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Eastchester, NY drops domestic partner health benefits
by IseFire - Wed 01/05/05 09:53 pm EST

Unfortunately, Eastchester's Town Board voted last night 3-to-2 to adopt a new employee benefits scheme that drops domestic partner health benefits. (See the Jan. 4 post below, "America.")

But, the night was not all loss. According to an ESPA representative I spoke to, there was no significant representation whatsoever at the meeting by the backers of the Family First Movement perspective; however, numerous residents spoke out against the vote, with many other residents in opposition also present in attendance. The debate was televised, and one 70-year-old gentleman watching was roused to pledge a $1,000 check to ESPA that night, stating that the vote made Eastchester not the sort of town he wants to live in. Also, television crews were there, and The New York Times will be running an article on it. This will help bring this discrimination into the light of day. I have a feeling Mr. Colavita, the final author of this targeted exclusion (i.e., discrimination), has made a political error he will come to regret if he runs for re-election.

America
by IseFire - Tue 01/04/05 10:03 pm EST

While abroad in England the last 10 days, it was obvious that The United Kingdom has surpassed the U.S. in legal and cultural acceptance of basic progressive values. While in the UK things such as domestic partnership benefits for same-sex couples are seen as right and prudent, here in the U.S., commonsense seems utterly uncommon. Today, this in my inbox from the Empire State Pride Agenda (ESPA):

Four years ago the town of Eastchester [New York] began providing domestic partner health benefits to families of LGBT employees.  With the defeat of town supervisor James Cavanaugh this past November and the election of Anthony Colavita to the post, the Town Board has scheduled a hearing on the issue with very little notice to the community so that it can vote on repealing DP benefits.  Colavita, an original supporter of DP benefits, changed his position during his campaign for town supervisor last year after a local group known as Family First Movement collected signatures on a petition opposing DP benefits.

The meeting was tonight. In the morning, I'll find out what transpired.

The UK survived the rise of the skinheads and the National Front; eventually, the Labour Party re-emerged as a dominant political force, and the people reclaimed from the Conservative Party and conservative and nationalistic organs the symbol of fhe flag. When I lived in London 10 years ago, the Union Jack was rarely seen. Now it is much, much more readily seen. And it took British pride in progress--pride in Britain success in international sport, pride in the monarchy, pride in a great economy (they experienced no recession when we did), pride in a recognized improving quality of life for this to happen. It did not take an attack by an outside force to prompt a patriotic surge, and a surge that all citizens could feel comfortable being a part of.

I can only hope that the U.S. follows a similar course before it is too late, before damage to the republic becomes much worse--becomes irreversible. It's way, way past time for a national health service in America, for equal rights for gay Americans, for serious corporate accountability, for tax fairness, for long-term solutions to mounting environmental problems, for the firm rejection of de facto religious tests for elected and judicial candidates, for regulations ensuring media diversity, for a renewed commitment to education, and for electoral reform.

We have a long way to go.

At home and abroad...and back again
by IseFire - Thu 12/23/04 04:00 pm EST

Isebrand.com will be taking a break and returning no later than January 4th. I'll be in Leicestershire, Manchester, and London, England for the holidays.

I wish everyone a blessed holiday season and a happy and peaceful new year.

At home and abroad
by IseFire - Thu 12/23/04 04:00 pm EST

*Families of U.S. soldiers who are being--and for many, many months have been--daily wounded, horribly maimed, and killed hold vigils, wakes, and funerals, and suffer intense private doubt and anger. *Equally as under-reported by the our insipid national press, Iraqis returning to Fallujah weep bitter tears at the destruction of their city, while dried tears have turned to hardened anti-U.S. anger for literally countless hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who in this undeclared war have lost at the hands of the American military machine wives, brothers, fathers, mothers, husbands, siblings, grandparents, and dear friends--the vast majority of them unarmed non-combatants--under the force of rubble and the tear of flying metal. *The world wonders: When will it end?

*Being deemed America's "new blacks" or "new Jews," gay Americans sit at dinner tables this season with family, friends, partners, wondering if their continued status as 2nd-class citizens--tarred by legalized special exclusions from basic rights--will evolve into something even more sinister, wondering if basic employment, housing, and marriage rights (including inheritance rights, visitation rights, tax benefits, spousal immigration/naturalization rights, etc.) will ever be championed in an America in which even so-called progressive leaders fall silent on such subjects, preferring instead to simply cite idiotic and caricaturing portrays of "gays" and "queer eyes" in popular culture and deem it "progress."

*In Ohio, Florida, New York, Washington, and elsewere men and women concerned either about the systemmatic disenfranchisement of American-Americans or electoral fraud worry the outcome of re-counts and court proceedings. The system is broken...and under assault from Republican operatives.

*Crony oligarchy reigns supreme over the republic, the peoples' voice drowned out by the conservative echo chamber that has become CNN, FOX News, the networks, talk radio, and the vast majority of corporate-owned local radio and print news. *Halliburton and other defense contractors growth fat, their boards of directors pouring money into the conservative machine, licking their lips as the prospect of Social Security's demise. It brings to mind Gore Vidal's reluctant assessment of what we have become, quite possibly what we've always been at our core: "A nation of sanctimonious hucksters."

"...Shock, Awe and the Human Body"
by IseFire - Thu 12/23/04 01:25 pm EST

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Bush administration is not torturing prisoners because it is useful but because of its symbolism.

If the above conclusion of William Pfaff, writing in The International Herald Tribune, is correct, the Bush chapter of the history of the United States has also enlarged and made even more indelible our mark in the annals of infamy:

A historian in the future, or a moralist, is likely to deem the Bush administration's enthusiasm for torture the most striking aspect of its war against terrorism.

This started early....Days after [9/11], the administration made it known that the United States was no longer bound by international treaties, or by American law and established U.S. military standards, concerning torture and the treatment of prisoners.

The United States has never before officially practiced torture. It was not deemed necessary in order to defeat Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan. Its indirect costs are enormous: in their effect on the national reputation, their alienation of international opinion, and their corruption of the morale and morality of the American military and intelligence services.

Torture doesn't even work that well. An indignant FBI witness of what has gone on at the Guantanamo prison camp says that "simple investigative techniques" could produce much information the army is trying to obtain through torture.

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Bush administration is not torturing prisoners because it is useful but because of its symbolism.

DNC post-election report on the LGBT vote
by IseFire - Wed 12/22/04 12:00 pm EST

Here, from the DNC, is its report on the gay and lesbian vote in 2004. Among some key findings:

Finding: LGBT voters delivered "more than 3.5 million votes for the Democrats and more than 6% of the Kerry-Edwards total."

Finding: "The GLBT community is now second only to the African-American community (88%) in Democratic base vote loyalty."

Finding: "[N]ational exit polling revealed that 60% of the electorate believes that legal recognition, rights and benefits should be extended to gay and lesbian families."

Finding: "According to a recent study of data collected from national exit polls, majority opposition to recognition of same-sex couples was limited to members of a relatively small number of overlapping analytic categories and virtually all of those are among the core supporters of the Republican Party—people who are not likely to vote Democratic under almost any condition."

Finding: "Kerry’s loss in Ohio had much more to do with Iraq and the war on terrorism, issues that ultimately trumped “moral values” at the polls.3 A national Gallup post-election panel survey shows that Iraq, terrorism and Bush’s job performance were key reasons why voters voted the way they did this year."

Wickard v. Filburn
by IseFire - Tue 12/21/04 2:11 am EST

Via a Isebrand.com reader, Tom, comes a reminder about this important December 14th piece, in The New York Times, by Adam Cohen about the legal attempts to undo the New Deal.

The New Deal made an unexpected appearance at the Supreme Court recently - in the form of a 1942 case about wheat. Some prominent states' rights conservatives were asking the court to overturn Wickard v. Filburn, a landmark ruling that laid out an expansive view of Congress's power to legislate in the public interest.

