The Vatican's newspaper has finally forgiven John Lennon for declaring that the Beatles were more famous than Jesus Christ, calling the remark a "boast" by a young man grappling with sudden fame.Read the rest of this post...
The comment by Lennon to a London newspaper in 1966 infuriated Christians, particularly in the United States, some of whom burned Beatles' albums in huge pyres.
But time apparently heals all wounds.
"The remark by John Lennon, which triggered deep indignation mainly in the United States, after many years sounds only like a 'boast' by a young working-class Englishman faced with unexpected success, after growing up in the legend of Elvis and rock and roll," Vatican daily Osservatore Romano said.
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Sunday, November 23, 2008
Vatican forgives John Lennon
It's hard to believe the Vatican isn't able to muster up the crowds these days in Europe and America with this kind of silliness. But to be fair to the Church, at least they did not try him, find him guilty and burn him at the stake as they did with Joan of Arc though it wouldn't surprise me if a few local leaders didn't at least think about it.
A Modest Mormon Proposal
The Mormon religion says I'm going to hell, and my religion says they're a cult. So, I lose my right to marry and they lose their religious tax status, right?
A lot of religions, starting with Catholicism, think that Mormons are cultists, what with thinking Jesus is the brother of the devil and that Jesus married him mom, Mary, and two other women. So why isn't granting Mormons tax exempt religious status a violation of the religious beliefs of Catholics and other Christians? The state is quite literally legitimizing, and subsidizing, what many other religions consider a cult. Clearly that's against the religious beliefs of many Americans. (And while we're at it, the Baptists think that Catholics worship Satan - quite literally - so doesn't it impinge on the beliefs of Baptists to grant "religious" status to Catholics, and vice versa?) And how is any of this different from the state legitimizing, but not subsidizing, the marriage of gay couples?
We're told that gay marriage is against God (though several mainstream religions permit the marriage of gay couples). But regardless, since when are we in the business of codifying religion into law? And now that we apparently are, why are some religions more equal than others? Surely we can agree, that if only majority religious views are to be favored in US law, then Catholicism certainly counts, Baptists may have some convincing to do, and Mormons, well they've got a long way to go before they approach the numbers of any kind of majority anywhere outside of Utah.
So, using Mormon and religious right logic, shouldn't we at least put the rights of Mormons (and religious right Republicans) up to a majority vote? If the Mormons can convince 51% of Americans that they're not a cult, and that their views of Jesus and the forced conversion of Jewish Holocaust victims to Mormonism should be subsidized by the American taxpayer, then they get their tax exemption. Isn't anything else un-democratic? Read the rest of this post...
A lot of religions, starting with Catholicism, think that Mormons are cultists, what with thinking Jesus is the brother of the devil and that Jesus married him mom, Mary, and two other women. So why isn't granting Mormons tax exempt religious status a violation of the religious beliefs of Catholics and other Christians? The state is quite literally legitimizing, and subsidizing, what many other religions consider a cult. Clearly that's against the religious beliefs of many Americans. (And while we're at it, the Baptists think that Catholics worship Satan - quite literally - so doesn't it impinge on the beliefs of Baptists to grant "religious" status to Catholics, and vice versa?) And how is any of this different from the state legitimizing, but not subsidizing, the marriage of gay couples?
We're told that gay marriage is against God (though several mainstream religions permit the marriage of gay couples). But regardless, since when are we in the business of codifying religion into law? And now that we apparently are, why are some religions more equal than others? Surely we can agree, that if only majority religious views are to be favored in US law, then Catholicism certainly counts, Baptists may have some convincing to do, and Mormons, well they've got a long way to go before they approach the numbers of any kind of majority anywhere outside of Utah.
So, using Mormon and religious right logic, shouldn't we at least put the rights of Mormons (and religious right Republicans) up to a majority vote? If the Mormons can convince 51% of Americans that they're not a cult, and that their views of Jesus and the forced conversion of Jewish Holocaust victims to Mormonism should be subsidized by the American taxpayer, then they get their tax exemption. Isn't anything else un-democratic? Read the rest of this post...
