We, the PEOPLE!!

Over this past week it was revealed that presumed republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney committed at least one well-documented act of bullying in 1965 when he was a senior at Cranbrook School, a prestigious and expensive prep school.  According to multiple witnesses, Romney did not like the hair style or hair color of another student suspected of being gay.  As a result, Romney organized a “posse”, found the other student and forcibly held that student down while he cut off the student’s hair.

Romney’s actions constitute assault and mostly likely battery as well.  These are violations of criminal law and are either misdemeanors or felonies, depending upon the specific circumstances.

When Romney was confronted by the media regarding this event, he said that he couldn’t remember it.  However, he did NOT deny it and for good reason, considering the number of witnesses there are.  After all, Romney is running for president of the USA.  If he can’t remember an incident wherein he chased, caught, pinned, immobilized and traumatized a weaker student, then perhaps Mitt has serious memory issues that would negatively impact a commander-in-chief.  That’s a fact the American voters deserves to know before the election.

However, if, on the other hand, Romney actually remembers the incident and is lying about his recollections, that, too, is something the voters have a right to know:   Mitt will lie through his teeth when he deems it convenient.

Either way, the most heinous fact is that Romney committed an act of bullying against someone who he saw as different simply because of a hair style and hair color, as well as most likely gay.

Bullying is a brutal and traumatizing act of force and often violence that often causes its victim emotional scars that often last a lifetime.  It is actually a form of torture:  Someone with superior force subjugates someone weaker with physical or emotional pain, or both. Most civilized people condemn torture.

However, there are those whom see bullying as a natural and normal part of “growing up”.  Most of those folks who believe that are generally very conservative.  many of them grew up in an unsophisticated environment where the strong were expected to dominate the weak.  To them, bullying is nothing to make a fuss about.  After all, they say, bullying has been around since the beginning of humanity, and yet here we all are.

Most people are aware of incidents of bullying that they either committed, participated in,, were the victims of, witnessed directly, or were witnesses to the consequences when they were younger.  Recently the media has been reporting on the all-too-frequent teenage suicides resulting from repeated merciless bullying of a victim who could no longer endure the abuse and its resulting shame, rejection, fear, hatred and negative self-image that the bullying caused.  it has resulted in many organized efforts to eliminate bullying in our schools and social networks.

As an act of violence, it is difficult to believe that anyone would “forget” knowledge of these acts.  But Mitt Romney makes that very claim.  He has, in fact, apologized for his “pranks” as a student at Cranbrook School in the 1960′s.  But as a candidate for president he clearly has not gone far enough.  He had the unique opportunity to come out forcefully against any kind of bullying anywhere.  Instead, he remained totally silent on the issue, as if to lend tacit approval to the idea that bullying is a normal part of growing up and a part of the natural order of things.

After all, as founder and CEO of Bain Capital, Romney oversaw the buying of companies that were split apart and their components sold off for profit, causing thousands of workers to lost their jobs.  That’s clearly a form of economic bullying, isn’t it?

And finally, perhaps more troubling concern about Romney’s 1965 bullying incident at Cranbrook School, which was organized and led by Romney himself, is about the victim being gay.  It seems Romney singled him out because of his perceived sexual orientation, which says much about Romney’s view of this group of people.  He evidently is intolerant of them and anyone else who is “different”.

Because of his millions, Romney is one of the “strong” who can prey upon the weak.  Clearly, the Cranbrook school incident demonstrates that he is capable and willing to do so, and that makes Romney questionable at best as a commander-in-chief and policy-maker for the USA.  Unfortunately, there are many voters who don’t see this and/or who agree with intolerance toward those that are weaker:   gays lesbians, minorities, the poor, etc.

Luckily, the USA has a sitting president who is the exact opposite of Romney when it comes to diversity, acceptance, integrity and  character.

Now all we need is to reach intelligent, open-minded, computer-savvy, fact-driven investigative voters to explore the real Mitt vs. the real Barack.

Those voters are out there…..somewhere…aren’t they?                         

The US state of North Carolina voted yesterday to amend their state’s constitution to ban same-sex marriage, legal status for civil unions and even certain domestic-partner rights for unmarried couples.  The vote was 61% in favor to 39% opposed. The vote made North Carolina the 31st state to pass state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

Specifically, North Carolina approved the following language in their constitutional amendment:  “Marriage between one man and one woman is the ONLY domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized.“  Thus, in one fundamentally-religiously-based action, North Carolina voters not only made reasonably certain that the state’s already existing same-sex ban would be protected in perpetuity, but it also dismantled all other state and local statutes and ordinance that presently allow certain legal rights for same-sex couples and even unmarried heterosexual couples, such as hospital visitation, child custody issues and the prosecution of domestic violence.

Certain faith-based organizations, such as the ultra-right wing Family Research Council supported this amendment.  So did Vote for Marriage NC, whose chairwoman, Tami Fitzgerald, said after the vote, “”We are not anti-gay; we are pro-marriage.  And the point — the whole point — is simply that you don’t rewrite the nature of God’s design for marriage based on the demands of a group of adults.”

She obviously does not believe in the separation of church and state, just as she seemingly does believe that the USA is a “Christian nation”, conceived in the bible and dedicated to the proposition that all born-again and evangelical Christian-Americans are created equal…as long as they support a fundamentalist agenda.  As for the the rest of the citizens…well…evidently they are not quite as equal.

On the other side of this issue, six states have legalized same-sex marriage:  Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont.  So has the District of Columbia.  Washington state and Maryland also have laws allowing same-sex marriage which have yet to be implemented, pending possible challenges from the extreme right.  And Maine and Minnesota are set to vote on the issue, as is Colorado.

Of all the social conditions of humanity, same-sex couple living happily together is probably one of the most innocuous.  It hurts no one, costs the nation nothing, and doesn’t try to impose its philosophies on others.  If they are married, the law allows these same-sex couples the same legal and contractual monetary rights and responsibilities as any other married couple under civil law.  After all, from a purely legal point of view, civil marriage is no more than a legal contract between two people primarily involving money, but also providing a legal framework for inheritance, child custody, and other non-religious legal matters.

Tragically, the born-again, evangelical fundamentalist crowd doesn’t see it that way.  Instead, they see marriage as “God’s design” for a man and a woman to have sex (but not before marriage!!!), which is “God’s design” for having children.  This is part of the reason many fundamentalist oppose contraception, or, put another way, sex for fun.  They also are steadfast in their belief that the purpose of sex (which, remember, is only permissible in marriage) is solely to produce offspring.  Thus,evidently single or divorced or widowed post-menopausal women should NEVER marry, since they can no longer become pregnant.  And since they can’t have any more children, they better not be having sex with anyone, either!

These same beliefs help to explain why these folks are opposed to same-sex marriage:   same-sex couple cannot produce offspring…or, at least, not by themselves.

The disconnect between the distinct characteristics of civil marriage vs. religious marriage is directly caused by fundamentalist belief that the bible is a higher authority than any constitution and/or federal, state and local laws.  Thus, these folks have continuously tried to modify constitutions and laws at all levels to match their religious belief systems.  The fact that not everyone in the USA agrees with them is no issue, since non-believers are not as “equal” as they are.

Sound familiar?  Isn’t this exactly what the Taliban believe about those they view as “non-believers”?

As bad as this fundamentalist “my religion is your law” philosophy is, it is far more dangerous since becoming “married” (if you’ll pardon the pun    ) to politics, which the fundamentalists have successful done since the early 1980′s.  They forced the republican party way over to the extreme right towards uncompromising intolerance of anything they disagree with.  One end-product of this intolerance is the lack of bipartisanship which today permeates congress. And in light of the lopsided approval of North Carolina’s anti-gay, pro-intolerance constitutional amendment, they’re energized for the coming presidential election as well.

But wait!

Uh oh!

President Obama just endorsed same-sex marriage in an interview with ABC News!  Seems Obama finally figured out that “no more Mr. Nice Guy” works best with these intolerant clowns.

Game on!!!!  

Unless you live on an asteroid and never use gasoline for anything, you’re certain to have noticed that the price of this commodity has been steadily rising during the first quarter of 2012.  And while it’s easy to blame the oil companies that take crude oil out of the ground, most of the blame truly lies elsewhere….such as with Wall Street’s psychotic overreacting to every mention of Iran…or with those self-same Wall Street market speculators and all the other “middlemen” who buy and sell off crude oil and its distillates, such as gasoline, long before you ever see a drop of it at the pump.

Nonetheless, the big oil companies (“Big Oil”) are still making huge profits of their own.

Take, for example, Exxon-Mobil, which recently reported a 2012 first quarter net profit (that’s after-taxes & expenses profit for the first three months of the year) of US$9.45 billion.  And they were disappointed with that because it represented a profit drop of 11%!

To put that profit into context, it equals US$315 billion a month, or US$105 million a day!  Nice work if you can get it.  Exxon-Mobil is a global company, as is Shell Oil, also known as Royal Dutch Shell.