Supporters of states' rights have always blamed Wickard, and a few other cases of the same era, for paving the way for strong federal action on workplace safety, civil rights and the environment. Although they are unlikely to reverse Wickard soon, states' rights conservatives are making progress in their drive to restore the narrow view of federal power that predated the New Deal - and render Congress too weak to protect Americans on many fronts.

We take for granted today the idea that Congress can adopt a national minimum wage or require safety standards in factories. That's because the Supreme Court, in modern times, has always held that it can.

But the court once had a far more limited view of Congress's power. In the early 1900's, justices routinely struck down laws protecting workers and discouraging child labor. The court reversed itself starting in 1937, in cases that led to Wickard, and began upholding these same laws.

States' rights conservatives have always been nostalgic for the pre-1937 doctrines, which they have lately taken to calling the Constitution-in-Exile. They argue - at conferences like "Rolling Back the New Deal" and in papers like "Was the New Deal Constitutional?" - that Congress lacks the power to do things like forcing employers to participate in Social Security. Given how entrenched New Deal programs have become in more than half a century, these plans for reversing history have always seemed more than a bit quixotic.

But that may be about to change. The attacks on the post-1937 view of the Constitution are becoming more mainstream among Republicans. One of President Bush's nominees to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Janice Rogers Brown, has called the "revolution of 1937" a disaster. And last month in the Supreme Court - in a case about medical marijuana - the justices found themselves having to decide whether to stand by Wickard.

In that case, two Californians who use marijuana for medical reasons argued that Congress, which passed the Controlled Substances Act, did not have the constitutional power to stop them. To pass a law, Congress needs a constitutional hook, and the Controlled Substances Act relied on one of the most important ones, the Commerce Clause, which authorizes Congress to "regulate Commerce ... among the several States." The Californians argued that their marijuana did not involve interstate commerce because it never left their state.

That is where Wickard v. Filburn comes in. Roscoe Filburn was a farmer who argued that his wheat crop should not fall under federal production quotas because much of it was consumed on his own farm. The Supreme Court held that even if that wheat did not enter interstate commerce, wheat grown for use on a farm altered supply and demand in the national market. The decision gave Congress broad power to regulate things that are located in one state, like factories and employer-employee relationships.

Some leading conservatives want the court to overturn Wickard and replace it with a pair of decisions from the 1800's that one brief filed in the case said would return "Commerce Clause jurisprudence to its settled limits prior to the New Deal." That would be a bold move, but the court has already been heading down this path. In recent years, it has struck down the Gun-Free School Zones Act and a crucial part of the Violence Against Women Act for exceeding Congress's power.

If the Supreme Court drifts rightward in the next four years, as seems likely, it could not only roll back Congress's Commerce Clause powers, but also revive other dangerous doctrines. Before 1937, the court invoked "liberty of contract" to strike down a Nebraska law regulating the weight of bread loaves, which kept buyers from being cheated, and a New York law setting a maximum 10-hour workday. Randy Barnett, the law professor who represented the medical marijuana users, argues in a new book that minimum wage laws infringe on "the fundamental natural right of freedom of contract."

In pre-1937 America, workers were exploited, factories were free to pollute, and old people were generally poor when they retired. This is not an agenda the public would be likely to sign onto today if it were debated in an election. But conservatives, who like to complain about activist liberal judges, could achieve their anti-New Deal agenda through judicial activism on the right. Judges could use the so-called Constitution-in-Exile to declare laws on workplace safety, environmental protection and civil rights unconstitutional.

Getting rid of Wickard would be an important first step. At last month's argument, that did not appear likely. Justice Antonin Scalia, a leading states' rights champions, said he "always used to laugh at Wickard," but he seemed prepared to stick with it. It may be, however, that the justices are quicker to limit Congress's power when it does things they don't like (like gun regulation) than when it does things they do (like drug regulation). They may be waiting for a more congenial case.

The court will not return to the pre-1937 Constitution in a single case, but it seems likely to keep whittling away Congressional power and federally protected rights. If it does, what President Franklin Roosevelt declared in 1936 - after two key New Deal programs were struck down - will again be true: "It was not the wage earners who cheered when these laws were declared invalid."

Social Security "reform"--as vital as more Post-It's for the Commerce Department! Urgent! Be fearful! (Bushie really likes that one.) Red alert!
by IseFire - Mon 12/20/04 12:05 pm EST

Ruy Teixeira's Dec. 19th post: "Social Security Privatization: The Reform That Isn't Needed for a Public That Doesn't Want It;" and the Krugman must-read piece (if you haven't already read it) from Dec. 7th, "Inventing a Social Security Crisis."

Guantánamo = ineptitude and shame?
by IseFire - Mon 12/20/04 08:29 am EST

Something like only 9% of Americans regularly read a newspaper, so I'm not optimistic about The New York Times' reporting on Guantánamo making much of a difference. After all, they've been reporting on Guantánamo for years now, and basically it's been the rest of the world that's paid attention, not us. It's also unlikely their reporting will cut through the conservative jabber and barrages of talking points daily filling the newsrooms of CNN, the major networks, and local news outlets.

Most Americans are utterly clueless about how shocked and disheartened the rest of the world is by our treatment of detainees at Guantánamo and our nearly slapstick-worthy political rhetoric and paranoia following September 11th, 2001. Some of the victims of the farce include our own soldiers.

From the must-read Times article:

Coloring much of the episode, interviews and documents indicate, were simmering tensions over the military's treatment of the roughly 660 foreign men who were then held at Guantánamo without charge.

"Lots of the guards saw us as some sort of sympathizers with the detainees," Airman Al Halabi recalled in one of several interviews. "We heard it many times: 'detainee-lovers,' or 'sympathizers.' They called us 'sand niggers.' "

.....

Airman Al Halabi, who came to the United States at 16 after growing up in poverty in his native Syria, has emphasized his loyalty as a naturalized American citizen. While insisting that he was careful not to share his views with anyone but close friends at Guantánamo, he said he was one of many servicemen and translators there who were uncomfortable with the way the detainees were treated.

"Every one of the chaplains was accused of something while I was there," said Brig. Gen. Rick Baccus, a former military police commander at the base, dismissing the suspicions as unfounded.

"They were always under suspicion by the interrogators, because they were interacting with the detainees and giving them Korans," General Baccus said in an interview. "The M.P.'s suspected them all the time, too. They just didn't like the chaplains going around talking to the detainees."

One chaplain who served under General Baccus, Lt. Abuhena Saiful Islam of the Navy, was accused by interrogators of sending messages from several detainees back to their families overseas. The allegations prompted a formal investigation by the Naval Criminal Intelligence Service.

According to three officials familiar with the inquiry, it turned up no evidence of any wrongdoing by the chaplain. Rather, they said, the case reflected the depth of suspicion among the guards and the need for a clearer understanding of the chaplains' role in dealing with the detainees."

I'd like to tell you that SafeDinar.com has crashed because it's getting so darn many hits, but...
by IseFire - Sat 12/18/04 04:59 pm EST

Your moment of surreality for the weekend: SafeDinar.com. "The most trusted, secure source of Iraqi dinar on the web."

Battles progressives must win: Social Security and gay rights. They start now.
by IseFire - Fri 12/17/04 09:17 am EST

Social Security is one of the two make-or-break battles for progressives in 2005 and immediately following. The other is gay rights.

Brush up on the reality of Social Security's strength and the need to preserve it with this article by Molly Ivins. The American people are being lied to about Social Security. Period. Social Security is the foundational legacy of the New Deal. It dies and the New Deal is dead. If the New Deal dies, it means the retirement security of poorer Americans and the middle class, which the Democratic Party created, is in jeopardy. It will represent the final betrayal of the American dream by the Republican Party--the ultimate concern of which is always the banking and monied class.

