Written by Amanda Marcotte for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice.

Leave it to the legislature of South Dakota, which tried to ban abortion outright but found the law rejected by a popular vote, to come around in a season of unprecedented attacks on women’s rights and really stand out from the crowd.  The new law requiring a three-day waiting period and a lecture from the busybodies at crisis pregnancy centers before you get an abortion now almost surely qualifies as the most restrictive abortion law in the country, especially since the single provider in South Dakota has to fly doctors in and may not be able to handle the three day waiting period requirement.  But what’s really amazing is how overtly theocratic the law is.  Anti-choicers are usually cognizant of the danger of being perceived as shoving their religious dogma on others through the law, because it’s expressly forbidden in the Constitution, even though that’s exactly what they’re doing.  But now the pretense of secularism is barely even shrugged at, because there is no way that sending women to religious institutions to get religiously motivated lectures about religious dogma isn’t a strike against religious freedom. 

I expressed this concern at Alternet, and Michelle Goldberg made the same observation in The Daily Beast, and joked to me on Twitter that the phrase “secular crisis pregnancy center” made as much sense as saying “secular mass and secular madrassas.”  Michelle’s research indicates that proponents of this law are aware that this could be a problem, because they assure her the law requires women to consent before having to hear a Jesus lecture.  But remember that the women are already there under duress, and may not think they have many rights.  Also, the folks doing the reassuring, Leslee and Allen Unruh, are hardly the most reliable people.  Leslee has faced trouble with the law for illegal bribery to give babies up for adoption, and she also lied to the New York Times, telling them CPC counseling is provided by medical professionals, when in fact CPCs are unregulated and usually run by volunteers. I’m sorry, but I don’t trust folks like that to keep the Jesus talk to a minimum when the door is shut and they have an already non-consenting woman in their snare. … Read more

Inside the beltway, there’s just one newspaper that everyone reads: the Washington Post. But these are busy people. Mostly they just scan the headlines and lead paragraphs. Few members of Congress or administration staffers take a special interest in. Let’s take a look at the recent flareup in the Israel-Palestine conflict, as told in WaPo headlines and leads, all written by the WaPo’s woman in Jerusalem, Janine Zacharia.

March 23:  “Eight Palestinians were killed Tuesday in two separate Israeli military strikes in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian spokesmen said. Israeli officials said the strikes were a response to the most serious escalation in rocket and mortar fire from the coastal territory since the 2009 Israeli offensive that sought to end such attacks.”

March 24: “A bomb detonated at a Jerusalem bus stop Wednesday, killing a 59-year-old woman, injuring 38 people and shattering the relative calm that had pervaded the city for several years. The attack came as tensions have escalated between Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and it prompted vows of reprisals from Israeli politicians who warned that they would take the necessary steps to restore the country’s security.”

March 25: “Sirens sounded throughout southern Israel on Thursday, warning residents to take cover as at least 10 rockets, missiles and mortars were fired from the Gaza Strip and Israel launched an airstrike to destroy a rocket launcher. The Israeli response was relatively muted.”

March 28: “Israel deployed a still experimental anti-missile system to protect residents within striking distance of rockets fired from the Gaza Strip, a clear sign that Israeli leaders do not believe that rocket fire from the territory will abate soon, as increased Palestinian rocket fire sent Israelis scurrying into shelters.”

It all adds up to the mythic tale that Americans who pay attention to the Middle East know all too well: Palestinians attack Israel. Israel strikes back in self defense and looks for ever new ways to protect its security. End of story. What more is there to say?

Plenty, as it turns out. How about asking the obvious question, “Why have rockets started flying from Gaza in larger numbers lately?”  The answer was  documented by two leading Israeli security analysts:  “Hamas does not seem to want large-scale clashes yet. The organization actually has good reasons to believe that Israel is the one heating up the southern front. It began with a bombardment a few weeks ago that disrupted the transfer of a large amount of money from Egypt to the Gaza Strip, continued with the interrogation of engineer and Hamas member Dirar Abu Sisi in Israel, and ended with last week’s bombing of a Hamas training base in which two Hamas militants were killed.” All of this before the escalation in rocket fire from Gaza.

Though Zacharia ignored this context, she was quick to link the Jerusalem bus bombing — committed by a person or persons still unknown — to the conflict in Gaza that was started, she implied, by Palestinians. She treated it all as part of the same challenge to Israel “to restore the country’s security.” There was nothing worth reporting, apparently, about how desperate Palestinians are to protect their own security.

Zacharia did note, near the end of one article, that “Hamas has at times worked to prevent attacks into Israel.” But she wrote nothing about the ongoing Hamas calls for a cease-fire, nor for the same calls now coming from Islamic Jihad in Gaza. That wouldn’t fit her plot line. She just wants to make sure we know that Israel’s “relatively muted” response is only temporary, while Israel is “still weighing” new (and presumably more violent) ways to stop those “Hamas rockets” (which are mostly, in fact, fired by factions opposed by Hamas).

Israelis get a more sophisticated view. They can read this, for example, in an editorial in Haaretz:  “In this testosterone-rich competition, there will always be more checkmarks on the Israeli side. But Israel is clever enough to act like the threatened party and to hide its deadly performances.” If you read only Zacharia’s reporting in the WaPo, you would never imagine that the editors of Israel’s most prestigious newspaper could see it that way.

