Romney/Ryan's Got a Boner for America

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, two to the manor born rich guys with a hard on for the middle class, senior citizens and poor people. They don't like “we the people” and they have authored, created or supported programs solely designed to destroy us, period.

There is no other way to look at it. Romney/Ryan will be the death of us all, if this ticket makes it to the White House.

For Example:

1. Privatizing social security-in the Ryan budget
2. “Fixing” medicare-in the Ryan budget
3. Destruction of the social safety net for families and the poor-is the Ryan budget
4. Open warfare on women-in the Ryan budget

By embracing Paul Ryan as his running mate, Mitt Romney has completed his deal with the devil and become the mouth of ultra right conservatives and the tea bag nation. He ensures that he will continue to get the money while the rest of us get shafted.

Fully 3/5^th of the proposed cuts in the Ryan budget come from programs that make up the federal safety net to keep poor people surviving, including gutting job training programs, pell grants and food stamps.

Back in the day, that 3/5^th number was used to tell slave owners how much of a slave they could count for property and how much was considered human. Poor people are being reduced to less than human, once again, by two clueless rich guys.

Paul Ryan's budget  is so severe that the national organization of Catholic Bishops called the cuts “unjustified and wrong.” In a letter the bishops accused the strict catholic Ryan of shredding “moral obligation” to the poor and needy of this nation. Ryan responded to the bishops by telling them he was merely helping the poor to kick their habit of dependence of the government.

Ryan's method is kind of like taking a two year old and throwing him into the deep end of the pool and walking away, in order to teach him to swim. If he drowns, oh well.

And while the less than rich are dying off, the Romney/Ryan approach would cut taxes even further, showering the upper 1% with even more wealth (29% tax bracket) to sock away in some tax haven in the islands south of America.

As for the war on women, which the GOP says does not exist, ever hear of the “Let women die act?”

HR 358 was a piece of legislation that passed the House by a 252 to 172 vote, with 15 democrats joining republicans in an attempt to get the measure made into law. Paul Ryan, Mitt's newly minted VP choice voted in favor of this bill which would have allowed hospitals to refuse emergency treatment to women in nearly all medical circumstances.  Mitt Romney has now officially signed onto this way of thinking. This of course is in addition to denying any type of preventive health care that women need to stay healthy in the first place.

Romney/Ryan is pro-birth, anti-choice, anti-women's health care in toto.

Romney/Ryan would migrate senior citizens off Medicare as we currently know it and onto a voucher system. This voucher system would give seniors a certain amount of money for their health care, forcing them to negotiate with the insurance companies for benefits and coverage.

The Congressional Budget Office says that 10 years into this program seniors would be paying $6400 more out of pocket then they do now for the very same health care.

It goes on and on. Every line of the Romney/Ryan plan for America is nothing more than a restatement of the fantasy land created by atheist author Ayn Rand in her books which espouse “screw thy neighbor” as her main philosophical outlook.

Ryan has said on the record, Rand was his reason for going into politics in the first place.

Needless to say, Romney/Ryan is anti LGBT everything..against ENDA, against repeal of DADT, against same sex marriage.

Just what we need...the leader of the prick posse teaming up with the playground bully.

Great...

Hypocrisy in Black and White, The American Way

A couple of things are sticking in my craw today....

 One is the fact that Troy Davis is scheduled to die this evening for a crime that he may not have committed. Yesterday, the Georgia Parole Board refused to grant Davis clemency, stating there was more than enough evidence to show that Davis was the gunman and that the 7 of 9 witnesses against him who  later recanted their testimony, were apparently confused.

What it boils down to is another Black man is being lynched in Georgia. Davis is convicted of killing a white police officer. If Davis had killed a Black cop, he would probably have been sentenced to life in prison, all other things being equal.

But this is America, where equality and justice are still determined by the color of your skin. Studies continue to show that when the victim is white, 9 times out of 10, the Black defendant is given the death penalty...regardless of where the trial takes place in this country.

And believe it or not, a sitting United States Supreme Court Justice says it's okay to put an innocent man to death in America because the Constitution doesn't address the matter.