What is more, countering the horrific lie from the wingnuts that Social Security is in trouble and needs reforming means countering the radical conservative media machine itself. The radicals will pour millions of dollars more into the attempt to spread falsehoods about Social Security. If we can defeat the message machine in this, we can defeat it on any issue! Winning this battle is the first great test for the NDN, ACT!, MoveOn.org, Media Matters, Air America Radio, and each and every major 527, progressive non-profit, and progressive media/entertainment vehicle out there. Even organizations seemingly irrelevant to the Social Security issue--like NOW, NARAL, and the Sierra Club--need to focus some time and energy on this battle and trying to coordinate with other progressive organizations.

As Social Security represents the preservation of a better America fought hard for and made progress towards in the past, gay rights is a critical part of the future of a better America. Gay rights are civil rights. Period. It is a bigoted and (thus) irrational notion that there is anything "special" or extraordinary about extending basic rights of life, liberty, and non-discrimination in employment, housing, and marriage (including inheritance rights, visitation rights, tax benefits, spousal immigration/naturalization rights, etc.) relative to Americans who happen to be gay.

In 2005, progress on the Gay rights front may have to be limited to simply stopping a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. But, longer term (four-to-ten years?), if we can win the battle for Gay rights--specifically getting passed into law Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act passed, and gay marriage (even if at the end of the day it's named something else)--we will have kept alive the very ideal itself of civil rights progress, with all the implications that has for everything from reproductive rights to voting rights and every form of anti-discrimination measure in the legal code.

Social Security and gay rights. Social Security and gay rights. Social Security and gay rights.

Go, "sanikka"
by IseFire - Thu 12/16/04 08:49 am EST

Rising above the usual off-putting din of the kosopolis right now is a user named "sanikka," and she's giving some of the standard commenters over there a good keyboard lashing! Go read what sanikka has to say. It's fairly important, and might be summarized as: you white, affluent, progressive Dems seem intent on either not seeing, or not caring about, the fact that the issues surrounding probable Ohio voting fraud are fundamentally about disenfranchising the African-American vote.

5 critical lessons about the progressive get-out-the-vote machine
by IseFire - Wed 12/15/04 08:50 am EST

As I see it, there are five key lessons to take away from Farhad Manjoo’s Salon.com article today, “The Revolution That Failed…For Now.” I outline them below.

Lesson 1: Basically, the emerging progressive grassroots get-out-the-vote infrastructure worked, but there were problems.

“Yes, John Kerry lost. But an amazing thing happened this year -- grass-roots activism, online and in the real world, invaded the heart and soul of the Democratic Party…. [But,]…the third-party groups [like ACT! and MoveOn.org and other so-called “527’s”] were barred under campaign finance regulations from coordinating their efforts with John Kerry's official campaign….”

Lesson 2: The Democratic Party must nurture and tap into this new activist base, which is clearly a new, important asset.

“Hard as it may be to believe (and it is hard), the numbers prove that that San Franciscans and New Yorkers met with some success in their attempts to persuade Clevelanders and Miamians to go to the polls for Kerry. As Democrats remake their party, it would be a shame for them to discount the work of the activists, or to fail to keep the activist spirit kindled…. The third-party groups, in other words, profoundly altered the physics of the presidential race. Without them, it would have been a blowout.”

Lesson 3: The 527’s, to Kerry’s benefit, actually listened to their volunteer base. The Democratic Party needs to, too.

“After Dancers for Democracy raised enough money to send a team to Miami, [the group’s leader,] DeNike, phoned the South Florida ACT office to ask if she could work with the group on voter registration. But ACT told DeNike that the group wasn't working on voter registration, and that instead it was working on a voter persuasion effort. So DeNike called the local Kerry campaign office [and got the same reply.]…. What DeNike discovered was that neither the ACT people nor the Kerry people were mounting a final new-registration push in South Florida because each believed that the other group would be handling it….

“[A]fter learning that neither ACT nor the Kerry campaign was focusing on registering new voters in South Florida,…DeNike wrote…to ACT's coordinator in Miami, detailing all the reasons why she and her band…should be allowed to work on voter registration out of ACT's offices… The coordinator liked her letter, and ACT acceded to her requests…. In the week before the registration deadline in Florida, DeNike and the others working on new registrations in the Miami ACT office signed up more than 900 new voters.

Lesson 4: Lack of coordination led to over-canvassing some areas, especially working-class urban areas, and under-canvassing other, particularly the suburbs.

“Volunteers from the various groups were running into each other on the street…but they couldn't pass the slightest information between themselves….”

Lesson 5: The Democratic Party and the 527’s themselves risk losing this new energized base.

“Even if ACT, MoveOn and other progressive groups manage to continue working well together, and the vast infrastructure they amassed this year remains relatively intact, there is still the matter of the activists -- those people on the ground who decided during the course of the year to join the political scene. Can those people be reactivated to fight future battles?”

Isebrand.com asks (and answers) -- What must be done to keep this base? Keep inspiring them, prove to them that they are being listening to, and demonstrate to them that the leaders of the nascent progressive machine are committed to set aside differences and increase both efficiency and the size of the machine itself.

Progress itself is under attack
by IseFire - Mon 12/13/04 02:50 pm EST

"Science is the quintessential example of critical thinking. It has to do with testing explanations rather than just accepting them because they sound good or because they suit your prejudices." - Dr. Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education.

Please join the NCSE today. Reason itself is under attack in America. Myth-makers are pushing pseudo-science into America's classrooms. America's future is nothing if we abandon the Enlightenment principles of our nation's founders.

Social security, science education, equal rights for gay Americans, fair voting and voting rights...these are among the chief battles of the next four or more years. The signs are everywhere.

You must get involved with these issues, get involved with promoting progressivism itself, if you are going to be able to say, "I stood for progress when the fearful and selfish attempted to deny our children a better America."

They declared the culture war. But we damn well had better win it.

Regime rule #1: Bush administration failures warrant anti-Clinton coverage
by IseFire - Sat 12/11/04 05:38 pm EST

Anyone who thought that the slim margin by which Bush was re-elected (sic) would somehow encourage the networks and news wires to become less irrationally anti-Democrat was naive in the extreme.

Bush picked a grossly under-qualified and corrupt city police commissioner, "Bernie" Kerik, to head the federal Dept. of Homeland Security. (The Democratic Party's milquetoast regime leadership applauded.) But it was discovered that Kerik used NYPD staff to do investigative work, on the taxpayers' dime, for his auto-biography, had unpaid taxes, hired a nanny with improper immigration status, and was hiding a 1998 Bergen Co. arrest warrant.

And does the media report on the Kerik pick as more evidence of Bush's need to surround himself with yes-men? Does it report on corruption in the Bush administration? On the lack of seriousness in Bush's security policies? No, the Associated Press runs all day the story, I suspect planted by the conservative message machine, like most stories are: "Nanny Problems Plagued Clinton Nominations."

Bush fouls up--with national security at stake--and the media attacks...Bill Clinton. We are a one-party and one-message state, and we're heading for something very like tyranny. Air America Radio is essentially like the BBC was in Soviet Russia, an underground source telling truth; it's resistance radio. That ought to horrify true patriots.

The next four-to-12 years, I predict, are going to be retrograde hell in America, with the echo chamber of lies getting stronger before it starts to be effectively, occasionally, countered by a progressive media machine representing sensible Enlightenment values.

Liberal war on terrorism
by IseFire - Fri 12/10/04 06:29 pm EST

If you're not reading Orcinus regularly, you should be. This is my second endorsement of Orcinus. While many blogs have been cited on Isebrand.com, only three or four have I explicitly recommended in a post, and of those only two or three, in nearly a year's time, have I recommended more than once.

From Orcinus today: "Liberals, I believe, would enthusiastically support a 'war on terror' that recognized its broad nature, its root sources in radical fundamentalism, and its asymmetrical shape, and responded appropriately. Unfortunately, the DLC-style leadership we've been getting from atop the Democratic party, cheered on by folks like Beinart, has been too timid to articulate that kind of vision.

