That Christmas spirit

This time of year in the northern hemisphere is especially difficult for the poor, the homeless, the sick. Many religious traditions take note of this by making special appeals at this time to their adherents to provide assistance to those in need. It is a time when people of conscience must be particularly aware of those who are less fortunate than they and wish to reach out to them and help them.

Having been raised in the Christian tradition, I always associate this desire to help with Jesus' parable of the sheep and the goats as related in the Book of Matthew in the New Testament. The relevant section of the parable from the New International Version of the Bible begins with Matthew 25:34.

34“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

37“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

40“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ 

Every religious tradition that I am familiar with gives similar approbation to this human impulse toward altruism.

And then there is the opposite tradition which is embodied by certain prominent politicians and their supporters in our country. They were skewered very succinctly in a Tom Tomorrow cartoon at Daily Kos this week.

"The true meaning of Christmas" in their world seems to be "We've got ours. All the rest of you losers are on your own." The irony is that, often, what they've got has been inherited and has not really been gained through their own efforts.

Then, of course, there is the very insular and racist view of Christmas as exemplified by this news host on Fox News this week.

She and all her all-white and vociferously Christian cohorts at Fox News would likely have their minds blown by this image:

Whatever our religious or non-religious traditions, let us resist the impulse to selfishness and insularity and instead extend our compassion and altruism to all who need it at this time of year and throughout the year. That would be the true spirit of Christmas, the humane spirit.

These voters have some strange values

Their big weekend summit in Washington is over and the "values voters" have spoken.  The next president of the United States will be ... Ron Paul!

Which, frankly, brings to mind a quote I read recently from the late and sadly missed Molly Ivins.  About ten years ago Molly said, “Next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president of the United States, please pay attention.”  If Molly were still here to advise us, I feel absolutely certain that she would not be endorsing either Ron Paul or that other Texan who is in the race.

Nevertheless, the voters with values, as they bill themselves, indicating that other people are without values, really, really liked Mr. Paul and gave him 37% of their votes.  The other Texan got 8%.  Obviously, these voters were not at all convinced about his "values."

The straw poll vote was only one of the headlines coming out of this summit and probably not the most interesting one at that.  It was revealed, for example, that Major League Baseball has saved us from another 9/11 style attack by having "God Bless America" sung during the seventh inning stretch at MLB games!  Who knew that protection was that easy?  We could just disband the army and perhaps add the singing of  "America" for an even stronger defense.

Meanwhile, the candidates who appeared at the summit vied with each other to see who could be the most anti-women.  I think Michele Bachmann won that one.

Then there was the kerfuffle over whether Mormonism is a Christian religion or a cult - meaning, of course, that any religion that isn't Christianity is a "cult."

And various speakers talked about whether good morals make a good economy, again implying that our present stagnant economy is the fault of "immoral" leaders who are not sanctioned by their Christian God. And we all know who is meant by that - that Kenyan-born, socialist, fascist, Muslim in the White House.

And what did these voters not talk about during the weekend?  Jobs and how to create them.  Because creating jobs to help people better their situations and support themselves and their families is not a value that these people...value.

Newt explains it all

Serial adulterer and perpetual hypocrite Newt Gingrich is making noises about possibly running for president again. I don't think he will. I don't think he even wants to really. I think he just wants the notoriety that comes from having his name mentioned as a possible candidate and the financial benefits that accrue to one who claims to be considering the race. But if he did run, it would be particularly ugly because all that nasty stuff about his sexual history would become a hot topic once again.

Newt is on his third marriage and his method for finding new wives has been nothing if not consistent. He cheated on his first wife and divorced her while she was recovering from cancer surgery. He then married his mistress. He cheated on her with a young staffer as the second wife was being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. He divorced her* and married his mistress who is now his third wife.

So how does he justify all that? Well, you see, it was just because he is so passionate about this country and he was working so hard for it that "things happened." Funny, I thought things happened because he was so passionate about all those mistresses. Silly me!

This is what he actually told an interviewer on Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcast Network:

There’s no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate. And what I can tell you is that when I did things that were wrong, I wasn’t trapped in situation ethics, I was doing things that were wrong, and yet, I was doing them. I found that I felt compelled to seek God’s forgiveness. Not God’s understanding, but God’s forgiveness. I do believe in a forgiving God. And I think most people, deep down in their hearts hope there’s a forgiving God. Somebody once said that when we’re young, we seek justice, but as we get older, we seek mercy. There’s something to that, I think.