In that same first quarter of 2012, Shell reported net profits of US$7.3 billion.  Unlike Exxon-Mobil, however, they were not disappointed at all, since their profits were up by 15.9%.  And on and on it goes with other oil companies.

Regardless of anyone’s political or economic philosophies, it is clear that a net profit of US10.5 million a day, as in Exxon-Mobil’s case, or even a measly, paltry US$81 million a day, as in Shell’s case, is humongous bucks, regardless of how one tries to spin it.  So it truly defies all reason and logic that on top of these facts, the taxpayers of the USA are also financing huge tax breaks for these self-same big oil companies.

Late last month, the Obama administration, along with senate democrats, attempted to pass legislation that would end the US$4 billion per year tax breaks that Big Oil enjoys.  Simply put, if Exxon-Mobil makes US$32 billion net profit in one year (and they’ll probably make more than that,), then ending this insane US taxpayer-financed subsidy for Big Oil would reduce Exxon-Mobil’s net yearly profit to perhaps US$31 billion!

How could anyone survive on only US$31 billion when they were expecting US$32 billion???

But wait!!! There’s MORE!!!

In the first quarter of 2012 alone, Big Oil donated half a million dollars to congressional incumbents and candidates of office (but, significantly, not for president..yet).  Take a look at this chart from publicampaign.org:

It’s important to note that fully 93% of that money went to republican congressional incumbents and candidates.  Of the US$501,500 in donations as seen above, only US$33,000 went to non-republicans, (possibly to the four dems that voted against ending the oil subsidies).

Based upon these figures, Big Oil is using US$2 million a year to fund republican political congressional campaigns.   These are just the first quarter figures, and they don’t include money to the Romney or Rove anti-Obama Super-Pacs, either   How much more of the US$4 billion yearly subsidies will be divided between donations to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign and various republican governors’ elections is anyone’s guess.

Oil industry subsidies have been around for a long time.  The first federal subsidies for oil came into being in 1916, with another round introduced in 1926.  They were necessary at the beginning of the oil industry’s development to allow for survival and growth, yet they’re both still in existence.

But it was in 2005 that some really big tax breaks were given to Big Oil by the GW Bush and his gang of Big-Oil-loving republicans.  And while Big Oil gets those 4 billion bucks a year from the federal government, it really gets anywhere from US$133.8 billion to as much as US$280.8 billion a year if one includes all taxpayer-provided sources, including from state and local governments.

When one really looks carefully at this debacle, it defies logic how anyone justifies tax breaks for the most profitable industry on Earth.  It’s like your neighbors putting together an emergency food basket at the Salvation Army Soup Kitchen and taking it to Mitt Romney’s house.  These subsidies have long since outlived their initial need and have now become an unnecessary tax break for the very wealthiest of private enterprises at the expense of middle class taxpayers and possibly even deficit reduction.  And the republicans, who claim to love deficit reduction, are the ones preserving the oil subsidies and thus preventing deficit reduction!

Meanwhile, they want to drastically reduce the food stamp program for the nation’s poor, as if that could possibly be justified in the face of the oil industry’s obscene hundreds of billions of dollars in yearly profit!

Isn’t this a little like telling people that if their house is on fire, they should pour gasoline on it (because buying gasoline is good for the economy)?

Republicans consistently and continuously claim they are against big government and government regulations.  They repeatedly preach that the USA would be a better place if they could just eliminate all those nasty government regulations that limit the freedom of people (and corporations whom they view as more useful people).

Their claim is that not only would the country be a better place to live and work in, but also that the national economy (a.k.a. corporate America’s profit margin) would be maximized, thus providing more jobs and more prosperity to the nation as a whole.

They would eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency (ERA) and the Department of Education, among other government agencies, and they would roll back the 2010 health care reform law if they win the White house and both houses of congress this fall.  After all, these are among the most “freedom limiting” laws and agencies of the US government.

Republicans have only one problem when trying to achieve their goal of enhancing personal freedom as they see it:  they can’t sell it.  Thus, they try to make the uninformed hate the government and its agencies and regulations, and make those same uninformed folks afraid of the government and its agencies and regulations.

Yet, if one really examines the GOP plans for increasing American freedom, one actually finds that their plan does the exact opposite!   For example:

A.  Claim of Increased Freedom:  Republicans want to eliminate the EPA and Food & Drug Administration (FDA) and all of those nasty, expensive, anti-pollution regulations that limit corporate America’s freedom to maximize their profits.

The Real Deal:  Freedom Loss:  Doing this would eliminate a citizen’s personal freedom to breath clean air, drink clean water, and eat safe food.

B.  Claim of Increased Freedom:  Republicans want to eliminate the Department of Education and provide vouchers for students to attend private religious-run schools if their parents choose.  This increases freedom for choice for parents, as well as enhancing the freedom of the private sector to run schools for profit.

The Real Deal:  Freedom Loss:  Those students attending public schools would have to endure much larger classrooms and reduced educational resources because of the money that gets siphoned off to support the rich private school students and ultimately, the private sector for-profit school consortiums.  Thus, those that cannot afford a private education would not have the freedom to attend a school that is adequately financed to provide them with an adequate education.

C.  Claim of Increased Freedom: Republicans want to free Americans from the burden of health care reform.  They want to return the freedom of choice to the private for-profit insurance companies.  Those companies will once again have the freedom to choose who can have and who can’t have health insurance.  They want to enhance that freedom by allowing those companies complete and total power to decide what their insurance will cover and what it will not cover.

The Real Deal:  Freedom Loss:  Anyone who cannot buy or can’t afford health insurance will not be allowed freedom from curable diseases or repairable medical conditions.  Those with pre-existing conditions will not have the freedom to acquire health insurance and the protections that insurance provides in the first place.  Children will not have the freedom from childhood diseases or freedom from contagious sick schoolmates attending class while sick because their parents can’t afford to keep them at home and take them to the doctor.

D.  Claim of Increased Freedom:  The republicans would reduce or eliminate all pro-labor regulations, thus allowing the “free and unregulated capitalist market’ to set risk and safety tolerances, as well as child laborstandards, work schedules and pay.

The Real Deal:  Freedom Loss:  If you’re a corporation, this will increase your freedom to turn a profit regardless of the human cost.  If you’re a child, your freedom from exploitation is gone.  If you’re a miner, your freedom from grossly unsafe working conditions is gone.  And if you’re a an hourly wage-earner, you’re freedom from work & pay abuse is gone.

E.  Claim of Increased Freedom  The GOP supports school prayer and the teaching and following of Christian dogma in all facets of their reduced government model.   This provides believers with freedom….like the freedom to impose those views on everyone.

The Real Deal:  Freedom Loss:  Those Americans (and everyone else, actually), who are not evangelical or born-again Christians will be forced to accept the “true” teachings of the Christ, according to these fundamentalists evangelical born-again-ers.  If you’re Jewish, Hindu, Buddest, Shinto, Tao, Confucius, Muslim, atheist or any other of a myriad of other human religions or non-religions (each claiming theirs is the only truly REAL word that matters)  you’re out of luck, slick….

But not to worry.  When Mitt Romney’s gets elected, he’s make sure prosperity returns to all those who truly deserve it:

His corporate campaign supporters.

When you hear mention of the US state of Arizona, your thoughts might turn to the Painted Desert, or the Grand Canyon, or the San Francisco mountains, or the cosmopolitan cities of Phoenix or Tucson.  Maybe you’ll envision the “4 corners”, where Arizona meets three other states:  Colorado, Utah and New Mexico.  And you may even relish southwestern food, which is very much a blending of Mexican, Native American and standard American foods.

Or perhaps you’ll simply remember enough American history to know that Arizona became a full state of the USA in 1912, the last of the 48 contiguous,  or physically connected American states (Alaska and Hawaii are, at present, the only non-connected US states).

Therefore, it might be a surprise to become aware that Arizona has a long history of extremist conservative views when it comes to social tolerance for diversity and women’s’ rights, to name a just a few issues which taint Arizona’s otherwise picturesque image.

The handwriting on the wall about the true nature of Arizona may well have started to be written in 1861, when Arizona, as part of the New Mexico Territory, seceded from the USA union of states as the Confederate Territory of Arizona.

In the late 1880′s (and continuing well into the 20th century), the Phoenix Indian School attempted to forcefully assimilate Native American children into the white Anglo-Saxon culture, at the expense of losing their own rich culture and history.  In fairness, this program was instituted by the US government’s Bureau of Indian Affairs, but there is no record of anyone in Arizona objecting to the setting up of this school or its “forced assimilation” agenda.

During World War 2, Arizona was host to one of several Japanese-American internment camps set up as a result of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  It also boasted several German and Italian POW camps during that era.

More recently, the Arizona legislature and the republican governor, Jan Brewer drew the attention of the rest of the USA (and hopefully the rest of the educated world) when they passed and signed into law two extraordinary measures.

The first is the “Stupid Motorist law“, which says that if a motorist gets stuck in a flash-flood (which are known to occur in Arizona due to inadequate storm drains and other anti-flood measures), he/she will be billed for his/her rescue.  The law’s name alone tells you about the tolerance level of the shakers and movers in Arizona.