In the meantime, it should not surprise anyone that liberals are unenthusiastic about the Bush administration's substitute: warmed-over Cold War strategies combined with a megalomaniacal vision of American global hegemony. Moreover, its "war on terror," as I've argued frequently, is manifestly a political public-relations campaign that does not take any serious steps at actually confronting terrorism. We know this isn't a real war on terror because we still haven't caught either Osama bin Laden or the anthrax killer -- and don't show any signs of doing so soon. We know this administration isn't serious about terrorism precisely because we are now spending the bulk of our national energy fighting a war in Iraq that made the likelihood of future terrorist attacks exponentially greater."

Israel grants same-sex couples more rights; Canada's high court approves gay marriage; New Zealand OKs civil unions; EU grants official status to gay rights group
by IseFire - Fri 12/10/04 08:25 am EST

Israel: "Same-sex couples in Israel will now have the same rights as common law spouses when it comes to matters of property, taxation and inheritance."
Canada: "the Canadian Supreme Court told the federal government in Ottawa that the Canadian Parliament has the right to redefine marriage for the entire country, and that there was nothing unconstitutional about defining marriage as the union of two people."
New Zealand: "An explosion of applause greeted the passing of New Zealand's Civil Union Bill in the country's parliament. The measure passed during its third and final reading, 65-55."
EU: "A leading gay rights group working with members of the European Parliament (MEPs) in the European Union has been given official parliamentary recognition.... Michael Cashman, Labour MEP for the West Midlands and the U.K.'s only gay MEP, says although the E.U. has seen radical change, the Intergroup will be invaluable in pushing lesbian and gay rights even more."

It has been a great week for civil rights...outside of the U.S.

NY court nixes gay marriage
by IseFire - Wed 12/08/04 01:30 pm EST

Thirteen couples sued NY over equal marriage rights. From the article: "One of the couples, Sylvia Samuels, 54, who is African-American, and Diane Gallagher, 53, who is Caucasian, remain haunted by an experience in 2000. Samuels was in a bicycle accident that left her unconscious in an emergency room. Doctors refused to let Gallagher see her because they said the two didn't 'look like' they could be related."

Jeez. How pathetic is that? It's two-fer discrimination: the denial of visitation rights for someone's life partner, and then basing it on racist assumptions. (What if one of the two women had been an adopted sibling?) This hospital should be sued separately over their idiotic actions.

Redress Press
by IseFire - Tue 12/07/04 10:36 pm EST

Check out Redress Press. I have a piece in their inaugural issue. Redress Press has a print-version component, which will be distributed very locally in Orlando, Florida. Obviously, their Web presense will be larger. Nonetheless, I guess I can feel good that I'm helping spread the message of progressivism to a swing state audience--however small. :)

Temps lose benefits gained under Clinton
by IseFire - Mon 12/06/04 08:30 am EST

The National Labor Relations Board voted 3-to-2 to strip temp workers of their right to bargain for job benefits as part of a unit with permanent employees. The vote was last week. Thus, the rollback of workers' rights under Bush's regime continues: in June, the board stripped employees in non-union companies of the entitlement to having a co-worker present when interviewed as part of a disciplinary investigation, and in July, it ruled that graduate teaching assistants at universities are not employees and therefore can't organize.

Last week's ruling is profoundly troubling insofar as our economy daily becomes more reliant on workers who aren't eligible for health care and other benefits. The number of Americans without health insurance is skyrocketing and has become a crisis ignored, as propaganda about the war in Iraq absorbs the infantile attention spans of the republic's increasingly witless citizenry.

The United States remains far behind the rest of the civilized world and the entire European industrial West in terms of providing benefits to employees, particularly health benefits and a basic level of guaranteed retirement security. Are taxes are not radically lower than in many European countries, especially in our cities, yet what we get back for those taxes is shoddy.

As a nation, we should be embarrassed by the system that exists here, and horrified at Republican attempts to obliterate all the vehicles set up by Democrats in the 1930's and 1940's to insure a basic level of survivability, fair play, and bare-bones quality of life for all Americans, especially the elderly, who we seemed determined to psychotically despise in our nation.

Howard Dean's Stanford speech
by IseFire - Sun 12/05/04 10:57 pm EST

Here's a story on it, in case you missed it. Here's more.

Black Watch leaving Iraq within a week
by IseFire - Sun 12/05/04 01:50 pm EST

The 850-solider Black Watch regiment of the British Army is ending their 12-month tour in Iraq and coming home before Christmas. From the article: "The time before they come home is expected to be spent handing over equipment...The Black Watch's mission to Dogwood was aimed at blocking insurgents and terrorists fleeing the aftermath of the US assault on Fallujah, to the north."

Dave Neiwert's thesis of pseudo-fascism
by IseFire - Sat 12/04/04 12:42 pm EST

A dKos regular commenter, "HollyweirdLiberal," brought to my attention that Dave Neiwert's multi-part analysis of the conservative movement as pseudo-fascism can now be read easily in its entirety, following Neiwert's posting of all the relevant Web addresses on a single page.

I recommend that you read Neiwert's work.

Part 1: The Morphing of the Conservative Movement

Part 2: The Architecture of Fascism

Part 3: The Pseudo-Fascist Campaign

Part 4: The Apocalyptic One-Party State

Part 5: Warfare By Other Means

Part 6: Breaking Down the Barriers

Part 7 [Conclusion]: It Can Happen Here

Pentagon advisory board task force slams "war on terrorism"
by IseFire - Fri 12/03/04 08:19 am EST

A 102-page report—completed nearly two months before the presidential election but not put on a Pentagon Web site until the night before Thanksgiving—slams the Bush administration’s so-called “war on terror” as nothing less than a “strategic mistake.”

Sidney Blumenthal, writing for Salon.com, summarizes the report’s findings, quoting significantly from the report itself:

The Bush administration…has misconceived a war on terrorism in the image of the Cold War—"reflexively" and "without a thought or a care as to whether these were the best responses to a very different strategic situation." Yet the administration seeks out "Cold War models" to cast this "war" against "totalitarian evil."… While we blindly and confidently call this a "war on terrorism," Muslims "in contrast see a history-shaking movement of Islamic restoration" against "apostate" Arab regimes allied with the U.S. and "Western Modernity….'" [T]he Bush administration's impulse has been to "imitate the routines and bureaucratic responses and mindset that so characterized [the Cold War]." So the U.S. projects Iraqis and other Arabs as people to be liberated like those "oppressed by Soviet rule." And the U.S. accepts authoritarian Arab regimes as allies against the "radical fighters." [The report notes:] “There is no yearning-to-be-liberated-by-the-U.S. groundswell among Muslim societies -- except to be liberated perhaps from what they see as apostate tyrannies that the U.S. so determinedly promotes and defends. (Original emphasis.)"

The sad result:

Bush's grand justification, his story line connecting all the dots from the World Trade Center to Baghdad, has "borne out the entire radical Islamist bill of particulars." As a result, jihadists have been able to transform themselves from marginal figures in the Muslim world into defenders against invasion and attack with a growing following of millions.

(My emphasis. So...read it again. A "growing following of millions.")

Thanks again, Mr. Dubya. No wonder Powell, Ridge, and so many others are following the Christine Todd Whitman exit plan: get the hell out of this administration before it destroys your political career.

Why haven't the terrorists struck NYC again? (One answer: the French)
by IseFire - Thu 12/02/04 08:21 am EST

Why hasn't New York City—or the U.S. for that matter—suffered from another terrorist attack? New York magazine gives various reasons. One is: The French.

From the article. Michael Swetman, CEO, Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, former CIA officer, and special consultant to President G. H. W. Bush’ Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board -

"Don’t think because nothing hit New York, nothing was tried. Plenty was tried [since 9/11], but everything was thwarted. And this might surprise you, but French intelligence was key. The last one was a big attempt to strike our financial centers. A year before that, they were putting together a ricin attack. Both attacks were planned and staged from Great Britain. The French intelligence services have been just phenomenal. We wouldn’t have captured those cells in Great Britain if it wasn’t for the French…."

