After reading so much bogus stuff on both Barack Obama and Proposition 8 I found a column today from someone who has had enough of hate, Mark Morford, who writes for the San Francisco Chronicle. Here is his take on this election. It is so nice to post this after the blatantly racist blogpost put up by our local radio bigot, Jaz McKay.
Hate's last stand
It's racism and homophobia, neck and neck, down to the wire. Can they hang on?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Let's not get carried away.
Let's not go so far as to suggest we're about to enter into some sort of fluffy utopian tofu puppy happyland where nipples fly free and consciousness expands and the fetid rivers of racism and homophobia that course through the American heartland like acidic sewage somehow magically vanish, somehow become dramatically curtailed, should the twin forces of progress known as President Obama and a vanquished California Proposition 8 somehow come to pass.
Let's not be naive. Just because it looks like the Western world is about to get its first black intellectual president, just because the nation's most influential and populous state could very possibly decide, finally and forevermore, that two adults of the same gender can get married without the cruel hammer of religious ignorance crashing down upon their heads, well, this can't possibly be a sign that racism and homophobia, two of our three most revered national pastimes (don't forget the sexism!) are going away anytime soon.
Unless it can. Unless some of our darkest cultural demons could finally be up for a major exorcism. Could it be true? Could this vote, at the very least, be one hell of a giant step forward in the fight against two toxic beliefs that have poisoned the American mindset for ages? Let me suggest: You're damn right it could.
Maybe you're not convinced. Maybe you need a sign, some sort of indicator of what's truly at stake, something that proves we are at a turning point not merely of tax brackets and energy strategy and foreign policy, but of the very tone and flavor of who we are and what we value as a nation. Yes? Easy enough.
Here it is: Just listen to the screaming.
Can you hear it? It is the Grand Rule of Bigotry, same as it ever was: Prejudice and fanaticism tend to yell loudest and cling on the hardest when they are most threatened, when they know their worldview is slated for imminent demolition.
Just look. As I write these very words, big-money ultraconservatives are joining churches and temples and sad, sad priests nationwide in extolling their fearful throngs to send huge portions of their life savings straight to the gaggle of pro-Prop. 8 extortionists, in an attempt to ban gay marriage and crush what essentially amounts to a type of love they cannot, will not understand.
And because they cannot understand it, they fear it. And because they fear it, they do as paranoid, fear-based religions have done since the dawn of a man-made God: They try to kill it.
The screaming is downright deafening. Right now, the Prop. 8 fight is second only to the presidential race in sheer dollars raised. The good news is, the homophobes are being outspent by the non-terrified by about four to one, with major corporations like Apple and Google coming out very publicly against it. The bad news is, the religious right is panicking, rallying, pulling out all the stops to get Prop. 8 passed, no matter what.
But here's the tragic part: They don't really know why they're panicking. They don't really know what the threat is, exactly. Except for the loss of their own power. And control. And cultural relevance. Besides that, I mean.
But they do know one thing: If California goes all-in for marriage equality, it's a slippery slope indeed until other states eventually follow suit, and before you know it the entire country will have to let love in and recognize scary gay people as valid Americans -- you know, just like we did not so long ago for those awful black people.
Ah yes, the racism. Not so easily parsed, and not so easily answered by a simple legislative proposition, given how much more deeply it infects, how much more nefariously it's woven into the very fabric of the nation.
Right now, even more than the homophobes, the racists are out in force. Nauseating indeed have been some of the e-mails readers have passed on to me in the past year or so, often the result of someone forwarding one of my pro-Obama columns to a conservative friend or relative they once deemed capable of ideological flexibility -- or, at the very least, respectful disagreement -- only to receive back a note crammed like a shrapnel bomb with the very kind of venomous language you want to believe doesn't exist anywhere except maybe our most hateful rural backwaters.
