Scanning the news in transgender America lately, it has been impossible to avoid the story of punk artist Tom Gabel coming out...not that I know who Tom Gabel is.
Let's face it, I'm an old fogey now. At 64 years of age, punk was never something on my radar.
Apparently Gabel is lead singer for a band called Against Me!. The punctuation is apparently part of the name (which makes the punctuation at the end of the previous sentence questionable).
The following is an acoustic version of the band's song, The Ocean:
And if I could have chosen, I would have been born a woman
My mother once told me she would have named me Laura
I'd grow up to be strong and beautiful like her
Gabel has chosen to come out very publicly, in the next edition of Rolling Stone magazine, which came out today (May 11). Gabel plans to begin living as a woman and will eventually take the name Laura Jane Grace. She plans to begin hormone therapy and electrolysis soon.
She also plans to remain married to her wife, Heather. That would, of course, depend upon the state in which they live and whether they would try to intervene...and whether Heather still feels like that after going through transition with Laura.
Vice President Joe Biden started a storm over marriage equality when he announced on Meet the Press that same sex marriage was OK with him. The press immediately wanted to know if President Obama's position had "evolved." The Biden interview was taped on Friday, so the White House was fully aware of what he had said. Finally, after three days of media over kill, the passage of Amendment 1 in North Carolina and the drying up of donations from the LGBT community, Pres. Obama announced that he "personally" supported same sex marriage. But hold your horses, people, this was just his personal opinion, not his political policy. Obama is still refusing to issue an executive order that would ban discrimination of gays, lesbians and transgender workers by federal contractors. From Sam Stein at Huffington Post:
The senior administration officials declined to say whether the president would now push for gay marriage to be part of the Democratic Party's platform at the convention. They also said they were not changing positions on an Executive Order that would ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation against federal contractors. The president has said he would not sign that order. [..]
There were, however, reasons why even party officials were insisting, not all that long ago, that the president needed to put this off until after the election. There is concern that support for gay marriage will drive away voters in some conservative-leaning swing states. There is even more concern that Republican operatives can and will use the issue to go after the president.
Letting each state decide on the equality of individuals is not the best idea either. How would individuals have voted in states like Mississippi if they had been given the choice about civil rights? Marriage equality is a federal matter since states are required under the Constitution to recognize marriage contracts from other states. Therefore, they should not be permitted to restrict marriage to heterosexual couples.
Does anyone at this point seriously believe that any of the people who voted for NC'S Amendment 1 will ever vote for Obama, no matter what his stand is on marriage equality? Only time will tell if the campaign donation faucet suddenly opens since it had dried up because of the work place discrimination issue. While it is certainly admirable and, in the case of Obama being a sitting president, momentous, for him to have made an official statement, the President still needs to "walk the walk", back up his words and sign the anti-discrimnation executive order.
"Greece is going to be the first country that's going to restructure and exit," he said. "Others will leave also."
"By the end of the year Spain is going to lose market access," Roubini said in a subsequent CNBC interview. "They're going to require a bailout. That will keep them out of the markets for a year or two. That's not going to work out - then maybe two years down the line then you have a restructuring of the debt...And eventually even Spain could exit the euro zone-but it's not something that's going to happen in 12 months."
And yet despite the clear signs of failure in the existing bailout countries, the EU looks set to pursue an unchanged plan in Spain. But the crucial difference between Spain and the bailout countries is size. If things go wrong in Greece, Portugal and Ireland, a second bailout is affordable. But there can only be one roll of the dice for a country as large as Spain.
A bailout package would buy some time for Spain, but time will only help if it is used to generate economic growth. By making private claims on the sovereign junior to the claims of the troika (European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund) even a bailout risks reducing the chances of it regaining market access. Moreover, with economic indicators showing Spain sinking further into recession, a turnround in the country's economic performance would require a significant shift in policy: monetary easing by the ECB, a weaker euro, fiscal stimulus in the core, less front-loaded austerity in the periphery, more international firewalls and debt mutualisation.
Perhaps I don't point it out often enough but The Stars Hollow Gazette and DocuDharma are group blogs and without member contributions they wouldn't be much.
My activist brother thinks I'm intimidating and perhaps he's right, however my intention is to be nurturant and encouraging in my internet interactions.