Loch Johnson, intelligence specialist, Univ. of Georgia, author, Bombs, Bugs, Drugs, and Thugs: Intelligence and America’s Quest for Security -

"[W]e didn’t transition quickly enough when the nerve center of the enemy changed from the halls of the Kremlin to mountain caves in Afghanistan. All of a sudden, we have to figure out how to intercept messages transmitted from mouth to ear."
[New York magazine commentary:] "The requires a formidable Arabic-speaking spy force, which would take years to build from scratch. But the French already have one, retained from their days as colonial masters of Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco, not to mention their mandates over Syria and Lebanon. French intelligence knows how to root our Arabic-speaking insurgents. And while Jacques Chirac may not lend us any French soldiers, he’s apparently been generous with the French spy network."

Take Action vs. CBS and NBC!
by IseFire - Wed 12/01/04 06:00 pm EST

CBS and NBC have refused to air a United Church of Christ ad that emphasizes the church's welcoming of a diverse membership, including same-sex couples.

According to a United Church of Christ statement, the ad says that the church seeks to welcome all people, regardless of ability, age, race, economic circumstance or sexual orientation.

"Because this commercial touches on the exclusion of gay couples...and the fact that the executive branch has recently proposed a Constitutional amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, this spot is unacceptable for broadcast," the church quoted CBS as saying.

You can view the ad on the UCC website at www.stillspeaking.com/default.htm

The ad has been accepted and will air on other networks, including ABC Family, AMC, BET, Discovery, Fox, Hallmark, History, Nick@Nite, TBS, TNT, Travel and TV Land.

Call CBS and NBC and tell them they are wrong for not airing a pro-tolerance, pro-inclusive ad by a Christian denomination. Tell them that you want them to air the ad.

To contact CBS, call: (212) 975-4321
To contact NBC, call: (212) 664-4444

More lessons learned
by IseFire - Tue 11/30/04 09:58 pm EST

Here's a key bit from Matt Bai's post-election post-mortem, "Who Lost Ohio?" in The New York Times' magazine, November 21, 2004. The true-blue emphses are mine:

...Ohio, like much of the country, was undergoing a demographic shift of historic proportions, and Republicans were learning to exploit their advantage in rapidly expanding rural areas that [Democratic] organizers..., for all their technological innovation, just didn't understand. In shiny new town-house communities, canvassing could be done quietly by neighbors; you didn't need vans and pagers.... In the old days, these towns and counties had been nothing but little pockets of voters, and Republicans hadn't bothered to expend the energy to organize them. But now the exurban populations had reached critical mass (Delaware County alone had grown by almost one-third since the 2000 election), and Republicans were building their own kind of quiet but ruthlessly efficient turnout machine.
…..
Therein, perhaps, lies the real lesson from Ohio, and from the election as a whole. From the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and especially after the disputed election of 2000, Democrats operated on the premise that they were superior in numbers, if only because their supporters lived in such concentrated urban communities. If they could mobilize every Democratic vote in America's industrial centers -- and in its populist heartland as well -- then they would win on math alone. Not anymore. Republicans now have their own concentrated vote, and it will probably continue to swell. Turnout operations like ACT can be remarkably successful at corralling the votes that exist, but turnout alone is no longer enough to win a national election for Democrats. The next Democrat who wins will be the one who changes enough minds.

Schumer: "Gaping holes" in airport security
by IseFire - Mon 11/29/04 08:58 am EST

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has found yet another failure on the part of the Bush Administration to keep America safe from terrorists. Only 5% of the 2.8 million tons of cargo-carrying commercial aircraft are examined. He cited data from the Center for American Progress. Remember the 1996 ValueJet airliner crash? That killed 100 people. An improper shipment of oxygen generators in the passenger jet's cargo hold exploded. The next airliner you're on will likely be carrying some for of cargo, too, including mail.

Bush says no privacy protection needed for new passport technology
by IseFire - Sat 11/27/04 06:28 pm EST

Bush has come out against privacy protection for new microchip-equipped passports. The passports, which debut in 2005, meet International Civil Aviation Organization standards; but, the standards themselves are deemed faulty by many. For starters, the ICAO standards don't require that the passport data be encrypted. Not only have privacy advocates raised the alarm about this, but according to documents obtained by the ACLU from the State Dept., countries including Canada, Germany, the Netherlands and Britain share the suspicion that the standards set for these new electronic passports inadequately protect against government snooping or identity theft by either criminal or terrorist organizations. More here.

Swiss SIGARMS wins more U.S. contracts
by IseFire - Fri 11/26/04 06:36 pm EST

Here's a news item I found interesting: The Swiss firearms manufacturer, SIGAMRS, which already supplies the FBI, DEA, and Secret Service with sidearms, has been awarded the Dept. of Homeland Security contract and the Coast Guard contract, too. (Beretta still supplies our military's sidearms; but, at this point I wonder if its days aren't numbered as the sidearm supplier to our soldiers, air force personnel, sailors, and marines.) The specific SIG model ordered is the SIG Sauer P229. The deliveries of 40,000 of these pistols have already begun. The contract lasts for 4 years.

Transsexuals win vs. Toys R Us
by IseFire - Wed 11/24/04 08:19 am EST

From Tom Shanahan:

The New York State Court of Appeals [on 11/23/2004] issued a ruling in favor of my three transsexual clients who sued the toy giant years ago for discrimination and won a jury verdict against Toys R Us for discrimination.

The decision is a major victory which supports the merit of our lawsuit and the argument that we have always asserted, transgendered persons are entitled to the same dignity and respect as everyone else.

The Court of Appeals by a 5-2 split agreed with the District or trial court Judge that "this was one of those unusual and infrequent instances in which attorneys fees should be awarded...to encourage the bringing of meritorious civil rights cases that would otherwise be abandoned."

The decision can be viewed on the Court of Appeals website. The Associated Press also released a story being circulated on the internet widely. You can also view the decision on my website at www.shanahanlaw.com, cases of interest page, Mc Grath v. Toys R Us....

Once the fees are awarded, we intend on sharing a portion with our clients and donating to [several] advocacy groups....

Congrats, Tom!

Please help out Juan Cole
by IseFire - Wed 11/24/04 08:00 am EST

From MyDD: By threatening to level a lawsuit, the lobbying group Middle East Media Research Organization is trying to silence indepdent blogger Juan Cole for having criticized them. (His blog is entitled, Informed Comment.) Chris Bowers over at MyDD asks, "What's next, Republicans trying to shut down the entire left-wing blogopshere through well-funded and completely unjustified lawsuits?" The answer is, yes.

Here's what you can do to help:

This technique of the SLAPP or Strategic Lawsuits against Public Participation had already been pioneered by polluting industries against environmental activists, and now the pro-Likud lobby in the US has apparently decided to try it out against people like me.

I urge all readers to send messages of protest to memri@memri.org. Please be polite, and simply urge MEMRI, which has a major Web presence, to withdraw the lawsuit threat and to respect the spirit of the free sharing of ideas that makes the internet possible

It's the irrationality, stupid!
by IseFire - Mon 11/22/04 12:30 pm EST

Spain is about to legalize same-sex marriage. And Thursday night, full-fledged civil unions--marriage in all but name--received royal assent in Britain (i.e. it is now the law of the realm)! By definition, this means it passed the House of Commons. It did so, relatively easily, in part because there are now many out, gay Members of Parliament--Conservative ones, Labour ones, and Liberal Democrat ones.