So it all happened because he is just so darn patriotic and he felt compelled to spread that "patriotism" around as much as possible. (I would be interested to know which young staff member he's spreading it around to now.) But it's all okay because God forgives him. Funny how that works.

If I could offer two words of advice to the current Mrs. Gingrich, assuming she wants to remain the current Mrs. Gingrich, it would be these: Stay healthy. If you are diagnosed with a debilitating illness, you can expect the notice of divorce to be delivered post haste.

*He persuaded the Catholic Church to annul that second marriage so that he could marry his current wife who was and is a Catholic. Newt was not a Catholic at the time but promised to become one. Thus is the Catholic Church complicit in his adulteries, as indeed it is for many powerful men who are members, speaking of hypocrisy.

The war against women

Our new Republican Congress keeps telling us that their number one priority is jobs, but their every action gives the lie to that claim. First, it was revisiting the Affordable Health Care Law. Now they are pursuing their true first priority - seeking to reverse every gain towards equality that women have made in the last hundred years. While Republicans say all the right things, offering empty platitudes about women's equality, their agenda is to legislate women into second-class citizenship. This is true not only at the national level but in state legislatures all across the country.

Republicans are seeking to reverse, through legislative action, the protections of the Equal Pay Act. They insist that the law is no longer needed because the pay gap has all but been eradicated. This is blatantly false, but when were these bozos ever guided by facts?

The big guns of this Republican war against women, though, are trained at women's health issues, specifically reproductive issues. For example, they are doing their best to shut down Planned Parenthood, which is a health care provider - sometimes the only health care provider available - for low income women and men, providing contraception, STD testing and treatment, and cancer screening. The Republicans' argument is that they want to limit abortions, but abortions are a very small part (about 3 percent) of the services that Planned Parenthood provides.

Republicans are also trying to decriminalize violence against women. They wanted, in their H.R.3 bill, to redefine rape. According to their "new rule," it wouldn't be rape unless it was "forcible rape." Statutory rape of a child or rape involving incest where perhaps no actual force was applied would no longer be considered rape and would not be grounds for a woman or a child to receive an abortion to remove the fruit of that act. The Republicans left themselves wide open on this point and they were ridiculed mercilessly as they should have been. Apparently, they have now retrenched and dropped that language from their bill. This does not mean, however, that they are giving up. These enemies of women's rights never give up. They keep pushing and pushing and they will continue to do that until they have managed to reverse every single gain that women have so painfully made.

So, these are the believers in "small government." They believe that government should not regulate commerce to make it more fair; it should not inspect food and drugs to make sure they are safe; it should not provide any social safety net at all. It should keep its hands off everything. Except women's bodies. When it comes to those, government should be as intrusive as all get out, going right into the medical examination room with her and monitoring her conversation with her doctor. The hypocrisy is truly mind-boggling.

UPDATE: Apparently the House GOPers have not changed the language in their H.R.3. And the war continues...

Ayn-rony shrugging

This story is just too deliciously ironic to ignore.

Remember Ayn Rand, heroine of the conservative/tea partier cause? She believed in individual self-sufficiency. Individuals should stand or fall on their own, based on their own efforts. It is a philosophy that essentially extolls survival of the fittest - or the richest and most ruthless. There is no social contract in Rand-world. We do not owe anything to our neighbors. Most importantly, we should not accept any assistance from the government and government, in its truest and most righteous form, should not offer any.

But if you happen to contract lung cancer, all that philosophy apparently goes out the window, because, you see, Ayn Rand - yes, Mrs. John Galt, herself - applied for and received Social Security and Medicare when she became ill with lung cancer.

An interview with Evva Pryror, a social worker and consultant to Miss Rand's law firm of Ernst, Cane, Gitlin and Winick verified that on Miss Rand's behalf she secured Rand's Social Security and Medicare payments which Ayn received under the name of Ann O'Connor (husband Frank O'Connor).

As Pryor said, "Doctors cost a lot more money than books earn and she could be totally wiped out" without the aid of these two government programs. Ayn took the bail out even though Ayn "despised government interference and felt that people should and could live independently... She didn't feel that an individual should take help."

But alas she did and said it was wrong for everyone else to do so.

Rand railed against such programs during her life, but when she needed them, they were there for her and she took advantage of them. As far as I can find out, she never acknowledged that fact and never told her followers that, actually, Social Security and Medicare are not Satan's tools to ensnare us and can be pretty useful when one needs them.