The second and most onerous of the bills passed and signed into law, is SB1070, also known as the “show me your papers” statute.  This is an a purported effort to stop illegal immigration into the state of Arizona from across its border from Mexico, and was purportedly motivated by the perceived massive flow of illegals into the USA through Arizona and the federal government’s purported unwillingness to stop it.  The fact that this opened the door to discriminatory racial profiling by Arizona law enforcement (which,by the way, is nothing to write home about, as you’ll note further on) is simply the price of doing business, according to the Brewer administration.

And lest we forget, Arizona, and more specifically Maricopa Count, which includes Phoenix, is home to perhaps the most controversial, bigoted, anti-diversity, anti-immigrant, anti-Obama, lunatic sheriff in the USA:  Joe Arpaio, who among other outrageous behaviors, recently claimed he and his “posse” staff have irrefutable evidence that president Barack Obama’s official long-form birth certificate from Hawaii is a forgery, all vetting by the FBI and Secret Service (among many, many others) to the contrary.

So perhaps, given this colorful record of hysterical xenophobic and intolerant behaviors for over 150 years, one should not be surprised by the recent and most idiotic actions of the Arizona legislature and its “colorful” governor Brewer:  Their recently signed-into-law anti-abortion legislation.

Here’s the gist of it:  Arizona limits abortions to the first 20 weeks of pregnancy, as do several other states.  But 20 weeks in one state is not 20 weeks in Arizona.  And why??

Because in Arizona, those 20 weeks begin on the first day a woman starts her period.  In other words, Arizona finagled a way to reduce the standard 20-week-pregnancy standard by two weeks, to 18 weeks.

Arizona’s legislators also had the audacity to define what a “medically necessary” abortion (ostensibly to “protect the well-being of the mother”) is, even though none of them is a doctor.  How cool is THAT??

While it is clear that no informed person believes that abortion is an acceptable form of birth control, the fact is that abortions are sometimes necessary for a whole variety of reasons, not the least of which is that some young people have had sex without first having been provided with the information necessary to protect themselves against unwanted pregnancies.  Obviously, “abstinence only” programs don’t provide this necessary information, thus the unreality of republican ideas in that regard.

But Jan Brewer and her ultra-extreme-right legislature don’t care.  They’re going to make Arizona an example for the rest of the country.  An example of something we can all be proud of….

Yeah.  If you’re a lunatic.

Yesterday (Tuesday, April 10, 2012), Rich Santorum, the ultra-conservative republican candidate who wanted to be president finally saw what every citizen of the Earth who understands basic math could see:  he had no way forward in the GOP primaries to win enough delegates to be his party’s nominee against Barack Obama in November.  That dubious honor is clearly going to be Mitt Romney’s for the taking.  Santorum “suspended” his campaign.

Just before Santorum did so, the delegate count stood at 661 for Romney vs. 285 for Santorum.  Adding to this lopsided ratio is the fact that Santorum had lost his own lead over Romney in Santorum’s home state of Pennsylvania.  The latest poll showed Romney with 44% vs. Santorum with 40%.

Santorum took the weekend off from campaigning.  He concurrently was involved with his sick daughter who had been admitted to a hospital.  At yesterday’s press conference Santorum that his family situation was the primary reason for his withdrawal from the race.  But he was being less than honest.

In fact, reports indicate that his campaign had already contacted Romney’s campaign days before to let them know that he was abandoning the race.  This occurred after polling data above, made available to the Santorum campaign days before being publicly released, indicated that Santorum stood to be severely embarrassed by losing his own home state to Romney in the upcoming April 24th primary.

Had this happened, Santorum’s ability to mount a new presidential campaign in 2016 (assuming Romney does NOT win the November 2012 election), or 2020 (assuming Romney wins in 2012 and again in 2016), would have been permanently damaged beyond repair.  Santorum is aware that at 53 years ol, he still has opportunities to run for president.  That means we may all have to again endure his anti-gay, anti-birth control, anti-separation of church and state, anti-college, anti-women, anti-evolution, anti-climate-change, anti-abortion, anti-public school system, pro-school prayer, pro-religion in government, pro-big business views once more.

Meanwhile, with Santorum gone, Mitt Romney’s sugar-daddy super-PAC supporters, Karl Rove and the Koch (pronounced Coke, for some bizarre reason that defies explanation) brothers, are preparing a multi-million dollar ad campaign to air against president Obama in several swing states.  This first early salvo will cost these folks USD $400 million.  That’s a lot of spending this early in the campaign.  But the Rove/Koch strategy is, unfortunately, sound.  They want to begin to convince undecided independent voters that Obama “isn’t up to the job”, and thus garner support for Romney.

It is also clear that they understand that the Romney/Santorum contest has left some hefty scars on the republican bid to regain the White House  and the senate in 2012.  After all, the ultra-right wing of the republican party supported Santorum against “non-Christian Mormon” Romney, and Romney’s own liberal statements during past political campaigns are no doubt going to dog him in his campaign to unseat president Obama.  At this point, Romney does not have solid support among his own party’s most conservative voters.

That’s the problem that many, including Karl Rove and the sugar-daddy Koch brothers see with Romney.  He tried really hard to move as far to the right as possible when he was battling Santorum during the primary process.  In doing so, he alienated independent voters who are primarily centrists.  Romney and his campaign know they must pivot back to the center to regain those independent voters who ultimately determine elections.

Unfortunately for Romney, in doing so he will further alienate the ultra-conservative wing of his party that he tried so desperately to win over.  In fact, before he even says a single word in this post-Santorum era, those ultra-conservatives are already expressing reservations about supporting him!

Back on the sidelines, Newt Gingrich, the cash-starved, divorce-lawyer-challenged, pseudo-ultra-conservative (which he really isn’t) candidate, who has vowed to stay in the race right up to the Republican national convention in Tampa this August, can now only benefit as the only ultra-conservative (according to himself) left standing after Santorum, Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry have left the race.

And ol’ Newt has nothing to lose, since he has already publicly acknowledged that Romney will most likely be the party’s nominee for president.  But much to Romney’s chagrin, Newt will be the recipient of much of the vote that Santorum would have gotten.  With several conservative states holding primaries in May, this could present a problem for Romney:  How does he pivot back to the center without alienating the ultra-right wing?

The simple math is that he can’t.  Those ultra-conservatives didn’t like him to begin with, didn’t trust his claim of support for conservative values, and don’t really believe that Mormonism is a Christian faith.  As Mitt is forced back to the center, they’re going to like him even less.

So it comes down to this:  Can Romney win without them?

Our money (and our hope) is that he can’t. 

Believe it or not, GOP state legislators in Georgia (and and earlier, in several other conservative states) recently determined that women should be treated as livestock in attempting to justify bills limiting a woman’s right to choose to only the first 20 weeks of pregnancy.  What’s even worse, they have determined that it does not matter if the pregnancy resulted from rape or forced incest.  In fact, the only exceptions allowed are in the case of a “medically futile” pregnancy, or one in which a woman’s life is in immediate danger.

While no one believes that abortion is a desirable form of birth control, it is occasionally necessary in the face of conservative rejection of sex education and their ridiculous abstinence programs.

This latest offensive attack on the part of conservatives in their holy War on Women is Georgia House Bill  (HB954).    It’s affectionately called the “fetal pain bill” by Georgian Republican, but everyone else is calling it the “women as livestock bill”.  Both houses of the Georgia state legislature has passed this bill, and republican governor Nathan Deal has indicated he will sign it into law.

Georgia republican state Representative Terry England  compared women who are pregnant with known stillborn fetuses to cows and pigs he attended to on his farm. He  reasons that if farmers have to “deliver calves, dead or alive,” then a woman carrying a dead or dying fetus should also have to carry it for a full 9 months of her pregnancy.  And as bizarre as that seems to many thinking people, he represents a thought process common to many ultra-conservatives whom, while espousing a hatred of government regulations, want endless government regulations in support of their personal religious beliefs.  This is evidenced by the fact that Nebraska, Indiana, Idaho, Kansas, Oklahoma, Alabama and North Carolina all have “fetal pain” laws limiting abortion after a similar time frame. North Carolina, for example, prohibits abortion after 20 weeks. And Arizona is about to join them.

All of those eight states have something in common:  Their state legislators and governors are controlled by conservative republicans.  The ultra-conservative wing of the republican party seems to be taking over the GOP mainstream.

If that’s true, then the prospect of Mitt Romney winning the GOP nomination, whom after his sweep last night of the Wisconsin, Maryland and the District of Columbia primaries appears virtually certain, should scare every thinking citizen of the USA.  Mitt Romney is the ultimate flip-flopper, pandering to whatever audience is in front of him at the moment.  He has moved so far to the right during the primary season that he is probably unelectable by independent voters who determine the election outcome.  He needs to pivot back to the center-right, where he was a governor of Massachusetts for his campaign against president Barack Obama in the fall.

