I love Joe Biden. I mean it. I LOVE Joe Biden

At the TAPS National Military Survivor Seminar and Good Grief Camp in Arlington, Virginia, Joe Biden stood in front of a room full of military families who had lost loved ones in the service of our country.  He stood with his wife, Jill, by his side and spoke from the heart in a voice thick with emotion, talking about his own losses--the deaths of his first wife and 18-month-old daughter in a horrific auto accident when he was but 29 years old and a new senator-elect--but he wasn't looking to one-up that group by telling his own sad story; nor was he asking for pity.

(Image credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

 He was one of them and he knew how they felt.  At that moment, he dropped the role of Vice President and became just one among many survivor group participants.  He understood how the sudden death of someone you love can send you over the edge, thinking only of ways to relieve the raging, relentless gut pain you feel every time the finality hits:

"It was the first time in my career, in my life, I realized someone could go out -- and I probably shouldn't say this with the press here, but no, but it's more important, you're more important. For the first time in my life, I understood how someone could consciously decide to commit suicide. Not because they were deranged, not because they were nuts; because they had been to the top of the mountain, and they just knew in their heart they would never get there again."

He gave the talk of his life (although he may not know it yet), and out of it came another remarkable confession.  He said when his son Beau finished his tour of duty in the Middle East, he couldn't help but feel guilty.  His son, his beloved son--one of two sons who miraculously survived that horrible accident so many years before--had come home whole when so many other sons and husbands hadn't.  Guilt is not an uncommon feeling among families whose loved ones have survived in places where others have lost their lives, but here was the vice president of the United States, without guile or lofty sense of privilege, confessing feelings rarely spoken out loud by anybody.   (Rachel Maddow played an extended clip of his speech. You can watch it here.)

In his next speech, reported to be against Mitt Romney, it'll be political business as usual.  In the coming days there will be repeats of those moments when his struggle for the right words will fit into the goofy category--fine fodder for the foaming media lightweights.  But he proved his mettle today, in a way that few politicians ever do.

Joe Biden is a good man.  He may be one of our best when it comes to showing us how one can be a career politician and a caring, feeling human being at the same time.  I want him to be the vice president for the next four years, and if he wants the presidency after that, I'll work my heart out for him.

And let no one try to tell me he's not worthy.

Hatred in a Lovely Church

As I watched that hideous video showing Pastor Charles Worley's recent headline-grabbing rants about penning gays and lesbians inside miles-long electrified corrals until they die, I couldn't help but notice his surroundings. (Okay, go and watch it if you haven't seen it.  But then come back and we'll talk.)

He preaches his particular style of self-righteous, good ol' boy hate from the pulpit of the Providence Road Baptist Church in Maiden, NC.  This is not a store-front or a rustic, backwoods building, it's a beautiful traditional church, obviously designed and built with the prospect of honoring the Christian God.

If you could turn off the sound and watch this man Worley as he clutches his bible and moves around his pulpit, you might be lulled into thinking you were watching a man of God preaching in God's house.  No such thing exists in that building posing as a church.

Picture a wedding in that space (a wedding between straight white adults, of course--proof of intelligence apparently not required), a baptism (poor baby), a funeral (I'm not going there).  Many loving hands keep that interior pristine and lovely.  Deep pockets provide the heavy-duty funding necessary to keep the building maintained.  All so that their chosen pastor can step to the front on a Sunday morning and propose a final solution for lesbians and gays.

A group called the Catawba Valley Citizens against Hate is planning a peaceful protest at Providence Road Baptist on Sunday, May 27.  They're trying to organize the rally on Facebook and I'm trying to help them by posting the link here.  (Please pass it on.)

This is how those good people want it to go: 

Reminder: This event is a peaceful protest organized in the ideals of Dr. Martin Luther King and Gandhi. All participants of this direct action must vow to remain peaceful and non-violent. We will not scream, shout or taunt Pastor Worley or his church's members. We will not vandalize, threaten or injury property or persons. We will allow law enforcement to handle harassment and disputes that may arise. Protest Peace Keepers will be in charge and will provide instructions. If you cannot vow to remain peaceful & non-violent, then this event may not be for you.

If you're going to be anywhere near that area in North Carolina, please help them out.  Huge crowds of peacekeeping activists would be great, but if you can't get there (as most of us can't) let's show our support by visiting their Facebook page to cheer them on. 

 (By the way, please don't confuse the Providence Road Church with the Providence Baptist Church in Charlotte, NC.  They don't like that.  With good reason.)

(Also, if you Google Providence Road Church and click on the link to their website, it'll take you to a dead end.  They've flown the coop.  So much for pride in their accomplishments.)