Obama not 'likely' to push repeal of Bush tax cuts until 2011
Fine with me. While it may be "fair" to push back Bush's tax cuts, and wise generally speaking for federal budget policy, it is not wise policy to take money out of the economy when you're in the throes of a massive, and growing, recession. Yes, you can argue about whether taxing the rich and spending it on more government projects leaves us revenue neutral in terms of money removed from and then re-injected into the economy. But considering how dire the predictions are for next year, I'd rather see Obama playing it safe and postponing the tax increase on the rich until the economy gets back on its feet.
Read the rest of this post...
A word about religious bigotry
Bigots don't generally call themselves bigots. Racists don't call themselves racists. And homophobes don't call themselves homophobes.
It's a common mistake to think that anti-gay bigotry isn't really bigoted if the bigot's heart was in the right place. For example, in the quote below from the LA Times, the victim offers the classic "but my persecutor thought he was following his religious beliefs" line.
It's a common mistake to think that anti-gay bigotry isn't really bigoted if the bigot's heart was in the right place. For example, in the quote below from the LA Times, the victim offers the classic "but my persecutor thought he was following his religious beliefs" line.
Condon, the gay writer-director of "Dreamgirls" and a Film Independent board member, offered this retort to what he calls the "off-with-his-head" crowd: "If you're asking, 'Do we take discrimination against gays as seriously as bigotry against African Americans and Jews?' . . . the answer is, 'Of course we do.' But we also believe that some people, including Rich, saw Prop. 8 not as a civil rights issue but a religious one. That is their right. And it is not, in and of itself, proof of bigotry."Well, yes they did. As do conservative Muslims who force their women to wear head to foot black veils, force them to sit in the back of the car, and who summarily stone those women when they're raped. As did southern Christians who argued that the Bible mandated slavery:
"[Slavery] was established by decree of Almighty God...it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation...it has existed in all ages, has been found among the people of the highest civilization, and in nations of the highest proficiency in the arts." Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America.So since we all supposedly take bigotry against gays as seriously as we do bigotry against blacks and Jews (and in Hollywood, that's an outright lie - tell me how well out gay super stars do once they come out), let's rewrite this guy's quote and see how it sounds:
'Do we take discrimination against blacks as seriously as bigotry against gays and Jews?' . . . the answer is, 'Of course we do.' But we also believe that some people saw slavery not as a civil rights issue but a religious one. That is their right. And it is not, in and of itself, proof of bigotry.Not as understandable any more. Now replace the word "blacks" with "Jews," and "slavery" with "Holocaust." An extreme example? You betcha. But as they teach you in the law, sometimes you need the extreme example to prove that the logic is not sound. The only reason we accept bigotry cloaked in religion when it's targeted against gays is because we all - all of us - are more tolerant of intolerance when the target is gay. And that's not evidence that the bigotry is somehow minimized, it's evidence of bigotry internalized. Read the rest of this post...
5 Myths About Our Ailing Health-Care System
I used to think health care reform was a boring, overly complicated issue. That was until I hit my mid-30s and, suddenly, every time I'd have an ache or pain my doctor would say "you're getting old." Amazing what a chronic shooting pain in your knee or ever-deteriorating vision can do to pique your interest in an issue.
Chris, Joe and I have all written before about our ongoing drama with America's health care system. Chris has written about a good friend's mom who suffered a stroke, then was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, only to be told that she'd met her lifetime insurance benefit limit - buh bye. And I recently found out that I'd met my annual prescription drug benefits limit - so, sorry, no more prescriptions for me this year.
I spent Saturday trying to find out what my health plan at CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield actually covers. And judging by the impossibility of finding the information, you'd think the insurance company might not want you to actually know the details of your plan. CareFirst, for example, has a dandy Web site where you can sign up with your account number and see how much you've already spent this year on prescriptions and doctor visits. And that's great, but kind of useless since they don't bother saying what my coverage actually is for prescriptions or doctor visits, how much they cover for each visit, nor do they tell you what your annual or lifetime limits are for those benefits. So, I can check the cost of prescription drugs I've bought this year, but I can't check whether I'm close to my annual benefits limit, or whether I even have an annual benefits limit. It's almost as if they don't want you to know, and would rather have you be surprised the next time you get sick and really need those antibiotics. Oh, and there is nothing on Blue Cross' site that I can find that actually details my benefits, even though they know what my plan is. How hard is it to simply put the detailed benefits package online in a downloadable PDF? Oh yeah, there's a link that claims it details your benefits - it doesn't. Almost as if they don't want you to know.
