Almost everywhere I turn, I’m hearing that the Democratic Party has sold out to corporate donors. Consider this:
…Republicans also attempted to obstruct the Democrats’ financial reform bill which passed last month with the support of just three Senate Republicans. Because of their willingness to always stand on the side of corporations, Republicans are being rewarded by big business. The Financial Times reports on a Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) study:
Wall Street executives are donating nearly 70 per cent of their political contributions to Republican candidates ahead of November’s mid-term elections, representing a significant shift in allegiances across an industry that has in recent history heavily favoured Democrats. […]
Wall Street executives began favouring Republicans over Democrats in December of last year, but the month of June marked the largest gap between donations to the two parties and federal candidates. The shift coincided with the intense debate on Capitol Hill over financial services reform, legislation that was passed in July.
This graph from the CRP shows the percentage of Wall Street dollars flowing to each party… [emphasis original]
Hey Democratic politicians! If you think caving-in to corporate criminals is worth it, get some Vaseline, because you’re getting you know what you know where!!
The Republican Religious Right believes in freedom of religion… for their religion ONLY!
How do you think the Religious Right would react to a scenario in which several Christian teachers and employees were fired from a school for not holding the proper views? Most likely, they’d scream "discrimination."
Now how do you think the Religious Right would react to a scenario in which several teachers were fired from a Christian school for not holding the proper views? Most likely, they’d say the school has the right to set its own religious requirements and to determine who it hires and fires accordingly.
So I am genuinely curious about how they will respond to this story in about a Christian school firing a bunch of Catholic employees for not being "born again":
Four teachers and seven other workers at a Southern California religious school have been fired because of differences in biblical interpretation and incompatible beliefs.
Most of the dismissed workers were Roman Catholics whose beliefs conflicted with those of Corona’s conservative evangelical Crossroads Christian Schools, which last year lost its autonomy and came under the umbrella of the 8,000-member Crossroads Christian Church next door.
"To me, it feels like religious cleansing," said the Rev. John Saville of St. John’s Episcopal Church, where fired elementary teacher Marylou Goodman is a parishioner.
The fired employees had been told a year ago of the school’s closer relationship with the church and a requirement that they attend a "Bible-believing church," meaning born-again.
The employees had reportedly signed a "statement of faith" which summarized Crossroads’ beliefs and saw nothing with which they disagreed, but authorities at the school believed that these employees "weren’t living out" the statement, in part because they have not received the proper baptism… [emphasis added]
I can’t say whether or not this school receives state of federal funds. If it doesn’t they are exercising their right to be wrong. If it does, that are in violation of the establishment clause abd the guarantee of equal protection. The poor children! Imagine that they had to associate with people who had been sprinkled instead of dunked!!
But if you think that bad, look how Keith Olbermann and Rep. Keith Ellison exposed how these ideologues who misrepresent Christianity behave toward other faiths.
Yesterday I had a very bad air day. About mid way through the group I was co-facilitating my chest plugged up and I started coughing. I continued all afternoon and all night. I have not slept, because of it. Today’s articles will be brief. I hope I will be able to sleep, so that I can reply to comments and return visits, but I can’t guarantee it.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today it took me 4:38. To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Take:
From TPM: Former Rep. Pat Toomey (R-PA) who is running for Senate against Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA) made yesterday on CNN’s "John King USA" that caught our ear: he claimed that he once led a filibuster… on the House floor.
Teabag Toomey is an idiot. The filibuster is a Senate rule only. There is no such thing as a filibuster on the House floor.
Count me in President Barack Obama’s corner. However, I am not in his pocket. When he or someone in the administration for which he is responsible does something wrong, I call it as I see it. Here are two examples of this, I’m sorry to say. They are the trial of Omar Khadr and yesterday’s ludicrous outburst by Robert Gibbs.
Jury selection has begun at the military-commission trial for Omar Khadr at Guantánamo. Khadr is the Canadian whom we captured when he was fifteen, after a firefight in Afghanistan in 2002; among the casualties in that encounter were Army Sergeant Christopher Speer, who was killed by a grenade, and Khadr, who was shot up and almost dead (but the only only survivor on his side). He has been accused of throwing the grenade that killed Speer, though it’s far from clear that he did. What is not in question is his age at the time, and that he was on the battlefield not because he was some rebellious child but because his father, an Al Qaeda associate who is now dead, sent him there. (Khadr was born in Toronto; I’ve written about his case before.) One reason Khadr has spent eight years—more than a third of his life—in Guantánamo is that he doesn’t come from what most people would call a respectable family, which has hurt him in terms of motivating the Canadian government to get him out of there. But is the niceness of parents the basis on which we decide to imprison teen-agers? And where are our concerns about the rehabilitation of child soldiers when one falls into our own hands? (Michelle Shephard, at the Toronto Star, has a piece on the former general who will be testifying as a medical expert in Khadr’s defense.)