(UPDATE 5/27:  Anderson Cooper interviews a Worley defender.  You have to see it to believe it.  http://youtu.be/ez0AMf2U5RU )

Fair Weather Dems will be the Death of Us Yet

When November 6 rolls around, American voters will have only three meaningful choices in the presidential election:  We can vote for Barack Obama, we can vote for Mitt Romney,  or we can opt out of voting for a president altogether.  There will be other presidential candidates on the ballot but there's not a snowball's chance they'll win.  If we choose to vote for anyone other than Obama or Romney,  it'll have the same effect as not voting at all.  That's the reality--that's the way it is.  

We can say we're voting our conscience by voting against the two top contenders, but that's the kind of satisfaction that's filling but fleeting.  It's here and then it's gone.  One of those two is going to win, and we will have to live with the voters' choice for the next four years.

 In a conversation the other day, someone--an admitted Democrat and progressive--said it had to be Romney, simply because Obama needed to learn a hard lesson.  He has failed us so completely he doesn't deserve another term.  (What wasn't said but could be seen hanging in the air were two words guaranteed to settle any argument of that measure:  "So there.") 

This person went on to ask, how much worse could it be with Romney as president, anyway?  And mightn't it be better for us in 2016 if the Dems aren't rewarded this time for their transgressions?  (Reminder: Democrat/progressive speaking.)

While the others involved in the conversation wouldn't necessarily go quite that far, they leaped on the bandwagon careening toward "Screw Obama and the Democrats."  Boy, were they mad!  They were so mad they completely forgot that screwing the Democrats meant essentially screwing themselves.  Pointing that out to them only added to their anger.  They were already screwed, and it was all Obama's fault.  And it was all the Democrats' fault.  And they will be made to pay.

 I'll skip the rest of the conversation, except to add that there was some talk of giving up being a Democrat until 2016, when the opportunity to elect real progressives might present itself.  (In other words, they'll be Democrats when and if being a Democrat is cool again, but don't expect them to do anything to make that happen.)

To this dedicated, lifetime Democrat (yes, I've talked about this before) that's like saying they'll give up being an American until America comes to its senses.  Being a member of a major political party--one with power and clout and the potential ability to make real societal change--is not a part-time, fair weather pastime; it's a privilege and an obligation.  It requires commitment and hard work.  It requires a studious analysis of past and present performance in order to understand our role in strengthening our platform and choosing our stable of potential leaders.

It requires that we honor the heroes of our party and work to keep the fruits of their hard labor relevant, sustained and not in vain.  It requires that we vet our candidates, draw out the very best, and support them to the hilt.

 As Democrats we've signed on to stand firm against our enemies--the enemies of the people--and form a coalition that can't be broken.  It's the only way we can fight against the privateers and build our country back again.  So we work to maintain our party and when our leaders disappoint us or go against what our party stands for (not unheard of, sorry to say), we're required to set them straight.  We never let up.  We make them act like Democrats.

What we don't do is pick up our toys and go home.  And we sure as hell don't work against our elected leaders and help the other guys win. 

Women, Gays and Barack Obama's Ear

The big news yesterday -- no, the HUGE news -- was President Obama's interview with ABC's Robin Roberts, set up specifically so that he could air his own personal views about gay people being able to marry their same-sex partners:  After much soul-searching and a couple of decades of "evolving", he was finally ready to say out loud that he's all for it.

He did go on to say that it should be left to the states to decide their own policies concerning the legalities of such unions, but the die was cast;  the mold was formed:  A sitting president took a positive public stand, albeit a personal one, on the issue of gay marriage.

As might have been expected, the fundie leaders in the Right Wing Religiousphere took it hard.  Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council was all over the airwaves protesting the president's comments.   (Kudos to CNN's Soledad O'Brien, the product of mixed-race parents who married when most states outlawed such marriages, for turning an interview into a real debate, thus punching bloody holes in Perkins' many lame arguments.)

Small-government advocate and current Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney came forward like the good soldier he is and said, no ifs, ands, or buts (for now) -- no, no, no to gay marriage, or even civil unions, or anything else that might require Big Government (that would be him if he wins) to step in and make more rules disregarding civil rights.

 Leaders of states that probably weren't going to go Obama's way in November anyway jumped in to remind him that he was committing political suicide over this.

Some Black church leaders voiced their opposition to Obama's views, sending a message that might possibly still resonate in November.

So, yes, even though his comments to Robin Roberts won't amount to a hill of beans in the legal world and won't change a thing in the states that are rabid about banning gay marriage (Two days ago, North Carolina became the 30th state to ban same-sex unions), Obama's admission of his own personal feelings is the stuff dreams are made of.   Both sides will see it as a world class political haymaker.