Zacharia’s version of the Israel-Palestine conflict carries a special weight because it has so much influence inside the beltway. But there’s nothing unusual about it. You can find much the same mythic tale in any of the most prestigious U.S. newspapers, on their editorial pages as well as their news pages.

We can’t expect them to change their ways voluntarily in the foreseeable future.  The myth of Israel’s insecurity will continue to be the official story in the U.S. mass media and thus the foundation of U.S. discourse and policy about Israel — unless proponents of peace and Palestinian independence, who are such persuasive critics of Israel’s actions, start training their verbal guns directly on that myth.

Otherwise most Americans, no matter how much they know about Israeli violence and oppression, will forgive most of it as unfortunate but necessary measures for national security. If we protect our national security at all costs, by any means necessary, they’ll think, why shouldn’t the Israelis do the same?

We can take one big step toward a more sane and humane U.S. policy on the Israel-Palestine conflict — a policy that might some day actually lead toward peace — by reading the mass media carefully and demanding that they give us real journalism, not just the old familiar myth disguised as news.

Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Read more of his writing on Israel, Palestine, and the U.S. on his blog.

One of the most effective strategies of religious right organizations is to take an incident which looks like Christians are being discriminated against because of lgbt equality and push it hard in the media before the truth is discovered.

And usually the truth turns out that the situation is a bit more complicated than the “innocent Christian vs. intolerant homosexual agenda” scenario set up by these groups.

We’ve seen this in the recent case of the British couple who were turned down as foster parents.

And now to fight ENDA, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, the Family Research Council is pulling out an old case – that of Marcia Walden.

From FRC’s blog:

Marcia Walden, a licensed counselor in Georgia, explains why she was fired after referring a homosexual client to a colleague. Marcia referred the client to another colleague because offering counseling services would conflict with her Christian beliefs on homosexuality. Under ENDA legislation currently before Congress, Christian employers and employees across the nation would experience similar attacks on their Constitutional right to freedom of religion, speech and association.

FRC features a video of Walden tell her story. I won’t embed that video because I think it’s unfair. The purpose of the video is to gain sympathy for Walden. However appealing to emotions masks the fact that in this case, there are two sides to the story.

This is the real story according to court documents:

Walden’s employer, Computer Science Corp had a contract with the CDC to provide counselors. Walden was counseling a CDC employee who told her about the problems she was having with her relationship with another woman. The employee had gotten emotional because it was a very sensitive situation involving a child in the relationship and forgery in order to steal credit.

It was then that Walden informed the CDC employee that her religious beliefs precluded her from providing counsel. Walden then sought another counselor to handle the client’s referral.

Now even though the client was satisfied with the new counselor, she felt “judged and condemned” by Walden. She also felt that Walden’s body language – her nonverbal communication – indicated disapproval of her relationship.

After an investigation, Walden’s supervisor suggested another way she could refer clients to another counselor without mentioning her “personal values.” Walden was specifically asked if she could tell clients in seeking same-sex relationship advice that she didn’t have relationship counseling experience. Walden refused. Apparently Walden wanted to tell clients that her personal values precluded her from counseling them.

And this is the rest of the story via Pam’s House Blend:

• The CDC later requested Walden’s removal from the contract.

• With no other counseling positions available in the Atlanta area, CSC laid Walden off and noted that she would preserve her benefits if re-hired by CSC within a year.

• Walden refused to pursue further employment with CSC, believing that the inclusion/diversity policies made it hostile toward Christians.

So Marcia Walden’s case is not about her being fired because of her Christian beliefs, but rather she handled duties. When people come in for counseling, it is generally a sensitive situation and they should not be made to feel like they have done anything wrong. Walden chose to express her beliefs in an unprofessional manner and was penalized for it.

By the way, the courts agreed because Walden lost her case.

But as we have seen on so many occasions with so many other cases, she lives on as a religious right cause celebre.

Crossposted on Tikkun

by Ian I. Mitroff

One of the biggest, long-lasting delusions of progressives is that people are moved mainly by rational arguments. Consequently, to get people to accept a particular policy such as universal health care, all one needs to do is to present strong and persuasive arguments in favor of it.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

As George Lakoff and many others have pointed out, conservatives are highly effective in getting their views across and their policies adopted not just because they control major media outlooks and think tanks, but because they have powerful narratives that appeal directly to gut emotions. Until progressives not only have a better understanding of how emotions fundamentally shape political issues, but also incorporate them into their appeals, they will continue to lose the hearts and minds of the wider populace.

Progressives don’t need to abandon rationality altogether. Instead, they need a better theory of it that shows how emotions and reason not only influence one another, but are interdependent. In this regard, psychoanalysis is one of the most powerful theories humans have ever invented.

Creative Commons/wstera21.

Take the important and thorny issue as to how should one treat mass psychosis. From the hateful and incendiary rants of the Tea Partiers; to the unrelenting, over-the-top behavior of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh; to the ceaseless paranoia of the extreme left with regard to business, we are surrounded by out-and-out paranoia.