A case in point- seakit posted some interesting links to pet food recall notifications for salmonella contamination in Monday'sOn This Day In History which I'll reproduce for you.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - May 5, 2012 - Diamond Pet Foods today announced that it is expanding a voluntary recall to include batches of nine brands of dry pet food formulas manufactured between December 9, 2011 and April 7, 2012 due to potential Salmonella contamination.
In April 2012, Diamond Pet Foods initiated three voluntary recalls of Diamond manufactured dry dog food. Although none of the additional products being recalled have tested positive for Salmonella, the company is pulling them from store shelves as a precaution. Diamond Pet Foods is coordinating efforts with federal and state health and regulatory agencies and decided to independently expand the recall to ensure the safety and well-being of customers and their pets.
The company stated: "We have taken corrective actions at our Gaston, S.C., facility and voluntarily expanded the recall out of concern for our customers and their pets."
Brands included in the recall include:
Chicken Soup for the Pet Lover's Soul
Country Value
Diamond
Diamond Naturals
Premium Edge
Professional
4Health
Taste of the Wild
Wellpet LLC Voluntarily Recalls One Recipe Of Dry Dog Food Due To Salmonella At Diamond Pet Foods' Facility
Contact:
Consumer
877-227-9587
Media
Megan McCutcheon, Hunter PR
212-679-6600
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - May 4, 2012 - WellPet LLC announced a voluntary recall of one recipe of Wellness® dry dog food after being notified by Diamond Pet Foods regarding the presence of Salmonella in Diamond's Gaston, South Carolina facility.
All Wellness products are tested for Salmonella and all lots tested negative prior to shipping to customers. The company is voluntarily recalling the select products below. This voluntary recall is being done out of an abundance of caution as these products were produced at the facility that has been linked to recent recalls of Diamond brand foods due to the threat of Salmonella.
Pets with Salmonella infections may have decreased appetite, fever and abdominal pain. If left untreated, pets may be lethargic and have diarrhea or bloody diarrhea, fever and vomiting. Infected but otherwise healthy pets can be carriers and infect other animals or humans. If your pet has consumed the recalled product and has these symptoms, please contact your veterinarian.
Individuals handling dry pet food can become infected with Salmonella, especially if they have not thoroughly washed their hands after having contact with surfaces exposed to this product. People who believe they may have been exposed to Salmonella should monitor themselves for some or all of the following symptoms: nausea, vomiting, diarrhea or bloody diarrhea, abdominal cramping and fever. According to the Centers for Disease Control, people who are more likely to be affected by Salmonella include infants, children younger than 5 years old, organ transplant patients, people with HIV/AIDS and people receiving treatment for cancer.
Contact:
Consumer Contact: 800-398-1600
Media Contact: Michael Lopes 800-398-1600 ext. 516 mlopes@canidae.com
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - May 5, 2012- Canidae Pet Foods announced today that it is issuing a voluntary recall of certain dry pet food formulas manufactured between December 9, 2011, and January 31, 2012 at the Diamond Pet Food Gaston, South Carolina plant.
Although there have been no animal or human illnesses related to Canidae Pet Food, and the product has not tested positive for Salmonella, the company has voluntarily initiated this recall out of caution to ensure the health and safety of consumers and their pets.
The below list of product with production codes that must have both a number "3" in the 9th position AND an "X" in the 10th or 11th position with best before dates of December 9, 2012, through January 31, 2013 which are being recalled.
Canidae Dog, All Life Stages
Canidae Dog, Chicken Meal & Rice
Canidae Dog, Lamb Meal & Rice
Canidae Dog, Platinum
Natural Balance Pet Foods Initiates Voluntary Recall of Certain Dry Pet Food Due to the Potential for Salmonella Contamination
Contact:
Consumer:
(800) 829-4493
Media:
Daniel Bernstein
(310) 902-2554
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - May 4, 2012 - Natural Balance Pet Foods announced today that it is issuing a voluntary recall of certain dry pet food formulas manufactured by Diamond Pet Foods at their Gaston, South Carolina facility.
Although there have been no animal illnesses reported and none of the products included in the recall has tested positive for Salmonella, the company has voluntarily initiated this recall as a precautionary measure.
Pets with Salmonella infections may have decreased appetite, fever and abdominal pain. If left untreated, pets may be lethargic and have diarrhea or bloody diarrhea, fever and vomiting. Infected but otherwise healthy pets can be carriers and infect other animals or humans. If your pet has consumed the recalled product and has these symptoms, please contact your veterinarian. We do not have any confirmed reports of pet illnesses.