It's a repulsive portrait of Obama indeed. References to Nazis, radical socialism, Muslim terrorists, a new black uprising, interracial marriage, gangsta rap, and of course lots and lots of the N-word, all wrapped in layers of hate and ignorance so rancid it's like some sort of xenophobic fantasia where Rush Limbaugh interbreeds with Michael Savage in Ann Coulter's personal vat of battery acid and pain.
But these are not merely the usual hot little spews of hate from the expected places, like the rural Midwest and the South and dumb-as-dirt skinheads from Tennessee. The race baiting has gone upmarket. From Sarah Palin's carefully worded Caribou Barbie flirtations with white small-town America, to the attempts to link Obama directly to black '60s militants and domestic terrorism (and don't forget those "radical" black churches), if you have any doubt whatsoever that McCain's Rove-trained team of jackals isn't trying every trick in the how-to-bait-a-racist handbook, you haven't been paying much attention.
So then, I am not here to suggest the impossible. I am not declaring that President Obama and a DOA Prop. 8 will somehow instantly put a cap on the fire hoses of discrimination and intolerance that regularly spit their bile across the land. This is not really the point.
The point is, once again, all about energy. About tonal shift. A deeply intelligent black American president changes the racism game forever, at a very deep level indeed. And a resounding defeat of intolerance in California sends perhaps the most powerful message yet to the conservative screamers across the land.
The message is this: You do not have to change your beliefs. You do not have to budge an inch on your views. You are still free to hate black people, still free to fear gay people (or demean women) all you like. It's simply that we as an Obama-led, gender-inclusive nation no longer have any real use for your brand of poison. We are done with you.
And if that's not a magnificent jolt of progress, I don't know what is.
The LA Times is doing a three part series on health care this week. Anyone on the fence about the issue, or looking for good information on our current health care crisis, owes these articles a once over.
For all the Libertarians, and those who continue to argue that health care should not be mandated, or that this is a liberal commie conspiracy designed to rob hard working real Americans of more of their money while helping to heal the growing deadbeats and freeloaders among us, please read the following quote from the CEO of Blue Shield of California.
"Bruce Bodaken, chief executive of Blue Shield of California, says that universal coverage is the answer.
Bodaken says government should mandate that everyone obtain health insurance and that insurers sell to all comers regardless of their health -- similar to a plan proposed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and defeated in the state Legislature last year.
The rationale of universal coverage, the norm in other industrialized countries, is that costs are manageable when everyone is covered because the risk pool includes the young and healthy to offset the older and sicker.
"One of the basic goals of universal coverage should be to change the health coverage business from avoiding risk to balancing health risks and focusing primarily on quality, service and cost-effective delivery," Bodaken wrote recently in the policy journal Health Affairs.
In the absence of such a system, and with group coverage increasingly unavailable, more and more Americans are left to rely on individual health policies. They are more expensive for all but the young and healthy and often provide fewer benefits."
I can hear the teeth gnashing from the unconvinced who argue for more open competiton and the keeping government out of the health business. How about those health savings plans as the answer, which is the plan advocated by John McCain. Here is today's headline from the LA Times story:
Health insurers reinvent themselves as money managers
Here is why managing your money is the real goal and not managing your health by the insurance industry, er banking industry.
"Among the signs of the change is the growth in health savings accounts, which allow individuals and families to pay out-of-pocket medical expenses from tax-exempt savings. As with individual retirement accounts and 401(k) plans, the money in HSAs tends to sit for long periods and can be invested in mutual funds and securities.
HSAs are different from flexible spending accounts, which allow employees to set aside tax-free dollars to pay deductibles and other medical expenses. At the end of the year, any unspent money in a flexible spending account is lost. In contrast, money in an HSA can carry over year after year indefinitely.
Federal tax rules for HSAs were liberalized in 2003, making them very attractive to well-heeled taxpayers. Commercial banks such as Bank of America and Mellon Bank, seeing the opportunity to collect management fees on the accounts, jumped into the business.