But what made the president's comments so memorable was the fact that, while he would have preferred to sidestep this particular bombshell of an issue forever if need be, it appears it was his wife and his daughters who ultimately convinced him that, while he might be president of these United States -- an all-powerful position requiring the wisdom of Solomon and the unbiased judgment of, say, the theoretical Supreme Court, his earlier published views on the subject were about as wrongheaded as it gets.

They talked to him about love and how it works in mysterious ways, and his daughters let him know how much it hurt them that, by his own admission, the best he could come up with was that he was still 'evolving' on that particular issue.

There were many juicy quote-bites one could pull out of that interview, but this one got me right where my heart beats loudest:

"You know, Malia and Sasha, they've got friends whose parents are same-sex couples. And I-- you know, there have been times where Michelle and I have been sittin' around the dinner table. And we've been talkin' and-- about their friends and their parents. And Malia and Sasha would-- it wouldn't dawn on them that somehow their friends' parents would be treated differently. It doesn't make sense to them. And-- and frankly-- that's the kind of thing that prompts-- a change of perspective. You know, not wanting to somehow explain to your child why somebody should be treated-- differently, when it comes to-- the eyes of the law." 

 Okay, I'm a sucker for a good dad, no matter what kind of house he lives in, so it's understandable why I might latch onto that one particular part of the conversation.  But I watched the entire interview; I watched the body language and listened to the tone of voice.  I saw an everyman wrestling with his ethos, not a politician striving to convince, and I rejoiced.

 But--I'll grant you--it didn't hurt that Joe Biden, our beloved, wacky veep, got to gushing about his own feelings on gay marriage on Sunday's "Meet the Press".  The next day the Washington Post's Dana Milbank called it a "gaffe" (a word that seems to cling to Biden as tightly as his own shadow) and the press took off running.  (Note to Joe:  It's far better to be gaffe-prone than to be mean-prone.  So far, you're okay, man.)

The vice president said he is “absolutely comfortable” with same-sex marriage, committing the classic Washington gaffe of accidentally speaking the truth. This bit of straight talk made Obama’s position — neither for nor against such unions but in an evolutionary state, not unlike the Galapagos finch — all the more untenable. On Monday, Biden took off for a campaign event in Tennessee, leaving Carney on cleanup duty. But the more Carney swabbed the mess, the more it spread. 

I frankly don't get it.  How exactly did Joe Biden's own personal views on gay marriage conflict with anything the president might have said about that same issue?  There is no actual blending of the pair, simply because they're Leaders One and Two.  They aren't contractually obligated to agree personally on all issues.  I didn't see it as "one-upping" the president, I saw it as Biden being Biden.  Especially when he got to the part about "Will and Grace".  (Debra Messing ("Grace") says it's right up there in the top five moments of her life, so you see, it's striking chords everywhere. )

Well, apparently even the president felt that Joe had overstepped "his skis" or some such.  But publicly he's okay with it, and I get the feeling that he, like me, loves old Joe, gaffes and all.  (And who wouldn't?)

Immediately after the Sunday news hours, it was out there, people were talking, and the entire White House had to grind to a halt and address the elephant in the room.  Does the president support gay marriage or doesn't he?  So on Wednesday, President Obama sat down with Good Morning America's Robin Roberts and talked at length about the issue he had so studiously worked to avoid.

Yes, it was calculated and ultimately political, but the essence of it, the way the president chose to address it, was as much heaven to me as it had to be hellish for his political opponents, those so intent on ousting Barack Obama they have no problem casting him as evil incarnate--the devil himself

I saw a man who might finally understand that there are times when it's not only essential but soul-satisfying to separate the thoughts of the person from the decisions of the presidency.  And that "evolution" doesn't work as a handy substitute for equivocation.  And that sometimes political expedience isn't all it's cracked up to be.

My mother was Finnish-Lutheran and my father was Italian-Catholic.  They celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary just nine months before my mom died, and they loved each other to the end.  What if the powers-that-be had arbitrarily decided that Finns and Italians couldn't marry?  Or that Lutherans and Catholics couldn't marry?  How different is that from deciding that blacks and whites couldn't marry or that same-sex partners couldn't marry?  They're all consenting adults with the capacity to love one another, and if marriage is the desired tie that binds, it's a sad and sorry law that seeks to outlaw fidelity instead of celebrating it.

I think the president always got that.  He only just now, thanks in part to the women in his life, found the cojones to say it out loud.

--Ramona

May Day! May Day! A little help here. . .

Today is May First, or May Day.  It's the day when workers around the world traditionally rally to show solidarity and support for one another.  It's the real Labor Day. While our own Labor Day has become a holiday, a day of picnics and celebration, May Day is and always will be an international day of protest--a reminder of worker rights and worker dignity in a world gone mad with greed.

Labor in America is under siege, like nothing we've seen in this country since the 1930s.  Whatever wage scales and rights and protections had been fought for and won over the years have slowly eroded away in this new, bizarre and reckless version of take-over capitalism. 