 Current  historical revisionists would have you believe, lynching is a thing of the past, doesn't happen anymore. Well, au contraire, mon frere, lynching has never been outlawed in America either. It just became not so classy to do so. Now it is done on the back roads, by drunken men in trucks who like to re-enact history, or  left up to the American justice system and police officers trained to coerce confessions to make it all seem legal and above board.  America's facade of pro life humanitarianism for all has slipped badly this week.

We're more worried about Palestinians killing Jews and vice versa than we are about what is happening inside our own borders.

No justice, there should be no peace if another innocent man dies.  However, Black America has been strangely quiet on this subject. Maybe it's because we're too busy bustin' a cap on each other to worry about another soon to be dead Black man.

Where is the outrage?  Where are the calls for justice from the Black blogosphere? Where are the Black celebrities willing speak on Troy Davis' behalf?

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Wow! Black churches have discovered there is an epidemic killing the Black community. It's call HIV/AIDS!  The headline trumpeted yesterday in the blogosphere.

So what do I do.... jump up and down, be happy, congratulate them? I've only been doing radio, TV and newspaper and magazine articles since 1984 on Blacks and AIDS.

I've lost 3 relatives and 15 friends to the disease. I don't even know how many of my friends are HIV positive, but I'll bet there are a lot of them, though.  All died in secrecy and some in isolation and fearful estrangement from their families. All of them considered themselves Christian, with many of them diligently attending Sunday services. Two were ordained ministers.

Straight Black women are the most at risk group in America today.

Am I supposed to welcome Black Churches, finally, to the last dance?  Maybe I should just  suppress my own anger and move on. Better late than never, right?  About damn time!

 Fuckin' hypocrites!

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Double WOW!

Only took LGBT equality some 60 years to the day after Blacks were allowed fully into the ranks of the military...Not because whites were suddenly become altruistic, seeing the error of their ways...The government simply needed more cannon fodder to fight the war du jour in Korea...

So on Day 2 after the government repeals that misguided policy formerly known as Don't Ask, Don't Tell...time for a reality check...

Sun still come up....check!
World still here....check!
Rain not turned radioactive...check!
Military not imploded....check!
Osama, Franco, Hitler and Mussolini still dead....check!
GOP still marching goose step over a teabag created cliff...check!
Obama still in the White House.....check!
Straight marriages still sanctified....Please!

Celebrating Self-National Coming Out Day

National Coming Out day is a celebration of self by the LGBT community. It's been going on since 1988 as a day when lesbians and gays, bisexuals and transgenders promote awareness of what it means to live your life openly and honestly without fear, in still homophobic America and the rest of the world.

The event is observed around the world because dangerous homophobes...those who like to kill or maim gay people...are everywhere. Witness the brutal rapes of three men that took place in New York last week.

National Coming Out day is a time to reinforce empathy and humanity, passing on those traits to young people. It is a day to call attention to the inequities in the law, such as the current legality of evicting a gay person or firing a gay person from a job...simply because they are gay...

Reality in America 2010..

For me, a 60 year old Black, female, lesbian professional, it is a day of reflection. In the past couple of weeks, the ugly secrecy around youth suicide has been ripped away. We've lost 6 young people, that we know about, bullied by so called friends and classmates into believing that the only way to stop the pain, was to kill themselves. Childhood should not be painful, ever.

We've got candidates for the United States Senate...some of them incumbents....saying my kind are not fit to teach or to raise or adopt children or get married....Some say we suffer from an identity disorder while at the same time attempting to convince her potential constituents hat she does not deal in witchcraft.

There is a gubernatorial candidate proclaiming that all gays are dysfunctional...not like him...a bestiality loving...serial adulterer...blatantly racist...and father of a secret out of wedlock child that he hid for ten years from his wife. All this while claiming to be a Christian.

I guess his coming out day is an open acknowledgement that he is unable to be faithful to his wife.

We have so called men of god, married to women, yet closeted and hiding....living the life of a gay man or a woman in some cases......while telling people from the pulpit that being gay is a choice and can be changed at the drop of a hat or a prayer to their god.

If changing is so simple and being who you are is so wrong....why haven't you changed yourself? And the last time I read your bible, one of the so called sins that commanded the death penalty was adultery...even in the Ten Commandments...

We have powerful church organizations spending millions to keep civil rights inequality on the books while secretly condoning the illegal and bigamous actions of their parishoners.

