Kudos to Eric Smith for catching this headline from the American Family Association:
Congress bows to gay agenda, repeals ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’
Congress has given in to pressure from gay activists and the White House and voted to repeal the "don’t ask, don’t tell" ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military…
And I’m just amazed the variety of categories I was able apply to put this tiny blog post.
Yup.
President Obama uttered three words on Thursday that many of his 43 predecessors twisted themselves into knots trying with varying degrees of success to avoid: “I was wrong.”
He strode into the East Room to mount a robust defense of his handling of the largest oil spill in American history, reassuring the nation that he was in charge and would do “whatever is necessary” to stop and clean up the BP leak in the Gulf of Mexico. But by the time he walked out an hour later, he had balanced that with a fairly unusual presidential self-critique.
He was wrong, he said, to assume that oil companies were prepared for the worst as he tried to expand offshore drilling. His team did not move with “sufficient urgency” to reform regulation of the industry. In dealing with BP, his administration “should have pushed them sooner” to provide images of the leak, and “it took too long for us” to measure the size of the spill.
“In case you’re wondering who’s responsible, I take responsibility,” Mr. Obama said as he concluded the news conference. “It is my job to make sure that everything is done to shut this down. That doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy. It doesn’t mean it’s going to happen right away or the way I’d like it to happen. It doesn’t mean that we’re not going to make mistakes. But there shouldn’t be any confusion here. The federal government is fully engaged, and I’m fully engaged.”
Asked about inevitable comparisons between his administration’s handling of the disaster with his predecessor’s response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which flooded New Orleans and other areas, Obama said: “I’ll leave it to you guys to make those comparisons. … What I’m thinking about is how do you solve the problem?”
Comparisons to former President George W. Bush’s paltry response to the devastating storm have come mainly from opposition Republicans who are trying to made political gains in November congressional elections.
“I’m confident people are going to look back and say this administration was on top of what was an unprecedented crisis,” he said. “We’ve got to get it right.”
I’m not defending the President, really. But what more can you say? “You bet you were wrong! Yeah!!!”
We’re still living with the industry-favoring bureaucracy created by the Bush Administration.
“Balance, Daniel-san! Balance!”
The President needs to balance the needs of corporate America with the remaining 300+ million Americans who pay taxes.
The following is from Media Matters for America, and I am happy to reproduce it here. Please take action:
On Wednesday, Rand Paul, the GOP’s US Senate candidate for Kentucky repeated his claim that a central piece of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was wrong, and that businesses should be free to discriminate against whomever they please.1 Paul and his supporters don’t seem to care that without federal intervention, Black people might still be second-class citizens in most aspects of American life: where we eat, where we work, even where we live.
Then, on Thursday, FOX contributor and business anchor John Stossel went even further than Paul and called for the section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that applies to business to be repealed.2 And he’s refused to back down.
It’s time to hold FOX accountable:
http://www.colorofchange.org/stossel/mm/?id=1835-468358
While Rand Paul may have started this outrage, he can be taken care of at the ballot box — FOX News can’t.
Stossel’s position is an affront to Black America and everyone in this country who believes in racial progress. It’s one thing to be a candidate with backwards views. It’s another to be employed by a supposed news network and to use that platform to push hateful ideas that our nation repudiated decades ago.
It’s time that FOX drop Stossel. It’s why I’ve joined ColorOfChange.org in demanding Fox do so immediately. If after hearing from thousands of people like you and I, FOX refuses to act, it will make clear that FOX stands with Stossel and his values, and ColorOfChange has pledged to go directly after the network with a major public campaign.
Can you take a moment to add your voice to the call to fire Stossel? After you do, please ask your friends and family to do the same:
http://www.colorofchange.org/stossel/mm/?id=1835-468358
FOX has a history of providing a platform for bigoted views and race-baiting. Most recently more than 300,000 people helped us hold FOX accountable by stripping Glenn Beck of more than 100 of his advertisers, after Beck called President Obama a "racist" with a "deep-seated hatred for white people."3
But Stossel has arguably gone beyond Beck, echoing segregationist arguments from the Jim Crow era:
"It’s time now to repeal that part of the law because private businesses ought to get to discriminate. And I won’t ever go to a place that’s racist and I will tell everybody else not to and I’ll speak against them. But it should be their right to be racist."
Stossel went on to argue something that history has disproved time and again — that private business will do the right thing, without being compelled by laws, because no one would patronize a business that discriminates. It’s a blind belief in market fundamentalism that just isn’t in sync with reality. In the ’60s, white-owned businesses that allowed Blacks as customers lost business. Market forces actually perpetuated discrimination; they didn’t combat it. Simply put: segregation would still be active in parts of this country if government hadn’t stepped in.