Splitting is one of the first and most powerful mechanisms that the pioneers of psychoanalysis discovered. Splitting is how very young children cope with a reality far beyond their ability to comprehend. The minds of infants and young children are not yet developed enough to grasp that the “good mother” who meets the child’s every demand and the “bad mother” who disciplines the child are one and the same person. As a result, young children literally split the mother into two distinct and separate beings. They project all of their good feelings on to the good mother and all of the bad ones onto the bad mother.

Splitting does not apply only to young children. Indeed, it occurs throughout all of life. For instance, we regularly split the world into “good guys” and “bad guys,” “friends” versus “foes.” As a result, from time to time, our projections get seriously out of hand as when, for example, one views all Muslims and immigrants as inherently dangerous, and far worse, as evil. For another, we constantly project our unconscious dreams, hopes, fears, and fantasies onto our leaders. To live up to the projections of others is one of the most difficult demands of being a leader.

Stronger still, projections are highly contagious. To be a member of a group is to share its mutual projections, positive and negative. This more than anything else helps to explain the phenomenon of the Tea Party, which goes far beyond mere opposition to President Obama and his policies. The Tea Party’s vicious attacks on Obama — including their allegations that he is a “socialist” (one of the worst imaginable identities for many on the Right), that he “somehow hates white people,” and that he is comparable to Hitler – reflects the Tea Party’s projections. Groups accentuate the best and the worst of our impulses.

From the standpoint of psychoanalysis, how then should any president or leader respond to raw and hateful projections?

Long ago, Wilfred Bion, one of the early giants of psychoanalysis, discovered that one couldn’t reason with psychotics. In an even more general sense, Bion also discovered that there was a psychotic part of everyone’s personality.

Psychotics literally hate reason and thought for if one has to engage in rational thought, one then has to face the true, underlying reasons for one’s immense psychological pain. As a result, they choose unconsciously to run away from pain by avoiding thought altogether. This helps to explain why facts alone are insufficient to dislodge someone from strongly held positions. Without dealing with the underlying emotions that undergird our beliefs, facts and counter-arguments only serve to strengthen a person’s beliefs.

This doesn’t mean that leaders shouldn’t attempt to reason with those who disagree with them. It means that reason devoid of emotion won’t even persuade those who are in fundamental agreement with someone to begin with. The task of a leader is not merely to seek out and reason with those who can bear rational thought but also — much more taxing — to live up to our positive projections.

Projections are never stable. They are not only exceedingly fragile, but constantly in flux. If a leader does not constantly live up to our initial positive projections, then they can quickly turn negative. When this happens, we feel betrayed to our core. The feelings of betrayal are so deep that we are unable to articulate clearly why we feel betrayed.

In abandoning the soaring thought and passion of his campaign for compromise, President Obama has not only lost the enthusiasm of his supporters, but far worse, he has lost the moral authority that is necessary to stand up to mass psychosis.

Ian I. Mitroff is a university professor at the Marshall Goldsmith School of Management and the co-author of Dirty Rotten Strategies: How We Trick Ourselves and Others into Solving the Wrong Problems Precisely (Stanford, 2009).
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“Next Steps for the Anti-Mountaintop Removal Movement” will be a series of interviews with affected residents and activists in the central Appalachian coalfields region, including West Virginia leader Bo Webb, Kentuckian Teri Blanton, Kathy Selvage in Virginia, Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson in Tennessee, and Appalachian Voices legislative aide JW Randolph in Washington, D.C. While the EPA scrambles to enforce the Clean Water Act and a Republican-controlled Congress attempts to defund strip-mining regulatory measures, and various state agencies continue to be embroiled in Big Coal machinations, millions of pounds of devastating explosives are detonated daily across mountain communities in central Appalachia. As a national movement, what should anti-mountaintop removal activists do next?

Living underneath a mountaintop removal mining operation in the Coal River Valley in West Virginia, Bo Webb has emerged as one of the most important frontline voices in the coalfield justice movement. Winner of the Purpose Prize last year, this coal miner’s son has met with and lobbied EPA and OSMRE officials and members of Congress, made personal appeals to President Obama, co-founded the Mountain Justice movement with Judy Bonds and many others, worked with the Coal River Mountain Watch organization, and organized and led numerous protests, marches and health care campaigns in West Virginia and Washington, D.C.

JB: Thanks to years of advocacy and actions by a growing movement, the EPA issued strict guidance rules on mountaintop removal operations last year, which EPA administrator Lisa Jackson acknowledged would end most valley fill operations. Do you think the EPA gone as far as it possibly (and politically) can in “regulating” mountaintop removal or should the EPA still be the focused of lobbying pressure?

BW: Absolutely not. The EPA can simply enforce the Clean Water Act and end mountaintop removal (MTR) now. They have not addressed, tested, or studied the air quality issue of people beneath these MTR sites being forced to breathe toxic blasting fallout of diesel fuel, ammonium nitrate, silica from blasted sandstone rock nor fungal bacteria that may be uncovered with blasting. In the interest of public health the EPA should immediately place a moratorium on all MTR operations until they can conduct a health study of the long-term effects of MTR on the people in communities beneath these sacrifice zones.