Individuals handling dry pet food can become infected with Salmonella, especially if they have not thoroughly washed their hands after having contact with surfaces exposed to a contaminated product. Healthy people who believe they may have been exposed to Salmonella should monitor themselves for some or all of the following symptoms: nausea, vomiting, diarrhea or bloody diarrhea, abdominal cramping and fever. According to the Centers for Disease Control, people who are more likely to be affected by Salmonella include infants, children younger than 5 years old, organ transplant patients, people with HIV/AIDS and people receiving treatment for cancer. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have received a limited number of reports of salmonellosis, the illness caused by Salmonella.
Now it's not my point to put seakit or anyone else on the spot, but we are fast approaching June and during that month both TheMomCat and I have other engagements that require a substantial time commitment.
I am hoping our loyal readers will respond by providing the content they've come to expect. It's not really that hard and while my family and friends are careful to pronounce every emission a 'gem' I know that 98% of it is crap. It's all part of the 'Poet's Pledge'-
At the time the Great Plains were settled in the mid-1800s, the land was covered by prairie grass, which held moisture in the earth and kept most of the soil from blowing away even during dry spells. By the early 20th century, however, farmers had plowed under much of the grass to create fields. The U.S. entry into World War I in 1917 caused a great need for wheat, and farms began to push their fields to the limit, plowing under more and more grassland with the newly invented tractor. The plowing continued after the war, when the introduction of even more powerful gasoline tractors sped up the process. During the 1920s, wheat production increased by 300 percent, causing a glut in the market by 1931.
The Dust Bowl, or the Dirty Thirties, was a period of severe dust storms causing major ecological and agricultural damage to American and Canadian prairie lands from 1930 to 1936 (in some areas until 1940). The phenomenon was caused by severe drought coupled with decades of extensive farming without crop rotation, fallow fields, cover crops or other techniques to prevent erosion. Deep plowing of the virgin topsoil of the Great Plains had displaced the natural deep-rooted grasses that normally kept the soil in place and trapped moisture even during periods of drought and high winds.
During the drought of the 1930s, without natural anchors to keep the soil in place, it dried, turned to dust, and blew away eastward and southward in large dark clouds. At times the clouds blackened the sky reaching all the way to East Coast cities such as New York and Washington, D.C. Much of the soil ended up deposited in the Atlantic Ocean, carried by prevailing winds, which were in part created by the dry and bare soil conditions. These immense dust storms-given names such as "Black Blizzards" and "Black Rollers"-often reduced visibility to a few feet (around a meter). The Dust Bowl affected 100,000,000 acres (400,000 km2), centered on the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma, and adjacent parts of New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas.
Millions of acres of farmland became useless, and hundreds of thousands of people were forced to leave their homes; many of these families (often known as "Okies", since so many came from Oklahoma) migrated to California and other states, where they found economic conditions little better during the Great Depression than those they had left. Owning no land, many became migrant workers who traveled from farm to farm to pick fruit and other crops at starvation wages. Author John Steinbeck [ later wrote The Grapes of Wrath, which won the Pulitzer Prize, and Of Mice and Men, about such people.
You are no doubt familiar with songs about the old lamplighter and the old umbrella man and the old garbage collector and all these lovable old characters who go around spreading sweetness and light to their respective communities but, it's always seemed to me that there is one member of this happy band who does an equally splendid job, but who has never been properly recognized in song or story, and this is an attempt to remedy, at least in part, that deplorable situation.
When the shades of night are falling, comes a fellow ev'ryone knows,
It's the old dope peddler, spreading joy wherever he goes.
Ev'ry evening you will find him, around our neighborhood.
It's the old dope peddler. Doing well by doing good.
He gives the kids free samples, because he knows full well
That today's young innocent faces will be tomorrow's clientele.
Here's a cure for all your troubles. Here's an end to all distress.
It's the old dope peddler with his powdered ha-happiness.