This year, here in America, planners have been at it for months, organizing what they're hoping will be a May Day to remember.  There is talk of a general strike, but whether the grass-roots activists are able to get it up and running is still to be seen.  Media for the 99 percent is planning to live-stream events across the country.  You can watch it here:  (No sign of James Dobson this year, by the way.  He will be missed.)



Two years ago, I wrote a piece that included the origins of May Day. In case you missed it, here it is again.  Note there is no mention of the Occupy movements.  That's because they barely existed then. Now Occupy Wall Street and the spin-offs are forces to be reckoned with, just the tonic to wake up the sleeping giant known as labor. We'll see what happens today.  The OWS website is going to livestream events around the world today.  I hope you're out there, and I hope it's big.

May Day: Workers of the World, Hang in There

In a proclamation printed just before May 1, 1886, one publisher appealed to working people with this plea:

•Workingmen to Arms!

•War to the Palace, Peace to the Cottage, and Death to LUXURIOUS IDLENESS.

•The wage system is the only cause of the World's misery. It is supported by the rich classes, and to destroy it, they must be either made to work or DIE.

•One pound of DYNAMITE is better than a bushel of BALLOTS!

•MAKE YOUR DEMAND FOR EIGHT HOURS with weapons in your hands to meet the capitalistic bloodhounds, police, and militia in proper manner.        IWW, The Brief Origins of May Day         

Okay, so that's the kind of thing that gave Socialists a bad name.  In the name of civility and good manners we've moved on to less violent (but probably less effective) ways of getting our message across.  The larger point here, though, is that since the 19th century, workers of the world have embraced May Day as the day to honor the sacrifices of the laboring classes.

In 1958, despite Joe McCarthy's earlier best efforts,  the Cold War Commies and Socialists were still purportedly climbing out from under every rock in every little burg in the US.  The VFW saw trouble in those May Day celebrations and foiled those plotters by renaming it "Loyalty Day".  Congress made it official and Ike actually signed it into law, but now, apart from a few VFW chapters and a few small towns, Loyalty Day is pretty much forgotten. (Not that loyalty isn't important, mind you. It is.  My loyalty to labor knows no bounds.)

But despite their best efforts, May Day demonstrations in America are still going strong.  Much of it centers on the controversial Arizona  "Show your Papers" law today, as hundreds of thousands in cities and towns all across the country are scheduled to march in solidarity against immigration and worker abuses. 

But even as I write this James Dobson, formerly of Focus on the Family, is leading  May Day, a Cry to God for a Nation in Distress on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.  Dobson and others, including Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association,  are calling it a "day of repentance and remembrance",  addressing "The greatest moral crisis since the Civil War", which seems to include abortion, Obamacare, Obama in general, and the scary notion that there are more "Socialists" than Republicans running Congress these days.

The Liberty Council will be there, as well.  They wouldn't want to pass up a chance to sell  their membership cards:

Oy. . .

So.  May our efforts this May Day and every day forward bring peace and equity to those who break their backs struggling to build this nation.  Solidarity until the sun ceases to shine or until worker equity is a reality.  Whichever comes first.

Ramona

Mr. Auctioneer: Saving Our Homes One by One

 
Yesterday there was a rally in front of the 22nd District Court in Inkster, Michigan, where foreclosure proceedings were being held.  The protesters were there to help save the home of Jerome Jackson, a paraplegic who moved into his wheelchair-accessible home in 2004 with the assistance of Community Living Services, a county-funded program that provided help with his mortgage payments.  When CLS dropped Jackson's funding in 2009, he fell behind on his payments and Fannie Mae eventually bought his mortgage at a foreclosure auction.  He was a man without a home, but he stayed put, hoping they could work it out and the house might someday be his again.

No amount of pleading could sway the steadfast bottom-liners from moving toward the day when Jerome Jackson would finally be evicted.  No addition funding came his way, even though he is handicapped and certainly qualifies.  Payment modification appears to have been out of the question.  The house now belongs to an entity given personhood by our Supreme Court without also having given it a heart.

A story told many times before, most often with a less-than-happy ending, but Jerome Jackson isn't fighting his battle against the Big Guys alone.  A loose coalition made up of UAW Local 600 and members of three local groups--Occupy Detroit, Moratorium Now, and People Before Banks--have taken up the cause and are responsible for organizing this rally (and others, as needed):

The banks were bailed out for their reckless profiteering
and fraudulent practices because they were “too big to fail.”
Jerome Jackson is “too human to discard.”

 Whatever the outcome, let it be said that the people tried.