JB: Do you think mountaintop removal mining needs to be framed as only an environmental issue — and thus, attracting more support from mainstream environmental organizations in D.C. and beyond — or as a human rights and health care issue?

BW: It has all too often been framed as an environmental issue and in a sense it is, but far greater than it being an environmental issue it is a human rights issue. I spent my day yesterday in the once town of Lindytown and Twilight, WV. Any reasonable thinking person that should visit this place would conclude that they have witnessed the resulting act of ethnic cleansing.

JB: After years of lobbying and leading protests in Charleston, W.V., and Washington, D.C., where do you think the anti-mountaintop removal movement should focus its funds and energy in the next phase — and more importantly, where should foundations and major fundraising efforts be dedicated?

BW: I believe we have accomplished about all we are going to accomplish in WV and Eastern Kentucky. It is time to move pressure on Washington, D.C., to the likes and persistence they have not seen since the Viet Nam War era. We have organized in these two Appalachian states for 40 years. It is now time to stop organizing and start mobilizing. Mobilizing will in itself work to organize.

JB: Appalachia Rising — an alliance of various groups and advocates — brought over 1,000 anti-mountaintop removal protesters to march in Washington, D.C., last summer, where over 100 people were arrested in front of the White House. That was 9 months ago. What has happened since, and should Appalachia Rising just be an annual event to call attention to the mountaintop removal or should it be organizing more sustained and frequent actions?

BW: Actually that number was much greater than 1,000. There were at least 3000 people in the march itself and upwards of 1000 that attended the weekend workshops. We brought an awful lot of people together that came to the frame of mind that they are ready to step up to the next level of mobilization protests as opposed to lobbying congress and the EPA to stop the MTR killing machine. I am very disappointed that we are not taking full advantage of this fact with another planned DC event. I hope that soon we will do that by offering evidence of the ever increasing cancer rates in the MTR sacrifice zones.

JB: The anti-mountaintop removal movement has become a national movement, involving mainstream citizens and environmental organizations based in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco and across Appalachia, direct action groups and affected coalfield residents. A similar national movement to end poverty in Appalachia — and to end strip-mining — took place in the 1960s, and the question was often ask: Who speaks for Appalachia? How role should affected residents in coal mining communities play in the national anti-MTR movement?

BW: Obviously we need help, national help. But the voices of the affected people and their immediate urgency of relief from the health effects of MTR must be heard above that of other concerns including jobs and labor, and unions I might add. Often forgotten aside from the physical health issues of MTR are the mental stress health effects of people living beneath this bombing of our mountains. I know first hand the mental effects of shell shock. I witnessed it and experienced it in Viet Nam. It is evident to me that people living beneath and near this terror are experiencing much the same.

JB: The first bill to end strip-mining was introduced in 1940 by Sen. Everett Dirksen — 70 years ago. US. Rep. Ken Hechler, from WV, introduced a bill to abolish strip-mining in 1970, and held the first hearings on mountaintop removal in 1971. Do you think it is important to maintain a citizens lobby force to push Congress, especially this current Republican-held House, to change course and abolish MTR?

BW: Yes, I do. But with that, there needs to be a much larger effort by non profits, grass roots, and big greens to mobilize their membership. It is time to get out of their seats and into the streets, and a few into the halls of congress to preach about what is happening outside their walls.

JB: Direct action — nonviolent protests and civil disobedience — have been a driving force in the anti-strip-mining movement since the 1960s, and saw renewed interest from campaigns led by Mountain Justice and Climate Ground Zero in West Virginia in the last few years. What role should direct action — either periodical actions or a sustained campaign — play in the future?

BW: It should be constant with a persistent message willing to challenge the status quo. No one that is aware of MTR should ever get a free pass so to speak, no fence sitting for any political group, Christian group or union group. We are all to be held responsible for every death that occurs from the day forth that we become aware of MTR. If we think we are doing all we can, we are wrong, we can do more. As caring human beings we understand that if we are involved in an activity that is causing harm and death to another human being, but we are not aware, then that is forgivable. But when we are given the knowledge of the truth that our activity is harming other human beings we must immediately stop that activity, otherwise we venture into an area of underlying evil. There is a bible passage that addresses this issue. I just happen to have Judy Bonds’ Bible in front of me right now and I quote Hebrew’s 10:26. “For if we sin willfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins.”

JB: Strip-mining takes place in 24 states, including new proposals in the endangered Cook Inlet in Alaska, the Shawnee National Forest in southern Illinois, and wilderness areas near Bryce National Park in Utah. As you know, Sec. of Interior Ken Salazar just green-lighted strip-mining operations in Wyoming that will produce 750 million to 2 billion tons of coal — several times the annual production of all Appalachia. Why should a national anti-mountaintop removal movement only lobby to halt mountaintop removal in 4 central Appalachian states, and not other affected regions?