Another thing that's quite suspicious. Once you get into the guts of Blue Cross' Web site you find out that you can buy prescription drugs online via Rite-Aid or Walgreen's, and the drugs are actually cheaper than using Drugstore.com (which is the cheapest reliable service I've found). Now, why is it that I have an annual limit on prescription drugs, that Blue Cross has a cheaper way for me to buy those same drugs, but Blue Cross doesn't affirmatively tell me in an obvious way that the alternative is out there. I had to find out by creating an account on Blue Cross' site (something that's relatively worthless), and then by digging around to discover that there are cheaper options than the already-cheap option I'm using. Considering how much the insurance companies gripe about spiraling health care costs, they do next to nothing to help their own customers save money, which in turn saves them money. It's almost as if there is some perverse incentive they're not telling us about, some incentive for us to actually SPEND more on our health care, that somehow this benefits them economically. Otherwise, they would tell us that we can buy drugs cheaper via their online buddies. But they don't.
The entire system is fishy, and inscrutable, as hell. I tried this past March to find out if my Blue Cross plan covers me while traveling abroad. I had a blithering idiot from Blue Cross on the phone for half an hour - I was calling from Paris, mind you - and after half an hour of her searching for a simple answer (am I, or am I not, covered while abroad), she gave me the wrong answer. The woman could not have been a bigger moron, she had no clue what she was doing, she was clearly reading off a computer screen. I learned my lesson, and went to the French doctors anyway, and said to hell with it, I'll pay whatever it costs to get better. In fact, I paid a grand total of 65 euros (about 80 bucks), for two doctor visits and a chest x-ray. The French thought that was a bit expensive - and, mind you, their health care plan would have picked up most of the 80 bucks. I laughed and paid it out of my pocket, knowing that the doctor visit here in the US would have been a good 65 bucks, easy, and the chest x-ray would have been 200 to 400 dollars, easy.
Our health care system sucks. As the article in today's Washington Post points out, we do not have the best health care in the world, by far. Ours is actually pretty crappy compared to other western democracies. And that should piss you off. The Republicans have told us for years that "we're number one!" in an effort to stop us from making the changes and improvements that would actually make us number one. Well we're not number one in terms of the health care we provide our citizens. We're far from it. And as each and every one of you passes the magic age of 30 - the age in which everything starts to hurt a little bit more - this fact ought to scare the hell out of you.
PS Speaking of "we're number one." Call a dermatologist some time and try to schedule an appointment for any day this century. Just try.
Note from Jacki: Just wanted to add the reminder that we're working very hard - right now - to do something about our health care system once and for all.
I now work for HCAN - Health Care for America Now - which is a grassroots campaign aiming to be the boots on the ground army that will back up Obama and our allies in Congress when the insurance companies and drug companies and high-paid DC lobbyists come out swinging.
This is the time we can finally (!) make change happen.
Obama signed on to the HCAN principles back on October 6th. It's not legislation. It's an outline for what good, comprehensive legislation will look like. If you have a moment, you should check it out. Health care doesn't have to be complicated, and I promise I will do everything in my power to help you understand the campaign every step of the way. Read the rest of this post...
Chris, Joe and I have all written before about our ongoing drama with America's health care system. Chris has written about a good friend's mom who suffered a stroke, then was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, only to be told that she'd met her lifetime insurance benefit limit - buh bye. And I recently found out that I'd met my annual prescription drug benefits limit - so, sorry, no more prescriptions for me this year.
I spent Saturday trying to find out what my health plan at CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield actually covers. And judging by the impossibility of finding the information, you'd think the insurance company might not want you to actually know the details of your plan. CareFirst, for example, has a dandy Web site where you can sign up with your account number and see how much you've already spent this year on prescriptions and doctor visits. And that's great, but kind of useless since they don't bother saying what my coverage actually is for prescriptions or doctor visits, how much they cover for each visit, nor do they tell you what your annual or lifetime limits are for those benefits. So, I can check the cost of prescription drugs I've bought this year, but I can't check whether I'm close to my annual benefits limit, or whether I even have an annual benefits limit. It's almost as if they don't want you to know, and would rather have you be surprised the next time you get sick and really need those antibiotics. Oh, and there is nothing on Blue Cross' site that I can find that actually details my benefits, even though they know what my plan is. How hard is it to simply put the detailed benefits package online in a downloadable PDF? Oh yeah, there's a link that claims it details your benefits - it doesn't. Almost as if they don't want you to know.