We suffer under a government that refuses to recognize that the LGBT community daily pays the ultimate price by dying in illegal wars to protect people who openly hate them and wish nothing but ill will. Didn't we learn this lesson with Black Americans?

We have whole communities of people (Black, Hispanic, Asian) refusing to accept that homosexuality is just another part of the human sexual spectrum...one part...nothing more....

Kind of like being left handed in a right handed world...different...but not wrong....more than likely genetic...

I know that some world class golfers (Phil Mickleson) and at least two world class tennis players (Rafa Nadal to name one) decided they could make more money by playing left handed. But the fact remains that they are still natural right handers...born right handed.... regardless of how they play their game.

The same holds true for gays and lesbians and transgenders. We may act straight...look straight (whatever that may be)...live straight..marry straight...however it does not change the fact that we are natually homosexual.

Homosexuality runs in families like other genetic traits...Brothers and sisters both gay and lesbian..from the same mother and father...happens..

National Coming Out Day, this year coincides with Columbus Day...that great American lie to the world that a white man who went to his grave believing he'd landed in Asia...”discovered” America. Columbus got lost...never made it to America which had been peopled with Native Americans for more than 11,000 years before the white man built his ocean going boats.

As Americans we need to “come out” and admit that we celebrate a fool. Better yet...let's cancel this holiday altogether or replace it with something real...like Americans Honoring Native Americans or National Coming Out Day or Mathew Shepard Day or James Byrd Day...or the day that President Obama canceled Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

However, as bad as things may seem according to the mainstream media, it is getting better and will continue to get better, because like racists, the homophobes are dying out and the teabaggers...while being a nuisance...really are temporary in the national scheme of things.

So my comemoration of National Coming Out Day is to end this ramble by coming out again and standing before you in all my 60 year old nakedness.....

I am a Black Female, Lesbian, Left handed, Liberal, freelance writer who votes...American as apple pie....and proud as hell..

A Tribal Conversation

There seems to be some confusion over the NAACP position on the civil rights goals and aspirations of gay and lesbian Americans, especially here in Cincinnati. Current National Board Chairman, Julian Bond was very clear and did not equivocate during his speech in March before the Los Angeles Branch of the Human Rights Campaign...


Julian Bond speaking before the Human Rights Campaign.




With the National organization setting the tone, why is the local chapter bogged down in simple mindedness?

Or is the local chapter, like the GOP-useless.

The time has come to talk with the Black LGBT community. Acknowledge us, make us welcome and understand that as long as one is chained...we're all chained.


We're waiting for you Mr President Obama...we're waiting for you....

Smitherman vs the LGBT Community

I want to say up front that I am a "johnny-come-lately to this topic, basically because I have problems with both the LGBT community and the Black Community for the very reasons being debated, racism and homophobia.

I also have a problem with Mr. Smitherman...When he talks, I turn off, because I have yet to find him credible on any topic. I am mystified by his election to head the NAACP. I am mystified that so many others apparently find him to be a man worth following.

I found Jill Benavides comments after the meeting at City Hall to be patronizing, and condescendingly PC with regard to Smitherman. It was as if she were talking about a child. In other words..."let him have his temper tantrum, we love him anyway."

Having said all that......Let’s go there...shall we...

Nowhere on either side of this clueless conversation has the Black LGBT community been talked about or included in the conversation. Smitherman talked about his one white gay male NAACP member, as if having one represents all. That is the same way the white LGBT community talks about Blacks...you know..."some of my best friends are....."

The conversation that took place at City Hall obscures the fact that Black gays and lesbians are totally invisible in Cincinnati. And it’s like that across the country. Much of it due to the queer hatred within the Black community, in addition to the racism in the LGBT community

As Black people..we spend most of our lives being beaten up because of the color of our skin. It’s been a very difficult road to electing our first Black president. We have been killed for simply wanting to be treated equally. Laws were passed to make that happen, yet it’s still a problem in 2009, and you have only to look at two recent incidents of men, white men, killing their families and police for fear of a Black man in the White House.

You’ve got white governors talking of secession...that has got to be the ultimate in white flight..think about it...the same thing happens when a black family moves into a previously all white neighborhood...still....that’s not past history...that’s last week....