Another thing that’s not in question: at preliminary hearings, a former interrogator acknowledged telling Khadr, then fifteen, that a boy like him might end up gang-raped by “a bunch of big black guys and big Nazis” if he didn’t say what guards wanted to hear. Another described Khadr chained, hooded, and crying. Khadr has alleged that he was tortured. Yesterday, the judge at his tribunal said that statements he made in those circumstances were perfectly admissible. What isn’t admissible, then? And why would a court looking for the truth even want such statements?
Why, really, did the Obama Administration decide that this case was the one to make the subject of the first full-fledged test of military commissions on its watch? A judge in a civilian court might at least have saved the prosecution from itself (morally speaking, if not in terms of getting a conviction at any price). If the Khadr case is a model of what Obama wants to happen in Guantánamo, it’s an ugly one… [emphasis added]
Rachel Maddow and Michael Isikoff discuss the trial, banning reporters because they published already public information, and spurious rule changes about coverage.
Frankly this is not the behavior I expected from Obama, and it is completely contrary to what he promised to do during his campaign. This is what I would have expected from Bush.
And on that note…
The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, who irritated fellow Democrats recently by saying Republicans might reclaim control of the House in November, is once again in hot water with his own party, after lambasting President Obama’s critics on what he called “the professional left.’’
In an interview with The Hill newspaper, published Tuesday, Mr. Gibbs unloaded his frustration with liberals who are themselves frustrated with the president.
“I hear these people saying he’s like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested – I mean, it’s crazy,’’ Mr. Gibbs was quoted in the newspaper as saying.
He went on to condemn the “professional left,’’ saying: “They will be satisfied when we have Canadian health care and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.’’
Mr. Gibbs’ remarks raced around the blogosphere and dominated much of the daily White House briefing, which was conducted Tuesday by his deputy, Bill Burton, who explained that the press secretary had a sore throat…
I think Gibbs’ comments were unjustified. Admittedly, there is a wing-nut fringe at the extreme of the progressive movement that is every bit as crazy as many of the Republicans’ leading politicians, but an overwhelming majority of us are not that way at all.
I think they described exactly what is going on here. The Obama administration is venting their discomfort that we have been right all along. Gibbs took off the gloves with the wrong people. He needs to go after the real villains here. I am still in Obama’s corner, but I am very disappointed in him today.
Keith summed this up with one of his best special comments ever. You owe it to yourself to watch this. Since he expresses my view perfectly, I’ll leave it at that.
I know. I spelled it that way, because that that’s how Kelly Bundy spelled it, and Kelly is a perfect example of a Republican intellectual. Republicans deny climate change, so much so that Bush ordered scientific data altered to prevent its recognition. Republicans deny evolution and want biblical creation taught in our classrooms. Not even Einstein is safe.
To many conservatives, almost everything is a secret liberal plot: from fluoride in the water to medicare reimbursements for end-of-life planning with your doctor to efforts to teach evolution in schools.
But Conservapedia founder and Eagle Forum University instructor [delinked] Andy Schlafly — Phyllis Schlafly’s son — has found one more liberal plot: the theory of relativity [delinked].
If you’re behind on your physics, the Theory of Relativity was Albert Einstein’s formulation in the early 20th century that gave rise to the famous theorum that E=mc2, otherwise stated as energy is equal to mass times the square of the speed of light. Why does Andy Schlafly hate the theory of relativity? We’re pretty sure it’s because he’s decided it doesn’t square with the Bible.
In the entry, "Counterexamples to Relativity," the authors (including Schlafly) write:
The theory of relativity is a mathematical system that allows no exceptions. It is heavily promoted by liberals who like its encouragement of relativism and its tendency to mislead people in how they view the world.[1]
To what does that reference lead? Why, a note by Schlafly:
See, e.g., historian Paul Johnson’s book about the 20th century, and the article written by liberal law professor Laurence Tribe as allegedly assisted by Barack Obama. Virtually no one who is taught and believes relativity continues to read the Bible, a book that outsells New York Times bestsellers by a hundred-fold
In other words, reading a theory about physics is correlated to a decrease in people’s interest in reading the Bible, which means that it causes people to stop reading the Bible… [emphasis added]
We certainly need those teachers, but I do have to disagree on one point. Evolution is not the only theory that should be taught in the classroom, when a competing view has ample supporting evidence. Consider the theory of devolution:
We need to use every possible means to keep Republicans from disenfranchising the poor. Eric Holder just took a big step in that direction.