"Every bank wants to increase its share of HSAs," said John Casillas, director of the Medical Banking Project, a Franklin, Tenn., organization that helps medical administrators develop financial service systems.
"There's fees for managing the account, transaction fees, fees for investing the funds," Casillas said. "You're going to see many billions of dollars moving from premium payments to professionally managed investment funds under HSA rules. Some people think that banks are going to threaten health plans by replacing them in the marketplace."
Hence the rush by medical insurers to open their own banks."
Your health is now their wealth.
If you are interested in this thought provoking and highly informative report go to www.latimes.com
This post finds an opinion piece from the Christian Science Monitor explaining how our country has historically fared under Republican Presidents and Democratic Presidents. Not this op-ed will change many minds, but it does offer excellent food for thought if you choose to nibble at the contents. Please feel free to add your two cents, which is roughly the amount all of our comments are worth these days.
Why the economy fares much better under Democrats
By Larry M. Bartels Larry M. Bartels – Tue Oct 21, 4:00 am ET
Princeton, N.J. – John McCain is a maverick and Barack Obama is a postpartisan problem-solver. But you wouldn't know it by looking at their economic plans. Both candidates' proposals faithfully reflect the traditional economic priorities of their respective parties. That makes the track records of past Democratic and Republican administrations a very useful benchmark for assessing how the economy might perform under a President McCain or a President Obama. The bottom line: During the past 60 years, Democrats have presided over much less unemployment and much more robust income growth.
The $52.5 billion plan Senator McCain announced last week includes $36 billion in tax breaks for senior citizens withdrawing funds from retirement accounts and $10 billion for a reduction in the capital gains tax. Those are perks for investors, most of whom are relatively affluent. (McCain is also proposing a two-year suspension of taxes on unemployment benefits, but that's a fraction of the plan's cost.) He also favors broader tax cuts for businesses and wants to extend President Bush's massive tax cuts indefinitely, even for people earning more than $250,000 per year.
McCain's proposals reflect the traditional Republican emphasis on cutting taxes for businesses and wealthy people in hopes of stimulating investment – "trickle down" economics, as it came to be called during Ronald Reagan's administration. But will proposals of this sort really "stop and reverse the rise of unemployment" and "create millions of new jobs" as McCain has claimed? The historical record suggests not.
President Bush's multitrillion-dollar tax cuts, which were strongly tilted toward the rich, could not prevent (and may even have contributed to) significant job losses. On the other hand, when Bill Clinton raised taxes on affluent people to balance the federal budget (while significantly expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit for working poor people), unemployment declined substantially. Under Clinton's watch, 22 million jobs were created.
Prefer a broader historical comparison? In the past three decades, since the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries oil price shocks of the mid-1970s and the Republican turn toward "supply side" economics, the average unemployment rate under Republican presidents has been 6.7 percent – substantially higher than the 5.5 percent average under Democratic presidents. (The official unemployment rate takes no account of people who have given up looking for work or taken substantial pay cuts to stay in the labor force.) Over an even broader time period, since the late 1940s, unemployment has averaged 4.8 percent under Democratic presidents but 6.3 percent – almost one-third higher – under Republican presidents.
Lower unemployment under Democratic presidents has contributed substantially to the real incomes of middle-class and working poor families. Job losses hurt everyone – not just those without work. In fact, every percentage point of unemployment has the effect of reducing middle-class income growth by about $300 per family per year. And the effects are long term, unlike the temporary boost in income from a stimulus check. Compounded over an eight-year period, a persistent one-point difference in unemployment is worth about $10,000 to a middle-class family. The dollar values are smaller for working poor families, but in relative terms their incomes are even more sensitive to unemployment. In contrast, income growth for affluent people is much more sensitive to inflation, which has been a perennial target of Republican economic policies.