Another thing that's quite suspicious. Once you get into the guts of Blue Cross' Web site you find out that you can buy prescription drugs online via Rite-Aid or Walgreen's, and the drugs are actually cheaper than using Drugstore.com (which is the cheapest reliable service I've found). Now, why is it that I have an annual limit on prescription drugs, that Blue Cross has a cheaper way for me to buy those same drugs, but Blue Cross doesn't affirmatively tell me in an obvious way that the alternative is out there. I had to find out by creating an account on Blue Cross' site (something that's relatively worthless), and then by digging around to discover that there are cheaper options than the already-cheap option I'm using. Considering how much the insurance companies gripe about spiraling health care costs, they do next to nothing to help their own customers save money, which in turn saves them money. It's almost as if there is some perverse incentive they're not telling us about, some incentive for us to actually SPEND more on our health care, that somehow this benefits them economically. Otherwise, they would tell us that we can buy drugs cheaper via their online buddies. But they don't.
The entire system is fishy, and inscrutable, as hell. I tried this past March to find out if my Blue Cross plan covers me while traveling abroad. I had a blithering idiot from Blue Cross on the phone for half an hour - I was calling from Paris, mind you - and after half an hour of her searching for a simple answer (am I, or am I not, covered while abroad), she gave me the wrong answer. The woman could not have been a bigger moron, she had no clue what she was doing, she was clearly reading off a computer screen. I learned my lesson, and went to the French doctors anyway, and said to hell with it, I'll pay whatever it costs to get better. In fact, I paid a grand total of 65 euros (about 80 bucks), for two doctor visits and a chest x-ray. The French thought that was a bit expensive - and, mind you, their health care plan would have picked up most of the 80 bucks. I laughed and paid it out of my pocket, knowing that the doctor visit here in the US would have been a good 65 bucks, easy, and the chest x-ray would have been 200 to 400 dollars, easy.
Our health care system sucks. As the article in today's Washington Post points out, we do not have the best health care in the world, by far. Ours is actually pretty crappy compared to other western democracies. And that should piss you off. The Republicans have told us for years that "we're number one!" in an effort to stop us from making the changes and improvements that would actually make us number one. Well we're not number one in terms of the health care we provide our citizens. We're far from it. And as each and every one of you passes the magic age of 30 - the age in which everything starts to hurt a little bit more - this fact ought to scare the hell out of you.
PS Speaking of "we're number one." Call a dermatologist some time and try to schedule an appointment for any day this century. Just try.
Note from Jacki: Just wanted to add the reminder that we're working very hard - right now - to do something about our health care system once and for all.
I now work for HCAN - Health Care for America Now - which is a grassroots campaign aiming to be the boots on the ground army that will back up Obama and our allies in Congress when the insurance companies and drug companies and high-paid DC lobbyists come out swinging.
This is the time we can finally (!) make change happen.
Obama signed on to the HCAN principles back on October 6th. It's not legislation. It's an outline for what good, comprehensive legislation will look like. If you have a moment, you should check it out. Health care doesn't have to be complicated, and I promise I will do everything in my power to help you understand the campaign every step of the way. Read the rest of this post...
Still recounting in Minnesota Senate Race. Still very close.
Here's the daily fix on the Franken-Coleman recount:
Secretary of State's website has Coleman up by 167 with 65.65% of votes recounted.
Star-Tribune has Coleman's lead at 180 with 68% of votes recounted.
Approximately 2,000 ballots have been challenged -- and it's an almost even split between the campaigns. Watch the video from theuptake.org, which is posted at MN Campaign Report, to see how frivolous some of the Coleman challenges are.
The Secretary of State shows Coleman leading with 42.22% to Franken's 40.90%. The race was tied at 42% each, so there are more Franken leaning precincts left to count. Read the rest of this post...