Now compound skin color with being gay or lesbian and you go from being beaten down on a national level to somebody, maybe your own brother, sister, mother, father, neighborhood, kicking your ass because you’re a sissy or you’re a bulldagger. You get tired of being a target, you get tired of being called names....for Black gays and lesbians...being called a nigger is not much different than being called queer or fag or bulldagger.

Trust me, you’re not going to run out and join the very community organizations that want you dead...

The white LGBT community doesn’t feel it’s racist, but it is no different, really than liberal whites who like using that.."some of my best friends are....." phrase. Blacks are not taken seriously within the LGBT community, usually being dismissed with a patronizing pat on the top of our fuzzy little heads, with a "thank you for coming...but we know better, what’s good for you..."

The prop 8 vote in California exposed the LGBT racism, when it was erroneously reported that Blacks were the reason it passed....Blacks gays and lesbians who took to the streets to protest the vote, were attacked by white gays and lesbians.....called niggers among other things....The white LGBT community has yet to apologize for their assumptions during that time...

Being Black gay and lesbian means you’re caught up between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

Not feeling accepted by anyone can be a very lonely way to grow up and to live.

Smitherman and the NAACP need to realize that there have always been Black gays and lesbians active within his organization and the civil rights movement. What they need to do is to recognize that the NAACP and other Black organizations are also not inclusive organizations working for all Blacks.

There is no mention of the devastation of HIV/AIDS on the Black Community. In fact Smitherman as a straight man is probably more susceptible to getting the virus than any gay black man at this stage, not because he is gay or down-lo, but because Black straight women are the ones being infected at record breaking rates.

Black women are sleeping with down-lo men and taking the germ back to their straight boyfriends...

And why are men down-lo...because they stand to be judged not men, if they come out..being labeled soft is worse than being called a nigger in the Black community. Witness the death a couple of weeks ago of a 12 year old Black youth, who hanged himself, after being repeatedly called a fag at school.

Why was he called a fag, or labeled soft.....he liked school and his mother taught him to comport himself like a gentleman...he was not gay, by the way....just a clean cut little boy...dead...

It is killing our community...yet....I hear nothing from the NAACP about this massive problem. If the women die...who is going to bear your sons? Or will any white or J-Lo looking Latina woman do?

It is no proof of your so called inclusive tendencies if all you can talk about is one gay white boy as a member. Remember, he can always go back to his community in which by birth he is a master of the universe.

Black gays and lesbians must go home to the same hate that they suffer from in the streets.

The entire Smitherman statement left women out the conversation, altogether. That is typical of the misogyny that also permeates the Black Community.

So, to put an end to this ramble.....

NAACP....you need to talk to Black gays and lesbians first.....you need to address the number one killer of Black people in this country and the world....second only to gun violence...which is another problem in and of itself...

Opening the tent to include all Black people will send a bigger message than a useless conversation with white gay and lesbian organizations with issues of their own to deal with..

It doesn’t matter who turns out to support what....until we recognize the problem within our own community, we will be having this worthless conversation in 2010, 2011, 2012.....

Bush Bait and Switch

Administration continues to blatantly discriminate against women


While we were paying attention to the peripheral bull* surrounding the auto industry bailout and the hoopla surrounding Obama’s inaugural invocation choice, Dubya and company tried to slip another one past us.

With no fanfare, the outgoing administration quietly put into place a sweeping new law designed to protect health care workers who refuse to provide services that they say violates their personal beliefs. Click here to read a summary of the rule.

The new regulation cuts off federal funding for any state or local government, hospital, health plan, clinic or other entity that does not accommodate doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other employees who refuse to participate in care they find ethically, morally or religiously objectionable. The measure was championed by conservatives, abortion opponents, and others who want to protect and safeguard workers from discipline or other sanctions, who refuse to do their jobs. Those in favor of the new law say that all it does is to protect the civil rights of health care workers and to stop religious discrimination.

The 127 page “right of conscience rule”, was issued just in time to take effect in the 30 days before regime change in Washington on January 20th. Women’s rights advocates, pro choice groups and many members of congress have condemned the measure by saying it hinders, women’s health services, including infertility treatments, birth control services, end of life services, and halts many areas of scientific research.

The Obama administration is reportedly already looking at all of the “eleventh hour” laws that Bush is putting into place. The new administration says it is working on just how to repeal these measures.