Although McCain portrays Senator Obama as a "job killing" tax-and-spend liberal, the new $60 billion plan Obama unveiled last week also has a tax break as its centerpiece – a tax break specifically tailored to create jobs by offering employers a $3,000 tax credit for each new hire over the next two years. Obama's proposal would also extend unemployment benefits by 13 weeks for those who remain jobless, as well as match McCain's in suspending taxes on unemployment benefits.
Obama's new proposal complements $115 billion in economic stimulus measures he had already announced, including $65 billion in direct rebates to taxpayers and $50 billion to help states jump-start spending on infrastructure projects. All of this is squarely in the tradition of Democratic presidents since John F. Kennedy, who have relied on public spending and tax breaks for working people to stimulate consumption and employment during economic downturns.
These and other policies have produced not only lower unemployment under Democratic presidents but also more economic output and income growth. In fact, over the past 60 years, the real incomes of middle-income families have grown about twice as fast under Democratic presidents as they have under Republican presidents. The partisan difference is even greater for working poor families, whose real incomes have grown six times as fast under Democratic presidents as they have under Republican presidents.
Of course, past performance is no guarantee of what will happen when the next president takes office. However, given the striking fidelity of both presidential candidates to their parties' traditional economic priorities, the profound impact of partisan politics on the economic fortunes of American families over more than half a century ought to weigh heavily in the minds of voters.
• Larry M. Bartels directs the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics in Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He is the author of "Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age."
Have any of you noticed the "Sound Off" archives being published all day long with thought provoking commentary several months old?
Are you tired of seeing multiple "Breaking News" blog posts on the most mundane and un-news worthy wastes of time being published ad-nauseum every day?
Do you notice that "Politics Anyone" has a tendency to post stories that have been talked about by other bloggers' posts repeatedly before they decide to add their contribution to the fray?
Are you tired of having everyone banished for a little a language faux pas in response to hot button issues?
Has anyone noticed there are no views now for two days for any blog post. but comments abound?
This blog site is deteriorating very rapidly. Fix it or lose it!
I am going to copy this post and repeat it for emphasis, because I believe that only then will it catch some intern's attention to pass on to some middle management coordinator who can then tell an editor who can decide to tell a managing editor that something has come unglued on the web site. Possibly a decision maker can pull a committee together to study the problem before a consultant is called to actually make a decision to fix the web site.
Thanks for your attention to this minor inconvenience.
Have any of you noticed the "Sound Off" archives being published all day long with thought provoking commentary several months old?
Are you tired of seeing multiple "Breaking News" blog posts on the most mundane and un-news worthy wastes of time being published ad-nauseum every day?
Do you notice that "Politics Anyone" has a tendency to post stories that have been talked about by other bloggers' posts repeatedly before they decide to add their contribution to the fray?
Are you tired of having everyone banished for a little a language faux pas in response to hot button issues?
Has anyone noticed there are no views now for two days for any blog post. but comments abound?
This blog site is deteriorating very rapidly. Fix it or lose it!
I am going to copy this post and repeat it for emphasis, because I believe that only then will it catch some intern's attention to pass on to some middle management coordinator who can then tell an editor who can decide to tell a managing editor that something has come unglued on the web site. Possibly a decision maker can pull a committee together to study the problem before a consultant is called to actually make a decision to fix the web site.
Thanks for your attention to this minor inconvenience.
Have any of you noticed the "Sound Off" archives being published all day long with thought provoking commentary several months old?
Are you tired of seeing multiple "Breaking News" blog posts on the most mundane and un-news worthy wastes of time being published ad-nauseum every day?
Do you notice that "Politics Anyone" has a tendency to post stories that have been talked about by other bloggers' posts repeatedly before they decide to add their contribution to the fray?
Are you tired of having everyone banished for a little a language faux pas in response to hot button issues?
Has anyone noticed there are no views now for two days for any blog post. but comments abound?
This blog site is deteriorating very rapidly. Fix it or lose it!