BW: We need to end all surface mining as soon as we possibly can. We are selling and shipping great amounts of coal overseas, perhaps more than we actually use domestically. Yet, certain politicians and the coal industry rail about the need to mine more coal in the name of energy independence. That is pure BS, and anti-American. To wrap oneself in the flag in that manner in an attempt to deflect the admission of greed is shameful. So, I say all surface mining should be halted as soon as possible, but I believe that MTR surface mining is much more than a coal issue. Again, it is a human rights issue, people are suffering and dying because of it. America’s majestic Appalachian Mountains are being transformed from miraculous incubators of life into tombs of death for all living creatures in the valleys and hollows below. Ending MTR will be a great victory for all of mankind now and our future generations. It is doable, and a great leap toward truly addressing climate change. More than one million acres of God’s carbon capturing forest have been destroyed by MTR. Let’s end MTR first, thereby energizing the movement to move forward and stop this insane path of destruction we are on.

There were hundreds of millions of Kindles and Nooks frozen in death, stuck on one page – “Why America Slept.”  You can say one thing about us, we were a species that scribbled, texted, hologrammed and burst a blood vessel of pixels in the final years.  Every last atrocity was broadcast virally.  By 2015, every consumer could make a major feature film with a gadget fitted to the hand.  We could dial in our imaginary laughing audience for the sound track.  If the revolution wasn’t televised, the end of the world was.  Millions of movies would be found on mounds of corpses, still flickering in fingers and suitcases.  Of the five known mass extinctions in the history of the earth, this was the only one where the dying species seemed to know what it was doing.

It was not a pretty sight, as so much of homo sapiens went down.  By 2020, there was a bitter suspicion that a privileged few would survive with secret technologies in the higher elevations.  It was a planet racing with high budget rumors as it died.  The bitterness was even directed at the coyotes and cockroaches that poured through the front-doors of suburban palaces as families packed their SUV’s for the final drive.  Yes, these millions of corpses had sour expressions on their faces – and still the question floated among us.  Why did America sleep?  The United States of America was supposed to be the hero.  “Saving the world” was the plot for most of the movies in theatres in those last years.   In fact, at the end, most Americans still believed that their habitual heroism was in full force.  But by then, we were stumbling back and forth between virtual and actual worlds.  It was a struggle to the death by competing dreams.

Praying in the Church of Earthalujah during the aftermath of the tsunami in Japan...

America was sleeping deeply, in a dream whose creators were hiding inside skyscrapers with smoked glass. One wonders – could we ever have looked critically at the heavily financed dream-state that became adopted as “normal living.”  Normal living became horrific apocalyptic screaming media, cosmetic heroism, and left-over fundamentalist religions.  This media was often produced by self-identified liberal environmentalists, while off-screen the air and water was utterly poisoned, with tsunamis coming in like big, consciously directed erasers.  If only we had found a way to examine the waking dream by riding into it on the back of a strong counter-dream, like some artists did back in the 20th century…

The American dream turned out to be deadly because it sold tickets to a long series of apocalypses – they are the epitome of good (funny-scary) entertainment.  Then, something went terribly wrong when dying spectacularly made good media – a diverting nightmare shall we say – but we could not go forward with ordinary living, where death has a natural place.  The leaders of the dream, the captains of consumption and militarism – culturally silenced those who thought that death was a natural part of living.  The special effects of mass death continued, while individual death was pushed into endless assisted living, and Americans slept on and on.  We took our imperial eternity for granted.  We shopped and bombed to push back the emptiness.   We swiped the plastic for yet another amazing funny apocalypse.  And then one of them, in mid-joke —-

Some on the right tell us that lgbt equality will trump people’s right to express their religious beliefs. In some cases maybe that’s not a bad idea, such as the following:

U.S. Catholic bishops are urging federal housing officials not to adopt proposed rules that would bar groups that receive federal funds from discriminating against gays, lesbians or transgender persons in housing programs.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development said the new rules, proposed on Jan. 24, would “ensure equal access” to programs that help the elderly, sick, and impoverished find stable housing.

Citing recent studies, HUD said gays and lesbians face discrimination in the private housing market, and one in five transgender persons reports homelessness due to bias.

“In considering the mounting evidence of violence and discrimination against LGBT persons, the department is concerned that its own programs may not be fully open to LGBT individuals and families,” HUD said in January.

Lawyers for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops say the new rules would force some religious groups to compromise their beliefs or quit HUD housing programs.

“Faith-based and other organizations should retain the freedom they have always had to make housing placements in a manner consistent with their religious beliefs, including when it concerns a cohabiting couple, be it an unmarried heterosexual couple or a homosexual couple,” said Anthony Picarello and Michael Moses, lawyers for the bishops conference.

The lawyers’ remarks came in a letter to HUD as part of a public comment period that ended Friday (March 25). A spokeswoman for HUD could not be reached immediately for comment about when the new policy would take effect.

So in other word, these Catholic bishops would let people homeless rather than give housing to someone who may be an lgbt if that person is in a relationship but can’t get married due to the anti-gay marriage laws. That doesn’t strike me as very Christian.

The irony of the situation is that Jesus – whom these bishops claim to serve – was born in a manger because his parents were turn away from the inn on the night of his birth. Apparently there was no room.

Years later there is still no room, but this time it’s in the hearts of those who claim to serve Him. There is no room for love or basic kindness.

Is this what Christianity has become? A selfish precept in which those needing love and support take a backseat to egos?  HUD is the last thing these bishops should worry about if they continue to be show such hatred and callousness in God’s name.