Two senators, one of them Hillary Clinton, have already introduced legislation to repeal this law. It is pending in Congress, now. The proposed repeal law also has many opponents who say they will work to keep Bush’s regulation in place.

The rule, which will cost more than $44 million to put into place, gives more than 584,000 health-care organizations until October, 2009 to provide written certification of their compliance. Those who don’t will have their funding cut off or be required to return funding they have received.

Officials at hospitals and clinics predict the regulation will cause chaos, forcing family planning centers and fertility clinics, as an example, to hire workers, even if those workers oppose abortions or in vitro fertilization procedures that can destroy embryos.

The new rule also goes so far as to prevent or make it difficult for states to enforce laws allowing hospitals to administer the “morning after pill” when a woman has been raped or sexually assaulted, according to officials who have read the regulation.

Bush’s Health and Human Services secretary, Mike Leavitt, who issued the new rule, initially said the regulation was intended primarily to protect workers who object to abortion. But the final rule, has a much, much bigger affect. It also protects workers who do not wish to dispense birth control pills, Plan B emergency contraceptives and other forms of contraception they consider equivalent to abortion. Nor do they have to tell patients where they might go to obtain such care. The rule could also protect workers who object to certain types of end-of-life care or to withdrawing care, or even perhaps providing care to unmarried people or gay men and lesbians.

This new regulation was primarily aimed at doctors and nurses. However, in it’s final form, it offers protection to anyone with a so called "reasonable" connection to objectionable care – In other words, the ultrasound technicians, the nurses aides, the secretaries and even the janitor who might have to clean equipment used in procedures, can refuse to do their job if they feel that their religious and moral rights were violated.

Consorting with the Enemy

The LGBT community and other political activists are hyperventilating about President-elect Obama’s choice of the Reverend Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at the inauguration on January 20th. Warren is aligned with the far right wing of the republican party. Click here to read more.

He is pro birth (my term for pro lifers). He is against allowing gays and lesbians to marry. Those two stances have angered many of Obama’s supporters, who are now questioning Obama’s stance on those two agendas.

This argument points out one of the things that has gone really, really wrong with America. We refuse to listen to people who disagree with our chosen stances. Every debate is not a war. Every argument or disagreement is not the end of a friendship. Differences of opinion don’t mean that you must hate the person who has those different feelings.

What it is, is a learning experience, a chance to expand your thinking. Talking to someone with different ideas forces you to find ways to strengthen and reinforce your own beliefs, or to question them, and maybe, to see the error of your ways. Either way, you learn something.

One of my closest friends is a member of Right to Life, and has been since it was founded in the 1970s by the Wilkes, here in Cincinnati. In fact, she was the one who first told me about the pro life organization. I have never agreed with anything that Right to Life stands for. Ever. We wrote letter after letter to each other and spent hour after hour, over the phone (she lives in Boston) talking and attempting to convince each other. It sometimes got heated. Sometimes, we took a week or two time out, between communications. But nearly 35 years later, we’re still friends, who still argue. We just agree to disagree.

I have similar arrangements with my sisters, my siblings. There are things we can’t talk about to each other. But my sisters are my family. They can tick me off royally, but hate, not listen, can’t do it.

Another pet peeve is the current fad of shouting down the other person or of not waiting for them to finish their point, before you’re jumping in their face. Nobody wins in the crosstalk. It’s a lost conversation....a lost opportunity to learn something, maybe. You can’t always assume that you know more than the other person to whom you’re talking. It's also extremely rude and disrespectful. There is a reason why teachers made you raise your hand before speaking in class.

And that is what drew me to Obama, one of the main things, actually. He listens, to everyone. Then he makes up his mind.

He does not fear hearing something different than what he may believe, even after he has taken a public stance on the issue. We should not fear difference of opinion, either. Because it is simply that.....a difference of opinion. You can still be friends if you want, or not. But you can and should work to implement your beliefs. In the end, however, everybody goes home a little better for the effort.

Bottom line, you learned something....isn’t that what life is all about anyway?

Black women, Black Church and Down-lo Men

Are apparently to blame for the defeat of proposition 8 in California, according to New York Times Op-ed columnist, Charles M. Blow. Prop 8, for those of you who don’t know, is the law passed in California banning gay marriage.