More than a year ago I had a letter to the editor published in The New York Observer, in which I stated a simple fact: the only rational response to homosexuality is nonchalance. The same goes for gay marriage. Neither thing has cosmic significance. Neither causes the moon to fall to earth or rain storms to begin. Neither harms any individual in any way, shape, or form. As realities, as concepts, both homosexuality as a perfectly human, relatively rare but still universally recognized, ingrained preference and "gay" marriage as a law are ideally responded to with as much passion as one responds to the "issues" of blond hair or left-handedness.

Appropriate nonchalance. It's flooding Western Europe. It's similarly won out over idiocy among a majority of our Canadian neighbors. There's even talk of it in political circles in Brazil.

The opposite of rationality is irrationality, and those in irrationality's grip are referred to as idiots. Given that 78% of Georgians approved of the sweeping gay marriage and civil unions ban, given that a sweeping gay marriage and civil unions ban passed in Ohio by a 2-to-1 margin--in a state Kerry nearly won--the math demonstrates that uncounted thousands of pro-choice, pro-environment, anti-war, pro-stem cell research "progressives" voted for these bans in some or all of the 11 states in which bans passed.

This is a fact progressive Americans and gay Americans have to face, and it is an ugly one. Homophobia is pandemic in the Democratic Party. (See: Andrew Cuomo and his despicable, "Vote for Cuomo, not the homo" campaign, on his father's behalf, against Ed Koch.) What is more, the nascent 21st-century American progressive movement as a whole is in jeopardy of losing gay American volunteers, money, and talent as more gay Americans feel taken for granted by other progressives and, in particular, realize that the Democratic Party has actually done precious little for them--far less than the courts--and that no prominent Democratic Party leader, including Howard Dean, will champion the issue of gay marriage. These leaders instead bow to irrationality. In other words, they are, on gay marriage, idiots.

Gay Americans rarely have a hard time understanding how pro-reproductive rights or civil rights affect them and any minority directly and indirectly. My guess is that a huge majority of self-identified gay voters are pro-choice. But you heard it here first: the conversations are happening proposing orchestrated mass withdrawals of membership from NARAL, NOW, the NAACP, other so-called progressive organizations, and the Democratic Party itself, until there is a wider acknowledgement that gay issues are American issues, that gay marriage is a civil rights issue. Currently, gay marriage is the issue that dare not speak its name, the issue told to go to the back of the bus.

In the end, we will all stand together or fall separately.

It's time for American progressives to put up on gay marriage or shut up about the importance of a new progressive movement--either its necessity or its supposedly inevitable success.

It's aboot time!
by IseFire - Mon 11/22/04 12:00 pm EST

Well, it's about time the Canadians start helping out American progressives! :) See it to believe it:

http://www.marryanamerican.ca/

Purple majesty, not red or blue
by IseFire - Sat 11/20/04 04:22 pm EST

Consider the 2004 state-level elections:

Democrats retook the Oregon State Senate and now control the state legislature for the first time in 10 years.
Democrats earned a tie in the Iowa Senate and made a net gain in the Iowa House.
Democrats retook the Colorado House and Senate both.
Democrats won control of the North Carolina House.
Democrats seized the Montana Senate.
Democrats captured the Vermont House.
Democrats made a net gain in Minnesota’s state legislature.
Democrats reclaimed the Washington Senate.
Republicans gained an elected majority in the Tennessee Senate for the first time since Reconstruction.
Republicans grabbed the Oklahoma House for the first time in 83 years.
Republicans reclaimed the Indiana House; the GOP in IN now controls both houses and the governorship.
Republicans utterly routed Georgia House Dems; the GOP in GA now controls both houses and the governorship.

Protect Every Child. Kerry to introduce universal child health care bill on Senate's first day.
by IseFire - Sat 11/20/04 11:56 am EST

Sign the petition. But part of this effort to push forward values that matter: Democratic values. Every America child deserves a guarantee of health care. No American child should suffer under the present system. We can and must do better.

"DHinMI" over in what I call the Kosopolis analyzes this important Democratic values initiative well:

The purpose and value in what Kerry’s doing is to advance a legislative and policy agenda. Kerry is our most prominent Democrat not named Clinton or Kennedy. Unlike Gore, for whom I have great respect, Kerry is not taking a hiatus from the public stage. So, if he’s going to be around, we have no reason to begrudge him for making use of his high profile to draw attention to health insurance and election reform. Let’s hope he works hard and gets attention for his legislative initiatives because that would draw a great and stark contrast with the Republicans.

You don’t have to like Kerry. But don’t judge him on whether these bills will pass, and don’t dismiss the value that comes from him drawing attention to important issues that we almost all think should be priorities.

[Aside] Okay, it's not politics, but...Pierolapithecus catalaunicus is cool
by IseFire - Sat 11/20/04 11:56 am EST

The display this week of the fossils of the newly-discoveredPierolapithecus catalaunicus in Els Hostalets de Figuerola, near Barcelona, are amazing. It lived 13 million years ago and so far is the most likely candidate for the last common ancestor of all apes--that means, chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, bonobos, and humans.

Iowa's blue Bush paradox
by IseFire - Fri 11/19/04 12:30 am EST

Gov. Thomas Vilsack of Iowa, a leading contender to chair the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is getting raked over the coals out in blogchat land by supporters of another key contender, former Gov. Howard Dean. Personally, I prefer Dean. (More on that soon.) However, I want to give Vilsack some of his due, and I'd like to kill a particularly myopic anti-Vilsack meme.

I keep hearing fellow supporters of a Dean chairmanship say that Vilsack "didn't even carry his own state [for Kerry]." Governors don't carry states for presidential candidates, the presidential candidates carry them...or not. Vilsack didn't lose Iowa, Kerry did.

In fact, Vilsack did carry Iowa...for himself--as a winning governor in a seemingly red-leaning state. Vilsack did in Iowa what John Kerry couldn't. (Is that called failing Kerry or perhaps doing a better job than Kerry?)

Don't miss this simple fact: Vilsack is the first Democratic governor of Iowa in my lifetime. While many in the Democratic party are fixated on some mythical quick-fix White House victory as our next battle, but who have done little to shift the Democratic Party at the grassroots level, Vilsack managed to turn a red governorship blue years ago. What is more, he's been instrumental in doing in Iowa just the sort of thing our nation's burgeoning progressive movement needs to be doing in every state now: nurturing candidates and winning elections at the local level.

Did you know that in 2004:
*Iowa on Nov. 2nd was 1 of only 3 states to make Democratic gains in the state legislature.
*Iowa Dems now enjoy a 25-25 tie in the Iowa Senate.
*Iowa Dems in the forever-Republican House now boast a mere 2-seat minority.
*The Iowa Democratic Party is basically tied with Republicans in voter registrations. They were behind by 60,000 registrants in 2003.
*Iowa Democratic Congressman Leonard Boswell absolutely smashed Republican challenger Stan Thompson. Thompson got major GOP money and ran a nasty campaign. Didn't matter. Vilsack's Iowa Dem organization helped Boswell eat Thompson alive.

None of us should be disuaded of Vilsack for the wrong reasons. He is an amazing person with a profoundly amazing personal story, and he is a proven and successful fighter for Democrats.

Bush is left of the evangelical right? (The amNew York brain fart.)
by IseFire - Wed 11/17/04 12:00 pm EST

In the Nov. 17 issue of New York City's main free daily, amNew York, a South Carolina-based columnist wrote in her opinion piece that, "Bush is far to the left of the so-called 'moral right.'" This statement is patently absurd. (What is more, I've never heard the exact term, "moral right" before. "Moralistic Right" I've heard, and it's more appropriate, too.)