There was a time when we might have read this story and moved on, saddened by the prospect but generally acknowledging that--poor man--what's done is done.  We've been there, we've done that, over and over again.  What we're left with are numbers of foreclosures and evictions across the country so unbelievable it feels like something out of a depression-era novel.  What we're left with is a whole lot of suffering, the causes of which smack suspiciously of callous profiteering, alternately smacking of outright criminal cruelty.

Much of my own state, Michigan, is struggling with heavy foreclosure rates, but in Detroit the statistics are especially grim. Roger Bybee put it into perspective in his "In These Times" piece yesterday:

Abysmal poverty afflicts the city; 40,000 households have suffered water shutoffs. The specter of thousands of new home foreclosure stalks the city, threatening to push more Detroiters out of their homes on top of the 67,000 bank foreclosures—more than 20 percent of all household mortgages—that hit the city between 2005 and 2009 alone. The city already has an estimated 50,000 to 70,000 vacant homes. With the ongoing wave of foreclosures, home values have been plunging. Foreclosed homes sell for $38,000 in Wayne County and less than $11,000 in Detroit, according to RealtyTrac.

Bybee writes of a particular foreclosure effort that didn't follow the norm, thanks to the efforts of caring individuals joining together as a formidable coalition:

Labor educator Steve Babson, a leader of People Before Banks and author of Working Detroit, recounted a recent action that was “a scene straight out of Charles Dickens." An elderly African-American couple, with husband William legally blind, missed some mortgage payments to the New York Bank of Mellon Trust. In a sheriff’s sale, the bank bought the home for $12,000, meaning that the Garretts would have to move from their home of 22 years in the dead of winter.
At one point, Bertha Garrett thought that she had persuaded the bank to sell the home to the Garretts for the $12,000 that the couple had managed to scrape together. But then the bank backed out of the deal, insisting on a sale price of $24,000, far out of reach for the couple.

Usually, what happens next step in the foreclosure process is the arrival of a truck hauling a dumpster, with a crew ready to throw out a family’s belongings. But UAW 600 and its allies confronted the would-be eviction team with a tactic appropriate to the Motor City: cars and lots of them. The anti-foreclosure forces surrounded the Garretts’ home with dozens of cars, and the bank’s evictors were shut out. When the eviction squad called in the police, officers came to the scene but dismissed it as a “civil matter” and drove off. That left the anti-foreclosure forces still in command of the situation, and the evictors left the scene.
Meanwhile, some 40 protesters—about half from Local 600—picketed outside the Mellon bank to publicize its treatment of the Garretts. With the eviction foiled and the prospect of bad publicity growing, the Mellon bank relented and sold the Garretts’ home back to them for $12,000.

(NOTE:  No, I don't know how the Garretts came up with the needed $12,000.  I've anticipated that question from the folks who think all economic victims got that way on purpose, so here's my answer:  I'll bet my life that they weren't hiding it under their mattress, waiting to pull it out just in the nick of time, guaranteeing a rip-roaring miracle of a finish to what seemed in the early scenes like a real tragedy.  The point, you ninnies, is that the bank reneged on an agreement and asked for double the amount, just because they could.)

Attempts to stop foreclosure actions are taking place all over the country.  One particularly innovative way is to sing it.  This video is from a courtroom in New York, but the "Mr. Auctioneer" song is traveling fast and is now being sung in rallies and in foreclosure courts all across the nation.  (Rachel Maddow's take here.)

 Mr. Auctioneer

All the people here 

Are asking you to stop all the sales right now

We’re going to survive, but we don’t know how

Foreclosure protest singers being led out of a NY courtroom

 
Is this just the start of something big?  Or is it already big? 

It appears to be big.  People are gathering in organized protests in all corners of the country and the word "occupy" is taking on a whole new meaning.  It's not just about Wall Street anymore.  It's moved to our cities, our towns, our neighborhoods.  It's about where we live and how we live and who gets to decide.

Everywhere there are coalitions forming to combat the coalitions intent on keeping the Honkin' Big Bonanza going, but to see what's happening locally you need look no further than the nearest union hall.  Check out their websites.  You'll find deep and abiding involvement in helping members of their communities entrapped in an economy not of their doing and not of their choice.  (It's because they're unions, O dubious ones.  That's what unions do.)

Have you noticed that it's getting harder and harder to shame people whose only motivation is making tons, and I mean literally tons, of money?  They've played the blame-the-victim game for so long they've fine-tuned to perfection the pretense that keeping the über-wealthy happy means riches for us all.  Never mind that there hasn't been a single economic indicator in the history of our republic that proves their point. Never mind that we've been keeping the über-wealthy happy at our expense for decades now and all that has happened to make lives better is that the über-wealthy have become ecstatic to the point of permanent giddy.

People are suffering through no fault of their own.  Others are not only profiting from their suffering, they're doing everything they can to keep it that way.  Now we've taken it upon ourselves to do something about it. 