After years of deliberate neglect, the Justice Department is finally beginning to enforce the federal law requiring states to provide voter registration at welfare and food stamp offices. The effort not only promises to bring hundreds of thousands of hard-to-reach voters into the electorate, but it could also reduce the impact of advocacy organizations whose role in registering voters caused such a furor in 2008.
The National Voter Registration Act of 1993, better known as the motor-voter law, is well-known for making it possible to register to vote at state motor vehicle offices. However, the law also required states to allow registration at offices that administer food stamps, welfare, Medicaid, disability assistance and child health programs. States were enthusiastic about the motor-vehicle section of the law, and millions of new voters got on the rolls while getting a driver’s license. But registration at public assistance offices proved far less popular.
In part, that was because of additional paperwork at those offices, but in many states, Republican officials did not want to provide easy entry to the voting rolls for low-income people whom they considered more likely to vote Democratic. The Bush administration devoted its attention to seeking out tiny examples of voter fraud and purging people from the rolls in swing states. It did little to enforce the motor-voter law despite years of complaints from civic groups and Democratic lawmakers.
In April, however, President Obama’s Justice Department sent the states a set of guidelines making it clear that it expected full compliance with the public-assistance office section of the law — the first time in the 15-year history of the motor-voter law that the Justice Department has explained what kinds of offices are covered and what procedures are to be used. The guidelines make it clear that people applying for benefits must not only be offered the chance to register but must be given help in filling out the forms if they ask. If states do not comply voluntarily, lawsuits are likely to follow… [emphasis added]
Republicans have been depriving poor and minority citizens of their right to vote ever since racist politicians deserted the Democratic for the Republican, because Democrats passed the Civil Rights Act. This is welcome news, and I hope Holder enforces it passionately.
Yesterday, I caught up with replying to comments and returned visits. Today I shall fall behind, because I’m co-facilitating a therapy group for former prisoners. Hopefully, I can catch up tomorrow.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today it took me 4:27. To do it, click here. How did you do?
Fantasy Football:
I learned yesterday that I can reduce the number of teams in the league, so I cut it down to ten. Unless a couple more join by Friday morning, I’ll reduce it to eight. We’ll definitely be able to play.
Short Takes:
From Reuters: In Colorado, Bennet beat liberal former Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff to dodge a wave of anti-Washington anger that buried two Senate colleagues earlier this year.
I had hoped Romanoff would win, but we should hold the seat, because a Teabagger won on the Republican side.
From Alternet: Legendary former US Senator Ted Stevens was among five fatalities after a small plane carrying nine people slammed into a remote Alaska mountainside, officials said Tuesday.
Unlike most of the MSM, I’m not going to pretend that he wasn’t one of the most corrupt Republicans in Senate history.
Republican pandering to their base has unleashed some of the most hateful outbursts I have seen, targeted at Muslims.
About a dozen right-wing Christians, carrying placards and yelling “Islam is a lie,” angrily confronted worshippers outside a Fairfield Avenue mosque Friday.
“Jesus hates Muslims,” they screamed at worshippers arriving at the Masjid An-Noor mosque to prepare for the holy week of Ramadan. One protester shoved a placard at a group of young children leaving the mosque. “Murderers,” he shouted.
Police arrived on the scene to separate the groups, but said no arrests were made.
Flip Benham, of Dallas, Texas, organizer of the protest, was yelling at the worshipers with a bullhorn.
“This is a war in America and we are taking it to the mosques around the country,” he said… [emphasis added]
As an American, I consider such behavior at odds with everything this nation represents. This Republican jihad violated the right of Muslims to worship in this country free from harassment. From the standpoint of rights, all religions are equal. Muslims have as much right to worship as Christians, or as any other faith.
As a Christian, I personally believe that God honors the faith of an authentic Muslim, who lives in peace, tolerance and goodwill, far more than he honors the hatred and bigotry of these modern day Pharisees and Sadducees. The Republican Taliban gives authentic Christians a bad name.
The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, who irritated fellow Democrats recently by saying Republicans might reclaim control of the House in November, is once again in hot water with his own party, after lambasting President Obama’s critics on what he called “the professional left.’’