But when he does his little pivot dance, he will also need to bring the ultra-conservative right wing of the GOP with him.  To do that, he will need an extremely conservative running mate…someone perhaps as conservative as Rich Santorum, the ultra-religious right-wing anti-contraception, anti-women’s reproductive rights, anti-gay, anti-lesbian, anti-social safety net,anti-separation of church & state,, anti-federal government presidential candidate from Pennsylvania.  Someone like that could attract the ultra-conservatives who are bound to stay home on election day if they have no other choice than  to vote for Romney for president and a Romney clone for vice-president.

What’s particularly frightening about an ultra-extreme-religious right candidate for vice-president is that he (or she) is only one heartbeat away from the presidency.  If, for instance, Romney should slip on a banana peel on his way to his presidential inauguration and break his perfect hair (thus disabling his ability to think), his VP would succeed him.  If that VP is the kind of conservative Romney must pick to turn out the conservative vote in his party, then all hell would break loose as this VP became president and attempts to implement his personal version of religion in government,  hands-off-business-no-matter-what-they-do, privatized social safety nets, and his own version of “women as livestock”.

That could not possibly be good for women, thinkers, scientists, employees, seniors, the poor, or other populations.  But, on the other hand, corporate America, and the evangelicals and born-agains would  literally eat it up.

Under these circumstances, imagine the new order:  Women would need to be branded (for ownership identification of them as proprietary human factories, you realize), thinkers and scientists would be reprogrammed into “faith-based believers”, seniors and the poor would simply cease to exist (due to starvation and sickness), and the evangelicals and born-agains would inherit what Earth is left after corporate America decimates it.

Naw…This is America.  THAT can’t happen here.

Nope.  No more than women being compared to livestock.  Could never happen here.  

Take a moment to click on and view the video below.  You will find it absolutely astounding:

World Air Traffic 24 hrs in 1 1/2 minutes

If you look closely, you will see thousands of individual moving dots, each one representing an individual airplane identified by air traffic control radar.  You will also see that as the earth rotates, certain areas are in daylight while others are in nighttime.  During daylight the air traffic increases exponentially, and though Europe has high air traffic density during its daylight hours, no other place on Earth has more air traffic than over the daytime USA.

Now consider this:  The video is of a single 24 hour period on Earth.  Tens of thousand of flights are clearly visible, and yet not one of them crashed into another.  Not one!

How can that possibly be with the incredible density of traffic seen on this video?

The answer is air traffic controllers, whose jobs it is to guide these airplanes safely and efficiently through the available airspace.  Air traffic controllers do this day in and day out, often in extreme conditions where it seems there are just too many airplanes present for the airspace available to put them in.  Nevertheless, day after day air traffic controllers juggle all of these flights, many of which have hundreds of passengers sitting on them, mixing large airplanes with small ones, fast airplanes with slower ones and crisscrossing airplanes heading right at each other at a blistering closing speed of 1000 miles per hour!

They do this hour after hour and day after day.  Yet, not one of those flights gets lost, or forgotten, or crushed against the body of another airplane in flight.  How is this possible?

It’s because air traffic controllers are highly intelligent, highly trained, highly motivated and highly dedicated to quality service in the performance of their jobs.  They make hundreds to thousands of instantaneous decisions in 3 dimensional space every day, each of which could result in a midair collision or crash if it is the wrong decision.

If you think that kind of pressure is stressful, you’re absolutely correct.  Air traffic controllers have a higher incidence of high blood pressure, divorce, and other issues than the average population.  They can suffer from sleep disorders because of their work schedules which must accommodate a 24/7/365 demand for services.  They sometimes cannot reach retirement age because of disqualifying medical conditions causes by the constant high stress of their jobs over time.

In the USA, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) employs most air traffic controllers.  Because of the negative effects of the high stress of the job, federal law was changed in the mid 1970′s to allow air traffic controllers to retire at age 50 with 20 years of service.  Federal law also mandated that controllers cannot be hired past their 31st birthdays, nor are they permitted to work air traffic past their 56th birthdays.

These federal law changes were achieved through the efforts of the air traffic controllers’ federal union of the time, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO).  However, in a struggle with the FAA in August 1981, PATCO conducted a strike, which is prohibited for federal employees under US law.  11,500 striking controllers were fired, and PATCO subsequently disbanded as a result.

Fast forward to July 19, 1987:  Though controllers had been working without representation for almost 6 years since the PATCO strike, a new air traffic controllers union, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA), was certified as the exclusive representative for the nations air traffic controllers after winning an election on June 11, 1987.  Controllers had not had representation during the almost 6 years since the PATCO strike.  It was a monumental achievement, especially considering that it was achieved while then-USA president Ronald Reagan, who fired the striking PATCO controllers in 1981, was still in office.

This week NATCA is meeting in Denver, Colorado for its 13th biannual convention, and concurrently is celebrating the 25th anniversary of its federal certification.  Over 1300 air traffic controllers from all over the USA are present for the convention and the anniversary celebration.

During those 25 years, NATCA accomplished things that were once thought impossible:  development of collaborative partnership processes with the FAA for solving problem, more effective equipment design because of controller involvement, the first-ever successful non-postal salary negotiation within government, controller involvement in all aspects of air traffic control oversight, etc..

Unfortunately, NATCA was also forced to endure the anti-labor efforts of the GW Bush administration, which immorally stripped NATCA of decent working conditions in 2006 in an effort to demoralize the federal workforce.  However, NATCA was able to reverse this situation in 2009, and won back reasonable working conditions and collaboration under the Obama administration.

Next time you take a flight, or a family member flies, or you look up and see an airplane flying overhead, remember the unseen and unsung air traffic controllers that keep those airplanes (and loved ones) safe….and also remember the union that represents and protects those controllers (and through them, all of the flying public)….NATCA.

Happy 25th anniversary, NATCA!   Enjoy your well-deserved celebration!!

(Ed. note:  For those interested in historical trivia, although NATCA was certified on June 19, 1987, it was actually born on December 18, 1985 at the Marine Engineers Beneficial Association (MEBA) headquarters in Washington DC.

(On that day, newly-hired-by-MEBA ex-controller John Thornton met with a working controller who had previously sparred with then-FAA administrator Don Engen on the ABC Nightline Program on November 13, 1985. As a result of the show, Engen invited that controller to a meeting with him.  After that meeting the controller met with Thornton.  Late on the afternoon of December 18, 1985, the two of them settled on the name “NATCA” and adopted the now famous NATCA logo which the controller had previously designed.)

One axiom of all wars is that each side is defined by those that join them.  For example, in World War 2, the side known as the “axis” consisted of Japan, Germany and Italy.  Germany and Italy were fascist dictatorships, and Japan was a fascist-like, deity-based empire ruled primarily by a brutal imperialistic military.  All three were brutal in nature, with their dictators and/or military ruling with an iron fist.  As the war progressed they became even more brutal and lunatic-based.

They were initially joined by the Soviet Union (USSR).  But that country was communist, which in purists terms was the extreme opposition of a fascist government.  Ultimately, Germany attacked invaded the USSR and it joined the allies against the axis.

The 21st century conservatives’ war on women is somewhat the same.  What started as a singular religious fundamentalist agenda among evangelical and other fundamentalists Christians in the USA was joined by the social conservatives of the republican party which encouraged  the GOP candidates for president to go further and further to the right.  In fact, they seem to be attempting to “one-up” each other regarding who is more to the extreme right.  Social issues such as actively opposing abortion, universal health care, contraception, and sex between unmarried people, particularly in ways that especially target women, is now part of their political mantra.

GOP presidential candidate Rich Santorum was the early champion of this effort.  He attempted to stamp religion upon everything, to the point that he stated publicly that the concept of separation of church and state expressed by Jon F. Kennedy, one of the most beloved US presidents in history, made him want to vomit.  He made it clear that he is against contraception, abortion, sex education, sex outside of marriage, and even sex in marriage if it’s for other than strictly procreation.

He was enjoined by the champion of hate radio, Rush Limbaugh, who publicly and repeatedly called a 3rd-year female law student at Georgetown University a “slut” and a “prostitute” because she testified before a democratic congressional committee in favor of health insurance companies having to provide free contraception to women.  Considering what many people think of Rush, one can see the connection between him and Santorum.

Enter the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) which might be Christianity’s answer to the Taliban.  the WBC is a lunatic-fringe fundamentalist cult claiming to believe in and follow the bible literally, much as the Taliban claims to follow the Quran literally.

The church is internationally known for its members’ protesting at the funerals of American soldiers who were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.  They march and protest with picket signs that say “God hates fags”, and “God loves dead American soldiers”.  The WBC claims that God is angry at America for its tolerance of gays and lesbians (among others), and American soldiers are killed as punishment against America.  One thus might conclude that these folks are lunatic cultists.

Considering this, no one should have been surprised when the WBC announced they had commissioned two ads which they hoped to sell to the ad-starved Rush Limbaugh radio show, which saw a major exodus of advertisers following his calling that college student a slut and a prostitute.