But today, her disciple, Rep. Paul Ryan, requires all his staff to read Atlas Shrugged and is continuing his covert and sometimes not-so-covert campaign to destroy the two programs.

I don't begrudge Rand her use of the social safety net. Thank FDR that it was there for her - and still there for me. I do begrudge her hypocrisy in not acknowledging the fact that she, too, took advantage of the help that was available to her and that she would have denied to others.

Broken promises already

For days now, the Republicans have been trumpeting their intention of reading the Constitution aloud on their first day in charge of the new Congress. They have also been on all the news outlets talking about their "New Rule" that any bill considered by the House must have a statement about its Constitutional authority. They tout this as something entirely different. It isn't. The old rules of the House already required a statement about the section of the Constitution which covered each bill it considered.

But these are the people who revere the Constitution so much that they consider it Holy Writ, handed down by God directly to the Founders, unchanged and unchangeable. (Just ask Antonin Scalia. But that's another rant.) So, of course, they - and we - were really, really excited about the prospect of actually hearing this sacred text read aloud in the People's House. We waited with bated breath.

We're still waiting. They didn't read the Constitution in the House today. They read selected portions of the Constitution. And the new House Republicans were so excited about the event that this is how they looked during the reading:


This is the Republican side of the aisle. Where is everybody? Well, John Boehner, for one, couldn't possibly be bothered with listening to a reading of even part of the Constitution. No, he had to hold a press conference.

So one day in office and already they are breaking their promises. I wonder if the tea partiers will notice? More importantly, I wonder if the news media will notice? I would guess that it is highly unlikely. I tell you, it's enough to make a grown man weep.

The rich must not suffer!

A couple of days ago, I was listening to NPR's Morning Edition and one of the hosts was interviewing a Republican congressman. I don't even know which one it was, but it really doesn't make any difference. They all speak from the same script and say exactly the same thing. Exactly! If the word of the day is "uncertainity", you can count on every Republican to use it at least fifteen times in any conversation or interview with the press throughout the day.

Anyway, the interviewer was asking the man about his vote against the extension of unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed. He mentioned that virtually every economist - except possibly ones employed by the Republican Party or Fox News - states unequivocally that one of the most stimulative things that you can do for the economy is to provide unemployment benefits, because the recipients of those benefits are certain to spend them almost as soon as they receive them. They have to in order to pay their bills, put food on the table, and keep the wolf from the door. The congressman, sounding quite exasperated, said that he would like to provide an extension of long-term benefits, but since he is a fiscal conservative, he wouldn't do so unless those benefits were paid for.

The interviewer did not challenge his reasoning or follow up in any way on that issue, but his next question to the congressman was about the so-called "Bush tax cuts". The congressman, of course, read from the Republican script and demanded that all of the tax cuts be extended and made permanent, including the extra bonus tax cut that taxpayers making over a quarter of a million dollars a year now get. He was appalled at the prospect of voting to extend the tax cuts only for those people who earn less than $250,000 a year.

I remarked to my husband, "Do you think he'll ask him why those tax cuts don't have to be paid for when benefits to the unemployed do?" All I got from him was a disgusted look, but we both knew the answer to my question. The interviewer did not comment on the gross contradiction and hypocrisy of the man and his party on these issues. He simply closed the interview and thanked the man for appearing.

Republicans constantly remind us of what budgetary conservatives they are and yet they are perfectly willing to bust the budget wide open and beggar the country for years to come in order that their friends, the $250,000+ earners, get their bonus tax break which, incidentally, they will not spend - they will hoard. They're just not willing to give assistance to an unemployed person who cannot find a job because of the poor economy, assistance that he would spend, thereby stimulating the economy.

Yes, the unemployed be damned! The rich must not "suffer"! Thus saith the Republicans, those financial conservatives. Those hypocrites!

These folks give hypocrisy a bad name

Remember back a couple of months ago when the right wing was all up in arms over having an Islamic Community Center built in the middle of Manhattan? They were so concerned about the sensitive feelings of survivors and kin of the victims of the Twin Towers tragedy. It would hurt their feelings to have an Islamic place of worship a few blocks from the site of the towers. Never mind the fact that a significant number of the innocent victims of that attack were Muslims who worked in the Towers and never mind that there had been an Islamic prayer room in the Towers which was destroyed by the attack of the fanactics along with everything else that awful day. Those were just inconvenient facts and these people don't have a very close relationship with facts.