Related post:

Catholic Church Urges HUD On LGBT Americans: “Let Them Go Homeless.”

Act fast because for a limited time only, the Right-wing Web site, Townhall, has a good two-for-one sale on pandering foolishness and ahistorical race-baiting.

As I have said many a time, the White Conservative Soul is quite ill. It is filled to the gills with the poisonous crack rock that is the politics of white racial resentment and victimology. In turn, this addiction is enabled by black conservative, professional Negro sycophants such as Herman Cain, Niger Innis, Juan Williams, Michael Steele, Allen West, and “journalist” Star Parker. Collectively, they are the metaphorical (if not literal) smokescreen for some of the most onerous policies of the New Right.

In their broken-record-like performance, popular black conservatives hit all the talking points as they smile, grin, shuffle, and legitimate a narrative in which black Americans are dumb, stupid, on a “plantation,” and incapable of making well-reasoned political choices. By implication, white people — and conservatives in particular — are endowed with a special wisdom and agency that black Americans are not. The premise from which the black conservative imagination flows is excreta-filled because of its utter disdain for the black community. The implications for their parroted Right-wing dogma are just as vile precisely because the wellsprings are so befouled.

Even given the low standards of intellectual rigor common to the Right-wing echo chamber, I always try to find a kernel of fact or historical truth in their utterances. John Rossomondo’s piece, “Socialist Thought has Crippled Black America” (where he, as the good, noble, white “father” offers resplendent insights into the “pathologies” of black people) is an epic fail even by the Right’s low standards.

Some choice excerpts:

Leading black conservatives lay blame for black America’s rampant poverty and other ills squarely at the feet of the socialist orientation of black leaders such as Al Sharpton.

They say the black intelligentsia’s rhetoric has created a defeatist and demoralizing climate that has robbed millions of black Americans of hope and has sentenced them to an impoverished existence.

“The biggest tragedy in all of this is that the blacks did not know the poison of socialism and communism,” Innis says. “And they were led to believe it was the only alternative for fighting Jim Crow and pushing back against segregation…”

The black elites’ Marxist dialectic has pit white versus black and rich versus poor, and has disempowered countless black Americans in the process by promoting collective hatred and jealousy.

“It has really hurt the black community because the real uplift in this country is through individual initiative, activity and entrepreneurship,” says Bishop E.W. Jackson Sr., a prominent conservative black minister and Tea Partier. “This mindset that you are owed something and everything has to be the same for everybody is a very dangerous and insidious attitude that has crept into the black community.”

Beyond what is an obviously piss-poor reading of history, there is so much wrong here.

Nowhere in Rossomondo’s piece is there a signal to the realities of white supremacy, the power and influence of structures, the intersections of race and class where capitalism was used as a bludgeon to underdevelop black America’s economy, or the realities of the racial state — in either its color-conscious past or its colorblind present.

Even more absurdly, in the racial imagination of contemporary conservatism it was somehow super-powered black villains such as the dastardly Jesse Jackson and the maniacal Al Sharpton who created a two-tiered labor market, slashed the federal budget, and implemented racist bank-lending practices which red-lined neighborhoods to make them ineligible for VA and FHA loans.

Conversely, John Rossomondo’s race-baiting essay ignores the deep traditions of capitalism and entrepreneurial behavior by black Americans from slavery to freedom where bonds people rented out their own labor and worked independently of the plantation as mechanics and artisans, to the importance of such legendary figures as Madam C.J. Walker, or even to the near-present, where the civil rights movement was struggling for equality in the consumer’s republic.

Moreover, the idea that black resistance to white supremacy is somehow morally equivalent with white racism is the most problematic of the many fictions offered by the race-baiting, yellow journalism of the right. A belief in equal culpability is so historically myopic as to be dim. Nevertheless, the lie of false equivalence has become one of the key tenets of conservative victimology because it fuels the Right’s specious and laughable claims that white people are somehow oppressed. Sadly, the big lie that equates black anger at white supremacy with white resentment (at being forced to deliver in some small ways on a metaphorical check stamped “insufficient funds”) has so seeped into the neo-liberal, post-civil rights dialogue, that even President Obama in his vaunted 2008 campaign speech on race was forced to kneel and kiss said ring.

In total, the Right’s deployment of the phrase “black Marxist intellectuals” is a catch-all laden with buzzwords designed to scare and frighten the White Conservative Soul. Those “crazy Negroes” are fifth-columnists and Socialists who cannot be trusted — a frame echoed by the charges that President Obama, a die-hard corporatist, is somehow a socialist. Those “intellectuals” are also high-foreheaded, book-reading “elitists” who dare to think that they know better than the white populist, “real American,” tea-baggers, such as the mama grizzlies and Joe the Plumbers. And most frightening to the racial id of the White Conservative Soul, as kin to the “giant Negroes” which haunt the darkest recesses of the white racial id, those black Marxist intellectuals are interested in redistributing America’s resources, getting reparations, and stealing the “well-deserved” monies of good, hard-working white people in order to give them to the undeserving masses of brown and black folk.

I have a simple request: If popular black conservatives are going to play the role of a succubus riding the chest and whispering into the ear of their white conservative masters as they lay intertwined in an intimate embrace on top of the soiled carcass which was the common good and the American middle class, that black conservatives at least make an effort to tell better lies, and to obfuscate history with more deft aplomb, as it would make for better sport.