In the first ad, WBC uses a parody of the Jeff Foxworthy “You Might be a be a Red Neck” comedy routine, but substitutes “You might be a slut”, presumably referring to women.  In the ad, a man says:

“If you wear a dress that is strapless with a brassiere that isn’t, you might be a slut…..If you are an anchor bimbo for Fox News and your name is Kelly or Julie, you might be a slut…..If you think it’s OK to have sex with men outside the marriage bed, you might be a slut……..And if you fornicate your brains out and you think the government ought to pay to kill your baby, well, sounds like a slut to me — and God hates sluts.”

You can watch the ad for yourself here:  You might be a slut…

Interestingly, the company that broadcasts Rush’s show, Premier Networks,  has since rejected the ads.  It seems that no lunatic wants anything to do with anyone who can out-lunatic him.  That might also be the reason that we haven’t heard Rick Santorum get very involved with defending Rush during the college student incident.  Rick absolutely doesn’t want to hang with someone who has out-lunatic-ed him, either.

In the meantime, the Westboro baptist Church is eating up all of this of free publicity.  They know they can reach more of the fornicating heathen masses and save them with their messages of why God will love them if they just learn to hate gays, lesbians, Muslims, Jews, Black, Latinos, Asians, Indians, immigrants, aliens, contraception, sex outside of marriage, sex inside of marriage (except to make babies), and anything foreign.

And the war continues….   

We, the PEOPLE!! has written several articles about how the religious right has hijacked the republican party, which has subsequently declared war on women and their reproductive rights.  As the evidence (and Rick Santorum’s having eight kids) demonstrates, the religious right does not believe that women should have the right to an abortion, contraception, or to have sex (even with just themselves!) before marriage.  Even after marriage, they believe in having sex SOLELY to procreate, i.e., for factory-production purposes.

Sadly and frighteningly, these folks would impose their whacked-out bible-soaked beliefs on everyone everywhere if they could.   From the view up here in the cheap seats, that makes them very similar to the Taliban and other extremist groups whose greatest happiness is derived from imposing their warped dogma on others.

Having written about this, however, has not done sufficient justice to how some women are courageously fighting back.  Take, for instance, the following examples:

First, there is Catherine Crier, author of the best-selling non-fiction book “Patriot Acts: What Americans Must Do to Save the Republic”, as well as several others.

On the March 9th, 2012 episode of the very popular HBO Friday night political series “Real Time with Bill Maher“, Crier  suggested that women at the grass-roots level everywhere could fight back very effectively against these outrageous religiously-based attempts to limit their reproductive rights, although she warned that it could involve short-term sacrifice on the women’s part.

Her strategy?   Simple!   Agree completely with these GOP rules about sex, just as they’re being pushed by the GOP candidates and their evangelical supporters!

In other words, women will stop all sexual activity except for the express purpose of conceiving a child.  Thus, they won’t need contraception, and they’ll never require an abortion.

And since they won’t want children, they will no longer have sex.

So how long do you think any of their male sex partners who support the GOP are going to put up with THAT?????

Next is the democratic state senator from Ohio, Nina Turner, who has decided to use the legislative process to fight back.  She introduced a bill in the Ohio state senate that would limit a man’s access to Viagra, Cialis, Levitra, or any other erectile dysfunction medication.  According to her proposed legislation before the Ohio state senate, a man would not be able to receive a prescription for any of the popular erectile dysfunction drugs (which enable him to have sex)  until and unless he goes to a second doctor to receive a second opinion regarding his need for this medication.

According to the senator, she is only trying to look out for the health and well-being of men by ensuring that they receive information on the possible side effects of these medications, known as PDE-5 inhibitors.

The legislation also includes the requirement that a man seeking any of these medications would have to a doctor certify in wrting that his “symptoms” are not psychological in nature.  That way, men could be guided to make the right decision for their bodies, much as male legislators have passed bills requiring women to have ultrasounds and/or hear the heartbeats of their fetuses before they can have an abortion, thus “guiding” them to make the right decision for their bodies.

Similar bills have been introduced in the state legislatures of at least other states so far:  Virginia, Oklahoma, Idaho, and Pennsylvania.

It seems only fair that women state legislators begin to protect the reproductive health of men, just as male legislators, who make up the extreme and vast majority of all legislators in every state of the USA as well as the US congress have been making laws governing the reproductive health of women for many years!  

And finally, there is Dr. Marlene Talbott-Green, whom, as a Professional Counselor, has advocated that the state should monitor for signs of masturbation by men.   She states, in a comment on the aforementioned article about Ohio state senator Nina Turner, that:  ” I think that’s even in the Bible – men should not spill their seed on the ground or anywhere outside a woman’s body… ”

She goes on to say:  “These people would then be taken into custody – for their own protection, of course – and face a hearing, and perhaps fines or jail-time, the way doctors will be criminalized for providing an abortion to a woman.”

All of these women are professionals, and women everywhere should thank them and others like them that are actively advocating for women’s rights.

And yet…defying all logic, thousands of women yesterday voted for Rich Santorum in the Alabama and Mississippi primaries!

Wow…..Talk about voting against one’s own self-interests….but then, the ultra-religious, the mis-informed poor, and the lazy/stupid do it all the time.

And that’s why the GOP survives!

Last night Rick Santorum came very close to beating Mitt Romney in Romney’s own home state of Michigan. The tally: Romney 41% to Santorum’s 38%.

That Santorum came so close but couldn’t close the deal is a testament to his extremist socially conservative views, such as his opposition to women’s use of contraceptives and his rigid  and inflexible position that all abortion should be illegal, even in cases of rape, incest, danger to the mother’s health or life, etc.  He also holds the ultra-conservative view that all sex outside of marriage is wrong and immoral, and that marital sex should be primarily for procreation.

Besides his hostility toward the reproductive rights of women, Santorum has also expressed hostility toward college graduates and the idea that everyone should have access to college.  Since he believes in a religiously traditional role for women, i.e., stay-home mothers and wives, not single, sexually active, college-graduated company executives telling men what to do (and presumably where to go do it), he is clearly the darling of born again/evangelical voters.  This is evidenced by the exit polls in Michigan where a 51% to 35%  majority of such voters chose him over favorite-son Romney.

Santorum might well had won Michigan if he had not been so vocal as to his extreme-right social views.  But he miscalculated how much (or how little, actually) his ultra-religious-right views would resonate with the average voter in the GOP primary. Perhaps, as Jerry Falwell did 30 years ago with his “Moral Majority” movement, Santorum thought that his fundamentalist-religion-belongs-in-government philosophy would catch on with John & Jane Q. Mainstream.

Unfortunately there are people out there who share these views.  Almost always republicans, they believe that if these “rules” are good enough for the bible, they’re good enough for the government and for everyone living in America.  That views has fueled the recently re-energized onslaught of attacks on women’s rights in state legislatures across the USA, where ever-tightening limits on a woman’s right to choose are popping up in GOP-controlled states,  further strengthening the war on women.

For example, look at Virginia (VA).  Similar to other states that have placed limits on a woman’s right to choose, the GOP-controlled Virginia General Assembly trumped them by passing legislation that would mandate a women seeking an abortion to first undergo an expensive and medically unnecessary invasive intra-vaginal ultrasound procedure, “because woman have a right to this information” as these fundamentalist fanatics have tried to publicly rationalize their arrogant actions.  Of course, the woman herself would be forced to pay for the procedure out of her own pocket.

After a tremendous amount of criticism and ridicule was levied against the Virginia GOP from all over the USA, the republican governor of Virginia convinced his cohorts in the Virgina legislature to soften the bill by requiring only an “on-the-tummy” ultrasound.  The legislature passed the new bill and the governor is expected to sign it into law.

WOW…For a political party that screams bloody murder over the federal health care reform mandate that most people will have to buy health insurance starting in 2014, the GOP sure seems to embrace government mandates when it suits their purposes.

Other states have imposed waiting periods (as if a woman suddenly chose an abortion as she was passing an abortion clinic), parental consent for women under 18 (who are just as unintentionally pregnant as women over 38), unnecessary ultrasounds, mandating the woman has to listen to the fetus’s heartbeat for a certain period of time before her abortion is scheduled, having to view photos of aborted fetuses, and other medically unnecessary processes and procedure designed solely to delay an abortion in the hopes of scaring or shaming the woman out of it.

It’s like someone trying to scare or shame someone else out of accessing their right to freedom of speech, or the right against self-incrimination.  Besides being unconstitutional, it is also immoral.

Imagine that:  an immoral practice from people claiming to be standing on the highest moral ground!

But besides the incredibly arrogant hypocrisy of this “holier-than-thou” crowd, what’s even worse is that it seems to be the most pious among them that continuously are being caught literally with their pants, down, in extramarital and or/gay affairs and/or sexually abusing children.

And they scream the loudest about an assault on their religious “freedom” if they have to allow health insurance companies to provide contraceptives to non-believers in their employ.  But they see no such assault on their part when they forcibly impose their anti-contraception beliefs by refusing to allow health-insurance-provided contraceptive services to women in their employ who want them!