My letter to the editor:

Kathleen Parker’s analysis of conservative evangelicalism’s role in Bush’s reelection was deeply flawed. She claimed Bush is to the left of conservative evangelicals; but, she didn’t cite a single example. That’s because he isn’t. Bush stated that the “jury is still out” on evolution. He is unequivocally anti-choice. He backs the death penalty. He let the assault weapons ban expire. He has stated support for home schooling. He supports school vouchers. He favors outsourcing government services to religious charities. This is 100% in-step with America’s political movement of conservative evangelicals.  What is more, Parker missed the significance of her own numbers and didn’t define her terms. One out of every three Bush votes came from an evangelical. That’s a massive number. But, conservative evangelicals are only part of the entire Christian Right, which includes millions of conservative Roman Catholics, who believe in the exact some political agenda as evangelicals. The overall Christian Right voting block is a behemoth. Finally, Parker overlooked the fact that those who have for years been warning about the Christian Right generally have stressed their influence even more than their numbers. The Left Behind series of books is, in serialized and narrative form, conservative evangelicalism’s political manifesto. Those books have sold 60,000,000 copies. Parker misses the point: an increasing number of voters who don’t describe themselves as evangelicals are voting in-synch with the evangelical worldview, which is increasingly synonymous with conservatism in general. That is called winning Americans’ hearts and minds. Conservative Christians have been at it for 30 years, and they are succeeding significantly.

Orcinus
by IseFire - Tue 11/16/04 11:50 pm EST

Dave Neiwert's Orcinus is worth your time. Neiwert has been writing a lot about the Religious Right these days.

US down from 18th to 27th in global social progress index
by IseFire - Tue 11/16/04 01:00 pm EST

From the AP article:

The United States ranks 27th in a study of social progress worldwide due to social service budget cuts and chronic poverty plaguing major US cities, a University of Pennyslvania report found.

Jerry's Moralistic MoveOn
by IseFire - Tue 11/16/04 12:00 am EST

With liberal organizations like MoveOn.org dazed by how insufficient they proved to be ("for now," the patriots said grimly), and with the nation's nascent progressive infrastructure manned by mere rampart patrols while the exhausted garrisons sluggishly recover from the Nov. 2nd "Pyrrhic defeat" (think about it), Jerry Falwell, founder of the late, great Moral Majority, is manufacturing what he hopes will inflict the Right's coup de grace against the Left: a new national organization of religious conservatives, The Faith and Values Coalition. Its chairman is to be Tim LaHaye, the conservative Christian activist and co-author of the "Left Behind" series of novels that sold more than 60,000,000 copies. (I noted for many, many months what these books' popularity foretold--having read in 1990 their literary harbinger, Frank Peretti's Piercing the Darkness--but the Left largely dismissed LaHaye's compelling claptrap as easily as secessionists once did Uncle Tom's Cabin.)

The org's tri-part agenda: 1) The confirmation of "pro-life, strict constructionist" U.S. Supreme Court justices and other federal judges, 2) the passage of the Federal Marriage Amendment, and 3) the election of "another socially-, fiscally-, and politically-conservative president in 2008." (Of course, Bush isn't fiscally or politically conservative, but what should Jerry care...or you? Intellectual honesty has always been an ass not an asset in America politics.)

More proof of global warming
by IseFire - Sun 11/14/04 09:39 pm EST

At this point in history, "more proof of global warming " ought to sounds as ridiculous as "more proof of gravity." Dut it doesn't, because in the United States, global warming is still "controversial." Article.

Conservative elements begin post-election incursions on all fronts, including education
by IseFire - Fri 11/12/04 08:59 pm EST

The conservative movement began testing the strength of the Bush 2nd-term "mandate" before the carcase of the Kerry campaign was cold. All along the political frontlines Republican officials, conservative judges, the Religious Right, corporate lawyers, and other elements of America's confederacy of conservative interests are launching actions against polices relating to education, health care, the environment, civil rights, voting rights, and more.

I pay attention to attacks on science education, among other targets. Our nation was founded upon Enlightenment principles, but is now dangerously influenced by religionists who do not greatly prize reason or even pragmatism in government or policy. Personally, I find religionists' attacks on our children's minds to be the most dangerous of all conservative violations.

Stories to pay attention to:
*Evolution lawyers make final pleas in GA.

*"Intelligent Design" (ID) mandated in science units in PA.

*Sex education, TX style.

*Grantsburg, WI twists science education with creationist/ "Intelligent Design" mandates.

Thomas Jefferson: "History...furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government."
by IseFire - Thu 11/11/04 08:30 am EST

It is Veterans' Day. "Eleven, eleven, eleven"--marking the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, when World War I officially ended. The First World War was not a religious conflict. Religious differences fueled ethnic hatreds which somewhat influenced the Serbian campaign, but that was it. All the national powers engaged in World War I were either declining or rising empires. All of them utterly secular--Britain, France, Belgium, Germany, Russia, the United States, etc.

Today one of the above powers is experiencing quasi-religious rule in which institutionalized religion--like in the Middle Ages of Europe--consciously exerts political influence and control of the State. All but one of the above powers dispensed hundreds of years ago with a politically significant priestly or religious class, sometimes violently.

From Sidney Blumenthal on Salon.com today:

The election of 2004 marks the rise of a quasi-clerical party for the first time in the United States. Ecclesiastical organization has become transformed into the sinew and muscle of the Republican Party, essential in George W. Bush's reelection. His narrow margins in the key states of Florida, Iowa and Ohio, and elsewhere, were dependent upon the direct imposition of the churches. None of this occurred suddenly or by happenstance. Nor was this development simply a pleasant surprise for Bush. For years, he has schooled himself in the machinations of the religious right, and Karl Rove has used the command center of the White House as more than its Office of Propaganda.

Bush's clerisy represents an unprecedented alliance of historically anti-Roman Catholic, nativist evangelical Protestants with the most reactionary elements of the Catholic hierarchy. Preacher, priest and politician have combined on the grounds that John F. Kennedy disputed in his famous speech before the Greater Houston Ministerial Association on Sept. 12, 1960. Every principle articulated by Kennedy has been flouted and contradicted by Bush: "I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute; where no Catholic prelate would tell the President -- should he be Catholic -- how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference ... where no public official either requests or accept instructions on public policy from the Pope or ... any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials."

From the White House, Rove operated a weekly conference call with selected religious leaders. Evangelical churches handed over their membership directories to the Bush campaign for voter registration drives. According to the Washington Post, "clergy members attended legal sessions explaining how they could talk about the election from the pulpit." A group associated with the Rev. Pat Robertson advised 45,000 churches on how to work for Bush. One popular preacher alone sent letters to 136,000 pastors advising them on "non-negotiable" issues -- gay marriage, stem cell research, abortion -- to mobilize the faithful. Perhaps the most influential figure of all was the Rev. James Dobson, whose radio programs are broadcast daily on more than 3,000 stations and 80 TV stations, and whose organization has affiliates in 36 states, and this year created a political action committee to advance "Christian citizenship."

GOP wolves attack their own
by IseFire - Tue 11/09/04 01:00 pm EST

From the New Dem Daily, an e-newsletter:

[W]ithin days of President Bush's pledge to "heal the nation" and serve as "president of all the people," the long knives of conservative Republicans have been drawn--against a fellow-Republican.

The demand for a blood-purge of Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), scheduled to become chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was first sounded by conservative columnist Robert Novak yesterday, and is now resounding throughout the precincts of the Right. National Review magazine, whose Washington editor, Kate O'Beirne, penned a magnanimous op-ed in The Washington Post on Sunday describing the GOP as a big-tent party with room for social moderates, has devoted an entire section of its web page to attacks on Specter. His specific transgression was telling a Pennsylvania reporter that he did not intend to support the nomination of judicial "extremists," and especially those who supported overturning Roe v. Wade, which he compared to Brown v. Board of Education as an important item of settled constitutiona l law.

National Review's editors thundered thusly: "The comparison of Roe to Brown was a gratuitous and vicious insult to the bulk of his own party. Pro-lifers are not segregationists, and Specter's side of this debate is not that of human rights. Nor is Roe settled law, the way Brown is." Like Novak and others, National Review is demanding that the Senate Republican Conference suspend the seniority rule and deny Specter the Judiciary chairmanship.