Real people making real change.  And for the good.  It's just crazy enough to work.

No Preacher Presidency this year. Santorum is out.

The big news yesterday was that Rick Santorum has suspended his presidential campaign.  After great deliberation, spurred on by the realization that he never had a chance at it anyway, he has cancelled his campaign plans and most of his public appearances.  As with every concession speech, Santorum says he's not giving up the fight.  There's more to come. The fight for freedom, except for women, children, the poor, the jobless and the heathens, goes on.

Yesterday, on the same day he stepped down from the podium, he stepped up to the pulpit for a scheduled appearance with James Dobson at his latest "Focus on the Family" smack-down.  I'm not surprised.  Just as George W. Bush's wishful true calling wasn't really as President of the United States but as baseball commissioner, Rick Santorum's true calling is as Grand Fundamental Firekeeper.

Being president would have been a feather in his tri-corner cap, but it's probably just as well it didn't happen.  If he had been chosen, he surely would have found himself governing an entire country full of surly sinners, most of whom would likely balk at having to practice his peculiar brand of holy paternalism.  It would be a full-time job, just keeping those ingrates under control.

Odds are his first priority would have been to hammer away at our constitution (a document almost as vague and open to interpretation as a certain Holy Book), attempting to turn the "dem" in democracy into a "theo" forevermore, or until the next secular coup, or until the world went up in flames, whichever came first.  But there are only so many hours in the day, and even if the West Wing had been turned into the Right Wing, there are demands on a nation's president that are. . .well, let's just put it out there. . .purely secular.

Santorum's rise to second place in the Republican primaries, based on nothing more than a series of sermons outlining some truly archaic and increasingly out-of-touch religious beliefs, caused real consternation in some circles expecting the more traditional, run-of-the-mill, I'll-promise-you-anything-if-you'll-vote-for-me campaign.  

The man was a tiger when it came to social crime and punishment, and he wasn't afraid to snarl his disapproval at whole segments of the population who might, for example, use artificial birth control. Or who might think for even a minute there could be some wisdom in separating government from the church.  But it turns out there were whole segments of primary voters who were looking for answers to questions about our economy, our environment, our crumbling infrastructure, our place in foreign affairs.  They were questions Rick Santorum either couldn't or wouldn't answer.  It was as if he didn't know or care what office he was running for.  The sermon was the thing and he was reaching crowds in the millions. 

Now that part, milked to the extreme, is over, but I predict we haven't seen the last of Mr. Santorum.  He'll take his Faith and Values show on the road and crowds will follow.  At every turn, when religion and government collide, Rick will be there.   But he will not be president of the United States.

Praise be.
  

Sign at Rose City Park Church, Oregon

When Being Black is All it Is

I don't think there is anyone who hasn't been affected in some way by Florida teenager Trayvon Martin's death in February at the hands of a neighborhood watchman who thought he saw a threat in the tall black teenager wearing a dark hooded jacket.  The story is almost too terrible for words. 

I am white and my children are white.  At the same time that I'm grieving with Trayvon's family, trying yet again to come to terms with the needless death of an innocent child, I recognize that I can't possibly grasp what it must feel like to know their precious son would likely still be alive if only he hadn't been black.

It wasn't the hoodie he was wearing that made him a target.  Kids all across the country wear hoodies every day.  It was the darkness of the skin underneath that hood that provided the catalyst for the kind of tragedy that is becoming as commonplace as it is unbearable.

We're in a place where the issue of racism opens up old wounds, forcing us to once again pull it out and examine it.  I would say racism is back, but we all know it never really went away.  We see it in the open hatred toward our first black president; in the collateral hatred toward his wife and daughters; in a generalized hatred toward people whose only difference is in the color of their skin.

I was a young mother during the last civil rights movement.  It was impossible to explain the inexplicable to my children--that in our own country, this country that boasts about fairness and equality in story and song--there are white people who hate black people so much they want to do them harm.

But the conversations I had with my kids couldn't even come close to the painful necessity every black parent had--and still has--in explaining the same thing to their black children.  How can it be explained?  It made no sense then and it makes no sense now.

I look at Sybrina Fulton's face as she weeps over this latest insult to her dead son--the gleeful egging on of a story about his suspension from high school over an empty marijuana bag in his backpack; I hear the anguished rage in Tracy Martin's voice as he defends the reputation of his murdered son, and I am back to a time more than a half-century ago, when defenseless black citizens were humiliated and hurt and killed for no other reason than the color of their skin.