This would be laughable if it wasn’t so tragic.  In fact, the other advanced western industrialized countries of the world (all of which have single-payer universal health care) ARE laughing at us!

Santorum and his fundamentalist-religious-right brethren would do well to remember that….as would his own campaign…because we WANT him to be the GOP nominee!! 

With the 2012 campaign season in full swing, more and more negative political advertising by one GOP candidate against another is showing up in the media where the GOP still has primaries to run.  But the GOP also has been running a lengthy negative advertising campaign against President Obama for over three years, and it is heating up even more right now.

The ad campaign referred to above is in the form of bumper stickers.  It’s been going on since Obama took office in January 2009, and was designed to keep the anti-Obama folks energized.  Slogans on stickers making fun of his name, the health care reform law, and all fashion of insulting “cutism”s (at least to the right wing) are seen on the back of cars…many of them old and beat up…and also particularly on pick-up trucks in the south, west, and elsewhere.  Messages such as:

“How’s that Hope & Change working out for you?” and

“O(ne) B(ig) A(wful) M(istake) A(merica)!”  and

“Send that Muslim back to Kenya!”

…and other similar stuff.

Well, as a progressive thinker, you no longer have to cringe in your car as you resist the temptation to drive it into the back of the pick-up displaying those obnoxious GOP bumper stickers.  You can now fight back!  As a public service, We, the PEOPLE!!  is providing anti-republican, anti-Tea Party bumper stickers so that the progressive thinkers among us can fight back.

All you have to do is copy & paste any or all of these into your favorite word processor or Photoshop-type program and enlarge and print them.  Or capture them and take them to your local bumper sticker printer…Or for a particularly satisfying experience…capture them and email them to all the conservatives you know, and revel in the knowledge that you may well have made their heads explode! 

You see…they don’t expect this from progressives.  They think progressives are a bunch of nancy-pansies who can be abused at will.  Well….this will turn the tables, at least once.  So here they are.  Enjoy!

And this author’s personal favorite:

What FUN!!!!!!  

(Note:  With very special thanks to RocketManLA!     )

Readers of We, the PEOPLE!! often submit letters, and occasionally they are so good that this blog would be remiss if the special ones would shared with the greater reading audience.

The following is an example that everyone should read and think about:

“Ronnie Republican is a self-made man who believes in the free market system.

“He knows the problem with the economy is too much government interference and the real answer is unrestricted capitalism.  He’ll have none of that liberal “European style socialism” or “tree hugging environmentalism.”  No more helping those too lazy to help themselves.  Government can do no good.  Ronald and Rush and Glenn all told him that.

“So he enjoys his morning breakfast eating food that is the safest in the world, and the water used to make his coffee is fresh and pure all thanks to some food safety regulations which some “environmental wackos” and bunch of “progressive Communists” fought to establish.

“He drives to work in a car with safety features that some liberals fought for, over safe high-speed roads and interstate highways constructed with federal funds.

“He refuses to join the union at work.  In fact, he doesn’t like unions and he doesn’t like progressives, either.   He doesn’t think about it, but that nasty union of progressives struggled to achieve his higher wages, decent hours, safe working conditions and even the health care he takes for granted.  Plus, his ten year old son isn’t working in a dangerous factory or an unsafe coal mine, either, because of those nasty union progressives.

*Ronnie’s flying off to the West Coast today in a plane made safe by federal regulations and guided on its way by federal (as in government) “air traffic controllers of the Federal Aviation Administration.

“His children are attending college thanks to government student loans, and his parents are enjoying dignity in their retirement thanks to Social Security and Medicare.

“But Ronnie Republican never thinks too much of all this.  You see, Ronnie is a self-made man.  Nobody helped him.  He made it all on his own, and everyone else should do the same thing.”

….or how about this one, regarding the self-righteous, self-appointed, self regulating “GOP Jesus”:

“With Rick Santorum claiming we need a “Jesus” candidate, Mitt Romney telling us that Obama will prevent us from being “one nation under God”, and Pat Robertson claiming God has told him God opposes Obama, an old familiar figure is back.  Once again, “GOP Jesus” is making an election year appearance and touting his special version of Christian values and principles.

“‘GOP Jesus’ and his followers fully support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and, in fact, they never met a war they didn’t like.  They also fully support torturing suspects during wartime, albeit as one pastor (who wants to remain anonymous) told me, “reluctantly.”

“‘GOP Jesus’ and his buddies want to cut food stamps and heating assistance to the poor, but there can never be enough money for the military or the extremely wealthy.  They believe the military-industrial complex creates the secret to happiness.  They condemn and resist all attempts to tax the richest 1% a bit more to feed or clothe the working poor and/or help the middle class, because, they explain, you can’t, “build up the weakest by knocking down the strongest.”  As for the sick, they can take care of themselves, just as they have done for centuries.

“When Obama has said that we’ve made mistakes as a nation, “GOP Jesus” and his followers won’t have any of that “excuse-mongering)!   It just shows them how filled with shame and hate for this country Obama really is!

“‘GOP Jesus’ and his followers send out all kinds of ugly emails about President Obama, never checking them for accuracy or concerned about “bearing false witness.”  If it’s a knock against Obama, it must be true!   And they will almost always conclude their knocks with “God Bless America!!!!!”

“They love Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, who preach hate for Democrats and especially Obama, and while eating pork hot dogs at work on the sabbath Sunday, they denounce gays and lesbians because “that lifestyle is something that is forbidden by the Old Testament.”

“Yes,” GOP Jesus” has many followers.

But one has to wonder what the original “Man from Galilee” would have to say about all this!  Somehow, it’s hard to believe that Jesus is really on their side!”

“signed,

“Secret Sam”

Secret Sam obviously doesn’t receive the same secret transmissions and messages in his head that those religion-loving, government-hating GOP tea baggers seem to be hearing in their heads.  It’s really too bad, because it must be the ultimate joy to know that what you believe is absolutely blessed, even in the face of overwhelming empirical evidence to the contrary.

After all, what did empirical evidence, science, data, proof and verifiable facts ever do for anyone?

Anyone paying attention to GOP race will note that, with the possible exception of Ron Paul, the other three GOP candidates are falling over each pandering to the GOP’s extreme conservative religious right.  Each claims to be more religiously devout and more socially conservative than the other two.

Mitt Romney is a Mormon, Rick Santorum is Roman Catholic, and Newt Gingrich was a Baptist and a Lutheran, until he converted into a Roman Catholic.

The Roman Catholic church, as well as some ultra-religious evangelical sects, actively disapproves of all forms of birth control except the “rhythm method“, a partial-abstinence methodology that seemingly works reasonably (though not infallibly) for priests and nuns.  However, a 2011 study by the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit organization working for the advancement of reproductive health, found the following statistics (which do not include the “rhythm method” as a form of contraception):

*  Among all sexually active women in the USA, 99% have used contraception, while 98% of sexually active Catholic women have used contraception.

*  Among sexually active women of all denominations wishing to avoid pregnancy, 69% are using a highly effective method (i.e., sterilization, the pill or another hormonal method, or the IUD).

*  68% of Catholic women, 73% of Mainline Protestants and 74% of Evangelicals use a highly effective method as described above.

*  More than 40% of Evangelicals rely on male or female sterilization, which is higher than other religious groups.

Thus it can be said that the vast overwhelming majority of American woman, as well as a vast overwhelming majority of Catholic women and evangelical women ignore  the teachings of either the Catholic Church or the most extremist fanatical evangelical churches.

That’s important because this past week the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services began requiring all employers’ health insurance – including religious institutions such as schools and hospitals (but not churches) – to cover contraceptives including the birth control pill and so-called Plan B pill, as well other highly effective methods such as those described above (within an implementation period of one year).

Of course, Romney, Gingrich and Santorum, who are all trying to out-pander the other for the ultra-religious voters, screamed about the evils of Obama’s health care reform and how it’s an unholy “war on religion” because of the HHS requirement on Catholic school and hospitals.  They claim it’s an attack on the Catholic institutions’ religious freedom.

But let’s examine some important facts:

1.  No one is forcing any Roman Catholic church (or any other church) or institution to either start handing out or using birth control.  The private for-profit health insurance companies are the ones providing the employer-based health insurance, and the mandate applies to those private insurance companies, to now cover the cost of birth control IF (and only if) a woman seeks it, regardless of her place of employment (except in a church itself).  The religious institutions can and will continue to preach whatever they want, and 98% to 99% of all women the USA will continue to ignore them, just as they do now.

2.  Religious institutions such as schools and hospitals generally employ people of any religion, not just the sponsoring religion of institution.  Do the churches or evangelicals and these hypocritical GOP contenders really think that the anti-contraception churches have a right to impose their particular religious beliefs on people of other religions, just because of where they work?  Is that what they consider “religious freedom”…forced imposition of one religion’s belief on others??  What about the religious freedom of the employees/victims of these employers?

Maybe the GOP’ers think that only those who share their beliefs have religious freedom, but no one else does.  Kind of a First amendment freedom but only for our special “club. 