I am going to copy this post and repeat it for emphasis, because I believe that only then will it catch some intern's attention to pass on to some middle management coordinator who can then tell an editor who can decide to tell a managing editor that something has come unglued on the web site. Possibly a decision maker can pull a committee together to study the problem before a consultant is called to actually make a decision to fix the web site.
Thanks for your attention to this minor inconvenience.
I'm no fan of most of the consolidation that has taken place over the past twenty-five plus years. That said, these mergers which I found in my e-mail box are worth consideration.
It's Friday and hopefully you'll chuckle a little bit over these strategic consolidations.
> 1.) Hale Business Systems, Mary Kay Cosmetics, Fuller
> Brush, and W R. Grace Co. Will merge and become: Hale, Mary, > Fuller, Grace.
> 2.) PolyGram Records, Warner Bros., and Zest Crackers join
> forces and become: Poly, Warner Cracker.
> 3.) 3M will merge with Goodyear and become: MMMGood.
> 4.. Zippo Manufacturing, Audi Motors, Dofasco, and Dakota
> Mining will merge and become: ZipAudiDoDa
> 5. FedEx is expected to join its competitor, UPS, and
> become: FedUP.
> 6. Fairchild Electronics and Honeywell Computers will
> become: Fairwell Honeychild.
> 7. Grey Poupon and Docker Pants are expected to become:
> PouponPants.
>
> 8. Knotts Berry Farm and the National Organization of Women
> will become: Knott NOW!
> And finally...
> 9. Victoria 's Secret and Smith &Wesson will merge
> under the new name: TittyTittyBangBang
Last week my wife and I took a long overdue vacation. We decided on New Orleans for a variety of reasons. My wife had never been to the Crescent City, and has always wanted to visit. We wanted to put a few more personal dollars into the New Orleans area to help the city rebuild and rebound. It is always a great place for adults to go and have fun.
When we got off the plane early afternoon at the New Orleans International Airport I was stunned by the lack of people in the airport. I have traveled to New Orleans many times on business prior to this vacation, and every time I stepped into the airport it had been bustling. It was empty and only one baggage carousel was operating out of the sixteen available in the baggage claim area.
The hotel we stayed at was the Monteleon in the heart of the French Quarter. Really nice digs with a pool on the roof to provide great views and relaxation. The hotel was very quiet during our week stay. We met some really nice folks from other parts of the country who were staying at the hotel and swapped daily tourist updates with each other. We toured the area browsing through the wonderful shops and beautiful sections of this amazingly diverse city. We wined and dined in great restaurants and little hideaways throughout the Quarter.
There is quite a bit of rebuilding going on throughout the area and a new warehouse district near the casinos is nearing completion. There are still a lot of vacancies throughout the French Quarter and through downtown near Canal Street and into the Garden District where notable colleges Tulane and Loyola stand side by side after all these years and many storms.
We had a great time all week long with great service at every business and locale we cruised through. The people were always gracious with a fair amount of Haitian and French spoken in the city.
When we left on Friday there were only four planes at the air terminal gates for the entire airport. The photo tells the tale of a nation hurting big-time. I am not alone in observing what is happening throughout our country's airports. The following is an excerpt from Peter King's Monday edition for Sports Illustrated.com:
This isn't brand new. It's something I've noticed my last three or four times through the Greater Pittsburgh International Airport. I was there Friday, late in the afternoon, around the time you'd expect a fairly major airport to be bustling with business people scurrying to change planes, or leaving town for the weekend, or just arriving here. And it felt like noontime Wednesday. A slight bustle, but nothing big. Empty shops. Sad.
I looked over at the 10-screen DEPARTURES board in the hub of the four concourses. Six screens were blank. Only four listed departing flights.
It's no wonder the Steelers are so important to so many people in the area, with the economy in the tank and the airport just another sign of it.
I am hopeful this is not the beginning of the end, but the beginning of the beginning.
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