And recent history has shown that the public accommodations section of the Civil Rights Act is still needed. In 1994, it was used to hold Denny’s Restaurants accountable, after the chain repeatedly refused to seat Black customers.4 Just last year, it was used to go after a Philadelphia pool that prevented Black children from swimming there.5
It’s time for Fox News to make a choice. Are they willing to continue to give a platform to racially-divisive rhetoric and revive dangerously outdated perspectives? Or will they move with the rest of the nation into into the 21st century? Please join me in calling on Fox News to fire John Stossel. And once you do, please ask your friends and family to do the same:
http://www.colorofchange.org/stossel/mm/?id=1835-468358
Thank you.
References:
1. http://huff.to/cjOnxL
2. http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201005200033
3. http://bit.ly/aoJUUy
4. http://nyti.ms/bpVZZY
5. http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/January/10-crt-033.html
I’m not going to spoil LOST for you if you haven’t seen the last episodes.
Let me just congratulate the writers and the actors all. This is perhaps the best story I’ve ever experienced.
And the ending has every world religion I’ve ever taught or studied going overtime inside me.
LOST forever. LOVE forever.
We all need each other, after all.
We are LOST in LOVE.
Oh yes he did.
As the standard bearer for the Tea Party crowd, it’s no surprise that Rand Paul likes his taxes small, and his government even smaller. But his recent comments on the 1964 Civil Rights Act are calling into question whether the hero of Tea Party activists nationwide believes it’s OK for private businesses to discriminate on the basis of race, sex, religion, or sexual orientation.
Asked by the Louisville Courier Journal whether he was supportive of the 1964 Civil Rights Act — you know, the piece of legislation that ended institutional racism in the United States — Paul told the paper that while he was supportive of some of the provisions in the Civil Rights Act, he took issue with the Act’s requiring all businesses (public and private) to adopt anti-racism policies.
"I abhor racism," Paul said. "but at the same time I believe in private ownership."
In other words, according to Rand Paul, private businesses like Wendy’s, Aetna, Comcast, the local furniture store down the street from you, or your neighborhood grocery store should be allowed to refuse service to people who are black, Latin@, gay, lesbian, transgender, Buddhist, female, Asian or any other sort of characteristic that individual business owners might not be cool with.
Which brings us to Rand Paul’s new campaign slogan: If you wish it was 1860 again, vote for Rand Paul this November.
Continue reading “Rand Paul Says Discrimination by Businesses is ‘Free Speech’”
No, liberals are not without sin and should cast no stones. But sharing news is a different story.
And this is news.
Eight-term Republican Congressman Mark Souder of of the great state of Indiana admitted to an affair with a staffer and will resign his seat effective Friday.
Indiana Republican Rep. Mark Souder announced Tuesday he would resign from Congress, effective Friday, because he had an affair with a staffer.
Souder said in a statement provided by his office that he has "sinned against God, my wife and my family by having a mutual relationship with a part-time member of my staff."
He scheduled a news conference in Fort Wayne on Tuesday to discuss his decision.
Souder won a bruising Republican primary on May 4 to be nominated for his ninth term representing northeastern Indiana.
Souder, 59, said he also would not be a candidate in the fall election.
"I believe it is the best decision for my family, the people of northeast Indiana and our country," he said in the statement.
Here’s a video produced by Rep. Souder’s office highlighting the fact that he was "one of the only voices speaking in defense of abstinence education during an April 2008 hearing," courtesy the Huffington Post:
He’s going Back Home Again.
Just sayin’.
Portugal’s conservative—yes, conservative—president, has decided to ratify a law legalizing gay marriage.
Yup.
In a Catholic country.
Yup. Yup.
Portugal’s conservative president announced Monday he is ratifying a law allowing gay marriage in the predominantly Catholic country.
The head of state’s decision to permit the enactment of a bill passed by Parliament in January makes Portugal the sixth European country allowing same-sex couples to wed.
President Anibal Cavaco Silva said in a nationally televised address he regretted that the country’s political parties had failed to reach a compromise during days of heated debate in Parliament four months ago.
Vetoing the bill would only send it back to Parliament where lawmakers would overturn his decision, he said, adding that the country needed to focus on overcoming an economic crisis that has increased unemployment and deepened poverty.
The Socialist government’s bill was backed by all of Portugal’s left-of-center parties, who together have a majority in Parliament. Right-of-center parties opposed the measure and demanded a national referendum.