Secretary of State's website has Coleman up by 167 with 65.65% of votes recounted.
Star-Tribune has Coleman's lead at 180 with 68% of votes recounted.
Approximately 2,000 ballots have been challenged -- and it's an almost even split between the campaigns. Watch the video from theuptake.org, which is posted at MN Campaign Report, to see how frivolous some of the Coleman challenges are.
The Secretary of State shows Coleman leading with 42.22% to Franken's 40.90%. The race was tied at 42% each, so there are more Franken leaning precincts left to count. Read the rest of this post...
Sunday Talk Shows Open Thread
A variety of guests on the shows this morning, but more Democrats than Republicans for a change. You'd almost think the Democrats are going to control the White House and he Senate and the House by wide margins. At this point, who cares what any of the Republican have to say? Well, I should say who cares besides the political pundits.
Today also marks the return of Lieberman. Be interesting to hear if he's supporting Al Franken in the recount or Jim Martin in the runoff. Actually, be interesting to hear if he's going to support the Obama agenda.
Here's the lineup:
Today also marks the return of Lieberman. Be interesting to hear if he's supporting Al Franken in the recount or Jim Martin in the runoff. Actually, be interesting to hear if he's going to support the Obama agenda.
Here's the lineup:
ABC's "This Week" — David Axelrod, senior adviser to President-elect Barack Obama; Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Richard Shelby, R-Ala.Read the rest of this post...
___
CBS' "Face the Nation" — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.; Austan Goolsbee, economic adviser to Obama.
___
NBC's "Meet the Press" — Former Secretary of State James Baker; former Commerce Secretary William Daley; Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn.
___
CNN's "Late Edition" — Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas; Gov. Jennifer Granholm, D-Mich.; former Gov. Mitt Romney, R-Mass.; Forbes Inc. CEO Steve Forbes; former Labor Secretary Robert Reich.
"Fox News Sunday" _ Reps. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., and John Boehner, R-Ohio; Axelrod.
Aretha
The sound and video and not in sync but who cares, it's Aretha Franklin. I'm still waking up after a late night out in the 'burbs and need something peppy. That and more coffee. Read the rest of this post...
Bush promotes free trade at final summit
Despite the his policies crumbling around him he remains oblivious to the failures until the very end. The so-called "free trade" has been a farce and never free. Well sure, it's been free as long as the US has been able to fund friends and then shove cheap products down the throat of international markets and wipe them out. Free trade as it's been deployed so far hasn't brought the fabulous benefits that were promised to either side.
President Bush, in what could be his final overseas trip as president, called on international leaders Saturday to continue his administration's push for free trade despite the global financial crisis.Great. So where the hell are the jobs? Notice how he skips over the million US jobs lost this year, before the year is even over. Read the rest of this post...
"One of the enduring lessons of the Great Depression is that global protectionism is a path to global economic ruin," Bush told the annual meeting of the 21-nation Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in the capital, Lima.
"I recognize I'm leaving office in two months," Bush said as he discussed the Doha trade talks, which were launched in 2001 to help liberalize international trade policies, "but nevertheless, this administration will push hard ... so that Doha can be completed and so we can send a message: We refuse to accept protectionism in the 21st century."
Touting his record on free trade, Bush said, "expanding trade and investment has been one of the highest priorities of my administration.
"When I took office, America had free trade agreements in force with only three nations. Today, we have agreements in force with 14."
Bush said that during his administration, "America's trade with the world has grown from $2.5 [trillion] to $4 trillion, an increase of 60 percent."
19 year old commits suicide online
This is an interesting story. The father wants tougher regulations of the Internet after his 19 year old son broadcast his suicide via Web cam, and told people on the site that he was going to kill himself hours before he did yet, allegedly, no one lifted a finger until the kid actually overdosed live on cam. I understand the father being horribly distraught, and anybody who thought this kid was really going to kill himself should have called the cops. But would we regulate coffee shops if he had announced at a Starbucks that he was going to kill himself in six hours and nobody did anything about it? Yes, there are sick people online, but one of them was this poor 19 year old. This kid's problem wasn't the Internet, and I suspect he'd have found another way to end his life had he not had a Web cam. Your thoughts? Remember, you don't have to register any more to comment.
Read the rest of this post...
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