Following the vote on election day, white gays and others erroneously faulted blacks for the vote after exit polls showed that 70% of blacks favored the ban. Subsequent reports however, showed that blacks actually made up a very small part of the coalition of voters who voted to ban gay marriage, for which white gays, who turned violent against black gays, during their demonstrations post election day, indiscriminately tossing around the N-word, have yet to apologize.

In his piece today, Blow did a closer look at the situation and came up with some interesting reasons as to why blacks, overall, don’t favor gay marriage. You can read his article here.

To briefly summarize Mr. Blow, the LGBT community should target black women, if they want to change the community mind set against homosexual marriage. His reasoning is that black women overwhelmingly outnumber black men when it comes to voting and going to church. The black church, Blow reasons, is the cause of conservative thinking among black women. So in Blow's opinion, white gays should target black women.

This conservative mind set is the main cause of homophobia within the community. Blow also states that since black women have trouble finding and keeping a man, they are probably not really happy with men marrying other men. In other words, black women don’t like competition. He also sights black women anger with black men who date and marry white women three times more than black women marry white men. Going outside the race for nooky has long been a thorn in the side of black women, according to Mr. Blow.

Blow also notes that black women’s anger is another reason why men who are on the down-lo, don’t want to discuss it with their female sex partners. This lack of communication is the reason behind the growing number of straight black women who are contracting the HIV/AIDs virus.

Blow concluded that white gays need to make the argument one about health rather than sexuality or civil rights, because basically when it comes to black men, the church and white women, black women don’t want to hear it.

American Taliban

Buried underneath all the financial bad news of the past week is a story in the Washington Post about 33 pastors who have decided to defy the governmental edict by mixing politics with religion from the pulpit.

One of them, the Reverend Ron Johnson, jr. told his congregation that a vote for Barack Obama represents a moral schizophrenia and was in violation of the Bible. Johnson stopped short of endorsing John McCain, but not by much.

The 33 ministers are part of a group that is attempting to generate a court battle that will ultimately overturn the 54 year old ban on telling their congregations how to vote. They say they have a constitutional right to tell their people who to vote for. They say the law violates their rights to religious expression.

The law, which is part of the national tax code says churches or any entity with a tax exempt status are barred from participating in, or of intervening in any political campaign on behalf of any person or public office. The law was enacted to prevent the joining of church and state government. There is no such ban on pastors who talk issues from the pulpit.

The IRS has taken no action...it says it is monitoring the situation.

For me, the solution is simple...if you want to talk politics from the pulpit...give up your tax exempt status. Pay taxes like the rest of us and you can say anything you want.

These blatant attempts to circumvent one of the basic tenants under lying the founding of this country has always scared the hell out of me. The people who came to these shores, and founded our country, and authored the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, were escaping from religious persecution, not running toward it with the goal of setting up their own system of preferential abuse.

If these American Taliban are ever successful at infusing our government with religion, me and people like me, will be in big trouble. There are things about me that I can’t change...the very things that make me, me, are the things that these fanatics, and they are fanatic, want to control...lock away...kill...

I’m a woman....they want to take away my control of the only thing I really own....my body..
I’m black....their religious book says I should be a slave....
I’m lesbian.....they say I can’t love the one I choose...or that I should be killed for having such thoughts...
I’m left handed......at one point in our history...left handed babies were put to death because it was said that left handed children were sired by the devil....

Sounds ridiculous, right? Well, in 1956....My first grade teacher tried to make me right handed because she said it wasn’t correct to use your left hand.. I told my Mom...she put a stop to it...That teacher should have lost her job, because who knows how many other little kids she messed up because they didn’t tell their mom, or their mom chose not to intervene in the abuse.

Civil rights for Blacks and the LGBT community continues.....look at the vicious racial attacks on Obama in this campaign...I’ve had my fair share of personal brushes with racism, some of it based in the old testament, my phone chats with the late Bill Wilkinson, grand wizard of the KKK, for instance. I was okay with him until I told him I was black, this coming six weeks into our weekly phone conversations....He couldn’t tell I was black by hearing me talk....When I started in broadcasting...I had a news director tell me that I was too light to be black on television...I’m high yellow in complexion, as we say in the ghetto...I can’t help that...My complexion is testimony to the race mixing of America...been going on for ages...yet this white man chose to judge me for color...never mind that I had a track record of running rings around every other reporter he had on staff.....I won that battle....I worked in darker makeup for about six months..until he stopped paying attention...It didn’t end there...but it’s over...I don’t choose to look back....unless provoked.