It will be a Democratic Congress and President that will destroy the social safety. Ryan Grimm at Huffington Post reports that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi supports the Simpson-Bowles plan:
During a recent press conference, and again during an interview with Charlie Rose, the California Congresswoman said that she would support what's known as the Simpson-Bowles plan, a budget proposal that was created by the co-chairs of a fiscal commission set up by President Obama (dubbed the "Catfood Commission" by progressives). The plan was rejected by members of the commission, failing to win the necessary votes to move to a vote in Congress. Yet the co-chairs -- former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming and Morgan Stanley director Erskin Bowles, a Democrat -- have worked recently to revive it, and the political class speaks of it as if it passed and is an official recommendation of the commission.
At the end of March, a version of the Simpson-Bowles plan was given a vote on the House floor. It was annihilated, 382-38, with Pelosi and most Democrats voting against it.
But Pelosi, the day after the vote, said that she could still support the plan if it stuck more closely to the original version put out by Simpson and Bowles. "I felt fully ready to vote for that myself, thought it was not even a controversial thing ... When we had our briefing with our caucus members, people felt pretty ready to vote for it. Until we saw it in print," she said. "It was more a caricature of Simpson Bowles, and that's why it didn't pass. If it were actually Simpson-Bowles, I would have voted for it."
Yet when the Simpson-Bowles plan had been originally unveiled, Pelosi called it "simply unacceptable."
In early April, Pelosi was asked about her initial opposition. "My problem with it was what it did as far as Social Security is concerned. Apart from that we said, there's a lot to work with," she told Charlie Rose. "It was a good framework in terms of revenue and in terms of cuts, in terms of defense spending and the rest. It was very bold."
The Simpson-Bowles plan is a mix of tax increases and spending cuts that trims four trillion dollars off the deficit in ten years. Its cuts to social spending and entitlement programs made it "simply unacceptable" to the Democrats' liberal base almost as soon as it was announced. Pelosi's rhetorical retreat from that hard-line position has progressives worried they'll have nobody left to defend the social safety net, even Medicare and Social Security.
All you need to know? Pete Peterson lives for one reason only - to kill off Social Security. Every crazed billionaire has a project. This is his. (No exaggeration; check the link. It's an excellent William Greider piece.)
From the "Summit" invite (but click fast; pages that name these names disappear fast at the "Summit" website). The underscoring below is mine:
Media Advisory
PETERSON FOUNDATION TO CONVENE 3RD ANNUAL FISCAL SUMMIT IN WASHINGTON ON MAY 15
Participants to include President Bill Clinton, Speaker of the House John Boehner, Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, Senator Rob Portman, Congressman Paul Ryan, Congressman Chris Van Hollen, and National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform Co-Chair Alan Simpson
NEW YORK (May 08, 2012) - Against the backdrop of the upcoming elections, and with a series of key fiscal deadlines approaching at the end of the year, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation's 2012 Fiscal Summit: America's Case for Action will feature the nation's leading experts and elected officials in discussions about the fiscal, economic, and political crossroads facing the country. ...
This year's summit will explore opportunities for compromise and establish the urgent need for action on these challenges, as well as highlight the voices of engaged citizens from across the country. The 2012 Fiscal Summit will work to generate the momentum necessary to motivate lawmakers to take action essential to preserving the American Dream.
Two videos that Gaius featured are significant because as he points out President Barack Obama is on the same page Bill Clinton, Paul Ryan and Pete Peterson.
5-25-2011 Leaked cell phone footage of Bill Clinton cozying up to Paul Ryan. The day after the stunning upset in the special congressional election in upstate New York, Rep. Paul Ryan is a man under fire.
Barack Obama's speech on April 5, 2006 at the launch of The Brookings Institute's Hamilton Project where Obama says that "most of us are strong free traders" and praises the goals of the Hamilton Project.
The real Grand Bargain isn't between the Dems and Republicans. It's between both of them and you. They're offering to sell out your children's Social Security, in exchange for letting you keep your own.
Greek, French and German voters went to the polls this past weekend and rejected pretty much told the European leaders they were very unhappy with the austerity measures that were being forced on them to bail out European banks. It took until yesterday for the world markets to react to this new reality with the Dow closing below its inflated 13,000 mark. Germany, the chief cheerleader for austerity, is not happy with France and very displeased with the new Greek leadership that blithely told Germany what to do with its austerity measures:
Alexis Tsipras, whose bloc came second in Sunday's vote, said Greek voters had "clearly nullified the loan agreement". [..]
The European Commission and Germany say countries must stick to budget cuts.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said on Tuesday: "What member states have to do is be consistent, implementing the policies that they have agreed." [..]