Interestingly, Romney has five children, all born between 1970 and 1981.  Unless he and his wife haven’t had sex (with each other) in 31 years, they must use a highly effective form of contraception.  Gingrich has had more wives than he has children (2, born almost 50 years ago), so you KNOW he and his multiple sex partners have used highly effective contraception.

Santorum is the only one who might qualify as a bonafide ultra-religious-right-wing-nut.  His wife was a human factory product eight offspring!  Additionally, while in the US senate he tried to make the teaching of religious creationism mandatory in US public schools.  He opposes contraception (ergo, eight kids!), hates a woman’s right to choose, opposes gay rights, and disagrees with the principal of a distinction between private religious conviction and public responsibility, as espoused by President John F. Kennedy.  Instead, he embraces religious imposition.

Though he may be the least hypocritical of the three noted GOP candidates when it comes to these issue, he is also quite possibly the most dangerous candidate regarding women’s rights and freedoms.

The other two are simply telling the religious right wing-nuts what they want to hear, whether they believe it or not. 

Especially Romney…..who has been for everything… until he was against everything.

Once upon a time there was a man named George Romney, who was a mainstream republican back when the GOP was a moderate political party that believed in working together for the good of the nation. They believed fiscal responsibility in government was important, but they also believed in the well-being of ALL Americans, and not just the very wealthy.  As a result, as governor of Michigan, George increased state spending but responsibly made sure it was paid for by increasing state taxes.  In other words, no deficit spending, but services for the people responsibly paid for by the people.  The state prospered and he was re-elected twice!

The social upheaval of the turbulent 1960′s did not leave Michigan unscathed.  Both anti-Vietnam war protests and pro-civil rights riots occurred in its cities, most notably Detroit, and George on occasion requested that federal troops intervene to keep order.  And even though George had been CEO of the American Motors and Director of the Automobile Manufacturers Association (and therefore had an interest in big business and capitalism), he did not believe that protecting the wealthy and the powerful was the overriding task of a republican.

Although he initially supported the Vietnam war after a carefully orchestrated visit to South Vietnam in 1965, his position changed as more US troops were killed and more Americans began to change their minds about their initial support as well.  He ultimately withdraw his support of the Vietnam War  even though the big business corporate elite of America were making billions of dollar from the American war effort in Vietnam.

George also supported civil rights at a time when the more conservative people in America (namely fascists, white supremacists and extremist fundamentals Christians many of whose ancestors had actually support and defended slavery) opposed the civil rights movement at every turn.

In 1966, the republican governors of the USA wanted George to be the republican presidential nominee for the presidential election of 1968.  In fact, a Gallup poll taken in November of 1966 showed that republicans in general favored George over former vice president and former losing republican presidential nominee Richard Nixon.  A Harris poll indicated that Romney was favored to win over then-president Johnson in the upcoming presidential election.  However, due to some gaffs on his own part as well as his evolved opposition to the Vietnam War and the money Nixon spent on his own campaign, Romney began to lose popularity against Nixon, and lost his bid for the republican nomination for president in 1968.

George had a son called Mitt Romney.  Although George was not a gazillionaire, he and his family had the money to live very well and to provide Mitt with plenty of opportunity.  Mitt used that opportunity to avoid being drafted into the military by first getting a student deferment, then traveling to France as a Mormon missionary which provided a ministerial deferment, and then returning to college in the USA for another student deferment until the draft lottery of 1969 provided him with a high-enough number to escape the draft permanently.  Through it all he supported the Vietnam war, although, it was evidently not enough to serve his country fighting the war he supported.  After all, support and commitment only go so far.

What Mitt wanted was to make tons of money just like those guys producing endless supplies of military equipment for the meat-grinder of the Vietnam war.  So after Harvard Business School (paid for by his dad, of course) he became one of those businessmen he admired and made millions and millions of dollars, partly by buying up distressed companies, breaking them apart, firing people, and then selling off whatever was left.  You know…one of the job-creators.

Next he decided to play politician and ran against Ted Kennedy in 1994, changing his conservative views in mid-campaign to more liberal ones on topics such as abortion and unions (known today as flip-flopping).   But he lost that election, which taught him to tell people what they want to hear BEFORE the next campaign starts.  With his new liberal positions now a bit older, he ran for governor of Massachusetts in 2002 and won.  As governor, he supported and signed a universal health care law with a mandate that people had to have health insurance.

Then in preparation for a 2008 presidential campaign, he changed his position on abortion AGAIN, taking it back to its original anti-choice position in 2005.  He had learned his lesson:  Tell ‘em what they want to hear.  His campaign failed in 2008, but 2012 was another opportunity.   So after Obama’s Health care reform law passed in 2010 with an identical mandate, Mitt strenuously opposed it.

But “tell ‘em what they want to hear” won’t work in a divided USA, and ol’ George would have known that.

And George would have told Mitt:

“Son, you’re either moderate or conservative.  You have to pick one or the people will pick without you.”

But Mitt probably wouldn’t listen.  After all, Mitt’s one of the 1% and dad George was only one of the 99%!

Those of us who online research, or are curious about a subject or a historical event, know, love and depend upon Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that has amassed the largest compendium of human knowledge in history.  So imagine how the millions of internet users are surviving today, Wednesday, January 18th, 2012 as Wikipedia has blacked out its web site for the entire 24 hours.

Wikipedia and other techno sites on the internet are protesting a pair of bills being considered in the US congress:  SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) in the US house of representatives and PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act) in the US senate.  What these bills aim to do is to provide more tools to prevent foreign web sites from infringing on copyrighted materials by offering pirated products such as software, movies, music, and so forth.

On the surface, this sounds like a good idea, and the problem is not that there is disagreement over the need to protect copyrights.  The real problem is, among other things, the near-unlimited power that would be granted to certain companies to black out suspected web sites without a court order or government oversight if the site has any copyrighted material on it.  That could include social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, and Google, where millions of people interact and it is impossible for anyone to examine and police every single item that millions of contributors place on these sites, or make available via these sites.

Additionally, the SOPA bill contains a provision that would allow the US government to target web sites that provide information regarding how to get around the censorship provisions in the this bill.  In other words, the government could pick and choose which web sites to go after, or black out, or order private internet providers to black out or hide, solely on the basis of available information on that site.  This would constitute an unconstitutional “prior restraint” against protected free speech, as guaranteed in the 1st amendment in the Bill of Rights of the US Constitution.  It would also have the effect of severely limiting online innovation, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).  For a more comprehensive examination of SOPA and PIPA and their detrimental effects on the internet and free speech, click HERE.

What’s interesting and even somewhat amusing about these bills is who supports them and who opposes them.  The bills are the result of intense lobbying by groups in the entertainment and media industry such as the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), Time-Warner and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).  They all support the bills as a way to protect their copyrighted properties.  On the other hand, the internet- and computer-techno-intensive companies such as Wikipedia, AOL, YouTube and the social networks are adamantly opposed to these bills in their present form.

Additionally, right-leaning venture capitalists seem to have joined with left-leaning free speech advocates by stating that they would not want to invest in online start-ups if these bills pass because of the massively increased liability they would face if someone posted something (anything!) found to be copyrighted.

As a result of the convoluted division of issues with these bills, both democrats and republicans are jumping on both the anti-SOPA and anti-PIPA bandwagons, just as some members of both parties support the bills.  It’s unfortunate that it takes something like this to see some bipartisanship occur in Congress.

On the other hand, Wikipedia shutting down for a day in protest isn’t something you get to see every day, either.

For those that have an opinion about these bills, several organizations have been sending out emails asking people to sign on to petitions against these bills.  If you go to Wikipedia today, you’ll see one way to get the message to your congresspeople.  Or you can go directly to this site to just fill in the blanks and get your view up to congress.

This actually is very important stuff.  Once censorship starts, even for the noblest of causes, it is very hard to stop and reverse.  And besides, who wants an internet where there is no Facebook, no Twitter, no free online encyclopedia with all human knowledge just a click away, and no YouTube?

No YouTube???  They may as will just shut the entire internet down if there’s no YouTube!!!  

Super PAC:  An independent-expenditure only committee, which is free to collect and spend as much money as it can, for the purpose of supporting a political candidate and/or agenda, as long as that candidate and/or agenda is not DIRECTLY tied to, coordinated with, or directed by a single political candidate or his/her campaign organization.

Super PAC’s were born out of two US federal court decisions:

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in which the US Supreme Court ruled that the US Constitution’s first amendment right to free speech extended to corporations and other non-personal entities, and

Speechnow.org v. FEC, in which the US Federal Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit decided that there could be no limit on the money contributed to groups such as independent super PACs which are prohibited from coordinating DIRECTLY with the candidates or political parties they support.  The only control exerted by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) is that Super PACs are required to disclose who their donors are.

So what?

Obviously, as long as a Super PAC doesn’t coordinate DIRECTLY with the candidates or political parties it supports, it can throw as much money toward a candidate’s success as it wants, which in this mega-media environment means buying TV and other media time to bash the opposition candidates and/or political party.