Black Americans are a blues people. With that comes an appreciation for the ironies, tragedies, and triumphs of this country. We are also radical in our commitment to justice and equality. But in no way are we traitors to the American tradition. If anything, black Americans loved a country which did not love us back, and worked, died, and struggled so that the promise of democracy would be made whole for all.

And while this will be news to some, conservatives are not the exclusive flame-holders or guardians of American liberty. As exemplified by the muckraking tone of pieces such as “Socialist Thought has Crippled Black America,” the Right, already teetering on the wrong side of history, is poised to fall into its maw as it leans over to take one more hit of the crack-like, meth-infused drug that is white racial resentment. I only hope that it falls gracefully and does not reach out for a saving hand, as I am loathe to interfere with gravity’s inexorable pull.

What really happened in Wyoming last week?

Perhaps we should ask billionaire coal hauler Warren Buffett, the “Oracle of Omaha.”

Energy and climate analysts and Big Green organizations are still staggering around for an answer to the Obama administration’s blockbuster news in Wyoming’s coalfields last week to green-light the mining of an estimated 750 million-2.4 billion tons of coal on public lands. According to environmental analysts, “when burned, the coal threatens to release more than 3.9 billion tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, equal to the annual emissions from 300 coal-fired power plants.”

As Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar scrambles to explain his wildly exaggerated claims of the coal lease sales from his announcement, the truth is that this mind-boggling announcement comes on the heels of EPA administrator’s proposed new rules to crack down on mercury emissions from coal-fired plants–that will, in effect, continue the move away from coal-fired energy.

It would be easy to point an accusing finger at Salazar, the former cowboy Senator from neighboring coal-rich Colorado who accepted massive amounts of contributions from dirty energy companies, and whose Bureau of Land Management quietly gave the green light for another 430 million tons of coal at the Antelope strip mine in Wyoming last year (within hours of the EPA’s crackdown on mountaintop removal mining operations in central Appalachia).

But I don’t think Salazar is the culprit on this Wyoming spring sale: President Obama needs to be called out for his less than transparent catering to his long-time billionaire and coal-profiteering friends.

(Warren Buffett receives the Medal of Freedom at the White House on Feb. 15, 2011)

Consider this: One month after jointly visiting Arch Coal’s mammoth Black Thunder strip mine in Wyoming with a fleet of nine private jets, billionaires Bill Gates and Warren Buffett sat in President Obama’s Oval Office on December 14th and discussed ways to improve the economy.

As the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett understands the economics of coal better than anyone: He owns the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad that transports most of Wyoming’s vast coal supply around the country, along with the utility company, MidAmerican Energy, which operates 11 coal-fired power plants, including four in Wyoming. To be fair, MidAmerican Energy also generates an estimated 2.9 MW of wind energy.

(Little secret: While central Appalachia tends to make the news for its horrific mountaintop removal operations and underground mine disasters, Wyoming is truly King Coal, and provides 40 percent of our nation’s coal production.)

Plains Justice, a citizens group on the mining frontlines in the Powder River Basin, has long called the federal land leasing program “the biggest corporate bail-out of all.” Clean Energy Action in Colorado has also questioned the growing and largely overlooked costs of coal mining in the Powder River Basin.

Everyone in the coal biz also knows that last week’s spring sale giveaway in Wyoming has as much to do with a controversial and impending coal export terminal proposed in the state of Washington–and geared toward Asian markets—as much as US markets.

Only days before their December meeting with the President, market analysts were abuzz with Buffett’s and Gate’s interest in the coal industry. One headline blurted out: Billionaires want coal for Christmas.

Well, looks like the billionaire’s coal Christmas came in March.

Let’s look at the timeline:

Nov. 10: Gates and Buffett visit Arch Coal’s mine in Wyoming, and Buffett hails the trip as “fascinating.”

Dec. 10: Wall Street is already certain that Buffett will continue this gamble on coal.

Dec. 14th. Gates and Buffett meet with Obama at the White House to discuss the economy.

Jan 6th: Wall Street analysts now say Buffett is betting BIG on COAL.

Feb. 15th: President Obama awards Buffett the Medal of Freedom at the White House.

Feb. 26th: In Buffet’s annual Berkshire Hathaway Shareholder Letter, he reminds all listeners that his coal-transporting railroads (nearly 300 million tons of coal a year) “will increase Berkshire’s “normal” earning power by nearly 40% pre-tax and by well over 30% after-tax.”

March 23rd: Citing the nuclear tragedy in Japan and world energy needs, Salazar opens 750 million-2.4 billions tons of coal on public lands in Wyoming, only days after EPA administrator Lisa Jackson cracks down on coal-fired plants.

Ah, the great game of capitalism and Big Coal machinations.

And the great dirty coal ship moves on.

The nightmare for far too many is Cyborgs. The public fears HAL, the 2001 Space Odyssey computer that killed astronauts rather than forfeit its objective.