Mr Tsipras made his position clear to reporters in a five-point plan:
Cancelling the bailout terms, notably laws that further cut wages and pensions
Scrapping laws that abolish workers rights, particularly a law abolishing collective labour agreements due to come into effect on 15 May
Promoting changes to deepen democracy and social justice
Investigating Greece's banking system which received almost 200bn euros of public money
Setting up an international committee to find out the causes of Greece's public deficit and putting on hold all debt servicing
"Germans are now predominantly of the opinion that they would be better off if Greece left the euro zone," said Carsten Hefeker, a professor of economics and an expert on the euro at the University of Siegen. "If the country really is continuing on the path they are taking now, it would be hard to justify keeping them in. How do you deal with a country that says we don't want to keep any of the commitments we have made?" [..]
Perhaps the one card Greece has to play is the danger its exit could pose to other, much larger members like Spain and Italy, with far greater consequences. If Greece were pushed out, Mr. Hefeker said, the bond markets would start betting on the next country to be kicked out. "Then Spain or Italy would be put under pressure, and the danger would be of the whole euro zone collapsing," he said.
There are few options are open for the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund which is holding most of Greece's debt and easing the threat to the banks.
First, the so-called "troika" could release just enough funds to keep the government running until the political situation stabilizes;
The terms of the agreement could be renegotiated with the creditors:
Or, lastly, the "troika" could just refuse to give Greece any money, as the IMF did over 10 years ago when Argentina faced similar economic crisis. This actually turned out well for Argentina over a shorter recovery than is predicted for Greece under the current terms.
Perhaps it is past time for Greece to go it on its own and let the Eu continue the blood letting without them.
Hospital patients waiting in an emergency room or convalescing after surgery are being confronted by an unexpected visitor: a debt collector at bedside.
This and other aggressive tactics by one of the nation's largest collectors of medical debts, Accretive Health, were revealed on Tuesday by the Minnesota attorney general, raising concerns that such practices have become common at hospitals across the country.
The tactics, like embedding debt collectors as employees in emergency rooms and demanding that patients pay before receiving treatment, were outlined in hundreds of company documents released by the attorney general. And they cast a spotlight on the increasingly desperate strategies among hospitals to recoup payments as their unpaid debts mount.
This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.
Find the past "On This Day in History"here.
Click on images to enlarge
May 10 is the 130th day of the year (131st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 235 days remaining until the end of the year.
On this day in 1869, the presidents of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads meet in Promontory, Utah, and drive a ceremonial last spike into a rail line that connects their railroads. This made transcontinental railroad travel possible for the first time in U.S. history. No longer would western-bound travelers need to take the long and dangerous journey by wagon train, and the West would surely lose some of its wild charm with the new connection to the civilized East.
Since at least 1832, both Eastern and frontier statesmen realized a need to connect the two coasts. It was not until 1853, though, that Congress appropriated funds to survey several routes for the transcontinental railroad. The actual building of the railroad would have to wait even longer, as North-South tensions prevented Congress from reaching an agreement on where the line would begin.
The Union Pacific laid 1,087 miles (1,749 km) of track, starting in Council Bluffs, and continuing across the Missouri River and through Nebraska (Elkhorn, now Omaha, Grand Island, North Platte, Ogallala, Sidney, Nebraska), the Colorado Territory (Julesburg), the Wyoming Territory (Cheyenne, Laramie, Green River, Evanston), the Utah Territory (Ogden, Brigham City, Corinne), and connecting with the Central Pacific at Promontory Summit. The route did not pass through the two biggest cities in the Great American Desert -- Denver, Colorado and Salt Lake City, Utah. Feeder lines were built to service the two cities.
The Central Pacific laid 690 miles (1,100 km) of track, starting in Sacramento, California, and continuing over the Sierra Nevada mountains into Nevada. It passed through Newcastle, California and Truckee, California, Reno, Nevada, Wadsworth, Winnemucca, Battle Mountain, Elko, and Wells, Nevada, before connecting with the Union Pacific line at Promontory Summit in the Utah Territory. Later, the western part of the route was extended to the Alameda Terminal in Alameda, California, and shortly thereafter, to the Oakland Long Wharf at Oakland Point in Oakland, California. When the eastern end of the CPRR was extended to Ogden, it ended the short period of a boom town for Promontory. Before the CPRR was completed, developers were building other railroads in Nevada and California to connect to it.