The specter of the repeal of Roe v. Wade looms large these days...It’s not just about abortion..It’s about returning women to second class citizenship or the days of barefoot and pregnant. There is actually a legal group who is studying whether or not women can be limited in their travel or crossing of state lines, if they seem to be with child..or someone thinks they may be traveling in order to get an abortion...no proof necessary...just the suspicion would be enough...

Anyone who is sitting on the fence need only look to the middle east to see religion taking over government....dissenters silenced in the name of religion...women killed in the name of religion.

Don’t think it can happen here? Listen to the pseudo Christians of the conservative right. Listen to the Governor of that great state of Alaska. The concentration camps have already been built with our taxpayer money by KBR, the Bush/Cheney favored corporation. Bush, as I said has done away with some basic civil rights protections that would make it easy to co-opt the government if the religious right in this country makes it to the White House. Don’t believe me, then go read The Patriot Act. We basically have no rights. The trouble is most of us won’t know, until the government starts to use our laws against us.

Back to the topic at hand....In an open letter from the Rev. Eric Williams, of the United Church of Christ...he warned that many members of the clergy are "exchanging their historic religious authority for a fleeting promise of political power," to the detriment of their churches.

"The role of the church -- of congregation, synagogue, temple and mosque -- and of its religious leaders is to stand apart from government, to prophetically speak truth to power," Williams wrote, "and to encourage a national dialogue that transcends the divisiveness of electoral politics and preserves for every citizen our 'first liberty.' "

I just hope that more people are listening to Rev Williams than Rev Johnson.

Things that Make You Go Hmmmmmmmm!

Pat endorses Rudy for the GOP nomination....why should anybody be surprised..Pat has always been more about power than religion...Rudy has always been about power and spotlight...It’s just two old guys making a grab for the ultimate brass ring....I think their hypocrisy will undo them, ultimately.

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Obama says anyone over 50 is too old to seek the presidency and should step aside and let the young ones, meaning “him” do it....Used to be “don’t trust anyone over 30"...Obama was taking aim at Hillary when he said that, yesterday...That line of thinking has worked twice in the past...once for JFK and once WJC....Won’t work for Obama, though...I think women will make the difference in this election....Whoops! Did I just endorse Hillary!?

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The House has passed legislation barring discrimination against the LGBT community in employment. 35 republicans joined the democrats in passing the bill which says:

.......“The House bill would make it illegal for an employer “to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise discriminate against any individual with respect to the compensation, terms, conditions or privileges of employment of the individual, because of such individual’s actual or perceived sexual orientation.”..........

The Democrats have been trying to pass this since Bella Abzug proposed it back in 1976. Watch out for Dubya's veto!

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And from the world of scientists comes yet another study that says overweight people have a lower death rate than normal weight people...Well, I guess so...overweight people tend to eat rather than starve themselves trying to meet some unrealistic Hollywood ideal of beauty..Deprivation of food is just as bad as gluttony...Moderation is always the key..

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A sign of end times....a Boston priest has been jailed for stalking...would you believe...talk show host Conan O’BRIEN. Father David Ajemian was arrested November 2nd and remains in jail according to a press release from the Archdiocese of Boston. The errant “father” sometimes signed his many letters to O’Brien as “your stalker priest.” and this after he’d been warned to stay away from the talk show host..

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The new discrimination.....lot’s of companies in Florida are now telling their employees and potential employees that smoking off the job is banned, too. As one official put it...”if you’re too stupid to know that smoking can kill you...then you don’t need a job..”

On the job...on company grounds...I can understand...what you do in your home..on your time is your business...period..

Dick’s Little Girl, Mary

Mary Cheney, Dick’s little girl is pregnant. Mary and her lesbian girlfriend Heather have decided to have a baby 15 years into their quietly closeted relationship.

LGBT activists have their collective drawers in a knot because Mary is living her life of rich white privilege, rather than being the poster child for queer activism.

Why get upset. The fault lines in this country have always been driven by money. If you have it you’re cool. If you don’t then you have to follow the laws of the land or face penalty.