"Given that fact, I feel I should not contribute to a pointless extension of this debate, which would only serve to deepen the divisions between the Portuguese and divert the attention of politicians away from the grave problems affecting us," Cavaco Silva said.
He said that, in ratifying the law, he was setting aside "personal convictions."
Remember, these are real, human lives our regressive American laws affect. And in Portugal, a conservative with guts.
Todd Stroger was happy to open the checkbook wider for one of his aides, and cash-strapped Cook County tax payers will have to pay more.
Jaye Morgan Williams, the county’s chief financial officer, sent letters to all 17 county commissioners Friday, explaining why Stroger boosted her pay from $176,156 to $230,000 for this year.
In the two-page letter, Williams, appointed by Stroger in August, noted that she helped deliver the county’s 2010 budget within 90 days of her start date, finished a "woefully stalled" 2008 audit just 90 days into her tenure and was earning less than two of her fellow CFOs on the county payroll.
She said she’s also taken on extra duties despite a 60-hour work week and at one point this year asked for "compensation consideration."
"As a professional with a long career in the industry, I do not want to get caught up in the current maelstrom and only ask that I be treated fairly," she wrote in a letter to the commissioners that was obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.
A defensive Stroger echoed those sentiments Friday during a radio interview, saying Williams’ salary is a "lot of money, but she actually is a chief financial officer of a $3 billion corporation."
And there’s the rub: Cook County is not a corporation. Cook County is not a business.
Are you counting the days until the November election?
I am.
Oak Forest is insane for considering the elimination of the position of Village Manager. Steger has apparently already gone off the deep end, voting to eliminate the position of Village Administrator.
This is wrong – and dangerous – on so many levels.
Here’s the danger: Blagojevich, Blagojevich, Blagojevich. And I’ll throw in the name Ryan, too.
It’s not that elected officials are inherently evil or unethical. It’s that elected officials and hired staff are human. As such, they are, we all are, susceptible to temptation. Thus, I believe, the genius of that line in the Lord’s Prayer Christians pray, "…lead us not into temptation." Why is that such an important and beautiful prayer for human beings?
Because human beings are easily tempted.
The position of Village Manager isolates elected officials on the local level from power — and that is a good thing. That is a necessary thing. The Council-Manager form of government is one of the smartest ideas on the planet.
What’s this all about?
Oak Forest Mayor Hank Kuspa came up with a surprising suggestion Thursday night to help the city save money: Eliminate the city administrator job.
Kuspa painted a grim financial picture for the city at a meeting of the city council’s finance committee and called for creative ways to help resolve its budget crisis.
Then he came up with one – abolishing the key post of city administrator, held now by John Marquart at a salary of $155,000.
In a prepared statement to aldermen, Kuspa called cutting the position, which oversees the daily operation of city government, "perhaps the hardest decision of all." He did not say how city operations would be managed if the position were eliminated.
First, Oak Forest will be losing much, much more than they will gain by eliminating a $155,000 salary. Oak Forest’s elected officials will be putting themselves one step closer to the temptation of running Oak Forest the way Todd Stroger has run Cook County: government-by-patronage. And patronage is a horribly expensive way to run government.
Tax payers of Oak Forest, do you really want your elected officials dolling out jobs, giving jobs to friends, creating jobs for friends and family? You need to think long-term. 20 years from now, in the absence of a Great Recession, what will your elected officials be up to? What power will they have that they do not have now? How many of their relatives will they have hired for positions that do not now exist?
Mayor Hank Kuspa and the board are putting Oak Forest on a suicide course. Village Managers — and Village Administrators — are essential to keeping elected officials focused on policy as opposed to patronage.
The temptation is too great. Elected officials — present and future — need to isolate themselves from temptation.
Or they, and Oak Forest, won’t have a prayer.
The fatal beating of a 5-year-old Gary boy left veteran investigators shaken after they saw deep, dark scars from the back of his head to his knees.
Leon Walker’s injuries were inflicted by someone who beat him repeatedly over time, police said.
"It’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen," Gary Police Cmdr. Thomas Decanter Jr. said Thursday.
Investigators are now trying to figure out who did it. The boy’s mother was questioned and released.
Dad is in custody. Investigators say they found items at the home that suggest the boy was restrained while he was struck with an object, perhaps a belt, the Sun-Times reports. He was to turn 6 on Monday.
It’s difficult to comprehend the level of violence we are capable of — men. This level of violence does not generally come from women. It’s us, the men of the world.
All we can do for Leon now is pray.