But, of course, another of their big concerns about the project was the question of where the money to build the structure was coming from. Was it from foreign sources? Was it "dirty Muslim money"? They spent weeks shouting about this and how it was just wrong for foreigners to be able to contribute to the building of this center on American soil. The loudest shouters, as usual, were on Fox News.

So, now, since the Supreme Court's decision allowing corporations to contribute essentially whatever they want in political campaigns and remain anonymous while doing it, in this fall's political campaign, we have the specter of foreign corporations, and perhaps foreign governments as well, making political contributions through the National Chamber of Commerce and other right wing organizations to affect the outcome of our elections. Yes, that's right - they are trying their very hardest to buy our government outright.

All those people who were so outraged about foreigners contributing to the building of a house of worship are now apoplectic about the possibility that these elections and our government can be bought by foreigners. Right? Right? Can't you hear the shouting on Fox News?

Well, they are shouting all right, but what they are shouting about is people complaining about the corruption of the political system and the buying of the government by rich people and by foreign interests. What they are saying is, "Move along now. Nothing to see here. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain."

Truly, these people give hypocrisy a bad name.

Gingrich family values

Newt Gingrich gives sleazeballs a bad name. If there is any more hypocritical, narcissistic, arrogant, and completely un-self-aware individual on the public scene today, I don't want to know about him. Even Sarah Palin pales in comparison.

I've known this and I guess most of the sentient world has known it since at least the 1990s, but it has just been confirmed for us again by his second wife. You remember his second wife, don't you? She was the woman that he was having an affair with while his first wife suffered from cancer. He asked that first wife for a divorce while she was in a hospital bed being treated for the disease. This behavior was occurring during the time that Gingrich was excoriating President Clinton for his affair with an intern and leading the charge for his impeachment over that affair. He was on the television news every night talking about "family values" and how important it was for political leaders to uphold them and be a moral example to the country and the world.

Gingrich went on to divorce his first wife and to marry his mistress. But his extra-marital affairs didn't end there. Eventually, the second wife gave way to a third, but, if I were her, I would not rest easy with that status. A husband guilty of serial infidelity is not likely to change his stripes.

Now the second wife has decided to talk after all these years and some of the things that she is saying are very interesting. For instance, she recalls an occasion when Gingrich gave a speech in Erie, Pennsylvania that was all about compassion and family values. In a conversation afterward, she challenged him about the dichotomy between what he was espousing in his speeches and what he was actually living. His answer was that people needed to hear what he had to say and that he was the only one who could say it and that it really didn't matter what he did. Do as I say, not as I do.

I have no doubt that he actually believed and still believes that claptrap. People like him honestly think that they are special and that the rules do not apply to them. They can easily preach about other people's sins while committing the same sins themselves and never bat an eye. (This, of course, would be where a diligent and honest investigative journalist could perform valuable service to the country by pointing all of this out and exposing the lies and hypocrisy. If only such people existed.)

Meanwhile, Gingrich's third marriage survives, for the moment at least, and Bill Clinton continues in his first and only marriage.

They do protest too much, methinks

In Hamlet, Shakespeare has Gertrude say in regard to a character in a play, "The lady doth protest too much, methinks." Like so much else that the Bard wrote, this quote has come to address a particular circumstance in life. When one is guilty of something which he/she does not want known, he/she may strive to give the appearance of being and doing the opposite of that thing. And so the dishonest woman proclaims her honesty - "I would never lie to you!" The thief professes his innocence - "I've never stolen anything in my life!" The false lover vows, "Of course I'll still respect you in the morning!"

We've seen this play so often in recent years that we should be able to write its ending every time. Nowhere is the ending to the play more obvious than in the political arena with those politicians who wrap themselves in the blanket of family values and excoriate anyone who is deviant from what they define as the path of righteousness. And so we get the spectacle of Larry Craig and his "wide stance" in that Minnesota men's room, or Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina giving new meaning to the phrase "hiking the Appalachian Trail", or Sen. John Ensign paying off the cuckolded husband of his lover in order to keep from being exposed, or Ted Haggard railing against homosexuality while secretly carrying on with a male prostitute. Well, the list goes on and on. And now we can add another name - George Rekers. George Rekers and his "rentboy".

George Rekers who was considered by the States of Florida and Arkansas as an expert on "curing homosexuality" and was paid by those states to testify in court on this subject on which he had alleged expertise. He was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars! If I were the people of Florida and Arkansas, I'd be asking for my money back. I'd also be asking some hard questions of the state officials who paid him that money.