September, 1955.  Murdered teenager Emmet Till's mother weeps at his open casket.  Emmet Till was 14 years old when he was kidnapped, tortured and murdered by white men for the crime of whistling at a white woman. His face was battered beyond recognition, but Mamie Till-Mobley wanted the world to see what pure hatred could do to another human being--and to society as a whole.  "Civil rights activists used the murder of Emmett Till as a rallying cry for civil rights protest, transforming a heinous crime into a springboard for justice. The Montgomery Bus Boycott followed closely on the heels of the case. Indeed, Rosa Parks is quoted as saying, 'I thought about Emmett Till, and I could not go back. My legs and feet were not hurting, that is a stereotype. I paid the same fare as others, and I felt violated.'"

 We are heading toward a new era of ignorance and poverty and those two ingredients become, historically, irrationally, the fuel for a dangerous firestorm.  It's not a leap to suggest that the vital issue of civil rights needs to be addressed and overhauled before violence becomes the norm again.

The stink of prejudice is everywhere. Hispanics feel it, Muslims feel it, LGBTs feel it, anyone who is "different" feels it.  We can't let hatred win.  We owe some measure of attention to the memories of Trayvon and all other human beings who are punished, often to the point of losing their lives, for no other crime than being who they are.

About those Ultrasounds: What if Doctors just say no?

 
I've been wondering--haven't you?--why primary care physicians, and especially OB/GYNs, aren't speaking out about the current creepy Rightward trend toward using ultrasounds as punishment against women who dare to sign up for an abortion.  Turns out some of them are.

They're angry, they're anguished, they're dumbstruck.  (Join the club.)  And they're speaking out anonymously--sadly--because we live in a country where medical doctors can no longer talk freely about abortion, a legal medical procedure, without fear of retribution.

This from a post called "Civil Disobedience" by palMD at his blog, White Coat Underground. (Take a few minutes to read some of his other posts while you're there.  Good stuff.):

"In the case of abortions, where time is essential and providers may not be easy to find, delays in care are unconscionable.  To enforce a waiting period violates the doctor’s ethical duty to provide appropriate, timely care and to avoid causing the patient unnecessary grief.  The law forces us to violate our ethics. To force us to perform ultrasounds, transvaginal or otherwise, is battery.

No procedure can be performed on a patient without their informed consent.  To make another important procedure contingent on an unnecessary one is a clear violation of medical ethics. Abortions can be safely performed without sonography, and should be unless their is compelling medical reason to perform one—with the patient’s consent.  To say that a woman can always refuse the ultrasound as long as they refuse the abortion is an immoral argument, one which removes all autonomy from the patient, and forces a doctor to make unreasonable choices."

 Another caring doctor used John Scalzi's blog, "Whatever", to lay out a plan for civil disobedience.  He says, in part:

"I do not feel that it is reactionary or even inaccurate to describe an unwanted, non-indicated transvaginal ultrasound as “rape”. If I insert ANY object into ANY orifice without informed consent, it is rape. And coercion of any kind negates consent, informed or otherwise.

In all of the discussion and all of the outrage and all of the Doonesbury comics, I find it interesting that we physicians are relatively silent.

After all, it’s our hands that will supposedly be used to insert medical equipment (tools of HEALING, for the sake of all that is good and holy) into the vaginas of coerced women.

Fellow physicians, once again we are being used as tools to screw people over. This time, it’s the politicians who want to use us to implement their morally reprehensible legislation. They want to use our ultrasound machines to invade women’s bodies, and they want our hands to be at the controls. Coerced and invaded women, you have a problem with that? Blame us evil doctors. We are such deliciously silent scapegoats.

It is our responsibility, as always, to protect our patients from things that would harm them. Therefore, as physicians, it is our duty to refuse to perform a medical procedure that is not medically indicated. Any medical procedure. Whatever the pseudo-justification.

It’s time for a little old-fashioned civil disobedience."

 The doctor then offers a five-step plan designed to keep physicians from ever having to perform an unwanted ultrasound on a female patient, starting it off with a bang:

  "1) Just don’t comply. No matter how much our autonomy as physicians has been eroded, we still have control of what our hands do and do not do with a transvaginal ultrasound wand. If this legislation is completely ignored by the people who are supposed to implement it, it will soon be worth less than the paper it is written on." 

And ends it with a bigger bang:

"It comes down to this: When the community has failed a patient by voting an ideologue into office…When the ideologue has failed the patient by writing legislation in his own interest instead of in the patient’s…When the legislative system has failed the patient by allowing the legislation to be considered… When the government has failed the patient by allowing something like this to be signed into law… We as physicians cannot and must not fail our patients by ducking our heads and meekly doing as we’re told.  Because we are their last line of defense."

Alrighty then. 

The Doc is actually echoing more forcefully the guidelines already set long ago by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists--the very guidelines the state of Virginia so clearly and consciously aims to violate. ( The story here by Rick Unger in Forbes.).