At first, the Union Pacific was not directly connected to the Eastern U.S. rail network. Instead, trains had to be ferried across the Missouri River. In 1873, the Union Pacific Missouri River Bridge opened and directly connected the East and West.
Modern-day Interstate 80 closely follows the path of the railroad, with one exception. Between Echo, Utah and Wells, Nevada, Interstate 80 passes through the larger Salt Lake City and passes along the south shore of the Great Salt Lake. The Railroad had blasted and tunneled its way down the Weber River canyon to Ogden and around the north shore of the Great Salt Lake (roughly paralleling modern Interstate 84 and State Route 30). While routing the railroad along the Weber River, Mormon workers signed the Thousand Mile Tree, to commemorate the milestone. A historic marker has been placed there. The portion of the railroad around the north shore of the lake is no longer intact. In 1904, the Lucin Cutoff, a causeway across the center of the Great Salt Lake, shortened the route by approximately 43 miles (69 km), traversing Promontory Point instead of Promontory Summit.
Anyone that follows how the bulk of defense or national security information becomes known understands much of it comes from what is often referred to as "selective leaking." Officials that will not put their name to comments or statements talk to the press and provide details on covert drone operations, foiled terror plots, secret activities going on in wars, etc. People in the press, who work for establishment media, win over these "sources." Their job depends on "selective leaking," as it is how they get scoops like this scoop about the CIA having an informant. It is why Barbara Starr and Fran Townsend go on TV-to parrot without question the details that were given to them and profess fealty for the national defense and security state of America.
...
This is not all that different from what the CIA does when it leaks details about the drone program. Unnamed officials routinely "selectively leak" details on the "covert" program to build support for expanding the program or to reassure the public that the program is not illegal or conducted without restraint. This is done as the CIA argues in court the program is "secret" and they can neither confirm or deny the existence of documents on the program that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other groups are trying to get released through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit.
Is it acceptable for anyone in government who wishes to show government agencies are doing their job to leak classified information? Is it acceptable for these people to be able to whip the press into a frenzy and get them to provide great PR designed to prop up counterterrorism operations and ensure the fight against al Qaeda continues with certain players at the helm? Is this acceptable while the Obama administration is prosecuting whistleblowers and endangering press freedom to a greater extent than any presidential administration in history because they released classified information without authorization?
As the truth around the CIA's sting operation surfaces, as we begin to find out how much this is used in counterterrorism operations, the leaking that occurred here should be a part of the discussion too. It should because the six people indicted under the Espionage Act have had their lives wrecked. They have given up security in their careers so that Americans can know the truth about how America "protects" national security. They have been made to pay the price, and people should be appalled that they would have to pay while people who leak so they can get a massive stroke job from the press and public, get to continue along their career paths without being held responsible for doing something that is much more concerning.
To the extent these type of incidents are discussed at all - and in American establishment media venues, they are most typically ignored - there are certain unbending rules that must be observed in order to retain Seriousness credentials. No matter how many times the U.S. kills innocent people in the world, it never reflects on our national character or that of our leaders. Indeed, none of these incidents convey any meaning at all. They are mere accidents, quasi-acts of nature which contain no moral information (in fact, the NYT article on these civilian deaths, out of nowhere, weirdly mentioned that "in northern Afghanistan, 23 members of a wedding celebration drowned in severe flash flooding" - as though that's comparable to the U.S.'s dropping bombs on innocent people). We've all been trained, like good little soldiers, that the phrase "collateral damage" cleanses and justifies this and washes it all way: yes, it's quite terrible, but innocent people die in wars; that's just how it is. It's all grounded in America's central religious belief that the country has the right to commit violence anywhere in the world, at any time, for any cause.
At some point - and more than a decade would certainly qualify - the act of continuously killing innocent people, countless children, in the Muslim world most certainly does reflect upon, and even alters, the moral character of a country, especially its leaders. You can't just spend year after year piling up the corpses of children and credibly insist that it has no bearing on who you are. That's particularly true when, as is the case in Afghanistan, the cause of the war is so vague as to be virtually unknowable. It's woefully inadequate to reflexively dismiss every one of these incidents as the regrettable but meaningless by-product of our national prerogative. But to maintain mainstream credibility, that is exactly how one must speak of our national actions even in these most egregious cases. To suggest any moral culpability, or to argue that continuously killing children in a country we're occupying is morally indefensible, is a self-marginalizing act, whereby one reveals oneself to be a shrill and unSerious critic, probably even a pacifist. Serious commentators, by definition, recognize and accept that this is merely the inevitable outcome of America's supreme imperial right, note (at most) some passing regret, and then move on.
