchgoers who don’t want to be challenged or edified, pastors become
candidates for stress and depression.

Clergy need parishioners who understand that the church exists, as it
always has, to save souls by elevating people’s values and desires.
They need churchgoers to ask for personal challenges, in areas like
daily devotions and outreach ministries.

When such an ethic takes root, as it has in generations past, then
pastors will cease to feel like the spiritual equivalents of
concierges. They’ll again know joy in ministering among people who
share their sense of purpose. They might even be on fire again for
their calling, rather than on a path to premature burnout.


G. Jeffrey MacDonald, a minister in the United Church of Christ, is
the author of “Thieves in the Temple: The Christian Church and the
Selling of the American Soul.”

[mokemoke]

Target Hit With Boycott by Gay-Rights Activists Over Political
Donation
5 days ago 133 Comments Say Something »
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Christopher Weber
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Subscribe :Gay-rights activists are cutting up their Target credit
cards and demonstrating outside the retail giant's stores to protest
the company's donation to a political group backing Minnesota
Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer, who is against same-sex
marriage.

Target contributed $150,000 to MN Forward, a pro-business group that
has endorsed and is paying for ads for Emmer, ABC News reported.

The boycott got a major boost Tuesday when MoveOn.org, the Democratic
political advocacy group, said it would help with the petition drive
to spread the boycott, according to Reuters.

On his Web site, Emmer says he defines marriage as a "union between
one man and one woman" -- a view common among politicians in both
parties. Emmer also angered some voters by contributing $250 to a
Christian rock band called You Can Run But You Cannot Hide that has
expressed anti-gay sentiments.

On Facebook, activists going after Target have started a page called
"Boycott Target Until They Cease Funding Anti-Gay Politics."
Meanwhile, a second group with a similar name is advocating a protest
of the electronics retailer Best Buy because it also contributed to MN
Forward.

"Target has always been a really supportive workplace for GLBT
people," said Monica Meyer, head of OutFront Minnesota. "I think
people are feeling a little betrayed by the company . . . seems really
contradictory to how they've acted in the past."

But Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel said the retailer's support for the
gay, lesbian and trans-gender community is "unwavering."

Target, Steinhafel said, "has a history of supporting organizations
and candidates, on both sides of the aisle, who seek to advance
policies aligned with our business objectives, such as job creation
and growth. It is also important to note that we rarely endorse all
advocated positions of organizations or candidates we support, and we
do not have a political or social agenda."

Filed Under: Gay Rights, Fundraising, Governors, 2010 Elections,
Conservatives
Tagged: best buy, dailyguidance, gay marriage, gay rights, MN Forward,
Target Corp., Tom Emmer

[mokemoke]

COMMUNITY ACTION ALERT


Monday, August 9, 2010





If Stay is Lifted – Sacramento Is Mobilized For Weddings To Begin


It isn't known how many same-sex couples are poised to rush down to
the Sacramento County Clerk's Office, however if Wednesday is any
indication there could be more then just a few dozen who spent the
weekend ring shopping, buying flowers and ordering wedding cakes in
anticipation of the possibility Judge Vaughn Walker who presided over
the Federal Prop 8 Trial will lift the stay and allow those couples to
apply for a marriage license.



If you go to the Sacramento County Clerks Office web site you will see
highlighted in bright yellow the following statement: "Prop 8 Ruling
– Until the ruling on Proposition 8 is entered, it is not in effect.
The court has stayed entry pending consideration of a motion to stay
the ruling while it is appealed. As a result, the County Clerk/
Recorder may not yet issue licenses to same-sex couples".



With Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and State Attorney General Jerry
Brown as well as other governmental entities such as the City and
County of San Francisco (Mayor Johnson and the City of Sacramento has
been silent on this issue so far) filing a Memorandum to Oppose
continuing the stay, anti-Prop 8 supporters have high hopes the Judge
will strike down the stay and will allow the issuing of marriage
licenses to begin.



It is uncertain, even if it is lifted, how soon same-sex couples will
be allowed to fill out the long-awaited and hard-fought paperwork that
gives them the right to join the already 18,000 married same-sex
couples to legally marry in the State of California. Attorney General
Brown has indicated he will call for an immediate issuing of licenses
as soon as Judge Walker lifts the order and enters the judgment.