In 2009 ACOG reaffirmed their recommendations on non-medical ultrasounds:

"The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) has endorsed the following statement from the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine (AIUM) discouraging the use of obstetric ultrasonography for non-medical purposes (eg, solely to create keepsake photographs or videos) (1):

The AIUM advocates the responsible use of diagnostic ultrasound. The AIUM strongly discourages the non-medical use of ultrasound for psychosocial or entertainment purposes. The use of either two-dimensional (2D) or three-dimensional (3D) ultrasound to only view the fetus, obtain a picture of the fetus or determine the fetal gender without a medical indication is inappropriate and contrary to responsible medical practice. Although there are no confirmed biological effects on patients caused by exposures from present diagnostic ultrasound instruments, the possibility exists that such biological effects may be identified in the future. Thus ultrasound should be used in a prudent manner to provide medical benefit to the patient."

 Of course, the states advocating this unprecedented invasion into women's lives aren't in the least impressed by protestations from anybody not connected with their own Koch-fueled, pseudo-religious circles--not even the medical pros, who are, you know, medical professionals.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, as of March 1, 2012:

•  11 states require verbal counseling or written materials to include information on accessing ultrasound services.

• 20 states regulate the provision of ultrasound by abortion providers.

•  7 states mandate that an abortion provider perform an ultrasound on each woman seeking an abortion, and require the provider to offer the woman the opportunity to view the image.

•  9 states require that a woman be provided with the opportunity to view an ultrasound image if her provider performs the procedure as part of the preparation for an abortion.

•  5 states require that a woman be provided with the opportunity to view an ultrasound image.

There are signs that some state legislatures may be rethinking their actions (Idaho, for instance), but it's a cinch they're only rethinking them in order to get around any detours to their goals.  When they come up with something this nutty in the first place,  the chances that either common sense or common decency will prevail are slim to none.

So how do we get through to them?  We can't shame them; they're shameless.  We can't shun them; they're in charge.  But we can raise our voices in decibels loud enough to be heard above the din of old-testament retribution disguised as modern-day government.

This was never how it was supposed to be.

Red States, White Popes, Blue-bloods: It is to Laugh

In almost every war, there are those moments when soldiers have to sit back and laugh at the absurdity of it all.  Think "Mash", "Stalag 17", "Catch-22", "Slaughterhouse Five".  Like that.  In the war of the Red States against American Women, while the scale may be worlds smaller, and while there's actually been no official declaration, the time has come.  To laugh, I mean.  Honest to God, it is to giggle.

Could even the wildest, zaniest futurist have predicted these hysterical days, when lawmakers in a dozen red states would be falling all over each other to see who could come up with the nuttiest demand to probe into the sex life of Femalus Americanus?

Pennsylvania governor Tom Corbett capped last week's antics, turning the usual Republican clown show into an Extravaganza de Burlesque with his lame punchline, "I don't know how you can make anyone watch. . .you just have to close your eyes",  after a reporter asked the Governor if state-sanctioned ultrasounds for women seeking abortions "went too far".

This clip from the Rachel Maddow Show shows the madness in a nutshell:   

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ThinkProgress Health does another recap, this one with an interactive map showing the states that either are planning or already have hardline, punitive anti-abortion laws in place.  (Okay, this one isn't funny. . .not funny at all.)

But then there's Rick Santorum.  Rick Santorum is running for president, I guess you know.  But is he?   His speeches are sermons and his sweater-vests are the closest he could come to a cassock without drawing attention to his real hope for the presidency.  But listening to him pontificate, don't you just know he's itching to wave at the crowds from his Rickmobile and turn the White House into a papal palace, where he can do what every American president should have been doing all these many years, which is to work tirelessly at saving us sinners from ourselves?

What The Great Santorum doesn't seem to understand is that most of us don't want to go back to the Dark Ages.  Inquisitions are so yesterday.  Self-flagellation hurts.  And women might be ladies but they'll never be chattel again.

So, given that Rick Santorum can't stop showing his inquisitor's hand, in all likelihood Mitt Romney will be the Republican presidential candidate.  Mitt Romney can't help that he was born a blue-blood, but somebody needs to tell him his impression of Thurston Howell III is wearing thin.  It was funny at first--even hilariously funny--but verbal pratfalls from haughty billionaires have never a president made.

Blue-blood presidents, from Washington to Jefferson to Roosevelt to Kennedy,  at least pretended to be egalitarians.  Equality is what our constitution is all about.  The president, as leader of the country, is a representative for the people, not a bottom-line, for-profit CEO.  Maybe this Mitt Romney needs to go back to his Massachusetts governor roots. That Mitt Romney could at least, every once in a while, be convincing in his role as public servant.

And Newt Gingrich.  Where is poor Newt?  As hard as he might try to insist otherwise, he's on the outside looking in.  Delusions of intellectual grandiosity failed to impress his peeps. They yawned and moved on.  Color him green.