So terrified of the sentient machine, citizens overlook the allegory. The soft-spoken, reasonable-sounding HAL behaves exactly like a greed-driven, multi-national corporation. The corporate mission is profit. With 29 workers massacred in a Massey mine explosion and 11 slain in the BP oil rig explosion in just one month last year, greedy corporations have shown they’re willing to kill rather than forfeit their profit objective.

In America, the UK and Europe, the entities that should be feared — greedy corporations — are pulling politicians’ strings. Reckless speculation by multi-national financial corporations took down the world economy, creating the worst recession since the Great Depression. Governments – in the UK, Europe and America – used worker tax dollars to bail out the banks. Now those big banks are granting outsized bonuses and pay packages to their executives while demanding that governments balance recession-ruined budgets with cuts to social services, education, pay and pensions for government workers and worker’s rights to collectively bargaining for better lives.

Workers, students and pensioners in the UK and Europe have protested these measures for a year, from general strikes in Greece to national strikes in France. In the U.K. students, in the largest numbers since the 1960s, protested education fee increases. Last weekend, the U.K.’s Trades Union Congress (TUC) organized the March for the Alternative in which a quarter million demonstrators walked for five hours in London to protest austerity imposed on workers while corporations get breaks.

The diamond-crusted rich on both sides of the Atlantic have determined that workers and the vulnerable will pay the consequences of the bankster-caused recession. And they’re exploiting the financial crisis to strip workers of collective bargaining rights, preventing them from ever regaining what they’ve lost.

That is what’s going on in Wisconsin — and in a half dozen other American states where right-wing legislatures and governors are passing or pressing for legislation decimating workers’ rights to collectively bargain, even after workers accepted pay cuts to help balance budgets.

The disingenuousness of these right-wing governors in blaming public employees is clear. First of all, many of the state leaders granted huge tax breaks to corporations, lowering the states’ anticipated revenues, then demanded state workers bear the brunt of filling budget deficits.

Second, many of these governors didn’t stop at demanding public workers accept pay cuts. They also insisted on terminating workers’ rights to bargain for better pay, benefits and working conditions in the future. In addition, these right-wingers are meddling in the relationship between private sector unions and corporations. They want to forbid private employers from subtracting union dues from paychecks and remitting the money to the union. And they want to pass legislation intended to bankrupt unions and to prevent them from supporting progressive candidates who would treat workers fairly and protect their rights.

This is how it played out in Wisconsin: The governor, right-winger Scott Walker, gave corporations more than $100 million in tax cuts then decreed that public workers, such as teachers, nurses and librarians, take wage and benefit concessions. And Walker threatened to send out the National Guard, a state-run militia despite the name, to quell protests. This raised the specter of the May 4, 1970 massacre at Kent State when Ohio National Guardsmen called out by the governor gunned down unarmed students protesting the Vietnam War.

Contrary to Walker’s expectations, his threat energized opposition. Repeatedly, tens of thousands of workers, students, retirees, environmentalists, religious leaders and children poured into the streets and occupied the state capitol building in Madison, Wisconsin to protest the right-wingers’ plan.

Walker’s proposal passed in the state Assembly and needed a vote in the state Senate before it could get to his desk for final signature. To prevent a quorum needed to vote on the measure, all 14 Democratic senators left the state. They became known as the “Fab 14” as they remained holed up in hotels in Illinois for weeks, trying to negotiate a less draconian measure with the governor.

Although public opinion polls showed 60 percent of Wisconsin citizens opposed cutting collective bargaining rights, although workers already had accepted the pay reductions Gov. Walker had contended were vital to balance the budget, although protestors occupied the capitol building with a sit-in and sleep-in for weeks, the right wingers devised a scheme, in a secret meeting behind doors locked to the public, to vote without a quorum to deny government workers their collective bargaining rights.

In the midst of the dispute, Gov. Walker revealed his puppet masters – the Koch brothers, owners of the Georgia-Pacific paper company, with plants in the United States and the U.K. While contending he had no time to talk to progressive leaders or union officials about his union-busting legislation, Gov. Walker jumped on the phone for 20 minutes when told the caller was billionaire David Koch. The billionaire was Walker’s second largest campaign contributor; he provided $1 million to a fund to attack Walker’s opponent, and he bankrolls the right-wing’s right-wing, the Tea Party.

Events in some other countries show it doesn’t have to be this way. Brazil just passed a law giving unions a director’s seat on each board of a state-owned company. And in Australia, progressive labor legislation has enabled unions to increase membership by 20 percent in the past two years.
There are some signs of success in U.S. workers’ struggle to stop the corporate-backed right-wing campaigns. A Wisconsin judge has halted implementation of the union-busting measure because the way conservatives passed it appears illegal. And progressives are working to recall – or remove from office – eight right-wing Wisconsin senators who voted against worker rights. They’ve pledged to mount a recall campaign against Gov. Walker as soon as it’s legally possible.

In addition, labor activists and their supports have derailed proposed anti-union legislation in Indiana and Missouri.

That’s an indication of what coordinated coalitions of citizen protesters can do. That’s an indication that organized workers with their allies can take on global capital and win.

The difference between HAL and corporations is that HAL is fictional while greedy multi-national corporations are real threats. In the end, a human defeated HAL. In democracies, workers united with their allies can take on corporations and win as well.