Emancipation sentiment was ascendant in the South after 1783 though Northern inventions like the cotton gin and mills hungry for raw cotton perpetuated the existence of slave labor on Southern plantations. Fearful of slave revolts as the black population grew, and shaken by the Nat Turner massacre of women and children, Southerners erected anti-emancipation laws to control slave populations. The constant agitation of slave revolt by abolitionist fanatics culminating in John Brown's crime in Virginia, was an effective means to end even voluntary emancipation in the South. Peaceful emancipation initiatives from the North would have had a better effect and avoided war.
All those complaining about last night's Amendment One results should take a lesson from Brother Thuersam's historical account. The good people of North Carolina wouldn't have passed Amendment One if homosexualists wouldn't go around demanding basic human rights.
Unless I miss my guess, "we have heard from at least half a dozen major gay and progressive donors" is code for what used to be known in donor circles as "the Cabinet" or "the Gay 8." The group has grown over the years, and it includes many of the biggest Democratic Party donors of the past decade. In addition to Jonathan Lewis, it now includes David Bohnett (Geo-Cities), Jon Stryker (Stryker Corp), Tim Gill (Oracle), James Hormel (Hormel), Henry van Amerigen (International Flavors & Fragrances), Linda Ketner (Food Lion), Weston Milliken (Milliken & Co.), Esmond Harmsworth (Daily Mail) and Laura Ricketts (Chicago Cubs).
While most in the group have already maxed out to Obama campaign and the DNC, that's small potatoes. The Obama campaign has recently been tapping members for multi-million dollar donations to the 527s - but according to Open Secrets, all conspicuously missing from the top 2012 election cycle donors.
The White House is pushing back on the Sargent article and telling journalists that there really are no problems. But if that's the case, where are the traditional LGBT 527 donors? They should name the ones that already have, or plan to donate.
The decision of LGBT donors to shut off campaign donations over Obama's refusal to sign an executive order on ENDA has tremendous downstream implications. It could have serious consequences for members of congress who rely not only on LGBT donors themselves, but who will need well-funded GOTV support for 2012 as well.
While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.
...
Some have asked: "Why didn't you give the new city administration time to act?" The only answer that I can give to this query is that the new Birmingham administration must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one, before it will act. We are sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Albert Boutwell as mayor will bring the millennium to Birmingham. While Mr. Boutwell is a much more gentle person than Mr. Connor, they are both segregationists, dedicated to maintenance of the status quo. I have hope that Mr. Boutwell will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from devotees of civil rights. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."
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We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country's antireligious laws.
I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.
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I wish you had commended the Negro sit inners and demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer and their amazing discipline in the midst of great provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes. They will be the James Merediths, with the noble sense of purpose that enables them to face jeering and hostile mobs, and with the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer. They will be old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy two year old woman in Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride segregated buses, and who responded with ungrammatical profundity to one who inquired about her weariness: "My feets is tired, but my soul is at rest." They will be the young high school and college students, the young ministers of the gospel and a host of their elders, courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience' sake. One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
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If I have said anything in this letter that overstates the truth and indicates an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything that understates the truth and indicates my having a patience that allows me to settle for anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me.
Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM (9 May 1860 - 19 June 1937) was a Scottish author and dramatist, best remembered today as the creator of Peter Pan. The child of a family of small-town weavers, he was educated in Scotland. He moved to London, where he developed a career as a novelist and playwright. There he met the Llewelyn Davies boys who inspired him in writing about a baby boy who has magical adventures in Kensington Gardens (included in The ), then to write Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, a "fairy play" about this ageless boy and an ordinary girl named Wendy who have adventures in the fantasy setting of Neverland. This play quickly overshadowed his previous work and although he continued to write successfully, it became his best-known work, credited with popularising the name Wendy, which was very uncommon previously. Barrie unofficially adopted the Davies boys following the deaths of their parents. Before his death, he gave the rights to the Peter Pan works to Great Ormond Street Hospital, which continues to benefit from them.