The leadership of Equality Action Now, a Sacramento grassroots civil
rights organization who has been on the forefront of the mobilization
of the Sacramento region's LGBTQI (Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Transgender,
Questioning, Intersex) community and their allies met Sunday evening
to plan their next mobilization effort – the support of all same-sex
couples and straight couples who have vowed not to marry until their
gay friends and family members can do so legally, at the Downtown
County Clerks Office (600 8 Street, Sacramento, CA 95814), if and
immediately when Judge Walker lifts the stay.



Tina Reynolds, co-founder of Equality Action Now and the membership
are calling on the community to help supply newly weds with white
balloons, flowers and wedding (cup) cake. Please take any wedding
supplies outside the Downtown Clerks Office and a volunteer will
direct you to where they should go, on the day the stay is lifted.



EAN is also contacting officials who are able to perform marriage
ceremonies to any couple showing up at the Downtown Office and would
like Wedding supply companies and services (Limo, cake, balloons,
wedding veils, coat and ties, etc) who will surly benefit long-term
from this decision to donate, the day the stay is lifted, their goods
and services.



Also, the organization is asking supporters who participate outside at
the Clerks Office to have all signage simply read: LOVE. Some services
may be conducted on the west steps of the State Capitol Building.
There may be some surprise well known officials lending their
services.



While the organization would like to cover all regional County Clerks
Offices, with limited resources they decided to focus on the Downtown
Office. You are encouraged to help support those who will be showing
up at other offices region-wide with flowers, balloons, cake, and a
cheer as each of them exit the office with marriage license in hand.



For more information:

Equality Action Now: www.equalityactionnow.org -
ti...@equalityactionnow.org - 916.446.1082

Sacramento Gay and Lesbian Center: www.saccenter.org - 916.442.0185

To volenteer or offer wedding supplies or services contact: Rachel
Hogue: rhsacr...@gmail.com

To contribute to this event: http://equalityactionnow.org/support.php

To be placed on EAN's Text Network: Hilary Hodge –
sacnowf...@yahoo.com

*Couples of all ages, married or not, gay or straight who would like
to volunteer as Media Spokespersons please contact: Ken Pierce –
kpier...@yahoo.com

[mokemoke]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-ostroy/will-prop-8-and-gay-marri_b_674764.html




Will Prop 8 and Gay Marriage Derail the GOP This November?

August 9, 2010 The Huffington Post

Just when the sputtering economy was seemingly presenting Republicans
with the well-paved road to victory this November along comes
Proposition 8 and gay marriage, the political equivalent of GOP crack.
And these self-righteous morality junkies just can't get enough.
They're addicted to guns, God and gays, as well as immigration and
abortion, and relapse during every campaign they wage. Watch it be the
death of them in the midterms as they embark on this diversionary
homophobic witch hunt while 14-million Americans are unemployed and
the poor and middle classes have been financially ravaged. To
Republicans, It's the homo's, stupid! Can Karl Rove be far behind?


The economy is still facing unprecedented challenges, especially in
the jobs market, as Friday's disappointing employment report
indicated. But all the GOP has to offer voters are spending cuts on
the lower and middle classes and huge tax cuts for the rich. It's the
same old song. Nothing innovative. And not terribly popular with
middle-America. Which is why it's so easy for them to lose focus and
fall back into their comfortable hot-button social issues trap yet
again.

Voters lapped up that polarizing rhetoric during the Bush/Cheney/Rove
glory days. They astoundingly put aside their own financial interests
and tapped their personal prejudices instead. While Republicans are
predicting massive victory this year and a repeat of their
"revolution" of 1994, that victory was fueled by New Gingrich's
Contract with America which focused on issues that had broad popular
support like welfare reform, term limits, tax cuts and balancing the
budget. The Gingrich army didn't invade our bedrooms, as the current
leadership is trying to do. And that will be political suicide. Voters
are much more focused on economic issues this year, and any attempt to
divert them away from their pocketbooks will be a disaster for the
GOP.

On a completely different note, here's a little question for my
Republican friends: how come Obama, who you label as the most liberal
president in history, is against gay marriage? And, why would he
appoint a Supreme Court justice, Elena Kagen, who's said there's no
constitutional right to gay marriage? I'll be waiting for your
answer....