Experts: Economy is slowing despite October hired related mostly to hurricane cleanup
by IseFire - Mon 11/08/04 8:30 am EST

Bloomberg News is reporting that U.S. retail sales barely rose in October and higher oil prices kept the nations trade deficit near a record a month earlier. (From amNew York)

33% conservative; 21% liberal. Liberals lose.
by IseFire - Sat 11/06/04 10:00 am EST

Of voters on November 2, 2004, 33% identified themselves as conservatives; only 21% as liberals.

Liberals in America need 5, 10 & 20+ year plans if those proportions of conservatives and liberals in the electorate are going to change to favor the liberals. However, the defeat of John Kerry is clearly helping the Left wake up up to the reality (that some of us knowledgeable about the Religious Right have warned about for more than a decade), that liberals are dangerously close to losing American hearts and minds for a long time.

Liberals have as much work to do, if they are going to have any long-term political success and influence, as the Religious Right (and conservatives in general) had 15 to 20+ years ago, when the Religious Right set goals such as "taking back" America by doing things like getting an evangelical elected President and overturning Roe v. Wade, and when intellectual conservatives set goals such as destroying Social Security and, to put it simplistically, avenging Goldwater and Nixon.

In the period 15, 20 and even 30+ years ago, the Heritage Foundation and Moral Majority were founded (1973 and 1979), televangelist Pat Robertson created the Christian Coalition (1989), Rush Limbaugh began his syndicated political radio show (1988), and conservative evangelical Christians accelerated greatly their political involvement, in part inspired by Pat Robertson's run for President (1988).

Conservative evangelical Christians began learning the political process, running for local offices, teambuilding, constructing communication operations, founding think tanks and publications, propping up or taking over those secular but conservative think tanks already in existence, like the American Enterprise Institute (1943), setting short-, intermediate, and long-term goals, and doing the necessary grunt work--leafleting, attending local governmental meetings (school boards, boards of county supervisors, etc.), stuffing and licking envelopes, and--perhaps most importantly--being daily evangelists no longer just for Christ, but for what they since the late 1960's increasingly had been told from the pulpit was "the" Christian political worldview for America.

And they vowed to represent that worldview in workplace conversations, at the dinner table, on the athletic field, in schools as students and teachers, everywhere, at any time, to anyone.

That was 10, 15, and 20+ years ago.... But look at the fruits that their efforts have borne:
*the 1996 "Republican Revolution" that seized Congress;
*the 2000 influence sufficient to make the GOP select a stridently conservative presidential nominee over a relative moderate, John McCain, and to keep out any true moderates altogether;
*the 2002 congressional victories of numerous evangelical candidates,
*the 2004 re-election of George W. Bush and the sizeable enlargement of the GOP's congressional majority;
And it has born one of the greatest fruits among the harvest conservative Christians hoped for:
*an increase in the percentage of Americans identifying with the evangelical Christian political agenda whether or not they are themselves evangelical Christians.

Liberals have a lot of work to do. And educating the next generation of voters and political leaders is paramount. Just because America is becoming more urbanized, just because young voters went for Kerry in big numbers, just because the nation is becoming "less white," is no guarantee of long-term victory. If liberals do not vigorously articulate a clear progressive message, using when helpful even the inherently irrational language of religion and understanding conservative religious worldviews--towards which they have been arrogantly dismissive--minds will turn away from the light of liberty, hypnotized by the fires of fear, militarism, intolerance, and provincialism.

Gore Vidal said the four most beautiful words in the English language are, "I told you so."
by IseFire - Sat 11/04/04 09:27 am EST

Four other great words, however, are also: "I have no idea."

Both my best friend (a W. Bush classmate and vet of the fight to get women admitted into Yale) and a Democratic Party District Leader I know, today encouraged me to indulge in something I've really yet to do on this site: wax righteously indignant and skewer my often idiotic and certainly arrogant liberal allies. I'll do so. But, I'll also admit that I'm not sure exactly how to make a concrete reality out of the vision I have of a future for a national opposition to the Religious Right.

The data is conclusive: "moral values" was the most important issue among voters on Nov. 2, and of voters identifying "moral values" as the most important issue, 80% voted for George W. Bush.

For years, I've been saying and writing until hoarse and knuckle-sore that both the Democratic Party and more recently the very welcome Deaniac new blood of the Left have been inexcusably clueless about the Religious Right. I know the Religious Right, which seized the nation's government in toto on Tuesday, and if people like me had been listened to much earlier, November 2nd's outcome might have been prevented.

As a kid in Iowa, I went door-to-door handing out literature for Jack Kemp in 1988; I remember when my evangelical church's minister became the county chairman for a Republican presidential campaign; I pitched horseshoes with George H. W. Bush in the same week that I helped a friend burn his "Satanic" Billy Joel LPs. I was a witness to the Religious Right's take-over of the apparatus of the Republican Party.

The American political left wing has wallowed in three key enduring errors now requiring immediate correction.

*The first is the consistent underestimation of the Religious Right's strength, as well as its adherents patience and self-sacrificing commitment springing from the emotional support, the sense of community, that the movement provides. (Comparatively, the Left lacks as strong of a sense of community.) I said and wrote it repeatedly since about 1990 when I ceased to consider myself an evangelical Christian any longer : if ever a President was elected who the Religious Right would perceive was "one of our own," the reality of his or her identification with them would forgive all his or her horrible faults, even if the faults weakened the economic standing of the lower and middle classes, in which most conservative evangelicals are situated. After all, such a President would be taken as literally an answer to prayer and form of divine intervention.

*The second left wing error is the failure to learn the Religious Right's nomenclature in order to speak about liberal values in the language of religion. To talk in irrational terms, such as the terms of religion, is not by definition to embrace conservative ideals! It can be a way to create fervor within a socio-political movement, even as the movement is not itself religious in the narrow sense of the word. And guess what will happen if the left were to speak about liberal values in the language of religion? The left would energize its base of those already active and expand its base with liberals--and those predisposed to be liberals--but who are not motivated as well as some converts from the Religious Right.

Yes, converts will come from the right. Some will "have ears to hear" (Mark 7:16) and turn their backs on the religio-conservative worldview, but only if they are offered in words yielding a visceral, positive emotional reaction a progressive worldview grounded in a true tale of a better future, a belief in redemptive labors and callings, and a lexicon unafraid of the language of values and morality; therefore, the current political left’s angry secularism, naive intellectualism, and detail-ridden policy explanations—and the spokespersons commonly communicating them—will not get us much farther. (Of course, it should go without saying that the mealy-mouthed, soft-pedaling DLC-esque prevaricators will benefit just just as unspectacularly.)

*The above first and second errors are really just symptoms of a larger failing, the third and most terrible error: the failure to copy and improve on the Religious Right's all the inter-related mechanisms for political growth, the creation of...
a
big-vision, big-message,
strategic (not always only tactical or defensive),
grassroots,
one-school-board-at-a-time,
community-building obsessed,
small group-based,
friendship-building,
patriotic,
liberal,
movement,
and one unafraid of realpolitik and archly Machiavellian operations. In other words: OPPOSITION SOCIETY WITH A VISION, MESSAGE, AND LONG-TERM PLAN.

(The closest historical comparison may be the abolitionist movement.)

Instead the left, liberal Democrats specifically, have been getting for years 1) McAuliffe-Kerry-Daschle defensive politics and messaging and 2) Deaniac money-raising but ultimately disorganized cheerleading that is deaf to middle and religious America (i.e. most of America). Worst of all, 1) and 2) waste huge amounts of energy being disdainful toward each other.

When the DLC talks about the need for a Southern (and charismatic) Presidential candidate and someone who understands the language of the religious American, I agree. When Deaniacs insist on a true-blue dyed-in-the-wool liberal movement, I agree. These two things aren't mutually exclusive. But I'm the first to admit that how to bring them together isn't easy to figure out either.

The time to figure it out was yesterday.

Let's get busy.