Mary doesn’t have to follow the law. Her dad is the Vice President of the United States of America. He is the head NeoCon in charge. Dubya is his lap dog. Who is going to tell Dick Cheney’s daughter, that she can’t do what she chooses when she chooses to do it? Daddy and his crowd make the laws, They never said their kids had to follow them, too.

That’s what the poor and middle class are for....obeying the laws, paying taxes and fighting wars....so they don’t have to.

The state where Mary lives, won’t allow her to marry her partner. Does it matter what the law says? 38 states and counting have anti gay laws on the books. Does it matter when it comes to rich people?

Who is going to tell Mary’s partner, Heather, she can’t visit Mary in the hospital or she can’t pick the kid up at school because she is not a relative, or she can’t say how the child is to receive medical treatment because she is not a parent?

Right wing conservative Christians who would just as soon put all queers in concentration camps or biblically throw them to the lions, have apparently given Mary a pass. They’ve been looking the other way all her life. Or for the past 15 years, at least.

Their kids, colleagues, and neighbors are all allowed personal lives. The Mark Foleys of the world are always well known within the circle. Every congressman and congressional worker knows who is queer on capitol hill. They just don’t tell the under privileged poor and middle class.

Mary Cheney’s pregnancy is just another example of “do as I say.....not as I do.”

Welcome to America..

Having It Both Ways

The Grand Old Party gets blown out of the water during last week’s midterm elections and what do they do....they trot out Tom Delay to explain and rationalize what happened. I ignored that when I saw it. The GOP is clueless and has repeatedly proven it the past six years.

The morally judgmental party talks the talk but never walks the walk. Delay has not yet been convicted, but it’s no secret the guy is bad news. Next to Jack Abramoff, he is probably the worst of the lot, which brings me to my subject today.

I find myself railing at my televison set today because Trent Lott has been elected minority whip. For those of you not versed in congress-talk that means he is the GOP vote counter in the senate.

It is a power position. Lott was booted out of power four years ago for making racially insensitive comments while toasting a fellow senator at his birthday party.

Basically, Lott said the country would be better off today, if birthday boy, former senator, staunch segregationist and proven father of a black illegitimate daughter, Strom Thurmond, had been elected president back in 1948. He apologized and was banished until today.

Today he is back in the old boy’s club.

Throughout the past several months, I’ve watched how the party of compassionate conservatism rationalizes the racist, sexist and bigoted attitudes of it’s members. From George Allen in Virginia, to the campaign run against Harold Ford in Tennessee, to the bigotry spewed by Ken Blackwell against Ted Strickland in Ohio, the attacks were unbridled and vicious in their intent.

Yet when called on it, they immediately try to rationalize and explain it away. When they find themselves unable to explain it away, the other members banish them for a while, only to trot them back out and into a power seat when they think we’ve forgotten.

The Christian principle of “forgive and forget” only applies to members. Those on the outside are never allowed to forget and are never forgiven (can you say, Jane Fonda and Bill and Hilary).

The GOP which wants to codify discrimination against gays and lesbians and has actually written it into its party platform, finds itself being outed as the true party of gay white men.

Further, GOP talking heads are making the talk show rounds having to defend their gay party members.

The talking heads argue that it is okay to be gay and to have a private life. It’s okay to have a job and a beautiful house or condo. People should not be punished for that.

Question: If gay is okay....then how come folks are still being killed, like the guy in New York, two weeks ago...how come Gary Studds husband can’t receive the dead congressman’s pension....how come people who want to get married, can’t, because it’s against the law....how come certain companies are allowed to fire people for looking gay, Cracker Barrel.....how come there is a boycott of walmart, and ford motor company for entering into a business agreement with an LGBT organization....

Yeah, It’s okay to be gay, as long as you’re closeted, support oppressive laws against other LGBT people, and are a member of the republican party....Mary Cheney. Phyllis Schafly’s son, whatever his name is. Mark Foley...the list goes on and on....Can you say Roy Cohn and J. Edgar Hoover.

Kind of like me supporting legislation against black people. Oh, I forgot, that’s Clarence Thomas’ job and Harold Ford Jr's, Alan Keyes' and J.C. Watts'. But that is a topic for another. day.

The GOP is going to have to make up it’s mind, which way it wants to flow or face the possibility of permanent banishment to their garden of homegrown hypocrisy.