The problem with this abusive system is unfair political system influence.  These Super PACs are primarily supported by corporations and organizations with tons of money to spend on their singular agenda item of buying votes that enhance their corporate bottom line.  They are not, and never have been, about what is best for the nation, known as the United States of America (USA), as a whole.  The corporate and economic philosophy of enhancing the bottom line at all costs is driving these Super PACs.  The average lowly middle class USA worker cannot possibly compete with the resources that these mega-corporations can bring to bear upon the electoral system of the USA.

As an example to the huge out-of-proportion influence that only the super-rich can exert on the political system of the USA, the ultra-conservative Koch brothers and their buddy Karl Rove (engineer of GW Bush’s lying political campaigns, justifications for the war in Iraq, and the outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame), made available more than a quarter of a billion US dollars that have ALREADY BEEN SPENT under the Super PAC concept in the republican political campaign process underway during and following last night’s republican primary in New Hampshire (NH).

NH is just a tiny state in the grand political primary scheme of things, so it’s not going to be that big a numerical influence in the republican nominating process.  But what it does very well is provide the  Super PACs with their testing ground for future proposed hate-, fear- and falsehood-mongering, as well as misleading political ads.   All this happens at the expense of the average voting citizen who is either too busy or too stupid to do his/her own political fact-finding.

At least on the surface, it is unbelievably bizarre that today’s USA citizens would accept even a moment of this unbelievably assaulting abuse on their voting rights from entities able to exert enormous amounts of political and financial pressure on the American electorate system.  Perhaps the explanation is that the both the internet and  today’s instantaneous telecommunications have made people so lazy that they no longer check rhetoric against facts.

Yet, whatever it is, it’s proving the old axiom that people get the government they deserve.  If they’re too lazy or too stupid to check facts and reality before they vote, then too bad for them for electing liars and businesspeople that only care about the benefits to the sponsors of the Super PACs that spend millions (or in the case of the Koch brother industrialists, billions!) of dollars influencing an election in a way that is good ONLY for the already wealthy profit mongers.

There is no way to rationalize that the founding fathers of America intended for this to occur, all explanations by Corporate America and the Tea Party to the contrary.  The truth is that our founding fathers were VERY concerned with the powerful suppressing the less powerful.

Although the founders obviously couldn’t see everything coming, they saw far enough into the future to realize that they needed to provide an amendment procedure into the US constitution.  That means that it is ultimately possible to change the Constitution in order to fix past mistakes and to make the individual USA citizen more important than the obscenely rich corporate American company, as well as the middle class who is at least as important as our obscenely profit-capable corporate American environment.

Obscenely rich corporate American eletoral influence is not about true democracy….it’s the Roman Empire, just before it collapsed.

Only problem is…the wealthy  front-runners absolutely love this shit…so they will fight any effort to suspend their power.  And the hell wit true democracy.

Anyone paying attention to the GOP Iowa caucus circus last night knows that Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum tied for first place, each with 25% of the vote cast.  The unusual factor of this caucus vote was that Romney received 30,015 votes to Santorum’s 30,007 votes, a difference of only 8 votes.  That made Rowney’s “victory”, if you can even call it that, the closest in GOP caucus history.

Rick Perry spent over US$4 million on advertising in Iowa but only received 12,600 votes, or 10% off all votes cast, and did not win a single county among Iowa’s 99 counties.  The math says he paid $350 per vote!  In contrast, Rick Santorum spent only US$30,000 on TV ads, costing just US$1 per vote.  As a result, following the pasting he took in Iowa Perry said he was going back to his home state of Texas to “reassess” his campaign.   But Perry, with his bible-thumping mass prayer get-together functions and his belief that such things can make in rain in Texas (except that it didn’t), is out of touch with reality, perhaps more so than Michele Bachmann (if that’s even possible).

Michele Bachmann only received approximately 6000 votes, or just 5% of the votes cast, and also did not win a single county in Iowa.  She came in 6th in a field of 7 candidates, just behind Perry’s 10%, and beating only John Huntsman, who did noteven campaign in Iowa at all.  That’s like losing to everyone except a dead person.

After her defeat last night in Iowa, she told the press that was still going to press on with her campaign.  But leaks from her campaign people made that doubtful.   As weird and religiously oriented as Michele Bachmann is, she listened to her campaign advisers and withdrew from the race.  That’s to her credit, and the first smart thing she’s done in quite some time.

Not surprisingly, in announcing this action she misrepresented health care reform, the founding of the USA, and President Obama’s political views, all while making it sound as if she was simply doing “God’s work”, according to “God’s plan”.  It was a speech seemingly designed to fire up the most evangelical ultra-extreme right religious fanatics out there.  After all, she and her husband believe and actively advocate that homosexuality is a perverted choice (as opposed to a genetic predisposition), and they own and administer a clinic that purports to “cure” homosexuality with prayer therapy, which, evidently, they also believe is”God’s work”.

Additionally, Bachmann has made speeches claiming that the “founding fathers” of the USA (who signed the US Constitution in 1787) ended slavery in the USA, when most (or all) had been dead for at least 40 years when President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation ending slavery in the USA in 1863, or 76 years later!!!!

Nonetheless, regardless of how delighted her niche constituency was, no one was more delighted than Rick Perry, whom, immediately after Bachmann’s withdrawal speech, was reported by members of his campaign to have completed his “reassessment” in favor of continuing his run for president, by concentrating on the South Carolina primary on January 21st.  After all, Perry knows he hasn’t got a chance against Mitt Romney in New Hampshire next Tuesday.   Additionally, Newt Gingrich and John Huntsman have campaigned hard in New Hampshire and will probably do well.  Perry’s strategy has always been to concentrate on the south, and now he seems to believe he’ll pick up Bachmann’s supporters.

For people who pay attention and think for themselves, Perry’s a buffoon who couldn’t debate well, couldn’t remember the names of the federal agencies he wanted to abolish, thinks much like Bachmann that he’s doing “God’s Work”, and simply cannot (or will not) see the handwriting on the wall that is screaming that he cannot possibly win the republican presidential nomination no matter what he says or does (or prays for).

The conclusion of this interesting turn of events is that though we may never know for sure if Perry’s “reassessment” was cut short by Bachmann’s decision to withdraw, it certainly seems to be more than a just a weird coincidence that the political campaign “leak” announcing Perry’s sudden decision to stay in the race was reported less than five minutes after the conclusion of Bachmann’s speech.

The one person who can’t be too happy with Bachmann’s departure is Mitt Romney.  He wants as many ultra-conservatives as possible to remain in the race to split the inevitable Tea Party, born-again, and evangelical vote which will make his vote percentages look better, since that’s the way plurality voting  systems work.  If Perry had dropped out as well, the anyone-but-Romney vote would have benefited Gingrich,Santorum and the space cadet (Ron Paul) the most.

And speaking of space cadets…Ron Paul did remarkably well last night with the 17-29 year-old folks, according to the polls.  Problem is…one has to be 18 to vote for president in the USA.

Except, maybe in Iowa??

By this time next week two things will be true that are not true right now:

First, the year will have changed from 2011 to 2012, and second, the Iowa caucus will be history.  It is widely believed that subsequent to the Iowa caucus, Rick Santorum will drop out of the race for republican 2012 nominee for president if he doesn’t do well.  If he does drop out, it will happen because running for national elective office is exceedingly expensive, and candidates, whose political campaigns are funded primarily by private and corporate campaign contributions, will not spend their own money unless they have a very good expectation of winning.  Rick Santorum does not that that expectation.

Rick Santorum was a lawyer who served as a republican congressman from Pennsylvania in the US House of Representatives for four years and also served as a US senator for two terms, but in this case he is just an example of the type of people that are in congress, from a financial point of view.  That is, members of congress have become part of the 1% that the Occupy Wall Street have been protesting against.

In 1984, the net worth of the average Americans was $20,648.  In 2009, that net worth, adjusted for inflation, actually declined to $20,500.  In contrast, the net worth of members of the US House of Representatives over the same time period rose from $280,000 to $725.056!  Interestingly, the republicans in congress always seem to have a higher net worth than democrats!  More detailed data is available HERE, but the chart below summarizes it pretty well:

2.  The Occupy Wall Street (or Occupy “Whatever”) bunch.  The best, last hope for the economic well-being of the USA probably rests with the Occupy crowd.  Why?  Because contrary to the propaganda machine of the 1%, the Occupiers are not against wealth any more than Warren Buffet or his son Howard Buffett are;  They are against greed and economic abuse of the “have nots” by the “haves”.   They’re not afraid to publicly proclaim that the emperor has no clothes.  All the propaganda in the world cannot overcome an unfrightened truth or the unfrightened folks willing to stand up for it.

Remember the Occupy Wall Street protesters camped out in Zuccotti Park in New York’s Wall Street financial district?  Now imagine those folks camped out in the hallowed halls of Congress….

Oh, baby….   

Have New Year to everyone from WE, the PEOPLE!!