The classic Peter Pan starring Mary Martin. This is the 1960 version for NBC. Has been very limited in its showing. The DVD is long out of print and expensive to own.
I know it's very bad form to quote one's own reviews, but I would like to mention something that The New York Times said about me a year ago which I've always treasured -- they said:
Mr. Lehrer's muse is not fettered by such inhibiting factors as taste.
Now we come to that peculiar bit of americana known as the football fight song. I was reminded not too long ago, upon returning from my lesson with the scrabble pro at the Harvard Club in Boston, in the days of my undergraduacy long ago when there used to be these very long Saturday afternoons in the fall with nothing to do -- the library was closed -- just waiting around for the cocktail parties to begin. and on occasions like that, some of us used to wander over to the... I believe it was called the stadium, to see if anything might be going on over there. and one did come to realize that the football fight songs that one hears in comparable stadia have a tendency to be somewhat uncouth, and even violent, and that it would be refreshing, to say the least, to find one that was a bit more genteel. And here it is, dedicated to my own alma mater, and called Fight Fiercely, Harvard.
Fight fiercely, Harvard, fight, fight, fight! Demonstrate to them our skill.
Albeit they possess the might, nonetheless we have the will.
How we shall celebrate our victory, We shall invite the whole team up for tea (how jolly!)
Hurl that spheroid down the field, and fight, fight, fight!
Fight fiercely, Harvard, fight, fight, fight! Impress them with our prowess, do!
Oh, fellows, do not let the Crimson down, Be of stout heart and true.
Come on, chaps, fight for Harvard's glorious name, Won't it be peachy if we win the game? (oh, goody!)
Let's try not to injure them, but fight, fight, fight! (let's not be rough though)
And do fight fiercely! Fight, fight, fight!
London (Reuters) - When Exxon boss Rex Tillerson walked into a meeting with the President of Ghana on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, he thought he was set to strike a deal with an important new oil producing nation.
Instead Tillerson - who had flown into town aboard an executive jet bigger than those used by many heads of state - was rebuffed by an irritated John Atta Mills, who had expected to be wooed rather than given a tough contract to rubber-stamp.
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Exxon has struggled to access new oil and gas reserves in recent years. In March the company slashed growth plans and by some calculations slipped behind PetroChina as the world's biggest listed producer of oil. Last week it revealed a fall in output and profits that knocked its share price.
A bossy approach worked well as long as oil-rich nations signed purely financial deals, and stuck to them. But when oil prices began to ramp up around a decade ago, a wave of resource nationalism blew through countries like Russia, Venezuela and Libya and changed the game.
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There is little doubt that Exxon's disputes have contributed to an increasing reliance on domestic fields. In 2011, 27 percent of Exxon's reserves were in the United States, up from 19 percent in 2006. By comparison, only 17 percent of Chevron's reserves are in the United States and 21 percent of Shell's.
The problem for Exxon is that, while places like Ghana, Russia and Venezuela offer less legal certainty than developed markets, they have more oil and offer better returns.
There's not more than a handful of voters in America who are bigoted enough to hold a position on marriage equality against a candidate for President above all else, or at least not more than a handful who wouldn't already be voting against Obama because they already think he endorses what he has strained not to endorse. So when I say "the only people who care about this issue," I'm talking about those gay rights activists who have given millions to the re-election effort and who want to see a President take their side on this matter of importance to them. Moreover, the only impression you get from this word-parsing and game-playing is one of a cynical campaign operation unable to articulate a strong statement of principle. It spills over into areas other than just the gay rights sphere.
In the words of Chuck Todd (about as Villager as they come) "gay money in this election has replaced Wall Street money. It has been the gay community that has put in money in a way to this President that is a very, very important part of the fundraising operation for the President Obama campaign."
Two points- after the consistent disrespect and lack of commitment from the White House starting with Donnie McClurkin and recently evidenced by the rejection of enforcing ENDA standards on Federal Contractors and non-existent support for the opposition to NC One, why are the institutional LGBT activism organizations even giving him the time of day?
WikiLeaks Mirror Sites
Vice President Joe Biden started a storm over marriage equality when he announced on Meet the Press that same sex marriage was OK with him. The press immediately wanted to know if President Obama's position had "evolved." The Biden interview was taped on Friday, so the White House was fully aware of what he had said. Finally, after 
On this day in 1934, 