But all of these guys and so many others pretend or have pretended to be something they are not. The homosexuals pretend to be heterosexuals. The faithless husbands pretend to be loving family men. And, most despicably, all the while they preach to others about what their proper behavior should be!

One can only surmise that they hate themselves and what they are so much that they feel the necessity of building a wall of protection around themselves. And so they protest too much - "Homosexuality is a sin and I would never ever engage in it." "My wife and family are the most important things in my life." - and all the while they continue engaging in that behavior which they publicly deplore.

These people are pitiable on one level. But they are also thoroughly despicable for the pain they cause others with their self-righteous fulminations. And for that, they deserve to be exposed and made the butt of late night comics' jokes. It seems that Jon Stewart will not be running out of material any time soon.

Elena Kagan = Harriet Miers? Really?

It's funny how one's perspective changes with time and circumstances.

For example, when George Bush nominated Harriet Miers, who had zero judicial experience and little other experience except for being a Bush sycophant, for the Supreme Court back in 2005, our own Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison thought it was a great nomination. Hutchison said Miers was a "wonderful choice" in 2005, but today she "has some concerns over Elena Kagan's lack of judicial experience."

Likewise, Texas' other esteemed senator, John Cornyn, said of the Miers nomination,
"One reason I felt so strongly about Harriet Miers' qualifications is I thought she would fill some very important gaps in the Supreme Court. Because right now you have people who've been federal judges, circuit judges most of their lives, or academicians."

But that was then. This is now. Cornyn says of Kagan, "Ms. Kagan is a surprising choice because she lacks judicial experience. Most Americans believe that prior judicial experience is a necessary credential for a Supreme Court Justice."

It is not only Texas' senators that are afflicted with this wandering point of view. Jeff Sessions of Alabama thought Miers was a peachy keen nominee. "It is not necessary that she have previous experience as a judge in order to serve on the Supreme Court," he said. "It's perfectly acceptable to nominate outstanding lawyers to that position."

But NOW Sessions thinks Kagan warrants close scrutiny because "Ms. Kagan's lack of judicial experience and short time as Solicitor General is troubling."

Similar contradictory statements have come from such people as Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., and Alabama Republican Sen. Richard Shelby.

The new meme that has been trotted out by Obama's opponents is that Kagan is his Harriet Miers. That is as thoroughly laughable as these hypocritical senators changing the "values" by which they will judge judicial nominees according to who is in the White House.

Kagan has clerked for two judges, one of them a Supreme Court Justice. She worked as an advisor in the Clinton White House. She has had an honored teaching career and has been Dean of Harvard Law School. She serves now as Solicitor General, for which position she was confirmed by the Senate. She is in no way comparable to Miers who hitched her star to the politician George W. Bush, who she fawned over as "cool", and she never wavered from that position. The only experience Miers had was working for him and, in the end, even Republicans agreed that that was not enough. Her candidacy for the Court was doomed.

I don't know if Kagan is the best candidate for the Supreme Court vacancy or if she will be a Justice of whom we can be proud, but there seems very little doubt that she is qualified for the position. Again, I think that, in the end, even Republicans will agree.

The hypocritic oath

So, have you heard about the urologist in Florida who is refusing to treat anyone who voted for Barack Obama? He posted a notice on his office door which reads:

If you voted for Obama...
seek urologic care elsewhere.
Changes to your health care begin right now,
not in four years.

Moreover, he has stocked his office waiting room with anti-Obama and anti-health care reform pamphlets. I'm not sure what section of the Hippocratic Oath admonishes fledgling doctors to screen their prospective patients for their political beliefs or to seek to impose their own political beliefs on their patients by plastering their offices with political pamphlets. I've just reread the oath and I didn't see anything about this in it, but perhaps I'm just too naive to correctly interpret the ancient oath.

Remember last summer amid all the tea party screaming about health care reform when some of the crazies were complaining that, under this reform, health care would be rationed and that Republicans could be refused treatment because they are Republicans? Apparently, this bozo in Florida decided to implement that policy - only in reverse. Mr. Cassell - I won't call him Dr. because he doesn't deserve the title - has decided that people who disagree with him politically are not worthy of receiving medical attention. Let them suffer and die early and, eventually, there will be no one left except people who agree with him, or who pretend to agree with him in order to receive medical treatment.

Obviously, Cassell misunderstood the oath he was taking upon entering his profession. He thought he was taking the Hypocritic Oath.

God help those who fall under his tender care.