Archive for the ‘Current Events’ Category
Another Evangelical Tragedy
A month ago, the Rev. Paul Barnes of Grace Chapel in Doug las County preached to his 2,100-member congregation about integrity and grace in the aftermath of the Ted Haggard drugs-and-gay-sex scandal. Now, the 54-year-old Barnes joins Haggard as a fallen evangelical minister who preached that homosexuality was a sin but grappled with a hidden […]
In: All, Briefly Noted, Current Events
The Nast-Cartoon Administration
This [election year, 2006] will be known as the year macho politics failed — mainly because it was macho politics by marshmallow men. […] Republicans were oddly oblivious to the fact that they had turned into a Thomas Nast cartoon: an unappetizing tableau of bloated, corrupt, dissembling, feckless white hacks who were leaving kids unprotected. […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Current Events
Webb on Class Struggle
This is an unusually long excerpt (for me) from a piece in the Wall Street Journal by Jim Webb, "the Democratic senator-elect from Virginia." It's an op-ed called "Class Struggle" (15 November 2006). This ever-widening divide [between the wealthiest in America and the less wealthy] is too often ignored or downplayed by its beneficiaries. A […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Current Events
Economic Equity & Social Tolerance
The Democrats who defeated them can be expected to hold these seats indefinitely. Historically Republican districts going back to the founding of the GOP in the Civil War are turning into Democratic bastions. After the failure of Reconstruction, the South became wholly Democratic, the Solid South, and the basis of a Democratic Party that was […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Current Events
No Republicans Fit to Endorse
The New York Times explains why it won't be endorsing a single Republican Congressional candidate this year — something they can't remember ever happening before: To begin with, the Republican majority that has run the House — and for the most part, the Senate — during President Bush’s tenure has done a terrible job on […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Current Events
Gay Prostitutes & Evangelical "Leaders"
This is a wholly gratuitous quotation: Now that Haggard has been outed by a gay prostitute for having sex with him and buying meth, and has resigned as president of the National Association of Evangelicals, I wonder what it will take for the good people in the pews to call ["]leaders["] like Haggard, Jerry Falwell, […]
In: All, Current Events, Laughing Matters
Haggard's Gay Ministry
Speaking of leading evangelical Ted Haggard, who this afternoon admits to buying meth — only once! — from his long-time friend the gay hooker, here's a tidbit from last year that may be enlightening: [Ted Haggard] was always on the lookout for spies. At the time [c. 1984, early in the founding of his New […]
Evangelical Hypocrite Confesses
What a difference a day makes. Yesterday, noted evangelical "pastor" Ted Haggard claimed I've never had a gay relationship with anybody. … I am steady with my wife. I'm faithful to my wife. I don't know if this is election-year politics or if this has to do with the marriage amendment or what it is. […]
Leading Evangelical Paid for Gay Sex
Yet another conservative, anti-gay, religious hypocrite bites the … dust: Ted Haggard, one of the most prominent evangelical pastors in the nation, resigned today as president of the National Association of Evangelicals amid allegations that he carried on a three-year sexual relationship with a male prostitute. Haggard, founder of the 14,000-member New Life Church, has […]
In: All, Current Events, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
Bond on Civil Rights
Marriage is a civil right. If you don't want gay people to marry in your church, good for you. But you can't say they can't marry in your city. — Julian Bond, NAACP Chair [Said in reference to a state constitutional amendment referendum that would ban marriage equality for gays in Virginia. Quoted in "NAACP […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Current Events
Bush's "Katrina Foreign Policy"
This [Bush] administration has given us a Katrina foreign policy—mistake upon mistake upon mistake. Unwilling to give our troops the armor that they need. Unwilling to have enough troops in place. Unwilling to give them the Humvees that they deserve to protect them. Unwilling to have a coalition that is adequate to be able to […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Current Events
Culture of Thugs?
What an interesting question to ask your favorite conservative candidate, which we receive via Pam Spaulding:* Homobigot Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO) was approached by Ben Gelt of ProgressActionNow yesterday and was asked to respond to a question from an undecided voter in her district: If you had the choice between saving a soldier's life and preventing […]
NYDPs
The end of marriage as we know it? The data tells [sic] it straight — three quarters of domestic partnerships in New York City are heterosexual couples. "So far this year, 27% of overall domestic partnership registrations are same- sex couples. We are on par percentage-wise with last year," said Michael McSweeney, first deputy at […]
In: All, Current Events, Plus Ca Change...
New Jersey & Marriage Equality
The opinion on the "gay-marriage" case in New Jersey was handed down today by that state's supreme court. The opinion, which I haven't read yet entirely, is interesting. Here's the pivotal bit: Only rights that are deeply rooted in the traditions, history, and conscience of the people are deemed to be fundamental. Although we cannot […]
In: All, Current Events, Faaabulosity
Beard of the Week XIX: NCOD
Today,# here in the US, it's National Coming Out Day, a day chosen to commemorate the first "March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights" on the same date in 1987. I didn't make it to that one, but I was there with Isaac for the next March in 1983, along with about a million […]
In: All, Beard of the Week, Current Events, Faaabulosity
Those Cracking Noises
Krugman suspects that the juggernaut may be more not than previously suspected. At its core, the political axis that currently controls Congress and the White House is an alliance between the preachers and the plutocrats — between the religious right, which hates gays, abortion and the theory of evolution, and the economic right, which hates […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Current Events
To Count Every Vote is American
This week the venerable New York Times was the latest of many organisations and institutions to declare that America's democratic system is simply starting to fail. Not in terms of its democratic ideals, or some takeover by a Neocon cabal, but by a simple collapse in its ability to count everyone's votes accurately and fairly. […]
Our Story So Far…
I can't help but feel sorry for my old Republican friends in Congress who are fighting for their political lives. After all, it must be tough explaining to voters at their local Baptist church's Keep Congress Conservative Day that it was their party that took a $155 billion surplus and turned it into a record-setting […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Current Events
"No Hereditary Kings in America"
I have read through Judge Anna Diggs Taylor opinion* in the federal case of ACLU v. NSA, i.e., the federal case over the constitutionality of the President's authorizing the NSA to spy wholesale on Americans without warrants. It makes good reading, with an interesting section (Part IV) on "The History of Electronic Surveillance in America". […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Current Events
"Christian Zionist" Foreign Policy
I know, I know. Perhaps I am slightly obsessive about all this weirdness with America's foreign policy and the pre-millenial dispensationalists under the bed, barely out of view, but it's a bit like global warming: if they're having even a tenth the influence on policy that one fears in the early hours of the morning, […]